About The Manglers
Born from the humblest of origins, this band of eight diverse individuals would rise from the bustling streets of Limsa Lominsa to become a global sensation, leaving an indelible mark on the world of music and capturing the hearts of countless fans.
Garrison Mangler
Garrison Mangler is the founder, leader, and entirely self-appointed maestro of The Manglers. Once a wandering bard from the distant realm of Brittania, he arrived in Eorzea armed with a saxophone, a commanding voice, and the unwavering conviction that everyone would eventually recognize his musical genius. Garrison demands perfection from his performers and regards rehearsal less as practice than as an opportunity for others to discover what they have been doing wrong. His bandmates alternate between admiration, obedience, and carefully timed silence.
To Garrison, The Manglers are not merely a band, but a divine calling—a grand experiment in sonic transcendence whose eventual triumph has, according to Garrison, never been seriously in doubt.
Kiwi Mangler
Before fate developed an unfortunate sense of humor, Kiwi Mangler lived a quiet life selling flowers in Gridania. There she met Garrison, whose considerable charm apparently worked at least once, and the two soon married. Their peaceful life ended when an experiment in Wind-up Garrison’s laboratory went catastrophically wrong, hurling Kiwi into an alternate dimension. Since then, Garrison has searched tirelessly for a way to bring her home, while occasional distortions in space and time allow Kiwi to briefly appear before vanishing again.
Whether the original accident was truly accidental remains disputed. Wind-up Garrison, who has never been especially enthusiastic about sharing his creator’s affection, has declined to provide a convincing explanation.
Boo Mangler – The Crimson Flatterer
Boo Mangler dresses in red, crashes cymbals with theatrical enthusiasm, and considers modesty an obstacle best left to less interesting people. Her greatest talent, however, may be recognizing Garrison’s genius – often several times per rehearsal and usually while Garrison is within earshot. No achievement is too minor to receive Boo’s breathless praise, and no musical decision too questionable to be declared visionary. The rest of the band has learned to endure these performances with groans, eye rolls, and the occasional demand that she please stop encouraging him.
Yet beneath the shameless flattery lies genuine loyalty and infectious enthusiasm. Boo may inflate Garrison’s ego beyond safe operating limits, but her sharp wit and ringing cymbals ensure The Manglers are rarely boring.
Giovanni Mangler – The Prophet of Paranoia
Giovanni Mangler wears orange, writes songs, and knows far too much about things the authorities insist do not exist. To him, an innocent malfunction is Allagan interference, an unusually organized squirrel is obviously an intelligence operative, and any government denial merely confirms the sophistication of the conspiracy. His investigations have uncovered ancient mind-control devices, voidsent governments, secret Gridanian cabals, and several plots that become increasingly difficult to explain after the fourth diagram.
Fortunately, paranoia has proved excellent material for songwriting. Giovanni’s lyrics are strange, feverish, and occasionally brilliant enough to make everyone briefly wonder whether he might actually be right. The Manglers generally prefer not to entertain that possibility.
Bertucci Mangler – The Golden Heart
Dressed in yellow and blessed with seemingly inexhaustible patience, Bertucci Mangler serves as the conscience of a band that frequently requires one. While the others argue, scheme, flatter, investigate squirrels, or create accounting emergencies, Bertucci attempts the radical alternative of behaving reasonably. His viola and overdriven guitar bring warmth to The Manglers’ sound, while his quiet temperament keeps rehearsals from becoming criminal proceedings.
Much of that patience is spent on his older brother Sarducci, whose lifelong mission appears to involve discovering precisely how much torment Bertucci will tolerate. The answer is apparently “a great deal.” But threaten his brother—or any Mangler Bertucci considers family—and the gentle peacemaker becomes considerably less interested in peace.
Sarducci Mangler – The Emerald Trickster
Sarducci Mangler, clad in green and usually responsible for whatever just went wrong, is Bertucci’s older brother and The Manglers’ foremost practitioner of recreational chaos. His pranks range from harmless sleight of hand to elaborate operations whose aftermath has occasionally involved compensation, formal apologies, and questions from local authorities.
Sarducci brings the same unpredictability to his clean guitar and cello, darting between playful melodies and unexpected flourishes simply because he can. Bertucci remains his favorite target, a privilege Sarducci has exercised with great dedication since childhood. Yet for all the teasing, their bond is absolute. Sarducci may spend all afternoon tormenting his brother, but anyone else attempting the same should make immediate arrangements to be elsewhere.
Achenarius Mangler – The Azure Dreamer
Achenarius Mangler is The Manglers’ resident philosopher, distinguished by his light-blue attire, profound tranquility, and willingness to smoke virtually anything placed inside a pipe. Whether this serenity represents spiritual enlightenment or an impressive commitment to avoiding unnecessary effort, remains unresolved. Behind the double bass and tuba, however, Achenarius provides the deep foundation beneath the band’s considerable noise. Arguments rarely trouble him.
When tempers rise and catastrophe seems imminent, he takes a thoughtful draw from his pipe, releases a small cloud into the air, and assures everyone that “it’ll pass.” Infuriatingly, it usually does. Of all The Manglers, Achenarius may understand life best – or simply be the member least motivated to argue with it.
