Characters / Tales of Arise

Tropes relating to the cast of Tales of Arise.

Party Members

In general

• Action Girl: All three ladies - Shionne, Kisara, and Rinwell - are this in spades, being phenomenal fighters who can clean house on the battlefield.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Initially, the party comes together to pursue their own goals which happen to align. As a result, there's initial tensions between everyone and especially in Rinwell's case since she has good reason to hate Renans. Alphen's really the only one who gets along with everyone. By the halfway point in the game, however, the party consider each other genuine friends.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Consists of three men (Alphen, Law, Dohalim) and three women (Shionne, Rinwell, Kisara).
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The party consists of a Dahnan mage, two Renan nobles (one of whom is a Renan Lord), said Dahnan lord's guard, a former meber of a Renan Lord's Secret Police, and a former slave.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: There's initial tensions between certain party members due to them being Renans. Having watched her family be killed off and witnessed abhorrent cruelty by the Renan Lord in charge of her region, Rinwell naturally distrusts Shionne and Dohalim. It's especially poignant in her case because the idea of a good Renan Lord is utterly alien to her, not helped by the later reveal that Dohalim didn't become a benevolent ruler for altruistic reasons.

Alphen / Iron Mask

Voiced by: Takuya Sato (JP), Ray Chase (EN)

The main protagonist of the game alongside Shionne. Initially going by the moniker "Iron Mask", he's an amnesiac Dahnan who was enslaved in Calaglia and lacks the ability to feel pain. After meeting Shionne, he teams up with her in hopes of bringing freedom to his people. His main weapon is a sword, showing remarkable skill with a blade in spite of his lack of memories. Through Shionne, Alphen is also able to utilize the Blazing Sword, a weapon manifested from the Fire Master Core that Shionne possesses that's capable of extraordinary power.

