Characters / Dragons Dogma Cassardis

This page details the inhabitants of the town of Cassardis and its surroundings in Dragon's Dogma.

Back to the main Characters page.

---

Main Characters

The Arisen

The Arisen is a simple fisherperson in the small village of Cassardis, right up until the moment when the Dragon comes and tries to destroy everything and everyone. In the chaos, the Arisen attempts to make a courageous stand against the Dragon, impressing it, and then getting his/her heart ripped out. Now the Dragon has taken his/her heart away, beckoning the Arisen to take up arms and retrieve it.

---

• Action Girl: If the Arisen happens to be female.
• The Ageless: One of the "perks" of being an Arisen is that they never grow older; they remain the exact same age they were at the time of their being chosen.
• Arrested for Heroism: When they return from killing the dragon, the duke wants to arrest them instead, since he doesn't believe you killed it... or rather, he doesn't want to believe that, given his own choices.
• Bash Brothers: With their Main Pawn. With the right setup, an Arisen and their Pawn can be an unstoppable force.
• Being Good Sucks: Despite their desire to do all that is good, the Arisen gets a lot of flak for it. Especially evident in Post-Game where they were now a wanted criminal in Gran Soren thanks to the Duke, and taken to the next level in the True Ending, where the only way to truly free the world ended in their death, which happens to the best ending they could have gotten.
• Blind Seer/Blind Weapon Master/Handicapped Badass: One of the eye presets in character creation are both eyes closed, indicating that you can make an Arisen that is completely blind, yet is still able to kick ass and take names.
• Character Customization: A ton of it. In addition to being able to change your Arisen's faces and hair (which has no effect), you're allowed to customize their height and build. Larger characters have a larger stamina pool and can carry more weight, but small characters recover their stamina faster and can be picked up and tossed at flying enemies or into small holes that typically hold loot.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: One of the body presets is the size of a child; alternately, with the right adjustments, you can make your Arisen look like a young teen.
• The Chosen Many: Canonically, every player's Arisen actually exists in their own universe. When you hire another player's Pawn, that Pawn is literally crossing over from their Arisen's universe to yours. Beyond this, there can be multiple Arisen in existence, though it appears that only one can be the Arisen at any given time, every other Arisen you meet has given up the quest to slay the Dragon at some point in the past. Most are found on Bitterblack Island but they can be found elsewhere. Sitting on the throne in Gran Soren for instance.
• The Chosen One: Selected by The Dragon to fight him. In extension, they are to be a candidate to be the new Seneschal.
• The Comically Serious: During the first audience with the Duke, the Arisen attempts to remain dignified and courteous, all the while oblivious to the fact that he/she is wearing a ridiculous hat to the amusement of everyone present.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Possible. Post-Game, in Everfall, there are numerous wandering Pawns around Everfall. According to the dialogue given by your own pawn, those Pawns had lost their master and now wander aimlessly until you perhaps want to hire them. Those wandering pawns belong to other Arisen players, meaning that in your universe, they had died. It's also possible that in other people's games, your pawn might be wandering around Everfall, meaning that you had died in their game.
• Determinator: They had enough determination to face up against the Dragon and to later pass the trials of the true Final Battle against the Seneschal.
• Downer Ending: The Arisen doesn't get a happy ending. Their best ending ends with their death, and the endings where they live are generally worse.
• Doomed Hometown: Subverted in the case of the Arisen, whose actions prevent his/her hometown from becoming doomed.
• Doomed Protagonist: From the moment they were chosen as the Arisen, they were also doomed to live out the cruel never-ending cycle, whether they fully succeed (becoming the seneschal which would curse them to eternally watch over the world in solitude) or fail (dying on their journey or becoming the dragon). If they had rejected their destiny, they would have likely ended up like the Dark Arisen. Of course they could just live out their immortality, but that would mean more people would suffer under the tyrant of the dragon and someone else would eventually take arms, meaning that that one day they could crumble to dust. The true ending where they killed themselves was the best ending they could have possibly gotten for both themselves and their world.
• The Dragonslayer: Comes with being an Arisen.
