Vignette 6 - Moogles and Their History

The Siedge Weald, 35 miles from Gariland, late evening

The seven sat around a large campfire. It was drizzling slightly, and so they kept feeding the fire to ensure it didn't get low enough to fizzle out in the damp. The drizzle was not as unpleasant as it might have been with the heat of the fire to continuously help to dry them.

"Go on then, Delita, you're the one with the fascination for history. Tell us about the moogles that supposedly lived in these parts." Samantha said.

Delita looked blank and Ramza started to laugh.

"Ask him about the murder of some King of Romanda two centuries ago, Sam, and he could tell you all of the manoeuvring that lead to it and the repercussions that were still being felt twenty years later. Don't ask him about something as non-political as moogles."

"For your information, you ignoramus, Romanda had a revolution a little over two hundred years ago which led to the formation of a Republic, which lasted for nearly thirty years. They exiled their King, they didn't murder him. When the tide turned back to favour the royal family, the republican system formed the basis..."

Delita's voice was changing from disgruntled to didactic. Ramza let his head fall dramatically to Ophellia's shoulder. Closing his eyes he made exaggerated snoring noises until he was hit on the ear by a stick that Delita threw at him.

"Fine, be as thick as a plank all of your life. I doubt very much that you can tell us anything more than I can about moogles." Delita said.

"Actually, Delita, Father once told me and the girls that a lot of the relics they've uncovered in the last few decades in Goug, and nearby in Lionel Province, are thought to have been built by moogles. He said Goug was probably the moogles' capital. It has an excellent natural harbour, which is why humans built over the moogles' tunnels within a few years of them abandoning it, or becoming extinct, or whatever it was that happened to them – no-one knows for certain." Ramza said.

"Where was I, then, when he was telling the three of you this?" His friend asked indignantly. Ramza gave him a wide grin.

"Take a wild guess. I don't remember, for sure, but I'm betting you were in the stables mucking out, having been naughty, yet again." That had been Delita's usual punishment, growing up. There was always plenty to do, with all the chocobos his father had owned - and so Delita had done a lot of mucking out.

"Oh, yes! As if you were such a bloody angel!" Delita said.

"Do you want to benefit from my vast moogle-related knowledge or not?" Ramza's asked, smiling serenely.

"I'm betting that's all you know!" Delita's tone had a bite that Ramza's relaxed teasing didn't.

"What's got you so touchy?" Ramza asked.

Delita rolled his eyes and made an odd "pfft" noise, but gave no other answer. Ramza, across the fire from Juliana, suspected that he was looking straight at Delita's source of touchiness.

"For your information, you moody pain in the neck, I was interested enough to go and look up more information about moogles in the library."

"All right, all right, I apologise to everyone for my mood. Now speak on, oh oracle of wisdom." Delita's voice had warmed up considerably, now the sarcasm was just their usual friendly banter.

"Actually, if you want hard facts there is very little more." Ramza said with a slightly sheepish look. "Lots of speculation, of course. Round here, Sam, the moogles seem to have lived in small rural settlements. Though they do find the occasional bit of technology, what they find mostly seems to be agricultural and domestic in nature.

"With it being warm and marshy, they think that the main crop was probably rice, or maybe something similar that we don't even have, today. It looks as if they lived much as we do in rural areas - apart from their homes being in tunnels underground - small villages and farms and with similar family and domestic arrangements." He trailed off, there was little more that wasn't hugely speculative.

"My nurse used to tell me and my brothers and sisters fairy tales about moogles." Hildegarde said. "They were always full of magic – but totally unlike the magick we have these days."

"Hmm... I do wonder if that might really be the relics. You know how stories change as they are passed down through the generations - if their technology was so much more advanced than ours it could seem more like magic.

"After all, the mythical airships are said to have been designed and built by moogles, and anything that can let people sail through the air as if they were on the seas sounds pretty magical to me. Yet, I heard a rumour that they think they've found airship parts under Goug." Ramza said.

"Do you have any old moogle settlements in Limberry, Argath?" Juliana asked.

Ramza wondered if her very friendly tone was to annoy Delita. He couldn't even remember her addressing the slightly sullen blond boy directly, before now. Argath gave a start, he had been staring into the fire, only half-listening to the conversation.

"Er... I don't know." He gave her a shy smile. "Sorry, history and mythology aren't really my things."

"Ramza, I've got an idea." Delita said brightly. "I'd really like to see some of these relics, why don't you and I and maybe the girls go down to Goug for a few days this summer. By chocobo and boat it should only take three or four days to get there."

"Dycedarg should let us go, but I don't know about the girls. Still it would be nice if the four of us could all go together. Come the Autumn, we should have our commissions and we could end up seeing even less of them than we have been while we've been at the Akademy."

Ramza sighed, he really hoped for his first posting to be near Eagrose, so that he could spend more time, not less, with his family.

"You know, I sometimes wonder about you two and your sisters." Juliana said nastily, glaring at Delita.

Delita blinked and opened his mouth to speak but it was Ophellia, Juliana's closest friend, who headed off the potential explosion from both boys, having quickly picked up on what Juliana was implying.

"Juliana, you're annoyed at Delita for some reason, we've all realised that, but what you just said was going too far. Especially as Ramza, at least, hasn't done a thing to you. And you know that Lady Alma and Tietra were very kind, welcoming us to Eagrose when we were there. I really think you should apologise."

Though she was embarrassed and a little ashamed, Juliana knew that if her friend was pulling her up like this she had gone far too far – had known that without being told, truthfully. So she apologised with good grace to Ramza, and only slightly resentfully to Delita.

The mood of the party gradually became companionable again, until the drizzle turned to rain and everyone but Hildegarde, who was taking first watch, turned in for the night.

Author's note:

I was trying to decide what to do next with the little band, and I ended up checking the the Siedge Wield's description. Moogles, hmm. Well, it was something for them to talk and bicker about.

Oh, and yes, I am deliberately, if vaguely, in my ham-fisted way, referencing one of Arthur C Clarke's "laws" - the one about sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. Once I realised that the moogles were engineers and scientists in Ivalice's distant past, their tech being sci-fi-ish legends being spoken about as if they were fairy tales became an appealing idea to me.