Enneagram · SX6 · geond90/100
His childhood:
Wanderer was created as a vessel meant to hold the Heart of God for his mother figure, Ei. When he showed emotion and independent will, Ei discarded him, leaving him alone in a room with no purpose and no one to care for him. This matches Naranjo's classic sx6 background: a mother who is ill, abusive, or absent in spirit, an absent father, so a child is left with no reliable role model, without the security of someone stronger. A childhood that teaches that following one's nature or giving in to emotions can lead to catastrophic consequences. Without safety or reassurance, the sx6 child develops an aggressively defensive personality over time — and a deep, persistent sense of helplessness and inferiority, both of which can be seen in the fully mature Wanderer.
Crucially, it is Wanderer who decided on his own that Ei discarded him because she found him "worthless." But Ei herself never said this (she in fact felt he was too fragile for her purposes and wanted him to be free of her control). His entire narrative is a projection — his own imagined reality built on what he fears to be true standing in for the actual one. This gap between what he assumes and what is true recurs throughout his story and is itself a hallmark of sx6: lacking basic security, they retreat into thought and prediction, where they can at least control the narrative, even a grim one.
As a child, his first reaction to abandonment is passive acceptance. He doesn't cry out or try to escape; he simply goes blank, "losing all perception," until humans rescue him. He then integrates into their world eagerly, learning their trades. Unlike his older self, this is an obedient, meek child who has simply changed households — from god to human — and expects, this time, to belong.
That belonging doesn't last. A disaster strikes, and the humans of Tatarasuna push him into a drastic, near-suicidal act to "save" the settlement, using him rather than protecting him. He goes along with it and survives — but everyone he'd come to think of as family does not. This is the "betrayal" and "expulsion" to which he returns while telling his story: humans, just like his mother, treated him as a tool to be used and then discarded once he'd served his purpose. Like a character in the head triad of the enneagram, he doesn't process this loss; he postpones the feelings behind it indefinitely and simply moves forward, eventually finding a new attachment in a child from Tatarasuna he takes in and raises as his family.
The trauma deepens: the child dies too, and Wanderer loses his last human tie. This third loss is what fully hardens him. Per Naranjo's description of counterphobic sx6 — he arrives at thoughts like "I would have preferred not to have been born." Then, rather than succumb to pain and grieve, he blames the dead child for "betraying" him, starts to smile with no one left to perform it for, and —This is the pivot from the meek, submerged child into the aggressive, armored adult, the exact transformation Naranjo describes as typical between childhood and puberty for counterphobic sixes. From here, he is picked up by the Fatui, endures Dottore's abuse in pursuit of power, and sets out to become a god so he can finally shed his "flawed" human vulnerability for good.
e6 and sx6 traits:
[Control through imagination] Because reality offered him no safety, Wanderer built an internal world where he always "knows" the worst in advance — a defense that gives him the illusion of control. This is why he avoids and resists any outside opinion that might evaluate his narrative: agreement would confirms his worst fears, disagreement would threaten the illusory safety of his assumptions. His refusal to ever simply ask Ei or Nahida what they actually think about him, preferring to "already know" is an excellent illustration of the sx6 neurosis.
[Thinking over feeling] Wanderer is capable, in the realm of logic and action — rising through Fatui ranks, engineering elaborate plans — but recoils from genuine emotional intimacy. He never lets himself be vulnerable with the kid or Nahida, masking pain behind smile, laughter or anger instead and advises Signora to "think coldly" to protect herself. This split reflects both the head triad's disconnect from feeling and the sexual instinct's paradox in a six: intimacy, vulnerability is what they fear most, since emotion and real connection is the least controllable thing in their world.
[Replacing doing with thinking] Rather than pursue real relationships or try to build connections, Wanderer endlessly interrogates why he was rejected, trying to find the "root cause" of the problem that could be "resolved", arriving at the same "safe" answer his mother supposedly gave him — he lacks a Heart. Only the anxiety these thoughts bring him gives him the energy to act, and when it comes to action, stealing a material object or building a new body for himself is easier for him than risking rejection by actually reaching out and believing in the good attitude of another.
[Black-and-white morality] Sx6s cannot hold "good" and "bad" together in one object — including themselves — because their early environment never let them learn that a scary caregiver could still be trusted, that a bad kid could still be loved. Wanderer oscillates wildly throughout his entire life with little connection to external circumstances: humans are family, then traitors, then friends; godhood is loathsome, then desirable, then bad again; he is worthless, then divine, then evil. To avoid being "bad" himself, he projects badness outward, that's why he goes on the righteous against Ei, trying to punish "evil", to pose as "good" himself.
[The Knight and the Monster] Naranjo describes the sx6 mask as a "knight in shining armor" — strong, honest, incapable of deception — hiding a shadow-belief that they are secretly a monster. Wanderer's masking pain and "vulnerable" emotions and insistence on brutal honesty (he "just tells it like it is," dislikes anything that "covers the truth" etc) is the knight's mask; his later self-punishing behavior after learning the truth about his past (him trying to kill himself, the "let them stab their blades into my chest" line) is the guilt for being a monster breaking through.
[Seeking for a "greater other"] Unable to trust his own judgment of his worth, Wanderer repeatedly hands his self-assessment to an outside authority — his mother, the humans of Tatarasuna, the Fatui, Nahida, the Traveler — and lets them name him and judge his goodness, laying down his own authority in the process of self-examination. The way he asked the Traveler to give him a name is, in a psychological sense, no different from the "coin toss" described in the sx6 description. Like an ambivalent sx6, he denies depending on anyone even as he clearly does: mocking Nahida as manipulative while still obeying her and testing her honesty, resenting his mother while still wearing her feather, trying to scare the wanderer away while nonetheless helping them.
[Hypercritical and competitive] Sx6s convert their fear as well as their envy into pre-emptive criticism of others, elevating themselves without ever risking open competition. That would explain why Wanderer always belittles others as "weak" or "inferior," positions himself as the smartest in the room, and — during the Sumeru tournament — pretends indifference to the contest until he ultimately dominates, avoiding the risk of visibly trying and failing.
[Reactive, danger-seeking behavior] Sx6s are hesitant overthinkers who nonetheless act decisively once cornered or once they feel morally justified. Wanderer's rescue of Tatarasuna and his split-second plan to erase his own past both fit this pattern: passivity and rumination, followed by sudden, high-stakes action once backed into a corner.
[Hardened body, intense inner activity] Wanderer denies needing rest, food or comfort, and is unfazed by attaching himself to machinery — the sx6 habit of hardening the body against pain by ignoring it entirely. At the same time, his imagination is unusually active and specific: he calls the world "an elaborate tapestry of lies" and reasons in sweeping, fatalistic terms — constructing plausible, controllable but grim and cynical reality.
[Service without surrender] Finally, the only intimacy Wanderer knows how to offer is protection and usefulness — sheltering the kid, serving the merchant, helping the Traveler and Nahida — never full emotional surrender. This mirrors Naranjo's description of sexual sixes as capable of protecting others without ever truly resting inside a relationship, because they never experienced the love that would have taught them how.
So, taken together, Wanderer's story is a near-perfect case study: a child abandoned by the one who should have protected him, who built a controlled inner world to predict danger and survive, hardened into a counterphobic person who pretends to face his his fear instead of naming it, and who still, underneath the armor, has never stopped waiting for someone else to tell him he's allowed to exist.