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• 24-Hour Armor: After receiving it as a gift, Alphen begins wearing the Sincleaver armor for a majority of the game. Law asks if it ever troubles him having to wear it all the time, and Alphen admits that it does especially once he loses his pain immunity which means he now feels all the inconveniences that come from wearing such an outfit all the time among other things. However, Alphen puts up with it in the event that if the party were to suddenly find themselves in a fight, he would be ready at any time.
• All-Loving Hero: Averted at the start of the game, but played straight later due to Character Development. He's willing to stick his neck out for his fellow Dahnans and is willing to trust Shionne, but after freeing Calaglia, he openly wonders if the only way to save Dahna is to kill all the Renans, though Zephyr points out doing so will cause a cycle of revenge. Later, he sees that Dahnan and Renan coexistence is possible in Elde Menancia and learns that the Renans are essentially enslaved to both an oppressive hierarchy and to the Helganquil, who are in turn enslaved to the Great Spirit of Rena. By the end of the game, he realizes that reconciliation is the only way for everyone to mutually survive, and ultimately saves the Great Spirit from its tragic circumstances too.
• Amazon Chaser: While it's only one aspect of what he loves about her, Alphen is quite enthusiastic when complimenting Shionne's abilities in combat and Shionne takes it as quite a flirtation from him. He shows no interest in the various other girls Law tries to get his opinion on in the game, remarking dismissively that they look like they don't work out.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Discussed. Early in the game, it's brought up by Zephyr that there's actually a chance that Alphen is a Renan due to his lack of a spirit core and the fact that no one can see his face due to his mask; and thus can't see if his eyes can glow the way Renans do when harnessing astral energy in manners such as astral artes. The fact that he can't feel pain, that the Blazing Sword manifested at all, or how he manifested the mysterious light that drove off Vholran only drives the question of who he is further. It's later revealed that he really is Dahnan, and that all of his abilities are the result of being the Sovereign. His inability to feel pain and memory loss are a direct consequence of spending 300 years in hibernation wearing his mask. Ultimately, the trope is averted - he has always been a Nice Guy, and at worst simply complied with experiments he didn't know were geared towards ending the world when he didn't really have a choice in the matter.
• Amnesiac Hero: He can't remember who he was prior to becoming a slave, except for his sword skills.
• Amnesiac Resonance: In spite his lack of memories, Alphen is shown to be an incredible fighter the moment he picks up a sword. Shionne even points out how strange and coincidental it is. This is because Alphen is a former soldier from long ago. He was part of an ancient Dahnan military force from before the Renan invasion over 300 years prior. His sword skills are the result of his training and combat experience from that time.
• Armor Is Useless: Completely averted during a camp interaction with Law. The two are training boxing skills when Law tries going for a cheap shot towards Alphen's gut. However, he's quickly reminded that Alphen's wearing heavy armor which results in his fist hitting solid metal and recoiling back in pain. Story-wise, this is also averted when Vholran stabs Alphen in the chest area after his mask breaks, his armour protecting him from getting hurt and merely having him knocked backwards with the force of the blow.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Asks one to Kisara to snap her out of her Heroic BSoD following Migal's death.
  Kisara: This realm is already finished. It perished along with my brother's dream.
  Alphen: That's a shame. Then I guess all the people who believed in that dream are on their own out there, aren't they?
• Asleep for Days: After defeating Balseph, tearing down the Gates of Fire, and remembering his name, he apparently collapsed off-screen and was out for an entire week, during which Shionne brought him back to the Crimson Crows and Calaglia was liberated from the Renans. It's hinted that it was due to a combination of mental exhaustion from his buried memories partially resurfacing, and the strain of him absorbing and repurposing the fire Astral energy Balseph had accumulated to blow down the gates— something Zephyr and Shionne point out nearly charred his body to ashes from the sheer flaming power he was wielding bare-handed.
• Audience Surrogate: Due to having amnesia he has no knowledge of the world around him. As a result, a lot has to be explained to him and the player as well.
• Base-Breaking Character: An In-Universe example. By the events of Beyond the Dawn set a year after the events of the main game, Alphen is viewed by the people of the world as either a hero, or The Dreaded. The Dahnan's see him as their savior who will protect them, while the Renan's see him as the one who ruined their lives and fear him. Both of these make Alphen uncomfortable, as he doesn't like the Dahnan's putting him on a pedestal as their savior, while being hurt that the Renan's think he went out of his way to ruin their lives instead of saving them. The party do their best to cheer him up about it.
• Battle Couple: With Shionne, especially after reuniting before Vholran's Castle where their feelings become so obvious that the other party members comment on it.
• Berserk Button:
  • After they spend some time together and open up more, harming Shionne quickly becomes the easiest way to rile him up. Hurting her is an easy way for Alphen to fly off the handle and it doesn't even have to be physical either. Dedyme insults Shionne's honor by insinuating that the only reason he cares about her is because they're "intimate", so to speak, resulting in the normally level-headed Alphen to instantly retaliate with a punch in sheer fury. An early scene in Beyond the Dawn causes him to become quietly angry at some Dahnan's who seem confused why Shionne is with him.
  • Early on, he also takes great offense to Shionne calling him a slave and yells at her for it. He's quick to apologize however, but asks that she never do so again which Shionne obliges to.
• Big Brother Mentor: To Rinwell and Law, both of whom look up to him greatly. Alphen forges a sibling-like bond with them and helps guide them along the right path on their journey.
• Blessed with Suck: As he points out, inability to feel any pain sounds great, until you realize he could have burned his fingers off with the Blazing Sword without noticing. This is an actual concern for people in real life who lack a sense of pain, unable to tell when they've been injured or how badly unless the damage is really obvious.
• Blow You Away: Alphen can use wind attacks like Hurricane Thrust and Severing Wind.
• Blue Is Heroic: A consistent feature of each of his main outfits. Alphen intentionally invokes this as well on a personal level because Shionne told him he looks good in blue.
• Cast from Hit Points: Skills that make use of the Blazing Sword are very powerful but deal damage to Alphen when used.
• Character Catchphrase: Alphen will use some variation of the phrase "breaking down the wall(s)" when it comes to trying to overcome some kind of metaphorical obstacle.
• Clothes Make the Superman: As it turns out, his mask is what dulls his ability to feel pain (and, as such, is the source of his Required Secondary Powers needed to wield the Blazing Sword).
• Combos: As this is a Tales Series game, everyone is, to some extent, expected to rely heavily on combos in gameplay, but Alphen is special among the rest of the cast in that this is his primary gimmick, and he has the most varied ^note Law has some amount of aerial potential but most of his attacks will bring an opponent to the ground, and Law himself is built to exploit this with his dive kicks and consistent ^note Dohalim can stunlock enemies in the air with Rotating Piledriver for extended periods, (until he hits the invisible ceiling) but it takes some set-up and isn't guaranteed to work air juggles in the game. Because Alphen's hits have more stopping power than Law's, he can reliably break enemies and lock them into hurt cycles that let him combo them for extended periods, at which point a skilled Alphen player can drag foes all over the map with extended combos. This also makes Alphen an excellent character to start with for beginning players, since his gameplay is rather safe compared to Kisara, Law, and Dohalim, and many of his fundamentals work well with the other melee-focused heroes.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Velvet Crowe was a woman who lived a relatively normal life until her village was destroyed by daemons and watched her brother-in-law kill her younger brother, sending her down a brutal path of revenge that also led to her gaining daemonic power as a result. Later in her game, Velvet becomes known as the Lord of Calamity due to her willingness to do anything to get her revenge. Alphen has no memories of his past and starts off the game as a Dahnan slave before meeting a Mysterious Waif who grants him the power to wield a flaming sword, a weapon only Alphen can wield due to him being unable to physically feel pain. Of the course of Arise, Alphen becomes a Hope Bringer to the people of Dahna as he liberates their people from the Renan invaders, though there are lengths Alphen refuses to sink to and even shows disgust towards a Dahnan rebel cell who act more like terrorists than freedom fighters.
• Cool Mask: Alphen wears one that covers his entire head in the beginning, which he cannot remove. Later on during the fight against Balseph, it partially breaks, leaving only the right side of his face covered and but still looking pretty cool. It's actually a sedative mask put on him to deal with the mental trauma of having killed many people during the failed Spirit Channeling ceremony 300 years before the game, with the neurological side effects of pain and memory loss aggravated by the three-hundred year hibernation he spent wearing it. It gets fully broken during a fight with Vholran once his sovereign abilities become fully unlocked, though it comes at the cost of him now fully able to feel pain.
• Cooldown Hug: Twice towards Shionne. The first instance is when he and the others rescue her from Vholran, snapping Shionne out of her despair. The second time occurs before the party heads to Lenegis.
• Create Your Own Villain: In the Beyond the Dawn DLC, Alphen's kindness toward Nazamil winds up turning her into the story's Arc Villain; having seen Alphen suffering under the weight of expectations between the Dahnans and Renans while also falling victim to both sides' Fantastic Racism, Nazamil decides to take matters into her own hands.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Alphen is clad in black armor and has a rather imposing appearance, but he's one of the most altruistic and chivalrous people in the entire game. The Sincleaver armor itself originally belonged to a Dahnan hero who tried and failed to rebel against the Renans. This is only in terms of physical appearance, since dark is the only element he can't use, even with DLC artes.
• The Dreaded: The Renans are terrified of him by the time of Beyond the Dawn since he's responsible for their way of life being upended. This contrasts his The Paragon reputation among the Dahnans, which distresses him.
• Dual Wielding: Averted for the most part. Alphen carries his primary weapon alongside the Blazing Sword strapped to his back, switching between them when he wants but the player cannot use them at the same time. In certain cutscenes, however, he does wield them both together, most notably to open a hole in Vholran's defenses by deflecting his Ice sword with his main blade and running him through with the Blazing Sword simultaneously. The Sword Art Online DLC finally allows him to use it in gameplay, if only for a one-per-battle Mystic Arte.
• Everyone Can See It: The attraction between him and Shionne becomes increasingly obvious to everyone as the game goes on. At one point Kisara even outright says they should get a room.
• Face of a Thug: Downplayed initially when he still has part of his broken mask on. Combined with the imposing black armor he wears, he looks like a stereotypical '90s Anti-Hero, though one NPC notes that the visible part of his face is handsome. In truth, he's actually a total Nice Guy.
• The Faceless: At first. The first few hours of the game have him use the moniker of "Iron Mask" due to being amnesiac and wearing a full-head concealing mask that hides his appearance, though he can see and hear out of it well enough. He cannot voluntarily remove it, and nobody knows what he actually looks like underneath it. It gets partially broken during the fight with Balseph, exposing the left side of his face and his left eye, but the remnants still cling to his face, obscuring his right side from that point on. During a fight with Vholran, the mask completely breaks.
• Feel No Pain: Along with his memories, Alphen has lost the ability to feel pain as well. Comes in handy when he uses the Blazing Sword which burns him the entire time he uses it. It also makes him immune to Shionne's Curse of Thorns. Shionne has to pay attention to Alphen's injuries because he won't notice them. This is a side effect of having worn his mask during his 300 year hibernation, and he's able to feel pain again after the mask fully breaks.
• Flaming Sword: The appropriately named Blazing Sword, a weapon that manifested from Shionne's fire master core. In actuality, it's not even a proper sword; it's merely in the shape of one and is otherwise a weapon that looks entirely made of molten rock. Unsurprisingly, it burns the hands of anyone who tries to wield it with Alphen only being able to thanks to his inability to feel pain, and even then he's not immune to its effects and needs to be regularly healed every time he uses it. Even after the mask breaks and Alphen feels pain again, he's able to power through it when wielding the Blazing Sword as it burns his hands and arms. At a later point in the game, he notes how he's since grown accustomed to feeling his hands arms being scorched.
