SPOILERS through Archades, when Balthier's former occupation, familial ties, and given name are revealed.
Ffamran would have liked to say Prototype Vessel ISF-9A (as of 3 o'clock this morning, unofficially rechristened the Strahl), wassoaring through the cloudless, indigo sky, silent as a nighthawk over the Dalmascan sand. To his dismay, how it was actually flying could be likened more closely to a drunken seagull with a death wish. With the invisibility paling in place, limping past the Nabradia/Dalmasca border shouldn't have been insurmountably difficult, even with the thrusters on his left side half fried by a lightning spell from Draklor Laboratory's security systems. He was a gifted pilot…the best and youngest in the Judicial candidate pool. But his skills at the helm didn't make a lick of difference in this particular case—at the moment he was fighting time, and the fact he'd gone leagues past any vestige of civilization before detecting the sick-sweet scent of leaking coolant in the air.
If the ship was in bad shape, her ersatz captain was in worse. His stock of curatives had rendered his perforated shoulder usable again, if infernally stiff, but didn't do a thing for the headache building steadily behind his eyes, or the way his concentration wandered alarmingly from the task of keeping himself on course. He'd have to set down somewhere soon before he blacked out and rammed into a cliffside. There should be some kind of Dalmascan settlement not too far south. With a good engineer. He hoped. Otherwise his masterful plan to escape a father who was simultaneously insane enough to hold philosophical conversations with potted plants and cogent enough to maintain an iron grip on every aspect of his son's life was going to go to waste, and Ffamran did not like to waste.
In his two faces he had the perfect tools to craft his escape: Ffamran Bunansa had access to the raw materials, and Judge Hiraldhad the authority to use them. No one suspected conscientious, well-mannered Fframran of anything (really the entire problem with his life in the first place), which meant he could slip in and out of offices almost at will, a charming smile and the claim he was running errands for his father the only clearance needed. This was how he got copies of Judge Aran's signature, Draklor's overseer, and the appropriate blank requisition forms. Every time he set pen to paper to practice the forgery, it sent a thrill through him—the penalty for impersonating a Judge Magister was death.
The weeks of planning done and the forms in hand, he donned the scowling steel visage of a newly titled Judge and strode authoritatively into the lab hangar at an unholy hour of the morning to demand the stealth tech prototype for a "covert mission" of extreme importance to the integrity of the Empire. The desk toad waved him through without a fuss…and that's where things unraveled. He had made the almost fatal mistake of underestimating the human capacity for pure, unadultered stupidity. The clerk was drunk on duty, and in his inebriated haze failed to inform the hangar guards they would have a visitor. What Ffamran had hoped to make a quiet affair got much too interesting much too fast—an all-out, sirens-blazing gunfight, which he, by a span of luck exactly two and one-half inches above his heart, had won.
He'd never been shot before, nor, for that matter, had he ever shot anyone. Pulling the trigger had been easy—he'd plugged enough drones and constructs at the academy it was second nature. Drones, however, do not scream in agony. The first to fall by his pistol was not a perpetrator of blackest villainy but some underpaid soldier in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whether he survived, Ffamran would probably never know. His stomach felt suddenly queasy. Whether it was a belated attack of conscience or advanced hypoxia was up for debate.
"If you want to be a sky pirate, you're going to be putting a lot of holes in your fellow men," he whispered to himself. "And no one will take you seriously if you're sick afterward."
The attempts to scrub the scene from his brain met with little success; there was nothing to distract him but sand, sky, and the possibility of his own impending demise.
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The farther he flew, the harder it was getting to keep his eyes open. When he saw the first pinprick of light, he was half afraid it was a dream, but after pinching hard into the skin of his hand and it was still there. He pounded on the radio to broadcast on all frequencies: "Request…requesting clearance for immediate…immediate...uhhnn…hell. I need to get this bloody thing on the ground."
"Request granted, unidentified vessel. Green spots are the perimeter of the landing pad, lock on to those. I've gotta say—you don't sound so good. Sparkdust Mine settlement out."
Thank all the gods there was an automated landing sequence on this thing. He punched in the proximity targets and let the ship do his flying for him, normally unthinkable, but in his present state he would have ended up burying her nose in the ochre dust. In a few minutes, the ship settled into the dry earth with a satisfying crunch. When he rose, the deck felt as if it were bucking beneath his feet, rather odd, considering he was now on the ground. Also, what had been a single green button next to the hatch were now two and had begun dancing back and forth in a most irritating fashion. He succeeded in smacking the right one, but only just, since it was right after he stepped out into the moonlight that his entire field of vision faded to black.
A rough, cool hand caught him around the shoulders before he could kiss the gangplank. "Steady there, steady there! You hurt? That would be rotten luck—no Hume doctors around for miles," its owner said.
"No…not hurt. Coolant," he mumbled. The air was freezing, and the most delicious thing he had ever tasted in his life. The black miasma retreated further the deeper he breathed, and behind it was a rusty Bangaa who had advanced enough in years his snout and eye ridge had faded to dusky peach.
The old Bangaa raised his nose and sampled carefully. "Tch. I can smell it. Sit yourself down and get some air," he said, and pulled him away to a stack of wide crates.
"Here," he said, and put a tiny phial in his hand. "Good for what ails you." Ffamran knocked it back without hesitation, and the cotton fuzz cleared from his head almost immediately. His rescuer set off to pace slowly around the ship while he lay back on the prickly boards and renewed his acquaintance with readily available oxygen.
"Looks like someone nipped your tail good, boy. Get into a tiff with the bucketheads, did we?" he asked, once he'd circled back round to stand in front of the stack.
Ffamran levered himself up on his elbows and thanked every bit of superstitious nonsense he could think of he'd decided to shuck the tin can he'd been wearing and jettison it somewhere over the Salikawood. "Aye. Don't suppose you have someone around who could repair their handiwork?"
"Maybe, maybe. I'll need to have a look-see when the light's better. You have, ah, compensation, I hope?"
"My gil is Imperial stamp, but there's enough of it."
"Gil is gil is gil," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "A boy with a full purse and trouble with the Judges. I think I like you already. Name is Arturus, by the way. Tell you what: the last of the clutch shipped out to Nalbina this spring, so we've an extra room. It's yours for the night, free of charge. "
"Your offer is most welcome, but must you address me as 'boy'? I'm hardly a child."
"Is that so. How many summers have you put behind you, then?
"Twenty-two," he said, inflating the real figure by half a decade.
"And I'm at one-hundred and nineteen, so I'll call you boy as I please until you've gone gray. Home is in the ravine. This way."