Burgeaux Rois

Situated in middle-class Ul’dah, Burgeaux worked as the head chef of a prolific restaurant, serving a combination of Limsan and Ishgardian-inspired dishes– aptly named Síntesis. He enjoyed the accolades his work brought in, both for his restaurant and respect towards the culinarian craft, but he steadily grew bored of the dishes and theming he’d had to keep up with.Being fancy just wasn’t his thing.It's a miracle that he survived the Calamity.
No, really– he woke up, opened the door, and stared, only to go shut the door and go back to bed. The fuckshit going on out there could wait until morning, or never. Preferably never. He found his business sustained only with slight damage, and seeing how the tragedy affected others; he repurposed the restaurant to produce quick, quality meals to sell to his regular customers with the profits and leftovers being donated to the poor.Síntesis ran as usual post-renovation, and on one day during the typical lunch rush, a rat ventured into Burgeaux's– usually spotless –restaurant, through the vents and ran along the high shelves. He noticed the creature, and in a panic, it jumped into the large pot of frying oil, cooking just below. Large drops of hot grease splashed onto the elezen’s left eye and he stumbled around blindly, hissing from the pain. In his fumble, he accidentally bumped the pot with the remaining oil, spilling it over his body.Coincidentally, it’d been the day when an infamous Ishgardian health inspector dined, one whom Burgeaux had been feuding with since an unseemly one night stand many months prior.

He’d heard the wails that emanated from the kitchen-- whispers of a rat fell upon keen duskwight ears– and he saw his chance to pull the trigger on Síntesis. Burgeaux was promptly stripped of his cooking license and the restaurant closed for the unforeseeable future.Burgeaux lost all his passion for living, staring lifelessly into the mirror as he applied burn cream to the intricately patterned scars that now decorated his body. It seemed as though he’d aged a decade in those few days afterward. All his hard work was gone in a haste, and the disconnect from his mind and body led him to operate on autopilot for three long years. Alcohol hung on his breath as he sunk into a deep depression– a part of himself lost from the inability to do what he loved, deprived of the respect he’d had from his peers before. He joined underground fighting rings just to make ends meet as his alcoholism worsened; but, word quickly spread and he quickly gained a loyal base of devotees as they’d remembered the donations once provided for them.Once on a walk to the arena, comrades by his side, he gained sudden awareness of his feelings and surroundings as he realized the overwhelming support for his fighting and what had gotten him there in the first place– his food! Although he desperately wanted to die, he realized couldn't cook in death and thus had to make the most of life. Why the hell did a license determine his food’s worth, and why did it stop him from cooking to his heart’s content!? Using his newly gained fighting skills and revitalized passion, he set off to get his life back together.