• Foil: To Shionne, especially at the start of the game. Alphen is Dahnan, male, a melee fighter. His inability to feel pain contrasts to Shionne's ability to cause it. He's a nice guy always willing to stick his neck out for others and always willing to help everyone. Shionne by contrast is female, Renan, a ranged fighter. She's standoffish, and far less willing to help people. Her desire to slay the lords is portrayed more as a personal goal than a desire to achieve some grander goal, while Alphen's doing it specifically to free the Dahnan people. Both of them have mysterious pasts, but for Alphen it's because he literally doesn't know it due to amnesia. Shionne knows her past, she's just not sharing. As a Renan Shionne comes from a world of relative comfort and privilege, while Alphen as a slave comes from one misery and suffering. Alphen has friends and is sociable, Shionne is a loner due to her curse and is reluctant to let people get close to her, both physically and emotionally. She's thus a lot more curt and prone to Brutal Honesty than Alphen who is nice to everyone. The interactions of how they are opposites and in particular how Shionne mellows out forms one of the game's main story beats.
• Freak Out: Defying this is why he has the mask on - during the failed Great Astral Spirit summoning, he was possessed by its essence and killed many nearby people in a berserk state. Already being a Nice Guy, he did not take it well, and Naori put it on so he could process it without losing his mind altogether.
• Friend to All Children: His Establishing Character Moment is taking a beating for a child slave that was struggling to put a heavy load, and shrugging off the act as nothing special because of his inability to feel the pain from it, even when he was struck badly enough to draw blood.
• Good Is Not Soft: While he is most certainly a Nice Guy 90% of the time, he has no qualms with killing various enemies when pushed to his limits, especially some of the Lords like Balseph or Ganabelt.
• Happily Married: To Shionne at the end of the game. The last two images shown during the credits sequence are of their wedding day, attended by all their surviving friends.
• The Heart: Alphen has a moderating influence on the entire party. He's the one who mellows Rinwell's hostility to Shionne, the one who guides Shionne to become more sociable and friendly, and the one who helps Law find a new sense of purpose. He helps Kisara turn her grief into a new sense of purpose by making her brother's dream a reality, and is also the one who welcomes Dohalim to work with them. This is why he becomes the de facto leader.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Alphen uses swords in combat, as typical for a Tales game protagonist. He also has the special Blazing Sword given to him by Shionne.
• Heroic BSoD: Alphen goes through this once his memories finally return to him and he remembers the mass slaughter he committed by accident on Lenegis over 300 years prior. The guilt he feels over what happened eats away at him and makes him question his actions up until that point, but support from the party allows him to come to terms with what happened and continue fighting.
• Heroic Willpower: After fully recovering his memories and pain perception from the second encounter against Vholran, Alphen with his sovereign power tries his hardest to shrug off the pain he now feels from using the Blazing Sword and touching Shionne, all in order to make her feel less isolated because she now has to worry about Alphen getting hurt like everyone else by her mere proximity.
• Human Popsicle: He spent three hundred years in hibernation after the failed Spirit Channeling ceremony he partook in.
• Irony: The man who has known nothing of life but a slave to the Renans is one of the only two true Sovereigns they've ever had - and the other Sovereign is also a Dahnan.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Played straight even before he gains the Sincleaver armor. Alphen doesn't hesitate to help anyone out in need and is ready to take on those who would threaten to harm others. Kisara even outright calls him one, and at the same time tells Alphen he doesn't need to be one all the time either after he begins doubting himself after Shionne is kidnapped and his memories fully return to him.
• Last of His Kind: Of a technical sort. After he recovers his memories, a skit with the party has him reveal that his swordsmanship skills came from training he had received as part of an old Dahnan army before the mask was put on him. This leads Rinwell to point out that he is the last native Dahnan swordsman, as the old swordsmanship styles have long ago died out after the Renan invasion.
• Leitmotif: Alphen.
• The Leader: After Zephyr dies early in the story, he slowly becomes the de facto leader of the party. Though he does struggle a little at first, the rest of his teammates easily accepts his leadership, even waiting for him to pull out of his Heroic BSoD before going to rescue Shionne.
• Lethal Chef: Initially thanks to his tendency to go overboard on spices. One skit has even has Alphen overcook a chicken to the point that it created a bunch of smoke which convinced everyone that they were under enemy attack. He eventually grows out of this by the time he cooks the Mabo Curry recipe, with his friends coming to enjoy the meal much to his delight.
• Light Is Good: The last outfit he obtains in the story, Gahm Arthalys, is almost entirely white, fitting his role as a heroic and noble-hearted sovereign.
• Lightning Bruiser: Alphen's an armored warrior who excels in hard-hitting attacks, but he's also fast and frighteningly athletic.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Throughout the story he increasingly becomes one to Shionne thanks to his immunity to the Curse of Thorns, allowing her to approach Alphen without fear of hurting him which is only compounded by how well he treats her even despite how she acts. When Alphen loses his immunity it causes her to come dangerously close to the Despair Event Horizon, convinced that she would be forever alone, until he gives her a Cooldown Hug to confirm that just because he is hurt by the thorns doesn't mean he's been driven away.
• Logical Weakness: The Blazing Sword is a really powerful weapon. However, it's still made of condensed fire astral energy, and Alphen is not fireproof even if he can't feel pain. As a result, he can only use it for so long before being incapacitated by burns or needing healing.
• Made of Iron: Played with. Part of Alphen's endurance is a result of his inability to feel pain, allowing him to muscle through certain situations without pause though he still needs to heal any injuries he receives less they cripple him. He eventually loses the pain immunity once his mask fully breaks, but Alphen learns to eventually push through the pain on his own, noting that in the midst of battle he finds that he is somehow still able to endure it, if only just. That this is possible for him is noted to be due to his powers as a Sovereign, granting his body enormous fortitude when it comes to wielding Astral Energy, far more than simply not feeling pain could account for. One can presume he has similar durability to the other Sovereign, Vholran, who manages to survive having a huge hole burned through his abdomen.
• Master Swordsman: Alphen is no slouch with a sword, displaying incredible skills as a swordsman as he takes on opponents like the Renan Lords and other powerful monsters with no real issue. Both Law and Dohalim are impressed by his strength, with the former even wishing to learn from Alphen in one skit in order to be as strong as him.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • In the main story, he suffers from a Heroic BSoD when he remembers that he accidentally killed a huge chunk of Lenegis's population during the Spirit Channeling Ceremony.
  • In Beyond the Dawn, he succumbs to his rage when the Dahnan extremists lure Zeugles into the city and attempt to shoot Nazamil, leading to him drawing the Blazing Sword against them. Although he stops himself before he can actually hurt them, he's ashamed of himself for using brute force to subjugate those who won't listen to him, which is what the Renan Lords did.
• Name Amnesia: Among the things he cannot remember is his own name and thus he is known simply as "Iron Mask" during the opening portion of the game.
• Nice Guy: He (almost) doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He does get harsh when Shionne is playing Misery Poker early on, but he calms down almost instantly and regularly protects her from Rinwell's bullying, and he tries to be kind to everyone. He even tries to do so with Vholran. It takes a lot to push him to a Rage Breaking Point, but heaven help you if you do so...
• No Sense of Personal Space: Around Shionne, to the point where Zephyr has to warn him to ease up since he's probably the first and only person who can touch her, so she's not used to it. Later, after his mask shatters and he can feel pain, his inability to do this causes Shionne to break down and admit she hates that she can't touch him any more.
• Official Couple: With Shionne. They even get married during the credits sequence.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: At first, due to him having amnesia and it being his most distinguishing feature, he was only known as Iron Mask.
• Otaku: For weapons in general. He has a strong enough fixation on them that characters, often Shionne, actually call him out on it. Also virtually anything mechanical. He remarks on how much he loves the sounds of hammers clanging.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: While he's no stranger to feeling anger, Alphen generally manages to keep his emotions in check, and even then, his hate is reserved for really despicable Renans. The only time he's shown to be genuinely angry to the point of near-violence is with the Dark Wings leader, whose hate for Renans is so great he's responsible for most of the damage in their region and has little care for anything other than seeing Renans dead.
  • In Beyond the Dawn, the DLC pushes him to his Rage Breaking Point. Already stressed from trying to get the Dahnans and Renans to live peacefully, seeing some of his fellow Dahnans persist in Fantastic Racism and cross the line by threatening the lives of Renans and Dahnans alike, plus their attempts to kill Nazamil for being half-Dahnan half-Renan, makes Alphen briefly snap: he threaten to kill his fellow Dahnans if they ever pull that shit again.
• Playing with Fire: Holding down an arte button after attacking will cause Alphen to use the Blazing Sword's artes, which deal fire damage. Though the damage is high, it causes damage to Alphen each time it's used. Skills that Alphen can learn will increase the damage that Alphen both deals and receives.
• Rage Breaking Point: In Beyond the Dawn. After spending over a year trying to help people in the wake of the merging of the two worlds, seeing fellow Dahnan's go so far as threaten the lives of not just Renans, but their own kind, on top of trying to kill Nazamil, pushes Alphen to the point of threatening to kill the Dahnans who did so.
• Randomly Gifted: Most people have a predisposition toward just one or two forms of astral energy. Alphen has an equal disposition toward all forms of Dahnan astral energy. This is why Alphen was the only successful Sovereign out of all of the other test subjects. This trait is so rare that it took three hundred years for another person to be born with it.
• Really 700 Years Old: He was given his Sovereign powers by way of Renan experimentation around 300 years before the main story.
• Red Baron: After the events of Calaglia, Alphen becomes known as "The Blazing Sword of Calaglia," sometimes shortened to just "The Blazing Sword" as his reputation spreads across the continents.
• Required Secondary Powers: Sort of. Alphen does not have an innate resistance or protection against fire or heat, but on the other hand, his ability to not feel pain allows him to handle the Blazing Sword regardless, although he's reliant on Shionne's Healing Hands to make sure the damage done when using it is reversed afterwards. Shionne herself notes that she can't use the sword due to the pain of holding it, so whilst Alphen can bypass the disadvantages of the weapon, he cannot fully ignore the consequences of handling flames bare-handed without aid.
• Rule of Symbolism: Alphen's mask is a representation of both his closed-off nature and his lack of identity following the incident that left him without memories. As the plot continues on, more and more of the mask breaks off, which coincides with the gradual regaining of his memories and his development as a person. The mask eventually shatters near the end of the first act which, in turn, restores Alphen's full memories and sense of pain.
• Shock and Awe: Gains access to the arte Lightning Thrust.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: With Shionne late in-game after rescuing her from Vholran. They don't enter into a relationship just yet, but both gradually become more affectionate with each other to the point where their friends notice the change. During the Owl Herder skit, Alphen and Shionne interpret the Owl King and Owl Queen's words as usual, but the conversation somehow veers off into them promising to stay by each other's side, much to the others' amusement and their embarrassment.
• Spirited Competitor: Alphen shows this trait at times, especially with Law, where they're super competitive with each other and try to one up each other with training and fighting.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The Sword to Shionne's Sorceress. He fights on the front lines so she can use her healing and fire spells uninterrupted.
• Sword Beam: The Blazing Sword is capable of this when sufficiently powered enough. Through absorbing the power of the Fire Avatar in Calaglia, Alphen manages to destroy the Gates of Fire in one swing. As noted, this is only when it's absorbed the proper amount of astral energy and can't do so otherwise.
• Sympathy for the Devil: After the party digs deeper on the inner workings of Renan society and even further than that, Alphen starts to understand how the lords, with the exception of Dohalim, became such monstrous slavers. He doesn't excuse what they did in the slightest nor does he forgive any of them, but starts to see them as people with their own lives and background despite their cruelty.
• Team Dad: Often plays this role to the party, trying to get them to get along when they fight and always offering support whenever they need it. Rinwell even describes him as such.
• Unaffected by Spice: An early skit with Shionne has him reveal that he loves to eat spices that nobody else can stand, and that Doc has speculated that his love of spice is a means to compensate for the fact that he can't feel any pain. However, even after he loses the pain immunity he still has a preference for it, meaning Alphen really just likes spicy food.
• Vague Age: Because of his amnesia, Alphen's exact age is never really brought up outside of the fact that he's chronologically over 300 years old. The official artbook included with the Collectors Edition states his physical age to be 21 however.
• You Are Number 6: He was referred to as Test Subject #1273 during the time he was experimented on by Renans.