• Driven to Suicide: After the Arisen becomes the new Seneschal, they are eternally fated to watch over the realm, but never be able to truly interact with it (mechanically, you are able to visit various locations around the world, but you are invisible and cannot interact with anything or anyone.) The only way out, and the only way to move the story to it's conclusion is for the Arisen to kill themselves with the Godsbane dagger they acquired earlier. Though one can make arguments for different reasons that the Arisen would do this, in the end they are still dead for all intents and purposes, with their primary pawn waking up in their body.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: During the final battle in the Post-Game, depending on the choices and what happens in the true final battle, you can get bad endings where the cycle isn't broken.
• Easily Forgiven: The Duke will throw you in the dungeon on charges of Attempted Rape for eloping with Aelinore in "Arousing Suspicion", but after the quest is finished, he seems to forget about this entirely and will gladly continue giving you work as if nothing has happened. The guard in the dungeon won't even care that you've clearly just escaped from right under his nose, and none of the City Watch will bother you either. While you were falsely accused to begin with, it's like no one else in the game even heard about the incident at all.
• Face–Monster Turn: If you fail fighting the Seneschal, the player Arisen will transform into the Dragon, now tasked with a mission to find the next worthy Arisen to face the Seneschal.
• A Father to His Men: Arisens act like mentors for their pawns, taking them across the land on their adventures so they may learn. They also can care very much for the pawns.
• First-Episode Resurrection: The dragon steals your heart and you're somehow still alive. Although whether or not you "died" in the process is debatable, you do lack a heartbeat.
• Generation Xerox: Though there's never any indication they're related by blood, the default male Arisen is almost a carbon copy of Savan, the Arisen from the prologue of the game. The only noticeable difference is the color of their hair (red for the default Arisen, and black for Savan). This is particularly noticeable when the Arisen and Savan face each other at the end of the game.
• A God Is You: After you defeat the true final boss, you take his place as Seneschal, whose job is essentially to will the world to continue to exist and who has the power to create life with ease.
• Hearing Voices: Since the dragon stole their heart, any time the Arisen places their hand over their chest, they (and you) can hear his voice.
• The Hero: You are the main hero of this adventure, guiding your party of Pawns on your quest to defeat the Dragon.
• Heroic Mime: Your Arisen doesn't say a single word during the entire story, even though one of the things which can be customized during character creation is the voice. This backfires when you cannot voice your opinion while the Duke is framing you up for bargaining with the Dragon; you have no other options but to flee from Noble Quarter, slaughter everyone in Gran Soren, or simply toss the city guard into the Everfall to skip the meeting.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Zigzagged. In the endgame, the Duke accuses the Arisen of turning him into an old man and attempting to assassinate him (though he himself started the fight) and has them branded a traitor, but only his knights and guards believe it. Everyone else in both Gransys and Cassardis remains on the Arisen's side, with the Cassardis NPCs in particular essentially saying that the Duke can go to hell.
• Humanity Is Infectious: Spending enough time with an Arisen will eventually cause a Pawn to be gifted with a piece of its master's soul, granting it full emotions and a human existence. Naturally, your Pawn comes to resemble you a great deal in the end.
• I Die Free: In order to free the world and themselves from the vicious cycle, the Arisen ends their life, freeing the world and themselves by extension.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Implied. In one of the bad endings, the Arisen can return to the simple life they had always wanted. Also implied that all they wanted to do is to live in peace in their hometown with their beloved.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: From the moment they were chosen as an Arisen, they were doomed to suffer from the vicious neverending cycle of eternal return.
• Magic Knight: The Arisen is the only character able to use Hybrid classes that mix magic with melee attacks (Mystic Knight) or archery (Magick Archer).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When you kill the dragon, the monsters unleashed on the world are ten times worse than what were there before. Oh, and the residential district of Gran Soren collapses into a giant sink hole. And if you purchased the manor instead of driving the residents out in one particular quest? They are now buried in the rubble at Everfall because of you.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Overall, the entirety of the post-game.
  • Even though you defeated the dragon, the world seemed to get a whole lot worse.
  • If you are kind enough to spend 80,000 Gold (which can be a large amount to new players on their first playthrough) to purchase the house for a family to live in to prevent them from being evicted, you find out later that the parents of the family, Jasper and Sara, died in their house when it collapsed into Everfall, leaving their son, Pip (who now vehemently hates you for it) an orphan.
