Outwardly, Ysayle is as chilly as her "Iceheart" moniker implies. While reasonable, she does not make attempts to get close to people and does not suffer foolishness in her allies. Used to maintaining the image of a cold-hearted leader, it comes to her readily as a first reaction.

Underneath that, however, Ysayle is a deeply lonely person. Even her belief in herself as the reincarnation of Shiva (a belief now shattered, leaving her adrift) ultimately comes from the desire to be close to the one person that she felt like she truly "knew" after losing her family and friends in the avalanche. The visions the Echo gave her were from Hraesvelgr's perspective, and in her loneliness, she formed an idea of a bond that only existed from her side.

However, given the chance, she does reach out, in her own, strange way. She responds first to the Warrior of Light, as a fellow bearer of the Echo, but soon also grows close to Alphinaud over the course of their journey and yes, even Estinien. It is a quiet fondness, that of someone who does not really know how to express it, but it is one of the strongest feelings she possesses.

Her other strong feelings are her belief in peace and her regret for her actions. Ysayle is a person who desires greatly to atone for the things she has done - not just for the lives her actions have ended, but for twisting the memories of Hraesvelgr and Shiva to her own purposes. It is this that draws her to the Light, as much as because she is already chosen by Hydaelyn's. Perhaps nothing can make up for it, if her death was not enough - but she will keep trying anyway.

[Note: Contains SPOILERS!!!! For FFXIV: Heavensward]







Ysayle was born and raised in Falcon's Nest, a farming hamlet to the west of the Holy See of Ishgard. Situated in the western part of the fertile highlands of Coerthas, Falcon's Nest both provided food to Ishgard and kept watch for her, as the settlement closest to the dragon-controlled regions of Dravania. Ishgard had been in a holy war with the dragons for nearly a thousand years. Children in Falcon's Nest were taught to watch the skies, and immediately run to an adult if they saw anything larger than a bird.

The sky held nothing but death. But no one knew how much, until the Calamity came. The distant red moon, Dalamud, barely larger than a star, increased in size, until the moon itself hovered close enough to set the seas to roiling and the aether of land into disarray. Over the battlefield at Cartenau, the moon shattered like a giant egg, fragments thrown across Eorzea, revealing the Primal Bahamut within.

But that's another story and another dragon. Ysayle was not at Cartenau. She watched, beset by the visions granted by the power of the Echo, as Coerthas turned from fertile highlands to snowtrapped wastelands in the aftermath of the Calamity, as the fragments of Dalamud corrupted the land across the continent. Slowly starving, the people of Falcon's Nest set out for Ishgard, seeking sanctuary.

They never made it. An avalanche occurred as they traversed the cliff path that would later come to be known as Snowcloak. While some few of the townsfolk at the beginning of the pack escaped safely, at the back, Ysayle alone survived. She was sixteen years old.

The path to Ishgard closed, she made her way to Dravania, desparately seeking shelter in the hunter's camp called Tailfeather. Instead, there she met the one from whose perspective came her visions - Hraevelgr, one of the brood of Midgarmsomr, the eldest and most powerful dragons in the entire world.

In that encounter, she learned the truth behind the war - that Nidhogg, another of the First Brood, waged it as revenge for their sister, who had been betrayed by power-hungry Ishgardian knights a thousand years before. She also learned of Saint Shiva - a mortal woman who, two centuries before that, recognized a soulmate in Hraevelgr and helped to bring peace. Love of Shiva was the only reason Hraevelgr didn't join with his brother.

After that, Ysayle does in fact make it to Falcon's Nest, and she spends roughly a year there, beginning to correspond with heretics - people who have sided with the dragons in the war with Ishgard. In time, she comes to believe herself something of a second coming of Shiva, and gathers an impressive base of followers under the name "Lady Iceheart."

Five years after the Calamity, an Ishgardian settlement called Camp Dragonshead breaks the policy of isolation that Ishgard has maintained since before the Calamity, and begins sending supplies south to a frontier settlement called Revenant's Toll. In these caravans, Iceheart sees opportunity, and she orders her followers to regularly assault them and bring back the supplies to the warren of ice caves in Snowcloak where she makes her base. Among these supplies are a large amount of crystals, and it is for that reason that the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (an organization dedicated to fighting Primals, which includes the player character) takes notice.