Shionne Vymer Imeris Daymore

Voiced by: Shino Shimoji (JP), Erica Lindbeck (EN)

The main protagonist of the game alongside Alphen. A Renan noblewoman bearing the Curse of Thorns, bringing pain to anyone who touches her. She encounters Alphen while on the run from her own people, using him to further her own ulterior motives. She fights using a rifle, while acting as the party's main healer.

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• The Aloner: Because of the Curse of Thorns, Shionne has led a very isolated life and expected to do so until the day she died.
• Anger Born of Worry: Over time, Shionne starts getting very critical of Alphen's lackadaisical attitude to not feeling pain and is prone to scold him about being careful. After he regains his sense of pain, her and Alphen have a very frank discussion about it, with Shionne reveals that she hates seeing him in pain/get hurt ESPECIALLY if it's from her thorns.
• Apocalypse Maiden: Shionne carries a piece of the Great Spirit of Rena within her that can trigger the end of Dahna.
• Battle Ballgown: Shionne's main outfit is a very elegant dress, with shoulder pauldrons and a bronze chestpiece. Her second outfit as The Maiden is a much fancier and less tattered version of this trope.
• Battle Couple: With Alphen of course, especially after they rescue her before entering Vholran's Castle. The other party members even comment on it, with Kisara saying point blank that they should Get a Room!.
• Big Eater:
  • This woman really loves to eat. One of her idle animations is pulling food out of Hammerspace and scarfing it down at ludicrous speed. If you find food recipes in chests, one of her interactions has her demand they make the food right away. An early game skit even has Shionne's stomach growling right after the cooking tutorial, which surprises Alphen since they not only both just ate, but he's totally full. Cooking the Gnocchi gives the player a skit^note aptly named "Shionne's Bottomless Stomach"which reveals that she can eat over 12 servings of a meal and still not be full much to her friends' utter amazement.
  • Shionne noticeably prefers the quantity of food over quality. One skit early in the game has her more-or-less tell Alphen that she knows what it's like to starve, which could help explain her love of food and preferences. Her favorite foods are simple dishes that can be prepared in bulk and shoveled down quickly. This even gets reflected in her cooking style, as she can use more ingredients when she cooks, which will make the food's effects last longer.
• Brutal Honesty: Shionne does not like to mince words, and early on will frequently give her opinion on something regardless of how abrasive she may come across as.
• The Caretaker: Because Alphen can't feel pain, he doesn't notice his injuries no matter how serious they are. Shionne takes charge of watching Alphen's injuries for him.
• Casting a Shadow: No spells, but Gravitas Field and Toxicity deal dark damage.
• Character Catchphrase: "Word to the wise," is a favored refrain of hers, normally used before giving a scathing bit of information or judgment.
• Cleavage Window: Her Noble Scarlet outfit and its color variations features one.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed as it only comes up once, but Shionne is implied to be not pleased by an NPC in Viscint asking Alphen out on a date late in-game. When she asks if his business was done, Alphen notes how he basically dodged a bullet.
• Combat Medic: She specializes in sniping and serves as your party's only healer, until Dohalim joins you.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: She's able to make simple meals like porridge and steamed potatoes but her love for eating obscene quantities of food makes its way into her cooking sometimes, to her friends' amazement and horror. In a pancake cooking contest, she put popping candies in hers, which Kisara found original but a bit too sweet. Then Shionne reveals that she managed to stuff three days' worth of sugar and nutrition into her dish, which prompts Kisara to go for a jog to burn off the bite she took after the contest ends. A followup campfire skit has her make different pancakes to appeal to everyone's individual tastes, including an incredibly spicy pancake for Alphen.
• Cursed with Awesome: Downplayed, since being unable to touch anyone for fear of hurting them is legitimately traumatic. However, when it's someone she doesn't want to touch her, it's extremely useful, though it doesn't protect her from someone sufficiently disciplined, masochistic, or just plain crazy.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • She's first seen as a prisoner in a Renan train, rescued by the Crimson Crows.
  • She's kidnapped by Vholran to goad Alphen into confronting him in his own realm, though she did fight it until Alphen regaining his sense of pain causes her to suffer a huge Heroic BSoD, nearly crossing the Despair Event Horizon.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: An In-Universe example. By the time of Beyond the Dawn, Shionne has only been free of the Curse of Thorns for roughly a year, so she instinctively still avoids touching or getting too close to people. A skit between her, Kisara, and Rinwell has her admit that she still has trouble adjusting, but is trying.
• Death Seeker: Shionne is convinced that losing her thorns will kill her, but because the thorns make her an Apocalypse Maiden and make her miserable in general, she is looking for a way to die that destroys the thorns in the process. At least, that was the plan. By the time they are to depart to Lenegis, Shionne reveals that although she still believes that she has to die, she no longer wants to die due to having met Alphen and the others.
• Defrosting the Ice Queen: Because of her life's circumstances, she starts out fairly cold and somewhat unempathetic to others. However, as her relationship with Alphen and the other party members begins to develop, she gradually becomes a lot warmer and more caring.
• Despair Event Horizon: Nearly crosses it during the party's second encounter with Vholran, when Alphen loses the remaining part of his mask, and with it, regains his sense of pain which prevents him from taking Shionne's hand to save her from Vholran. Losing the ability to touch the first and only person she ever felt close to completely breaks her, with her being seen as catatonic soon afterward.
• Deuteragonist: The story is as much about Shionne as it is Alphen, and it is frequently brought up that neither is capable of moving forward without the other.
• Didn't Think This Through: When the party gets invited into Autelina Palace by Dohalim, Shionne tries to assassinate Dohalim by shooting him while his back is turned. Naturally, being a Renan Lord Dohalim easily evades the bullet and disarms Shionne of her gun before she can even react. If not for Alphen taking the hit from Dohalim’s retaliation she could’ve gotten badly hurt. Later on, when she apologizes to Alphen she admits that in hindsight it wasn’t the smartest idea to try and bring down a Renan Lord with only a few bullets.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Of all the party members, she has one of the steeper learning curves, up there with Law and Kisara. Picking Shionne up and using her is easy enough given her ranged gameplay keeps Shionne relatively safe, but she has some of the hardest combos to master largely because her attacks are grouped up into being effective at different ranges and she's the only character to lack a pop-up attack that gets her airborne to continue combos. This isn't even getting into her Sniper Blast mechanic, which requires the player to track Shionne's ammo count and plan out combos in advance so they don't run out of ammo before they're finished with their combo. Once mastered, however, Shionne has by far the best control of the battlefield of any character, possessing an arte to capitalize on any amount of distance between her and her enemies and having a brutally effective slide arte^note Lunar Corruption that allows her to get in close and slam enemies with flip kicks and grenades, in addition to a variety of trick shots with massive amounts of stopping power^note Ignis Diffusus, the potential to inflict debilitating ailments^note Toxicity, Gravitas Field, Tonitus Pluvia, Glacio Split, Aranea Nubes, and the capability to really rack up an enemy's strike marker to get in quick and efficient Boost Strikes.^note Luke Divisio
• Elemental Powers: She can learn Burning Strike, Explosion, and Flare Tornado, as well as Spread and Freeze Lancer.
• Everyone Can See It: As mentioned in Alphen's entry, their companions eventually notice the attraction that he and Shionne have for one another. Kisara even says they should get a room at one point.
• Everyone Has Standards: Shionne usually sees the elimination of all Renan Lords with nothing else but a necessary step to her goal, generally showing indifference in how she will accomplish it. After she witnesses Renan Lord Almeidrea casually massacring the people of Niez and clearly enjoying it, Shionne is seen shaking her fist when talking about the event. It's apparent that even she thinks this brutality is too much and wants Almeidrea dead for reasons beyond how she's a Renan Lord and an obstacle for Shionne's goal.
• The Fashionista: Shionne's first order of business after she and Alphen join up with the Crimson Crows is to find herself a new dress. When asked about settling for Dahnan clothes, she refuses and makes a point of traversing to some old Renan ruins to find what she's looking for, much to Alphen's exasperation. She also makes comments about her companions' appearances and how they should spruce up a little. One side quest, aptly named "Shionne the Fashion Critic," has her give fashion advice to an NPC.
• Flower Motif: She's visually associated with roses, which, not coincidentally, are infamous for their thorns.
• Foil: To Alphen, especially at the start of the game. Alphen is Dahnan, male, a melee fighter. His inability to feel pain contrasts to Shionne's ability to cause it. He's a nice guy always willing to stick his neck out for others and always willing to help everyone. Shionne by contrast is female, Renan, a ranged fighter. She's standoffish, and far less willing to help people. Her desire to slay the lords is portrayed more as a personal goal than a desire to achieve some grander goal, while Alphen's doing it specifically to free the Dahnan people. Both of them have mysterious pasts, but for Alphen it's becasuse he literally doesn't know it due to amnesia. Shionne knows her past, she's just not sharing. As a Renan Shionne comes from a world of relative comfort and priviledge, while Alphen as a slave comes from one misery and suffering. Alphen has friends and is sociable, Shionne is a loner due to her curse and is reluctant to let people get close to her, both physically and emotionally. She's thus a lot more curt and prone to Brutal Honesty than Alphen who is nice to everyone. The interactions of how they are opposites and in particular how Shionne mellows out forms one of the game's main story beats.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: According to Dohalim, Shionne's talent with healing Artes exceeds most Renans; including his own - except the actual gameplay outright contradicts his statement. Shionne's strongest healing Arte is Healing Circle, which has a reasonably wide area of effect and gradually restores all recipients full HP. Yet Dohalim's "Fairy Circle"^note a healing Arte he can only attain via paid dlc thoroughly outclasses it, having faster activation time, a wider area of effect, and it restores all recipients HP nearly twice as fast.
• Gratuitous Latin: Her bomb artes have Latin names like Ignis Celestra, Luke Celestra, and Tonitrus Celestra, and while her regular gun artes don't have it uniformly, it does show up in attacks like Magna Ray, Gemini Aqua and Gravitas Field.
• Happily Married: To Alphen at the end of the game. The last two images shown during the credits sequence are of their wedding day, attended by all their surviving friends.
• Harmful to Touch: Her Curse of Thorns inflicts agonizing pain on anyone who touches her.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Alphen has this reaction upon first seeing her step out in her Battle Ballgown. Although the viewer can't see his face due to the mask he wears at the time, it's still obvious from his voice and body language that he's utterly mesmerized. It's not limited to just him either: Once the player has saved enough NPCs with Shionne's healing artes, stories about a "Renan vision of beauty" saving people begin to circulate, much to her embarrassment.
• Healer Signs On Early: Joins the party a handful of fights in, and serves as the party's primary healer for the majority of the game. Extremely justified from both a story and gameplay perspective, as without her Healing Hands, Alphen's primary gameplay mechanic of using the Blazing Sword would kill him in a few moves, and healing items and such being very expensive and uncommon, it would be too much of a liability of him to use its immense power despite the fact it's the only thing they have that stands a chance at overcoming the strength of the Renan Lords.
• Healing Hands: Shionne can use astral artes to heal others, making her a necessary complement to Alphen who tends to get injured without even realizing it especially when he uses the Blazing Sword. Some quests require her to heal NPCs. Dohalim and other Renans also note her skill in healing, that although others like them can do the same, they pale in comparison to Shionne's natural gift in the art.
• Heroic BSoD: She gets hit with a huge one - nearly crossing the Despair Event Horizon - this when Alphen regains his sense of pain and thus can no longer touch her without being harmed, resulting in Shionne allowing herself to be taken by Vholran out of despair. When the party finds her, she's completely catatonic and unresponsive to their calls for her to snap out of it, with her thorns lashing out in droves when they try approaching her. It's only when Alphen gives Shionne a Cooldown Hug that she finally returns to her senses.
• Heroic Suicide: This is revealed to be her true goal. Having received visions of the impending apocalypse, Shionne figured the least she could do was to take herself out before her thorns could destroy everything. She even tried leaving for Lenegis by herself knowing that her friends would stop her if they knew her plans, but Alphen stops her and gives her a You Are Not Alone speech, convincing Shionne to not give up as they all promise to find a way to save her.
• Hesitant Sacrifice: Premonitions of doom as the result of her curse caused Shionne to conclude that she needed to die to prevent an apocalypse. Near the final act, Shionne laments that she doesn't want to die anymore and that she wants to live with Alphen and her friends even though she still believes she has to.
• Humble Goal: Once the party convinces her she might not have to die to save the worlds, Shionne mentions offhand at certain points she'd like to open a restaurant, something she shows herself to have some skill for when she really tries to understand the people she's cooking for. Once the game is beaten, an ending still featuring her in her clerk outfit implies she may have managed to reach that goal.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: In a skit, Alphen directly brings up how Shionne can seemingly make her gun appear and disappear whenever she wants. According to her, she's using "transferal technology" to submerge it in empty space when not needed, and summon it when the situation demands such.
• Hypocritical Humor: Calls Alphen out for his weapon fixation and tells him to rein it in. This is in spite of the fact that Shionne behaves similarly when it comes to food. In fact, Alphen even points it out which causes her to go silent and drop the matter.
• I Am Not Pretty: A life of isolation and resentment has left Shionne with a rather low view of her own looks, despite her love for fashion and maintaining a good appearance. When she gets her outfit from the ruins she is certain that Alphen stared at her in dumbfounded silence because he wanted to make fun of her, when it was pretty obvious he was mesmerized by her beauty. Later in the game she thinks it's "a bit much" when she hears that she's gained a reputation among the Dahnans as a "Renan vision of beauty" who goes around healing people.
• Irony: The party's main healer causes intense pain to anyone she touches.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although cold and abrasive, often picking fights with people unintentionally through her words, Shionne is a good person who's willing to risk herself for another's sake and even takes time to heal anyone who's injured even when told it's unnecessary.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After defeating Ganabelt, Alphen has a breakdown over Zephyr's death. Shionne finally gets fed up and slaps him before saying that they are literally fighting a war against the Five Lords, people on their side will die in the process, and if Alphen can't handle that then he needs to go back to Calaglia so Shionne can find someone who can. After he calms down, Alphen admits that Shionne was right on every point.
• Jerkass Realization: When the party meets Dohalim for the first time, Shionne, whose main goal is to take down all the Renan Lords, immediately tries to attack him only to get thwarted in an instant. The only reason she doesn't get hurt was because Alphen protects her. He later calls her out on her recklessness, which Law adds is only because Alphen's worried about her. This causes Shionne to rethink how she approaches things and starts to act nicer from then on. By Shionne's own account, the real turning point was later when Alphen called her his friend in front of Dedyme.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Similar to how Alphen functions as one to Shionne, the reverse is also true as Shionne slowly becomes one for Alphen as well. He admits that without her that he would have likely lost his way and he tends to lose it whenever she's harmed in some fashion.
• Long-Range Fighter: She primarily uses guns as her offensive weapons, along with magic. This means Shionne is most effective from far away.
• Made of Iron: While she's not particularly durable gameplay-wise, she does take hits that would normally kill a person and survives them, including getting shot in the chest with an arrow early on, and then much more seriously, being run through by Vholran's sword. None of these incidents have any lasting effect (Shionne rather casually heals the wound left by the sword), as it turns out the thorns are forcibly keeping her alive. Her body can also handle and channel enormous amounts of Astral Energy thanks to her status as The Maiden, to the point that she can endure sealing the entirety of the Great Astral Spirit inside her body and hold it at bay for a time.
• Mage Marksman: Shionne fighting style supplements sniping with ranged Astral Artes, via caster shells. They're limited in number, so the player has to be mindful to use her "reload" function to resupply her with casters.
• Meaningful Name: Shionne's name is a reference to aster flowers, or shion. In flower language the aster flower symbolize memory and remembrance in Japan and love in other parts of the world.
• Misery Poker: Downplayed. Early on, she drives in that she has had a terrible life due to the Curse of Thorns... to Alphen, a slave who has no memories apart from abuse by her people and surrounded by other slaves. She quickly realizes that as bad as her life has been, it's arguably no worse than that of most Dahnan people, just different, as she isn't being worked to death to drain her of astral energy and shuts up about it. We eventually learn details of how bad her life has been (spending most of it as an imprisoned lab rat undergoing painful experiments with nothing but a old doll for comfort and only surviving past childhood because she literally can't die), and it's unclear who really comes out on top.
• Mundane Utility: There are some implications that Shionne's 'Thorns' are partly why she doesn't get morbidly obese from all the food she eats, as Law notes how much agony someone would be in after eating twelve servings of gnocchi, a food known for causing indigestion. Even Kisara notes that Shionne should be writhing in pain after eating that much food, wondering where it even goes. Similarly, fatal falls, arrows to the chest, and a sword through her lungs doesn't do much harm to Shionne, and the Spirit within her refuses to let her die, so it's hinted at some points her 'Thorns' are keeping her from developing any fatal illnesses from overeating and getting fat, instead just making her heavier... which is just as well for Shionne, given how much of a foodie she is.
• Never Gets Fat: Much to the annoyance and envy of Rinwell and Kisara, Shionne always manages to retain her slim figure regardless of how much food she actually eats. Kisara is aghast at how her slim body can even fit so much food, wondering aloud just where it even goes. Dohalim, however, indicates the food does still somehow effect her weight in the sense of making her body denser, as he notes after some particularly large meals that Shionne's footprints are leaving deeper impressions than usual.
• Noble Bigot: Admits to seeing Dahnans as a lesser race like most of her fellow Renans but is willing to help Alphen liberate them from their Renan captors if it will serve her ends. She grows out of this fairly quickly, and it's implied her aloof attitude was more a result of her trauma and distrust of people in general than any particular prejudice.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: All but says this explicitly to the first Dahnan resistance group she meets (this in contrast to Alphen, who's been looking for a fight with the Renans for a while). It doesn't stick.
• Official Couple: With Alphen, who she marries at the end of the game.
• Playing with Fire: She learns fire spells such as Burning Strike and Explosion.
• Raised in a Lab: Shionne spent most, if not all, of her life in a lab being experimented on by uncaring scientists.
• Removing the Crucial Teammate: Shionne is absent from the party for a little while due to being kidnapped by Vholran and her absence is felt even in gameplay. Not only do Dohalim's healing artes pale in comparison to hers, but Shionne also takes the Blazing Sword with her during this time, limiting Alphen battle capabilities (especially if you're playing as him), and the next Boss Battle you face is a flying enemy, which just so happens to be Shionne's specialty. Additionally, she's missing for the entire first half of gameplay in Ganath Haros, which is the water themed area in Dahna, which means she's not present to deal with the massive glut of fire-weak enemies that show up there. As Rinwell doesn't get any fire spells until endgame, this means that Kisara and Law, with their easier access to fire artes, have to carry the party through Lavtu Marshlands and Aureum Falls.
• Shock and Awe: Her "Curse of Thorns". Anyone who touches her (including through clothes or gloves) gains a painful electric-like shock, with glowing tendrils of thorn-like energy emerging from her body as it happens. In an early cutscene, one Dahnan who touches Shionne compares it to being struck by lightning. Alphen's Feel No Pain ability bypasses this, as he's shown to touch her without problems several times during the beginning hours of the game much to her outright shock, given how Shionne has never before been able to have normal contact with anyone. It also appears that it is merely the sensation of being electrocuted that the curse causes, as Alphen doesn't suffer loss of motor control over his limbs whilst he's getting struck by it. The thorns also leave no apparent damage to the body, possibly only inflicting pain (albeit at least enough to make a person fall unconscious).
  • From a mechanics perspective, one of Shionne's grenades also deals lightning damage.
• Shoot the Medic First: She's the victim of this a few times. In particular, early on in the game, she takes an arrow to the chest. She gets better. Later on, Vholran impales her on his blade, but she survives it.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts:
  • With Alphen late in-game after he and the others rescue her from Vholran. Though they don't actually enter into a relationship just yet, both gradually start to act more affectionate with one another with their friends noting this change and often express amusement over it. They even flirt during battle, and near the end of the game Shionne expresses no surprise when Alphen tries to say he's in love with her, instead asking that he wait until her thorns are gone.
  • It's also on display in ''Beyond the Dawn', as Shionne also shows no surprise when, despite having been kept in the dark as to Alphen's research, he attempts to propose to her. Like before, she tells him to wait till things have settled down, and at the end gently nudges him to tell her what he wants to say.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: As the game progresses she falls in love with Alphen, who is a quintessential Nice Guy.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To Naori Imeris, one of Shionne's ancestors and the woman in Alphen's memories whom he mistook her for.
• Support Party Member: On top of the ranged fire support she contributes, she's one of the main healers of the party.
• Sword and Sorcerer: The Sorceress to Alphen's Sword. While he fights on the front with a sword, she provides support with healing, fire spells and gunfire.
• Throw Down the Bomblet: She has several artes that revolve around thrown bombs.
• Token Heroic Orc: She's a Renan, but she firmly fights against the Renan Lords that rule with an iron fist.
• Tsundere:
  • Due to her Curse of Thorns and status as a Renan among Dahnans, Shionne is quick to keep others at arm's length in an attempt to stay focused on her mission. Alphen, however, notes that she is still very observant of others and is ready to heal anyone who's injured with her artes whenever possible, so as much as she may act like she doesn't care, she actually does. When he points this out to her, she predictably tries to deny it. There's also her growing attraction to Alphen which she spends most of the game denying, saying she only sticks with him because only he can use the Blazing Sword.
  • It's ultimately deconstructed: her Tsundere-like attitude is her way of coping with life after all she's been through, particularly the Thorns isolating her from making friends with people and a troubled past where she was experimented on. Not being used to people wanting to genuinely interact with her, much less accept her as a person, leaves her conflicted and unsure if she deserves such companionship. It doesn't help that Shionne thinks the only hope of the Thorns leaving without causing The End of the World as We Know It is her death, which increasingly makes her conflicted with the thought that she doesn't want to die and lose them (yet has to), but also doesn't want them to die in her place either.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: She looks almost identical to her ancestor Naori who lived 300 years ago, the only tell-tale difference being Shionne's pink hair to Naori's blonde. The similarity leads Alphen to ask her if he knows her from somewhere while he was still an amnesiac.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: A skit in Ganath Haros has her freak out and try to shoot bugs with her rifle. She then mentions how much bugs creep her out, and goes Green Around the Gills when Dohalim and Alphen mention the idea of consuming bugs by accident or as a delicacy.