    Pip:: Curse your eyes, Arisen.
• One-Man Army: Although Arisens are never usually seen without at least their Main Pawn, the Arisen is still a force to be reckoned with alone. They can take on waves of enemies and beasts only armies could dream of taking down.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Presumably. There's no mention of the Arisen ever having parents, and they live alone in a little house with only one bed. It's also indicated that s/he was raised by the village chief.
• Papa Bear / Mama Wolf: Mostly dependent on the type of player you are, but canonically, the Arisen (or even in general) is unlikely to abandon their pawn in need.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: Although a small light-weight character will have less stamina, it's still absolutely viable to make the Arisen a child-sized warrior with a warhammer twice their own height, with them dealing enormous amounts of physical damage.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: You can play as male or female and it has virtually no effect on the storyline at all. Seriously, Everyone Is Bi anyway.
  • Game-Favored Gender: The lines of some Non Player Characters make it quite obvious the game was designed around a male Arisen: some females will be quite flirtatious right from the get-go, while the males are usually simply polite. Pawns often address the Arisen as "Master," regardless of gender. Talking to a "working girl" in Gran Soren at night even makes it obvious that the game is expecting a male Arisen with a (presumably attractive) female Pawn: she tells you to discard the "puppet" in favor of a real woman. There are also five potential female love interests, as opposed to only three male. AND, during the ending only primary female love interests will have anything to say when the Arisen's pawn wakes up on the beach in the Arisen's body, the male love interests remain silent as they check on them.
    • On the other hand, being a female Arisen allows you to befriend a group of female bandits and open the gate at their headquarter, whereas a male Arisen would need to dress with a lady's dress to fool the said bandits. Besides, Ogres would chase after female Arisens or Pawns before going after the males. Elder Ogre, on the other hand, does the opposite.
• Main Character Final Boss: If you play the game in both New Game Plus and offline mode, your previous Arisen replaces Savan.
• Pyrrhic Victory: After the defeat of the Dragon at their own hand, the world gets undoubtedly worse: Gran Soren's basically fallen and vicious enemies now roam the land, terrorizing the world. This gets taken up a level during the final segment of the game when the Arisen transcends and becomes Seneschal, where the only way to free the world was at the cost of their life.
• Sadistic Choice: The final choices available to the Arisen in the Final Battle is quite a sadistic one to chose from. Either you live out the rest of eternity in solitude as Seneschal, molding the world to what you see fit until the next chosen one comes to kill you for various reasons, letting the world's fate run on its own without a powerful being to guide it, at the cost of ending your life. Not very pretty choices to pick from. Canonically, the Arisen chose the latter.
• Scars Are Forever: Even after killing Grigori and getting his/her heart restored, the Arisen's chest scar does not disappear.
• The Stoic: The player Arisen typically isn't very expressive, though they express shock and surprise well enough.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: You can certainly become this after the Duke frames you up for becoming a traitor by bargaining with the Dragon. Since every guard would make an attempt to kill you instead of arresting you, you can now slaughter everyone in Gran Soren guilt-free. Let's just say they asked for your betrayal in the first place.
• True Companions / Platonic Life-Partners: Arisens have a lifelong partnership with their pawn, extending past just friendship and family. They're connected on a fundamental level and never seen apart. If one is without the other, you can bet something bad has happened. Later revealed that upon the creation of their pawn, the pawn is gifted a portion of their Arisen's soul that they would cultivate and grow, becoming human and taking on their Arisen's appearance = meaning that not only are they connected as Arisen and pawn, but they share the same soul.
• Took a Level in Badass: Once just a fisherman/woman in a sleepy seaside town, becoming marked by the dragon and later able to command Pawns and take down numerous and gigantic monsters that haunt Gransys.
• Vague Age: It's uncertain on how exactly old the Arisen is. Customization can make them appear as a young child or an elderly man, but canonically, they're probably more or less the same as Quina and Valmiro, their childhood friends, somewhere between twenties to mid thirties.
• Won the War, Lost the Peace: Defeated the dragon, but Gransys has fallen to hell after its defeat. They would presumably bring back the peace as Seneschal before ending their own life.
• World's Best Warrior: To be considered so.