With the aid of the Scions, Ishgard clears Snowcloak of her followers. Iceheart herself speaks briefly to the player character, condemning them, before fleeing to the Akh Afah Amphitheatre. There, she summons the primal spirit of Shiva into her own body, and does battle with the PC. After the fight, she reveals herself as another chosen by the Echo with the trademark Hear, Feel, Think spoken by Hydaelyn to all her chosen. She then flees again.

Later, she appears before the warded bridge to Ishgard, shattering the first and most powerful of the magics that keep dragons from the city itself, and allowing Nidhogg's Brood to assault the city itself for the first time in history. However, Ysayle is devestated by the loss of life - the dragons did not target only the knights and nobles of Ishgard as she had imagined, but anyone they could get their hands on. She comes to greatly regret these actions.

The player meets Ysayle again briefly after tailing heretics to a hideout outside Falcon's Nest. There, she reveals some of her history and the root of her desire for peace, and has a brief exchange with the small manifestation of Midgardsomr that follows the player around. The player, perhaps intentionally, allows her to escape before Ishgardian reinforcements arrive.

Later, she appears when signalled by the player, Alphinaud Leveilleur (a member of the Scions) and Estinien Wyrmblood (a dragoon - jumping, dragon-slaying knight - who carries one of Nidhogg's stolen eyes, which Ishgardians believe to be the cause of the war). She agrees to guide them into Dravania in an attempt to broker peace with Hraesvelgr, or at least to delay the next of Nidhogg's assaults upon Ishgard. They set off, Ysayle and Estinien butting heads the entire way, both deeply set in their beliefs.

In the Dravanian Forelands, she introduces the group to Vidofnir, a daughter of Hraesvelgr's who is her friend. Vidofnir refuses to allow them past to the holy mount of Dravania, Sohm Al, until a local primal threat (Ravana, the Lord of Conquest, summoned by the insectoid Gnath hivemind) is taken care of. Ysayle attempts to defeat Ravana by turning into Shiva, but fails, in part due to poor elemental matchup (Ravana being a primal of fire). However, the PC is able to slay the god, and the group continues on to Sohm Al with Vidofnir's approval.

After fighting their way up, the group arrives in a town populated by moogles, Mogshome, which is situated on one of the largest floating isles of the Churning Mists. After the PC and Alphinaud enlist help from a moogle of the lands below, and numerous boring fetchquests, the moogles entrust to them a horn that can be played to call Hraevelgr to Zenith, a ruined town that was once home to the combined civilization of man and dragon.

Hraesvelgr reveals the truth that Ysayle already knew to the others, and breaks Ysayle's delusion of being Shiva reborn, describing the primal as a god of her own making. Broken in faith and heart, Ysayle remains behind when the player and Estinien assault Nidhogg's lair and slay him, and has barely moved when they return, bearing the eye that Hraevelgr lent to his brother to save Nidhogg's life, the eye that allowed the war to continue for so long. Ysayle returns with the group only long enough to lead the last of the heretics from Ishgard, and then vanishes again to Zenith, heart heavy with the weight of her sins.

The dream of peace is short-lived; the Archbishop of Ishgard's Orthodox Church wants nothing of it, and prepares to turn himself into a primal much as Ysayle did, but with far more power, fueled by a thousand years of faith and desperation. The player, in the company of several Scions and Estinien, tails him to Azys Lla, a series of artificial floating islands once used as a research base by the lost civilization of Allag. Behind them comes the Garlean warship the Gration, a titanic airship outfitted to destroy any resistance.

In Zenith, Ysayle begs Hraevelgr to bear her to her allies, her friends, that she might atone. He agrees. With the kind of timing you find only in stories, they arrive just as the Gration turns its cannons upon the smaller airship.

Ysayle takes a single crystal, potent with Hydaelyn's blessing, in her hand, and lets go.

"O goddess born of mine own hopes and dreams. For the last time, I beseech you! Fill this vessel with your light! Still the hatred within our hearts and bless us with eternal grace!"

Shiva takes to the sky, answering the Garlean assault with ice, debilitating its engines in a way that puts an end to the use of the ship as a means of conquest. In the process, she sustains heavy damage from the cannons, but provides cover for the airship bearing the player to escape and land safely among the machinery of Azys Lla.

Shiva dissolves, and, falling, Ysayle dissolves into a cloud of aether, and is no more.