Rinwell

Voiced by: Sayuri Hara (JP), Christine Marie Cabanos (EN)

A young girl from Cysloden, who collapses before Alphen and Shionne. Despite being Dahnan, she's able to use Astral Artes, something presumed only to be possible by Renans. She's accompanied by Hootle, a baby Dahnan owl and uses a spellbook in battle.

---

• And Then What?: After her first opportunity at revenge against Almeidrea is denied, she says that the chance for revenge is everything that kept her going after her parents were murdered. The party then asks her what happens after that and Rinwell decides to find a new reason to keep on living.
• Animal Motifs: The Dahnan Mages collectively have close ties with the Dahnan owls, as evidenced by several of Rinwell's books, three of her dlc costumes, and her "Feathered Friend" skill tree which increases her elemental attack power based on how many owls she's found. The player can even adorn her with giant owl wings^note originally only available as a pre-order exclusive item, which Bandai Namco eventually made available as paid dlc.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She’s the youngest member of the party at 14 years old when she joins the party. Now 15, by the time of Beyond the Dawn.
• Badass Adorable: That cute little 14-year old girl, who gushes over Hootle, shortcake, and ice cream, is the same one who can annihilate entire fields of enemies with wide ranged AOE spell Artes.
• Badass Bookworm: Rinwell is an avid reader, especially in regard to Dahna's history, the tomes left behind by her predecessors, the study of Astral Artes, and fairy tales regarding the owls. Many of those same books are literally used as her weapons and can be viewed on the equipment screen. Her strongest one being "The Oblivion Ring", an ensorcelled book encircled with rings of ancient magical power.
• Black-and-White Morality: Due to her young age and the rampant mistreatment of Dahnans by the Renans, she views all Dahnans as good and all Renans as bad. She's absolutely flabbergasted when Zephyr indicates that the best long term solution would be to make peace with the Renans instead of continuing the Cycle of Revenge, and is the most outwardly suspicious/opposed to the idea of Dahnans and Renans learning to co-exist upon seeing this type of society in Elde Menancia. Getting to meet actual decent Renans such as Shionne and Dohalim, as well as witnessing the actions of more abhorrent Dahnans such as Dedyme and the Dark Wings, help to break Rinwell out of these views.
• Black Mage: She's the party's primary attack magic specialist.
• Black Magician Girl: A cheerful young girl who's devoted to the extensive study of Astral Artes.
• Counterspell: Her Boost Attack steals enemy spells, allowing her to use it against them as if she had cast it herself and forbids usage of this spell for a short time from the enemy, a bit like a certain witch before her.
• Character Development: She starts off incredibly distrustful and hateful towards any Renan she meets including Shionne and Dohalim. However, over time she slowly comes to realize that they and other Renans aren't all bad (and conversely, not all Dahnans are good either), and after Almeidrea's defeat, Rinwell even supports the idea of peace between Dahna and Rena just like the others.
• Child Mage: A Tales series tradition which she continues by serving as the party's primary spellcaster, despite being their youngest member. Rinwell has command over all Elements except earth and darkness, the latter being exclusive to Renans.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Rinwell loves to see Law consistently failing to impress women, reserving plenty of jokes and laughs at his expense, but the one time a girl, the Viscint Librarian, does get flirty with Law at the end of Rinwell’s book collection sub-quest, she becomes furious about it, losing the friendly demeanour she had with the librarian before.
• Commonality Connection: Rinwell loves to learn about lost Dahnan history and so does Dohalim who values history and culture in general, which, initially, makes Rinwell burst with anger due to her strong hatred towards Renans, the very people that nearly wiped out her own. As the story progresses, however, a genuine bond does form between them as Rinwell learns to let go of her prejudices.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Several skits have her attacking Law with her magic or siccing Hootle on him whenever he does something to annoy her, and there's the Hot Springs Episode where she hits the guys with a lightning spell. Law even points this out to her when brushing off her threatening to kill him and then hitting him with her magic when he talks her down from trying to kill Almeidrea.
• Elemental Powers: Rinwell focuses on using elemental magic to attack enemies. She can use water spells like Splash and Tidal Wave, ice based ones like Freeze Lancer, wind magic like Air Thrust and Cyclone, lightning spells like Thunder Blade, and light based spells like Holy Lance. She can also pick up Fire-elemental Burning Strike by finishing a side quest.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Like most Dahnans, she's heavily prejudiced against Renans in general due to their tyranny and crimes against her people. Because of this, she often butts heads with Shionne early on due to her Renan lineage which isn't helped by how cold the latter generally acts as well. She also tends to get riled by Dohalim even when he's not intentionally trying to be mean.
  • Outside of the Renans, Rinwell and her family were also victims of this by other Dahnans due to prejudice against mages well before the Renan conquest.
• Girly Girl: Everything about her design and mannerism is decidedly feminine: from her hair decorations and choice of attire, her run animation, her daintiness, and her interests in the fragrances Shionne uses for her hair.
• Heavy Sleeper: Rinwell's a night owl and usually spends her time reading into the wee hours. Which makes her an extremely deep sleeper and the slowest to raise in the morning after camping.
  Rinwell: (yawning) "I wanna go back to BED."
• Hiding Your Heritage: Rinwell comes from a line of Dahnan Mages capable of using magic. However, even before the Renans' arrival her kind were hunted and persecuted because of this, and so she grew up being told never to use her magic so she could stay safe. She ultimately begins using it again due to the situation and becomes more open to it thanks to the party.
• Informed Attribute: Law repeatedly calls her a tomboy, despite her being every bit as feminine as Shionne - from her choice of attire, to her interest in the fragrance Shionne uses for her hair. She's also quite fragile if the enemy gets to her during combat. Though it's possible Law calls her such because of her attitude toward him, and/or he's under a mistaken impression of what a tomboy is.
  Rinwell: (running away) "Someone cover the caster!"
• Irony:
  • Among the party members, she is most vocal about expressing her dislike of Renans, which turns the endgame reveal that Renans are Human Subspecies of the magic-capable Dahnans into this trope.
  • She tells the party to not trust anyone in Cyslodia as you don't know who's a mole or an informer. The leader of the very resistance group she's a part of is the local Renan lord, and she leads the group straight to him.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: She refers to Shionne as an "it" when she is first told Shionne is working with the rebels, in disbelief that a Renan is accepted by the side she is seeking help from. She ceases to do this afterwards, though it takes her a long time to actually start trusting Shionne.
• It's All My Fault: In one of the campfire skits, Rinwell reveals that a part of her blames herself for the death of her parents because she cast magic when they had told her not to and this may have revealed them to Almeidrea. Alphen snaps her out of this by telling her that he thinks that her parents likely knew that something like this might happen, but chose to teach her anyway. They would have felt it was better to give her a fighting chance because of the possibility that they might get discovered, rather than her be left defenseless and on her own if that did happen.
• Kamehame Hadoken: Rinwell has two such Astral Artes: The foremost example being Divine Streak, which fires a wide laser like beam of holy light. The other is Maelstrom, which fires an even wider column of pressurized water.
• Last of Her Kind: She's literally the last surviving member of the Dhanan Mage Clan. The others were either murdered by Almeidrea, or persecuted and put to death centuries ago by other Dhanans who feared them. By Beyond the Dawn, Rinwell now lives in Viscint where she's dedicated herself to leaving behind a written record of the Dhanan Mages and all her knowledge of Astral Artes.
• Light 'em Up: While she has command over most elements, light is the one she excels at making it her foremost skill in the Astral Artes. The description for her spell Artes such as Celestial Hammer, Divine Streak, Divine Sabre, and Shooting Star notes that they're holy in nature.
• Magikarp Power: One of her easily to acquire skills gives her a boost to her elemental damage based on the number of Owls found throughout the game. Since finding them is a Collection Sidequest that spans the entire game, early on this skill gives a very tiny amount of extra damage to her artes and can be easily skipped. However, by the late game, thanks to having more artes and better stats, Rinwell with most of the Owls found can be the best offensive caster in the game.
• Making a Splash: Water is her secondary element, having the next highest number of spell Artes in that category after Light. That includes series staples such as Freeze Lancer and Tidal Wave, as well as all new water spells like Arrow Squall and Maelstrom.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: One camp skit between her and Alphen has the two talk about their group as though they were a family. With that in mind, Rinwell proceeds to describe how Alphen is like the dad/big brother, Shionne the big sister, Kisara the mom, Dohalim the uncle, Hootle the little brother, and Law as the pet dog.
• My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Her lineage as the last surviving member of the Dahnan Mages and her lifelong devotion to the study of Astral Artes has made her naturally attuned to changes in the flow of Astral Energy.
  • This becomes pivotal when the party reaches the Wedge and Rinwell hears Dahna's voice for the first time and says it was calling her. Upon reaching the center, Rinwell enters a trance like state and gets drawn into a rising column of highly condensed Astral Energy prompting the party to rush in after her.
  • It happens again during her character sidequest in Niez while ascending the stairs to the Wind Tower and, much later, while searching the Forbidden Zone on Lenegis. Each incident gradually imparts her with deeper insight to Dahna's Will and, eventually, Rena's Will as well.
• Oblivious to Love: Justified, due to Law's habit of either hitting on, or ogling any girl he sees.
  • The game repeatedly emphasizes his growing attraction to Rinwell, but she either fails realize it, or flatly rejects any such implication, because she sees Law as a horndog^note there's an optional field skit in Elde Menancia where Rinwell catches him staring at Kisara's butt and calls him out for it. And if the player camps while Kisara's wearing the "steamy towel" cotume, it triggers a campfire skit where Law openly admits being distracted by it. The most telling instance being the "In Sync" sidequest in Cysloden which ends with the following dialogue:
    Kisara: "What was that all about?"
    Law: "Oh, that? Eh... he thinks there's something going on between me and Rinwell. And Rinwell, being Rinwell, took it the wrong way. So now I'm getting an earful from both of 'em."
    Kisara: (matter-of-factly) "That didn't really explain anything."
  • The search for the Cysloden Flower concludes with Law trying to confess his feelings for her. Rinwell fails to even notice, due to her excitement over seeing the Aurora and darts off to get a better view of it. So he sighs and decides to let her be.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Often remarked upon by by Alphen, Shionne, and Dohalim in mid-battle, particularly during use of Rinwell's strongest spell Artes like Meteor Storm and Divine Sabre:
  Dohalim: (in awe) "My word! Such unadulterated FURY!!"
  Alphen: (muttering in relief) "Glad she's on our side..."
• Revenge Before Reason: Rinwell's entire motivation is getting revenge on Almeidrea to the point where she has no other goals in life. Law and Shionne talk her down from it.
• Ship Tease: There are moments when she becomes particularly flustered around Law and vice versa. They get their own among a trio of quite romance-leaning conversations among the party members near the end of the game, though theirs centers more on Rinwell's ability to hear Dahna's "Voice" and discern its will.
• Sole Survivor: She's the only surviving Dahnan mage in existence after Almeidrea murdered her family and people just to further her studies into Astral Artes.
• Spell Book: Rinwell uses a book to fight and channel her magic. She can also store an already casted or stolen spell in it to instantly release it later or combine with the next casted spell. Curiously, only a handful of her books actually have something to do with magic. The rest are fairy tales, history books, and gardening magazines.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Gold eyes, and is a mage as one of the few Dahnans capable of using Astral Arts.
• Sweet Tooth: She loves sweets, especially parfaits and strawberry shortcake which are her favorite two recipes. Both will trigger a campfire skit if the player chooses her to make them. She gets so excited over the parfait that she even refuses to share it with Hootle!
• Team Pet: Hootle, a baby Dahnan owl that travels together with Rinwell.
• Tragic Bigot: She's the most openly prejudiced party member against Renans, loudly declaring her dislike of Shionne and treating her very harshly. Given how Dahnans in general are a brutally treated Slave Race and Rinwell herself is the direct victim of a massacre a Renan Lord committed which resulted in her family and clan's deaths, not even Shionne herself holds it against her once she finds out, instead encouraging her to see Renans as Not Always Evil. She eventually comes around as she learns more about Renan society and how they are themselves trapped and enslaved by it.
• Tetragonist: As a Dahnan mage, Rinwell has a unique connection to the Great Spirits of the two worlds, making her the only one capable of determining the Great Spirits' motives and giving Alphen the information he needs to save both worlds without sacrificing Shionne. She is also, along with Dohalim, the most affected by the reveal that the Renans are genetically modified Dahnan mages, although the game focuses more on his reaction than hers.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: Her entire arsenal consists of books covering an array of topics from Dahna's history, nature, how Astral Artes work, and multiple volumes dedicated to fairy tales about the Dahnan owls. Their descriptions usually note that these books are written in ancient texts and symbols that are indecipherable to all except the Dahnan Mage Clan themselves. The Oblivion Ring is most powerful tome of them all — an ensorcelled book encircled by rings of ancient magical power.
• Unstoppable Rage: Rinwell bursts in anger upon seeing Almeidrea, the Renan Lord who killed her family, again after just seeing her use the Fruit of Helgan to slaughter an entire crowd of Dahnans. She even threatens to kill Law when he tries to break her out of it.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Law. She often snarks at him but considers him a dear friend. Somewhat overlaps with Belligerent Sexual Tension considering the Ship Tease between them.

Law

Voiced by: Yoshitsugu Matsuoka (JP), Bryce Papenbrook (EN)

A young man from Calaglia, and Zephyr's son. Despite being Dahnan, he is an active member of Rena's police organization called "Snake Eyes", confronting Alphen and the others when they arrive in Cyslodia. He fights primarily using his fists.