The Main Pawn

The Main Pawn is one of the numerous Pawn Legion, manifested into Gransys from the Arisen's will. Although Pawns are known to be clumsy and somewhat lacking motivation under anyone else, the Main Pawn is able to learn and grow under the Arisen's guidance — a piece of proof that the Player Character truly is Arisen.

---

• The Ageless: Pawns cannot age, but they can appear a certain age due to the customization. They would later attain mortality with the death of their master.
• Bash Brothers: With their Arisen. With the right setup, an Arisen and their pawn can be an unstoppable force.
• Big "NO!" / Say My Name: Pawns will always react to the player Arisen dying, either by exclaiming 'No', calling out in horror for their Master, or even begging their master to open their eyes. The Main Pawn will cry out for their Master in one of the final cutscenes in the game, after their master kills themselves and they both hurtle down after being rejected from the Seneschal's Chamber.
• Character Customization: Just like the Arisen, the main pawn is fully customizable. Their 'personality' is also malleable, their Arisen can modify it any time in the Knowledge chair.
• The Chosen One: Chosen by their Arisen.
• Deuteragonist: The Main Pawn is the Arisen's longest lasting ally and the only party member who levels up with the Arisen. S/he assists the Arisen in finishing off Savan, and becomes human during the True Ending.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Twisted in a way. The Main pawn inherits the player Arisen's well earned happy ending.
• Encyclopaedic Knowledge: Pawns are this in nature, learning about the world and enemies, chronicling all that knowledge into their mental database, so the information may be helpful to their Arisen.
• Foreshadowing: The Main Pawn may comment about how they're worried for the future of their Arisen on Bitterblack Isle after defeating Daimon.. Later, they would be correct in their worries.
• Futile Hand Reach: The Main Pawn tries to reach out to their dead master during the fall near the end of the game.
• Gender Bender: Their transformation into their Arisen can occur with this, if the Arisen and Pawn are of different genders.
• Happiness in Slavery: A pawn's entire existence is dedicated to helping and serving their Arisen. They lack the capability to have emotions or a will, unable to go on adventures on their own. However, Pawns, especially Main Pawns, feel exceptionally fulfilled when they are with an Arisen. Pawns who have lost their masters wander around like lost puppies or sometimes they even grow insane from their lost of their duty and grief, attacking anything on sight, even if it's an another Arisen that they could serve. Even after the Arisen's death at the end of the game, the Main Pawn still shows a strong attachment to their Master, even if they were free to live out their lives as true humans.
  Pawn: Lucky is the pawn that fights by the Arisen's side.
• Humanity Is Infectious: The more time a pawn spends time with their Arisen, the more humanlike they become. The Arisen gifts a part of their soul to the pawn, which pawns would fill overtime, becoming more like their Arisen as time goes on.
• It Has Been an Honor: In the Post-Game, the Main Pawn will remark how lucky, honored, and happy they are to be by the Arisen's side. Their chances of saying this will increase inside the Seneschal's Chamber.
• Maybe Ever After: It's unclear whether or not the Main Pawn will have the same affection their master had for their beloved, but it's implied that the Main Pawn will spend the rest of their now peaceful quiet life with their master's beloved.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Pawns will never admonish their Arisen, even if they're slaying innocent bystanders or evicting a family out of their own home as a favor for a rich noble. Sometimes pawns will even rationalize why their Arisen did something questionable, like killing one of the mooks of the Salvation who begs for his life by claiming that if their Arisen didn't kill him, Mason would certainly would have (which he does if you don't).
• Papa Wolf / Mama Bear: Pawns, especially the Main Pawn, can get aggressively protective of their Arisen. If an enemy grabs hold of an Arisen, you can be sure that the pawns will do everything they can to rescue their Arisen.
  Pawn: None may touch the Arisen!
• Personality Swap: Pawns don't have personalities by default, but their Arisen can form their Pawn's personality and reactions in the knowledge chair. They can even can 'modify' their pawns personality any time as long as they have access to the said chair.
• Metamorphosis: By the end of the story, the Main pawn will completely resemble the Arisen, having inherited their soul.
• Resurrective Immortality: Pawns cannot really die. When they do get defeated, they get sent back to the rift, where they can be summoned again by their Arisen.
• Servant Race: Pawns are created to serve the Arisen, but they don't mind it at all. They're quite happy to be serving the Arisen.
• Sidekick: To the Arisen. Always expect an Arisen to be accompanied by at least their Main pawn, if not more pawns.
• So What Do We Do Now?: The Main Pawn obviously seem really confused and conflicted what to do after their Master's death and becoming human.
• Soul Jar: Upon creation, a pawn will be gifted a portion of their Arisen's soul. They would later grow this portion to become human, which can only happen after their Arisen passes away.
• The Stoic: Pawns, for the most part, manage to keep their cool even in the heat of battle. They don't have true emotions and have been called 'empty shells'. They will eventually grow to have them the more time they spend with their Arisen.
• Third-Person Person: Pawns will sometimes refer to themselves in third person.
  Pawn: This pawn feels quite comfortable here.
• True Companions: With their Arisen. They wholly depend on the Arisen's existence to function properly as pawns, and it's clear that they care very deeply for their masters.
• Turned Against Their Masters: During battle, there's a possibility a pawn will fall victim of a possession by ghosts or taken control of by a dragonkin and subsequently turn against their Arisen. However, they will always warn their Arisen that they're not themselves.
• Undying Loyalty: No matter what happens, the main pawn will always be loyal to their Arisen. Even if they get controlled by a dragon, they will even warn their master that they're not themselves.
• Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: Pawns can only be truly fulfilled in life under guidance of an Arisen. Main Pawns can become absolutely devastated by the lost of their master that they can even go mad with grief if their Arisen dies (ex. Lost Pawns in Bitterblack Isle). Some pawns are still loyal to their Arisen even unto death, like the pawns in Everfall, who still want to carry out the wishes of their master. The Main Pawn at the end of the game was devastated by the lost of the Arisen player, though intends to live out the life their master would have wanted in their stead.
• Voices Are Mental: At the end of the game, your Pawn transforms into a physical copy of you, yet retains its own voice. This can result in the voice of a large man coming from the body of a small girl, or vice versa.
• Worth Living For: After they inherit their master's appearance and soul, the main pawn goes to live out their life in peace, the life that their master would have wanted to live.
• You Remind Me of X: At the end of the game, if the Arisen's beloved may realize that the Main Pawn is not the Arisen, but treats them similarly nonetheless.