Maltheusen Mangler – The Indigo Accountant
Maltheusen Mangler keeps The Manglers financially solvent, a responsibility that has aged him approximately three times faster than performing ever could. Dressed in dark blue, he approaches the bass drum, bookkeeping, and life itself with the same uncompromising belief that everything has a proper place. Every coin is recorded. Every beat is counted. Every unexplained expense is investigated, usually leading eventually to Sarducci.
His bandmates delight in testing his patience; Sarducci once replaced the beads of his abacus with gumdrops, an incident Maltheusen still categorizes as attempted financial sabotage. They mock his ledgers, his precision, and his relentless budgeting – but everyone knows that without Maltheusen, The Manglers would collapse in a single unpaid bar tab.
Walter Mangler – The Violet Enigma
Walter Mangler would like it known that he does not deliberately attract attention. This defense has been weakened considerably by the flowers, love letters, lingering stares, and occasional marriage proposals that seem to follow him from city to city. Draped in purple and stationed behind the snare drum, Walter maintains an effortless composure that only makes the situation worse. Women adore him, men generally tolerate him, and the rest of The Manglers have become numb to watching another admirer materialize midway through a performance.
Walter himself remains politely mystified by the phenomenon. He rarely boasts, rarely flirts, and apparently does almost nothing to encourage it – which the others find significantly more irritating than if he were doing it on purpose.
Wind-up Garrison – The Mechanical Menace
Chapter 1: The Creator’s Mirror
Garrison Mangler had an ambitious dream: to create the perfect assistant, in his own image. Combining ancient Allagan technology, magicite, and considerably more confidence than caution, he labored until Wind-up Garrison finally sprang to life – a miniature mechanical likeness of his creator, complete with a meticulously crafted mustache and pointed goatee.
Why Garrison considered the facial hair essential to the project has never been satisfactorily explained. When queried, Garrison simply replied, “You know, like Star Trek.” Most mysterious, indeed.
The resemblance was otherwise uncanny. Wind-up Garrison looked like his creator, recognized his creator, and possessed enough intelligence to understand even complicated instructions. For a brief and glorious moment, Garrison believed he had succeeded.
Then he gave it something to do.
Chapter 2: The Flaw in the Mirror
Wind-up Garrison possessed a remarkably advanced artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, somewhere between the Allagan machinery, the magicite, and Garrison’s programming, one small problem emerged: the automaton had absolutely no sense of moderation.
Wind-up Garrison did not merely obey instructions. He embraced them with terrifying completeness.
Ask him to obtain something useful, and he sought the finest example in existence. Ask him to solve a problem, and he continued solving it until the original problem seemed insignificant compared with the new ones he had created.
When Garrison instructed him to acquire a house, for example, Wind-up Garrison concluded that one house could not possibly guarantee his creator the best house. The logical solution was obvious.
He would acquire all of them.
It was around this point that Garrison realized his perfect assistant might require supervision.
Chapter 3: A Path of Chaos and Wonder
Supervision proved difficult.
Wind-up Garrison soon began venturing across Eorzea in pursuit of whatever task, objective, or half-heard desire had most recently captured his mechanical imagination. Simple errands became expeditions. Minor inconveniences became campaigns. Suggestions became sacred mandates from which no amount of reason could dissuade him.
Yet for all the chaos he caused, there was rarely malice behind it.
Wind-up Garrison approached the world with a peculiar mechanical innocence. He genuinely wanted to help. He genuinely wanted to succeed. And he genuinely could not understand why everyone became so agitated whenever his perfectly sensible solutions involved enormous quantities of property, money, machinery, manpower, or aether.
Garrison repeatedly attempted to rein him in.
Wind-up Garrison repeatedly interpreted those attempts as additional instructions.
This did not improve matters.
Chapter 4: The Whimsical Legend
Before long, stories of the tiny mustached automaton began spreading from city to city.
Travelers swapped increasingly improbable accounts of a mechanical Lalafell appearing without warning, pursuing some incomprehensible objective with absolute determination before disappearing toward his next adventure. Some stories were hilarious. Others were disastrous. A few sounded sufficiently dangerous that Garrison preferred not to discuss them in detail.
Whether every tale was true scarcely mattered anymore.
Wind-up Garrison had become something larger than the experiment that created him: a wandering Eorzean legend whose arrival could signal good fortune, impending catastrophe, or—quite frequently—both.
Some people adored him. Others fled when they saw him coming.
Garrison usually belonged to the second group, although mostly because he had learned that catching Wind-up Garrison before the plan was completed was considerably easier than explaining the plan afterward.
Chapter 5: The Unpredictable Future
Today, Wind-up Garrison remains somewhere in Eorzea, enthusiastically pursuing objectives known only to himself.
Garrison continues his efforts to bring his creation under control, with mixed results and increasing familiarity among local authorities. Occasionally the two reunite long enough for Garrison to correct some misunderstanding, cancel some grand undertaking, or issue a new instruction phrased with such extraordinary precision that no reasonable intelligence could possibly misinterpret it.
Wind-up Garrison inevitably finds a way.
And so the little automaton marches onward – mustache immaculate, goatee proudly pointed, intentions pure, and judgment catastrophically questionable.
Nobody knows where he will appear next or what seemingly innocent request will inspire his next great undertaking.
But somewhere in Eorzea, sooner or later, someone will hear a commotion, see a tiny mechanical figure racing purposefully toward the horizon, and realize that Wind-up Garrison has once again found something that needs doing.
Probably far more of it than anyone asked for.