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• All Men Are Perverts: Law's quick to show interest in cute girls. He blushes with visible excitement when a female quest NPC describes her excitement over a book "as though her clothes were about to be blown off" which Rinwell calls him out on. He also tries to peek on the female party members during the game's traditional Hot Springs Episode together with Dohalim, but fails due to Rinwell intercepting them and punishing both with a spell. During the quest to gather the "voices" of Dahna through a recording, Law explicitly asks Alphen to repeat the Viscint Librarian's suggestive moan, giggles in delight, then gets chewed out by Rinwell.
• Animal Lover: Law has a surprising talent and affinity for raising domestic animals. He does most of the work on Pharia Ranch, has the only voice lines telling you to check back on the ranch and your animals, and "The Stud From The Plains" quest makes it clear that female animals especially love him—though he's none too fond of how he doesn't have the same success with females of his own species. The only exception to this are Zeugles, which are universally hostile due to being feral or controlled by hostile Renans, and Hootle, because his loyalties are primarily with Rinwell and he will not hesitate to attack Law in Rinwell's stead or her direct command.
• Antagonistic Offspring: In his very first scene, he attacks his father, Zephyr. Still, despite the complications of the their relationship, he still loves his father enough to be devastated by his death.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: He is encouraged to do this, since his perk activates the longer he keeps up his offensive pressure.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: He fights using martial arts, much like his old man Zephyr does.
• Big Eater: Not as much as Shionne, but he talks quite a bit about food, especially meat. One of his skill panels unlocks after cooking a couple of meat-based meals with him. Doesn't apply to vegetables though.
• Boring, but Practical: A rare example not having to do with gameplay. Law's life philosophy once he leaves Cyslodia's Snake Eyes is noted by Law himself to be fairly simplistic, since he mostly just fixates on 'who do I have to punch next to make things better,' but the party notes multiple times that it nevertheless makes him one of the most dependable party members. From a metanarrative perspective of who Law is as a person, his philosophy also goes a long way, especially early into the story, to help the party get along with one another, since he is the least racist member of the party by far because he always defaults to looking for and beating up actual problems. He understandably takes issue with Lords who treat the Dahnans like expendable resources, but is the quickest member of the party to put aside his prejudices and work with good Renans and against bad Dahnans when the situation calls for it, lacking any of Rinwell's hand-wringing in regards to Renans and Shionne's early difficulty opening up to the party as a Renan speaking to Dahnans. Law is thus placed in the party after Zephyr dies to help stabilize the more extreme opinions of the other party members, and also to help the party quickly acclimate to Elde Menancia, the first real Dahnan territory with nuance to its relationship between Dahnans and Renans.
• Butt-Monkey: More often than not the victim of practical jokes than the rest of his companions. The most common Running Gags include:
  • Being attacked by or earning the ire of Rinwell or Hootle by him being gross, dense, or both.
  • Trying some of Alphen's lethally over-spiced foods before getting a Vomit Indiscretion Shot.
  • Trying (and failing) to be a hit with the ladies, only to get brutally shut down or fail spectacularly.
• Calling the Old Man Out: His first appearance has him attacking and shouting at Zephyr for neglecting him and his late mother in favor of focusing solely on the resistance. He deeply comes to regret this later on as it results in his father's capture and eventual execution.
• Casanova Wannabe: He certainly wants to be popular with attractive women, but so far his only success is with female animals who are a little too fond of him for his own comfort. Law's main obstacles being his own mouth and his habit of hitting on almost any girl he sees.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Law only knows how to do one thing: attack. Thus, he usually gets sidelined in favor of Dohalim whose playstyle offers far greater utility. The game itself pointedly lampshades the issue in two separate skits. The first one has Rinwell mercilessly point the inherent flaw of Law focusing solely on attacking with no regard to his own defense, or anything else, whereas the other skit has the others marvel at how diverse Dohalim's talents are, making it abundantly clear why he became a Lord.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's the goofiest and most immature member of the party by far, but it should also be noted that he's a strong martial artist capable of breaking down walls with nothing but his fists. He's also good at spy work as a former member of the Snake Eyes, and oftentimes notices or picks up on things that the others wouldn't know, simply because he has the background experience to notice them, such as Kisara tailing the group in Viscint.
• Did Not Get the Girl: By the time Beyond the Dawn concludes, he's still no closer to hooking up with Rinwell than when he started. Despite her implied attraction to him, she still considers him only a friend (at best) and a skirt chaser at his worst.
• Dumb Is Good: His impulsive nature and simple mindedness leads Law to say some embarrassing things or flat out uncalled for observations, but this works out in his favor just as good when he presents his simple but rational solutions to someone having an emotional turmoil, especially Rinwell who sometimes needs to hear from others what's best for her, and Alphen whenever he finds himself on the brink of making a difficult decision.
• Fantastic Racism: Largely downplayed, surprisingly enough. While he doesn't have fond feelings for Renans and is often on guard around them, he doesn't have much problems with getting along with either Shionne or Dohalim outside of the occasional exasperations at their own personality quirks. He largely tends to act as the voice of reason between himself and Rinwell's far more blatant prejudices, often pointing out and agreeing with Alphen that, while justified in her mistrust, her own hostility isn't doing much to resolve any conflicts within the group.
• Glass Cannon: He has the highest Attack power in the game but cannot take much hits because he's also got the lowest Defense. Lampshaded via Rinwell making fun of him about the second part. Gameplay wise, a lot of his skills give him more dodging frames and abilities that encourage avoiding being damaged as much as possible.
• Going Commando: An Implied Trope as there is evidence that Law does not like wearing underwear. His Warring States DLC costume exposes his outer legs, showing nothing but skin, and during a trip to hot spring it's shown that he is a bit of an underwear snob when he's forced to strip Dohalim and cringes at the sight of his knickers.
• Has a Type: Invoked but defied. Law tries claiming he is only attracted to mature, womanly women like Kisara, not "tomboys" like Rinwell but the rest of the group recognizes it as just an excuse to avoid admitting he likes Rinwell. Kisara also tells him that she was actually a tomboy like Rinwell when she was younger, which just flusters Law more.
• Healing Hands: Downplayed since Inspiration only allows Law to heal himself and it only recovers 40% of his total HP.
• His Own Worst Enemy: The reason he constantly strikes out with women is twofold: 1.) He speaks without thinking first and doesn't know when to shut up. 2.) He hits on virtually any girl he sees at the drop of a dime. The second point is especially problematic because Rinwell sees him as a horndog, which is why she doesn't take him seriously.
• Hurricane Kick: Has two versions between Swallow Dance and Super Swallow Dance, though it looks more like Robert Garcia's "Hien Shippukyaku" from The King of Fighters.
• Innocently Insensitive: He means well, but he has habit of speaking without thinking first, especially when it involves Rinwell. Such as repeatedly insisting she's "a tomboy", despite her apparent femininity, or asking ridiculous questions about how her Astral Artes work^note which is an especially sensitive subject for her, given that the Dhanan mages were forced to live in seclusion due to tremendous prejudice and persecution simply because they could channel Astral Artes. The discovery of Rinwell's powers resulted in Almedria becoming aware of the existence of the Dhanan mages and murdered Rinwell's parents. The end result usually being either Rinwell getting angry with him, or Hootle pecking him until he apologizes.
• Internal Reformist: One of the reasons why he became a Snake Eye was to act as this. After meeting Alphen's group, however, he becomes a revolutionary.
• It's All My Fault: Law feels this way in regards to his father Zephyr's death as it was the latter's refusal to leave him and their earlier fight that resulted in him being captured and executed in the first place. The fact that no one else blames him for it just makes him feel all the more uncomfortable.
• Ki Manipulation: The means by which Law charges his attacks with elemental properties. He can also use it to momentarily enhance his strength, or restore his own health.
• Les Collaborateurs: He's a member of the Renan secret police, yet he's a Dahnan. He explains to the others that he joined the Snake Eyes out of fear, given his choices were either conscription, or death.
• Nice Guy: His simple mind makes him the most honest person in the group, even if it sometimes works against him whenever he blurts something that makes his friends mad or embarrassed. A shining example of Law's genuine good qualities is the fact that he's quick to let go of any lingering prejudice he might feel towards a Renan if said person isn’t provoking him, showing that he values individual character.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Has a tendency to say things that annoy his friends, particularly Rinwell and Kisara, which he often backtracks on when he realizes his mistake.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Both in terms of gameplay and Arise's story. While certainly no slouch in combat, Law readily admits that he's both mystified and dwarfed by Rinwell's ability to use Astral Artes and occasionally asks her how she does it.
• Parting-Words Regret: He deeply regrets the way he treated his father and how he never managed to properly apologize or make amends for it prior to his death.
• Passing the Torch: One of the endgame sub-quests allows the party to fight the Boss Zeugle being imprisoned in Iglia Wastes, which was meant to be taken on by Law and whatever friends he made in his journey. Zephyr left a letter there for his son to remind him that he had always loved him. Upon completion, Law gets his late father's knuckle for use as his own weapon, along with his mother's wedding ring.
• Picky Eater: One skit shows him getting called out by the others for leaving food on his plate, particuarly Alphen and Kisara, who recall their own past struggles to afford being able to eat at all.
• Power Fist: His weapon, much like his old man Zephyr. The difference is that Law's fists can be changed, but Zephyr's can't, owing to the latter being a Guest-Star Party Member.
• Real Men Eat Meat: Law will eat pretty much anything as long as meat is a component.
• Revenge is Sweet: Played with. Law felt cathartic release upon avenging his father Zephyr by killing the man's murderer, Ganabelt. However, the satisfaction is fleeting and he acknowledges soon afterwards that he's still wallowing in regret for failing to reconcile with Zephyr and for being partially to blame for his death. Alphen recruiting him to the team helps him move past his regrets and feel happier. Later on, after getting over his hang ups, Law admits that he would relish the opportunity to kill Ganabelt again just for more of that cathartic sensation.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Invoked any time anyone raises the issue of Law's obvious attraction to Rinwell. He vehemently denies it every time, despite all evidence to the contrary, only to later ask Alphen and the others for advice about how to get closer to her.
• Ship Tease: There are several moments that imply a budding mutual attraction between them, though it seems to be more from his end than hers.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: Since Law lacks the ability to channel Astral Energy, he supplements his martial arts skills by charging them with Elemental properties, via Ki Manipulation.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: After liberating Cyslodia and being invited to join the party by Alphen, Law becomes a lot more cheerful when compared to his more jaded and cynical self upon first meeting him.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In the middle of his many failings with skirt chasing, there is one girl that miraculously shows interest on Law, the Viscint Librarian, and ironically he doesn’t even try to court her. Rinwell doesn’t let Law enjoy this bit of good luck, however.
• Unstable Equilibrium: His perk, Awakening, lets him deal more damage as long as he attacks constantly. Evading for too long or getting hit resets this bonus, making the fight harder.
• Vapor Wear: A rare male example with two different outfits showing skin. The first is his various wolf vest outfits which exposes the sides of his stomach and hips showing that he doesn’t wear any type of undershirt. The second, and more important, outfit is his Warring States DLC costume that not only exposes the sides of his chest but also his outer thighs, showing that he is not wearing underwear.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Ultimately defied. In the immediate aftermath of Ganabelt's death, Law is shown to gain little satisfaction or closure from it, and claims that he just wants to "find a ditch to die in" because he's still torn up over failing to save Zephyr. However, after joining Alphen's party and managing to sort out his regrets regarding his father, Law starts to look back on his revenge with pride, having realized by that point that it was pivotal to his growth as a man while honoring Zephyr's legacy as a Dahnan liberator. He also readily admits that he would gladly kill Ganabelt again if he could, if only for catharsis.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Rinwell. The two of them often trade snipes at each other but at the end of the day consider each other friends. Possibly also counts as Belligerent Sexual Tension considering some of these sniping moments come from when one is particularly flustered around the other.

Kisara

Voiced by: Haruna Ikezawa (JP), Katelyn Gault (EN)

A Dahnan guardswoman of Elde Menancia who serves Dohalim. One of the strongest of the Dahnan fighters, she is also highly regarded by the Renan soldiers. She fights with a heavy mace and tower shield.