Villagers

Quina

Voiced by: Michelle Ruff

A young woman of Cassardis and your friend since childhood. She is a gentle soul, tirelessly caring for injured villagers with the healing magicks she learned from her mother. She greatly admires the Arisen, who since childhood had always been the one to protect her, and when the Dragon takes their heart, she desperately searches for some way she can possibly repay her old friend... and for her own purpose in life.

---

• Badass Bookworm: Downplayed, but present. She's skilled enough with magic to hold her own during her escort quests, especially when dealing with the Specter in the catacombs, and she's able to learn an impressive amount about the eternal cycle during her studies with the church. In particular, she's the only Beloved other than Selene (who has intimate experience in the matter) who immediately realizes that the Arisen's is gone, and their pawn has taken on their appearance and part of their soul.
• Childhood Friend Romance: If the player takes her as their Beloved.
• Cower Power: As the dragon attacks Cassardis, Quina runs and hides behind you. This makes sense if you have a large, muscular character, but if you've made your Arisen short and slender, it looks quite funny.
• Kissing Cousins: Averted. The local residents of Cassardis call everyone "cousin/cos" as a form of affection, Quina included. In fact, all in-game descriptions of Quina never refer to her as being the Arisen's actual cousin.
• Rescue Romance: Her bio states that she has held affection for the Arisen since childhood because they regularly protected her from bullies and other threats. Part of why she dedicated herself to learning healing magic was to aid the one she saw as her hero.
• White Magician Girl: She's caring, feminine, and a skilled caster of healing spells. She's also the Arisen's Childhood Friend and the first of the game's five major female love interests.

Chief Adaro

Voiced by: Alan Shearman (credited as Johnny Wesley)

"The chief of Cassardis, he is beloved and trusted by all of the village folk thanks to his fine decision making abilities."

Adaro raised the Arisen from childhood and cares for them as a father. He loves the whole village as his family, but does not care much for outsiders or pawns. Trusts in the Arisen no matter what and is willing to let him/her do as he/she likes, so long as the village isn't harmed.

---

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: The official art book refers to him as "a blunt and sometimes insensitive man of the sea with a heart of gold."
• Retired Badass: According to his backstory, he was once a skilled fighter who protected the village from monsters.
• So Proud of You: Talk to him after getting invited to the palace by the Duke, and he'll note how proud he is of you and how it seems like only yesterday that you were a young child sitting on his knee, gutting fish.

Valmiro

Voiced by: Vic Mignogna

A young man whose curiosity tends to get the better of him. He much prefers observing the world around him over being a fisherman. It's hinted that his observations are on the border of being actual research...

---

• Childhood Friend Romance: An option, though exactly how much of a "friend" he was growing up is never really mentioned in-depth, unlike with Quina. You were both friends with Quina, though, so it's likely you were at least well-acquainted if not common playmates.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: He likes to chase birds and fish and other small animals, for no other reason than he finds watching them fascinating, often with little or no heed to his personal safety. He also desires to see the world and believes that he may somehow help people by doing so, just as you're helping everyone by fighting the dragon.
• The Fool: Comes off as this to others, with the way he chases birds up trees and wanders into the Witchwood looking for interesting plants or whatever has caught his fancy lately and babbles to whoever will listen about all of it.
  • Fearless Fool: The questline to introduce him has you chasing him down and trying to convince him that adventuring without sufficient healing items is a bad idea. As it turns out, he's actually quite smart and his interest in knowledge overwhelms his common sense when something piques his curiosity.
• Kissing Cousins: Averted. The local residents of Cassardis call everyone "cousin/cos" as a form of affection, Valmiro included. In fact, all in-game descriptions of Valmiro never refer to him as being the Arisen's actual cousin.
• Talkative Loon: According to the other villagers, at least, though he's not quite as loony with you, so it comes off as a bit of an Informed Flaw. And "loon" may not really be the correct term.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He takes the cake for being the biggest (and possibly only) one in the game, which can be quite refreshing with everyone else's cynicism and worldliness.