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• The Ace: Despite spending much of her childhood as an orphan on the streets in Elde Menancia, once she became a member of the guardsmen her abilities in battle became highly regarded by both Dahnan and Renan, to the point that she is seen as something of a genius. She's quite skilled in social and organizational matters as well, having been afforded a high quality education by the Renans, and while not above letting her emotions get the best of her (especially when it comes to her brother) she is still overall perhaps the most mature and reasonable member of the party.
• Amazonian Beauty: Kisara is the most physically fit member of the party, male or female, and she's definitely a looker.
• Animal Motifs: Lions. Kisara has a lion's head figure on her armor as well as her shield. Her belt accessory also evokes a lioness' tail.
• Beneath the Mask: Being labelled as a "brutish woman" by a slimy retired warrior who was only smitten by Shionne's looks during a side-quest seems to have stung more than it appeared, as Kisara becomes rather sarcastically cold to Shionne after finishing the quest, despite Shionne telling the guy off for only caring about outward appearance. This shows that Kisara feels sensitive about her femininity, and wants it appreciated even if she chose the life of a warrior. This is also seen in her rather conflicted reactions to being called "stupidly strong" by Law (who meant that as a compliment) and other such remarks, at one point even lamenting that she thinks she is lacking in feminine charm. Kisara is very proud of her warrior abilities, but worries if that is all she is good for, especially once the party becomes better able to take care of themselves in domestic affairs.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: As a soldier under direct service to Dohalim, one of Kisara's sworn duties is to protect her lord, but since he also happens to be a powerful warrior in his own right, the two of them function more like a fighting team as with the rest of the party. The "bodyguard" part eventually gets dropped altogether when Dohalim decides to give up his nobility and relieves Kisara from servitude, but she opts to stay by his side anyway — not as hired help, but as a cherished comrade. Old habits also die hard as Kisara still finds herself often walking especially close to Dohalim during travels, ready to shield him on instinct. In one skit, Kisara mentions that even though she was Dohalim's bodyguard, it didn't mean he (or anyone else with bodyguards) was inherently weak; it's simply that one person can't protect themselves from all threats, and she dedicated herself to helping him as such.
• Bodyguard Crush: Her interactions with Dohalim steadily hint that she's becoming attracted to him.
  • The most telling is a late-game skit where he recites poems to her, one of which causes her to smile shyly and blush. Near the end of the game, she notes that the revelation that Renans are actually descended from Dahnans means that another "barrier" which separated them had now been lifted, prompting her to affectionately address him as "Do".
  • Made blatant by several field skits in Beyond the Dawn, including one in which she and Dohalim agree to "a bright future" together. The same skit ends with Dohalim asking if she'll ever call him "Do" again. Her response?
    Kisara: (laughs) "Oh, you're hopeless." (switches to seductive tone) "Of course I will."
• Boring, but Practical: The dictates of her combat style are simple, not very flashy (beyond her rather showy Boost Arte) and incredibly effective. Most of what Kisara does revolves around three simple tasks - taking hits and countering a few in the process, rushing her enemies down, and mauling them with an endless series of penetrating blows to build up the Boost Strike gauge so she can go for an instant down. Her combat style is only effective at extreme melee range, but because of the fact she doesn't let up and tanks the few attacks the enemy can sneak in, she has a monstrously easy time keeping enemies locked down once she engages, which is easy given her fair number of artes designed to home her in on her target. She may not have Rinwell's mastery of magic, her combos might not be as flashy as the male half of the party, and she doesn't have a gun or bombs like Shionne, but Kisara's brutally simple combat style gets the job done.
• Carry a Big Stick: She wields a large mace as her secondary weapon of choice.
• Counter-Attack: Though anyone in the party can get a counterstrike in if they perfectly dodge an attack, Kisara's playstyle is built on this trope. She's the only playable character in the game with a guard maneuver, and she can be played to emphasize guarding so she draws aggro and mitigates damage or she can emphasize perfectly guarding attacks to get counters in. Either way, her playstyle heavily encourages one of these two approaches, as guarding normally allows her to throw in massively powerful 'ignition' attacks from her guarded position once the enemy lets up, and perfect guards give Kisara a massive power-spike that lasts about as long as a normal combo. As she gains more titles, the act of guarding itself gives Kisara buffs to her damage output, such that she really brings the hurt so long as she sticks to her gimmick.
• Custom Uniform of Sexy: She's the only known Elde Menancian guard to wear highly customized armor — in her case, one with an exposed back and designed with the female figure in mind. The rest of her peers (even the other women) all seem to be dressed in the exact same bulky, masculine look. The party questions how different her armor is at one point, with Dohalim and Kisara explaining the Elde Menancian guard are allowed to modify their uniforms as they see fit, Kisara opting for more mobility via customized armor and focused defense in the front while sacrificing defense in the back. It's possible her insecurity over seeing herself as not being feminine enough also factored into wanting her armor to display her feminine features.
• Difficult, but Awesome: While Kisara's basic kit is incredibly simple - turtle up, attack, continue turtling - to get the most out of Kisara, it's all but necessary to learn how to properly parry attacks. This carries much more risk than dodging, because dodging early means getting out of the way of an attack; guarding early still means Kisara will face reprisal, and can easily lead to panicking and trying to parry again, only to take the full brunt of an attack. Deceptive hitbox windows on some enemy attacks and the fact characters can't dodge or block out of artes means Kisara needs to be played carefully, with no small degree of foresight. However, once mastered, Kisara brings a massive amount of damage and combo potential to the table, and can easily keep up with all but the most aggressive Rinwell and Alphen builds due to just how powerful her counters are and how much countering properly enhances her damage.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Of all the characters, Kisara's playstyle is the most heavily represented accurately in cutscenes, as she fully abuses her parry mechanic against Vholran and frequently draws aggro with her shield up.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: She's ultimately the one to snap Alphen out of his mental breakdown, addressing the fact he's suffering from shock and needs time to recover. Her own issues with the loss of Migal and learning the truth about Dohalim are implied to play a large part in how she's able to identify when others need to hear this sort of thing from her.
• Good Feels Good: After Kisara joins the party and is effectively no longer a servant of Dohalim, or anyone else for that matter, she still employs herself towards serving the entire party with basic chores even if in part to teach them how to properly take care of themselves. She's even questioned on why still treats Dohalim with reverence as if still in his employ, the only difference being she can now reprimand him or tell him to do certain things. Kisara simply replies that she likes taking care of others, as it's what she has done her entire life and wants to set an example like her big brother, Migal.
• Green Around the Gills: Once the party ventures out into the sea, Kisara is quickly revealed to be prone to getting sea sick. It doesn't bother her when she focuses on things such as when she's fighting or fishing, but once the focus is gone the sickness returns, leaving her looking obviously nauseous.
• Hartman Hips: She's got a pretty shapely rear, which is on full display whenever her back is turned to the camera.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Likely the only reason why she doesn't seem to own one despite the rest of Elde Menancia's guards all wearing face-concealing helmets while on duty.
• Hidden Buxom: Her plate armor does a good job hiding how busty she is.
• Hidden Depths: She turns out to be something of a fishing enthusiast. In her final Camp Bonding scene, she mentions how she dreams of making her own fishing pond. During the credits, it's revealed that she made it a reality.
• Hot Teacher: Her DLC outfit "Fiery Teacher" invokes this for the fictional high school the characters find themselves playing roles in (per the costume descriptions), featuring a plunging neckline that shows a generous amount of cleavage courtesy of her leaving her shirt deliberately unbuttoned, thigh high stockings and glasses.
• Humble Goal: To build her own fishing pond, which is about as humble as it gets. She gets her wish sometime after the end of the adventure.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Much like Shionne with her gun, Kisara has access to transferal technology that sends her shield in empty space whenever she's not using it. In her case, it's because of an equipped device (given to her by Dohalim) that stores astral energy needed to power the tech, which Dahnans like her aren't naturally able to harness.
• I Am Not Pretty: Kisara is self-conscious about her femininity, partially because of having developed a beefier body from being a soldier for so many years. This is emphasized in the “Her Place” sub-quest, when the NPC who gives it to you flirts with Shionne and completely ignores Kisara, calling her “burly”. Kisara actually gets jealous of her for this, much to the latter’s surprise. She later admits to Dohalim that because the party is becoming more self-sufficient, she feels she has nothing to offer besides being a soldier, adding that she also doesn’t have “much in the way of feminine charm”. On top of this, she also feels uncomfortable when the party comments on her strength or warrior-like behaviors, even as a compliment.
• I Shall Taunt You: Kisara throws around taunts frequently in combat. This actually has a strategic benefit for the player, as her taunts are context-sensitive. Any taunt that implies an enemy isn't focused on her indicates that the foe she's fighting has either broken off aggro from her or wasn't aggroed on her to begin with.
• Jiggle Physics: Her chest has a noticeble bounce in her bikini DLC costume, yet for how big they appear and the outfit being mostly fanservice, the bounce is rather restrained, moving about as much as a real-world woman of similar size would.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Kisara lives and breathes this ideal, standing as the last defense for all under her charge. When she suffers a mental breakdown courtesy of learning Dohalim wasn't the perfect lord she thought she was following and watching her brother liquefy, what convinces Kisara to keep going is a reminder of the ideals she stands for as a soldier. This dedication to her ideals allows her to break the siege on Aurelina Palace by Kelzalik's forces. It's best summed up by something Kisara tells Shionne when Shionne insists she plans to look out for herself and doesn't want Kisara's help;
  Kisara: "That's okay. It doesn't matter if you do or not. I don't protect people because they ask me to. I do it because I want to, and because I think it's the right thing to do."
• Lady and Knight: With Dohalim. They’re a modern take with a lord and a female knight who are both capable fighters and protect each other on the battlefield. Also, unlike most pairs who follow this trope, their story shows how being from different social classes (and different cultures) creates conflict between them. By the end of the game, they learn to see each other as equals. The changes in their relationship are marked by what Kisara calls him — from “Lord Dohalim” or “my lord” to just “Dohalim” then later, his nickname “Do”. Some moments in the game also hint at a growing romantic attraction to each other.
• Light Is Good: She wears all-white armor, has a number of holy/light-themed attacks, and is, without question, a woman of strong moral fiber.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Downplayed as it's not shown in an unhealthy or overly dependent way, but rather a constructive "working through the dependency to better himself and not be so dependent" way, but it becomes clear over the course of the game that Kisara has become one for Dohalim. He multiple times expresses he doesn't know what he would do without her, and when it becomes clear to the party just how emotionally damaged Dohalim is from his past, they are reassured by recognizing he will be okay as long as he has Kisara to support him and help him heal.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: She carries an enormous tower shield for extra strong defense, using it to guard both herself and her allies against enemies' assault. Interestingly, it's the shield that counts as her primary weapon, not the mace.
• Male Gaze: She has a very shapely rear and the camera knows it. Its size is commented on by Rinwell and Kisara hopes the former is talking about her shield instead.
• Maybe Ever After: Discussed twice between her and Dohalim during the events of Beyond the Dawn. In the first skit, Dohalim mentions looking forward to retirement and hints that he'd like Kisara to live with him. She picks up on the unspoken implication and agrees, but says "now's not the time".
  Kisara: (coyly) "I think I know what it is that you're trying to coax out of me, but now isn't the time. There's still much work to be done before either of us can rest comfortably."
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Unlike the other party members, Kisara cannot dodge. Instead, she has a block and counter move as her main defensive option against incoming attacks, befitting her use of that giant Tower Shield.
• Mighty Glacier: Though typically a Stone Wall trusted to block damage and draw aggro, especially as a companion, playing Kisara emphasizes this playstyle. She's not slow, but the effect is similar, as her attacks require her to really close in on enemies, her artes typically have long cooldown if they aren't being strung and quite a bit of wind-up unless she's in extreme melee range, and her aerial gameplay is incredibly sluggish. She also doesn't have a dodge, meaning she's all about guarding. The 'might' is put into effect through her powerful 'ignition' attacks and the power boosts she gets when she perfectly guards attacks, and even without these boons she's still great at getting combos despite her slower attack speed given how her endless ground combos can keep enemies pinned easily... once she manages to lock them down.
• Morph Weapon: Not normally, and not in the sense of it changing shape, but for her Mystic Arte she can increase the already large size of her shield several times over, then slam it into the ground to produce a large explosion. Her Boost Strikes also tend to involve other characters using their powers to change her shield or mace, adding ice spikes, a giant blade of stone or some kind of other energy construct around it.
• Ms. Fanservice: A rather unusual, subdued case. She looks modest when viewed from the front, but the moment she turns her rear-exposed backside, it shows. Her butt is also bigger than average to the point that she feels self-conscious about it at times, including one specific post-battle quote where Rinwell comments about an unspecified something that's so big, with an embarrassed Kisara hoping Rinwell was referring to her shield. Her alternate outfits tend to be less subtle, with a focus on her fairly large breasts. Notably, she's the only woman in the party whose swimsuit is a bikini.
• No Guy Wants an Amazon: Should Kisara beat the highest rank for her single battles in the arena, Dohalim will note that Migal once told him that he was afraid this trope would come into play, that she would be so strong she'd scare away suitors and never be able to get married. Kisara is less than amused that her brother thought this. For his part, Dohalim has no issue with how powerful she is, happy that he can always depend on her in and out of battle.
• Not So Above It All: While fairly mature for the most part, any maturity Kisara has gets thrown out the window whenever she and Lagill get into one of their competitions. The subject of fishing can lead to her gushing like an excited child and behaving in unreasonable ways as well.
• Number Two: To the team as a whole, best shown when Alphen regains his memories and suffers from such severe trauma he physically can't fight at anywhere near full capacity. Her time spent as a captain in her city's guard means she knows how to give orders and direct people, and whenever Alphen is out of commission, she either takes up the leadership role or is sought out to fill it. She's the one who gives the order for everyone to take time and process what Alphen went through, and she administers to the party and ensures everyone is being efficient with their goods, time, and tasks. In particular, she takes charge, more or less, of administering Pelegion during the one month timeskip, and when control returns to the player she directs the party in assisting the townsfolk.
• Only One Name: As is required for Dahnans by the Renans, and commented on in-universe.
• Painted-On Pants: The black suit she wears underneath her armor is very form-fitting.
• Pungeon Master: It's not commented on much among the party, but in addition to smack-talk, Kisara loves making puns out of several of her Artes when she gets the chance in combat. Come the DLC, she even occasionally makes ice cream puns with Shionne whenever they both use several Water-element Artes or perform their Boost Strike.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Kisara is extremely loyal to Dohalim but she's also not afraid to take him down a peg, at least once he ceases to be her lord. In particular, she often quips about his preference to speak in fancy ways that others find difficult to understand.
• Serious Business:
  • Fishing, specifically with a rod and lure. It's so intense for her that it even comes with its own epic battle and boss fight music. She also gets extremely angry at Zeugles denying humans the chance to fish, is horrified but reluctantly accepting of net fishing, and when she hears that a legendary fishing hole is being polluted and destroyed by a Zeugle, she's extremely fired up to kill it and save the fishing hole before it's utterly ruined.
  • Cooking, to a lesser extent. When Shionne requests she give her some lessons, Kisara agrees on the condition that Shionne always refer to her as "captain" during said lessons, and the lessons themselves go about as if Kisara were a drill instructor and Shionne a military recruit.
  • And finally, shields. The female guard barracks she lived in features multiple books all about shields with the text noting that somebody there really likes shields, clearly.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Despite being heavily armored from the front, her backside is left pretty bare and exposes a lot of skin. Justified in-story by the fact that this makes the armor lighter and easier to move in, and a warrior should never allow an enemy to see their back anyway.
• Shield Bash: In battle, Kisara uses her shield in tandem with her mace, from basic combos to devastating combat artes that have her charge through her enemies like a one-woman battering ram. The shield is also classified as her equippable weapon instead of just being for stats and visuals.
• Ship Tease: With Dohalim. Though not as obvious as Alphen/Shionne, the game hints at a growing attraction between the two of them throughout the story. When Dohalim recites a bunch of romantic poetry to her in the "Her Place" sub quest, Kisara blushes and acts in a very flattered manner. Another sub-quest has them mistaken as a couple and neither really try to deny it. The "Missing Lover" side quest centers on a Renan and Dahnan in love and Dohalim being quite invested in the relationship, and concludes with Kisara putting forth the idea of the same thing happening to him, Dohalim giving a somewhat longing reply. She later even takes to calling Dohalim by his nickname "Do", gladly musing out loud that it feels like a wall between them has come down. Kisara then says he'll "always have a home in Menancia", and Dohalim responds by thanking her for her "patience" while he figures out how to handle his responsibilities.
• Spell Blade: Her Boost Strike with Dohalim starts with him magically manifesting a giant crystalline blade from Kisara's shield, which she then slices the enemy with.
• Statuesque Stunner: The tallest of the playable female characters at 172cm and definitely a looker with the most Fanservice tropes to her.
• Stone Wall: Her primary role in battle. She has the highest HP and defense stats out of anyone in the party and, rather than dodge, she uses her shield to block attacks and counter them.
• Supermodel Strut: Her slow walking animation has her swaying her hips in an exaggerated manner. This doesn't really fit her personality, meaning it's likely done to invoke Third-Person Seductress.
• Super-Strength: Her shield is utterly massive, and appropriately enough, Kisara has the matching strength to wield it (though she claims it is not as heavy as it looks). When Rinwell tries holding it, she can barely do so and is amazed at how Kisara is able to move around with it at all. It also extends to her mace. One camp interaction has Alphen try to pick it up, but utterly fails to do so even with both hands. Kisara then proceeds to casually pick it up with one hand.
• Supreme Chef: Among the cast, she is the most talented at cooking, to the point that Shionne goes to her for advice. She's even selected as the judge for an impromptu pancake cooking contest due to her reputation. This is reflected gameplay-wise by her having the most amount of dishes she can provide a bonus to, and her effect is one of a few with no trade-offs of any kind.
• Team Mom: Upon joining the party proper, she finds her stride in instilling discipline into the party's behavior and well-being, from improving their diet to maintaining their appearance. This extends from the younger members like Rinwell and Law to even to her former master Dohalim, the latter of whom frequently requires Kisara to spell out basic Dahnan social norms. The other party members frequently liken her to the "mother" of the group for this reason.

Dohalim il Qaras

Voiced by: Yasuyuki Kase (JP) Griffin Puatu (EN)

The Renan lord of Viscint, capital city of Elde Menancia, where the Dahnans and Renans live together in peace and harmony. He's rather eccentric and has an appreciation for the arts. He fights with a staff.

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• The Ace: To say Dohalim is "talented" would be a considerable understatement, be it the artistry and precision timing of his melee skills, his mastery of Astral Artes, and with defensive and healing magic. Or his innate ability to seamlessly blend all his skills into a singular fighting style. If he clears the lv.90 solo trials, it triggers a skit where Alphen and the others marvel at how diverse Dohalim's talents are and that he excels at all of them.
• Action Politician: Dohalim becomes this after Kelzalik’s uprising. He personally finds the factory where Kelzalik was producing the Fruit of Helgan and tears it down. Then, he joins Alphen and the gang to help them defeat the remaining Renan Lords and end the Crown Contest, in order to establish a lasting coexistence between Renans and Dahnans in Elde Menancia. Also, even though his former guard, Kisara, comes along, too, he doesn't rely on her to protect him. Technically, he gives up the throne before leaving Menancia, but many people still call him “Lord Dohalim” throughout the game. Not to mention, he later becomes the leader of the Renan people, essentially the sovereign in all but name.
• Affectionate Nickname: Simply called "Do" by his closest Renan friends and later by Kisara near the end of the game once they become closer than ever after learning the truth about the Renans, removing any class barriers between the two; Law even wonders if something else may be going on.
• All Men Are Perverts: During the party’s stay at a hot spring, Dohalim tries to convince Law to sneak a peek at the girls while they are bathing, which he considers to be a rite of passage for male adulthood. He even grows a ladder to aid Law in the "rite."
• Antiquated Linguistics: As an indication of his high class upbringing, he speaks in a decidedly more flowery fashion than the other party members. Strangely enough, he's the only member of Renan nobility who puts a consistent effort into speaking in this fashion, reflecting his background as having been essentially educated to become one.
• Assassin Outclassin': When the party first meets Dohalim, Shionne, seeing him as just another Renan lord to kill, tries to shoot him while his back is turned. He dodges the attack, knocks her gun out of her hands, and holds his rod to her neck. Then he counterattacks, but Alphen shields her from the blow, suffering significant damage to his shoulder. Shionne has to heal him twice before it moves normally again. All this proves Dohalim became lord for a reason.
• Authority Sounds Deep: Dohalim has a much deeper voice in Japanese than in English, invoking this trope. Part of the paradox of his character is he looks and sounds the part of a leader, but he doesn't act like one until the end of the game when he takes command of Lenegis.
• Beneath the Mask: At first, Dohalim seems like a calm, competent, and well-adjusted man who genuinely cares about the well-being of the Dahnans of Elde Menancia. But after Migal’s death and Kelzalik’s uprising, the party finds out he was just pretending. Turns out he really turned Menancia into a paradise of coexistence just so he didn’t have to hear the Dahnans’ screams, which triggered his traumatic memory of killing his best friend. His desire for Renan-Dahnan coexistence is real, however, and he makes up for his selfishness by putting in the effort to secure permanent peace between the two races. Personality-wise, he’s actually pessimistic and withdrawn, and he gets flustered easily when things don’t go his way. He also constantly says and does things that make Alphen and the others question his sanity.
• Broken Pedestal: He becomes this to Kisara when he admits the true, selfish reason behind his "dream" of seeing peace between the Dahnans and Renans: not some grand vision of co-existence, but to simply distance himself from others' pain and suffering because of how much they remind him of his own personal guilt when he killed a friend to secure his title as lord. Kisara is so enraged that, combined with her grief, she outright has to be held back by Alphen to keep her from ripping Dohalim apart. Subverted when he eventually starts to take up those ideals of harmony in earnest and, if anything, her affection for him becomes even stronger.
• Casting a Shadow: Uses Darkness based spells like Negative Gate and Bloody Howling, signifying his status as an experienced Renan mage (the Dark element being exclusive to Rena).
• Combat Medic: Dohalim can use Astral Artes for both offense and healing, alongside his staff-based Strike Artes.
• The Comically Serious: Of the group, he's the most likely to resort to being a Deadpan Snarker, and much of the humor involved with him is his tendency to sound dead-serious while engaging in the party's lighthearted antics. That said, he is not above attempting lighthearted banter.
• Cultured Badass: He's described as being well versed in all kinds of art, including music, poetry, and antiques. He's also perfectly capable of fighting alongside his own bodyguard.
• Death Seeker: Becomes this for a short time when the truth of his utopia is revealed to him. He asks the party to kill him, and before this seemingly goads Kisara's rage to try to get her to do it. He gets better once he's had some time to reflect on things. Getting him past the belief that he still deserves to be killed takes quite a bit longer though.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Though Dohalim invites the party to dinner (mainly as a show of confidence), he is, at first, wary of them and wants them to leave Menancia as soon as possible. But after he goes berserk at the underground lake, forcing them to fight him to snap him out of it, he opens up to them about his past and his true motivations for making Menancia a utopia. Then he disappears. Not even the Elde Menancia Guard knows where he’s gone. The next time you see him, he joins the party.
• Didn't Think This Through: The main practical issue with him being Secretly Selfish is that he had no long-term plans for preserving or defending his paradise, causing him to leave the heavy lifting to others and fall into a self-destructive panic when things started going wrong. Rectifying this is a key part of his character arc.
• Dishing Out Dirt: In addition to his dark elemental magic and being decent at healing artes, he focuses on earth magic like Stalagmite and Ground Dasher, as expected of the Earth Lord. He can also form solid paths of rock over lava.
• Elemental Powers: Dohalim specializes in using both earth and darkness astral artes.
• Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry: Not surprisingly since he comes from money, he wears a lot of jewelry: a pair of earrings, a gold choker, and several rings on both hands. One skit reveals his rings were a gift valued at 100,000-200,000 Gald — quite cheap in his mind.
• Flanderization: Justified for comedy. Dohalim's posh, art-critic-esque attitude and the fact he's been tended to hand and foot for seven years is played up during the hot springs sequence so that he looks out of touch trying to have servants proffer food to him and undress him. This being a silly comedy sequence, it's not remarked on much, and he returns to his typical level of competency following the event.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Witnessing Migal's death and Kisara's reaction to it causes him to recall the day he killed his own friend to become a lord and earned the hatred of that man's fiance. Dohalim then goes berserk along with/due to his Master Core, leaving the party no choice but to fight him to snap him out of it.
• Green Thumb: As an extension of his earth elemental magic, he is able to control plants to some degree and make them grow. His main use of this in battle is to tangle up the legs of agile enemies to trip and slow them down for a time. In the field he can fill in gaps in climbing pathways that are made of hanging plants.
• Guilt Complex: Despite being unquestionably the most benevolent Lord in the 300 year history of the Crown Contests, Dohalim constantly belittles his accomplishments, questions his motives and dwells on every mistake. It nearly gets him killed after he berates himself and confesses his selfish motives to Kisara right after Migal's death, provoking her into a murderous rage. Later, he ends up relying on her to break him out of this tendency.
• Heroic Safe Mode: He's been in the midst of one ever since he became a lord, and Migal's death sends him back into a full-scale berserk, panicked fury.
• Innocently Insensitive: Some of the tension after he joins the party comes from this. Being a well-off Renan, he lacked having to deal with the same kind of hardships that the Dahnans had to endure and often has to remind himself/be reminded of that fact. For example, he gets annoyed at Alphen and Law's lack of etiquette compared to Kisara, forcing them to point out how, being slaves, they never had the luxury to do so compared to Kisara who did.
• Internal Reformist: While his approach is less immediately obvious in its flaws than Law's, and has helped far more people, it has the same problem of being more a comfort blanket for his fear of conflict than anything that might make lasting, durable change to the brutal, exploitative society he's part of. There's a reason he ends up joining Alphen's band of freedom-fighters.
• Jack of All Stats: Dohalim's physical and magical attack stats are nearly equal, and he fights with a mixture of physical attacks, offensive spells, and healing.
• Lady and Knight: With Kisara. They’re a modern take with a lord and a female knight who are both capable fighters and protect each other on the battlefield. Also, unlike most pairs who follow this trope, their story shows how being from different social classes (and different cultures) creates conflict between them. By the end of the game, they learn to see each other as equals. The changes in their relationship are marked by what Kisara calls him — from “Lord Dohalim” or “my lord” to just “Dohalim” then later, his nickname “Do”. Some moments in the game also hint at a growing romantic attraction to each other.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The marketing for Tales of Arise hid Dohalim being one of the five Renan Lords. It simply called him a “noble” and didn’t connect him to his realm, Elde Menancia, except in the game demo. The art book that came with the collector’s edition said he’s “a member of the Renan aristocracy”. Bandai Namco also removed all references to his status from the game demo, including him calling himself "Lord" in his introduction. But the New Year’s 2022 event in Tales Of The Rays, less than four months after Arise’s release, ruined the surprise for fans who hadn’t played Arise yet. Dohalim’s character description called him “the lord of Menancia” and even spoiled that he gives up his throne after some incident occurs. The story also referenced him having been a lord.
• The Lightfooted: Dohalim's core battle mechanic hinges on evading enemy attack with precision timing. Doing so will cause his staff to extend, thus widening his range of attack and also grants a counterattack up bonus. The effect will stack up to three times, provided Dohalim successfully avoids being hit. If he fails, it resets his staff and its attack power back to normal.
• Loon with a Heart of Gold: Dohalim recites impromptu poetry, casually jumps off waterfalls, and thinks his artifact collection literally speaks to him. And those are just a few of his eccentricities. Yet he’s also the most benevolent Renan Lord in history, who treats Dahnans kindly and transformed Elde Menancia into a thriving realm where Renans and Dahnans coexist peacefully. Also, as we learn from his backstory, he disapproves of the Renan caste system, which divides people based on their astral energy. It’s one of the first things he wants to change when he becomes the new leader of the Renan people.
• Magic Knight: Dohalim can fight either on the front lines with his staff or from the back with offensive magic such as Negative Gate.
• Martial Arts Staff: He uses one as his weapon of choice, having been trained in martial arts that make heavy use of it. Similarly to Leia, his special ability causes his staff to grow in size when he executes a perfect dodge.
• Maybe Ever After: Discussed twice between him and Kisara during the events of Beyond the Dawn. In the first skit, Dohalim mentions looking forward to retirement and hints that he'd like Kisara to live with him. She picks up on the unspoken implication and agrees, but says "now's not the time".
  Kisara: (coyly) "I think I know what it is that you're trying to coax out of me, but now isn't the time. There's still much work to be done before either of us can rest comfortably."
• My Greatest Failure: Being forced to kill one of his best friends in the battle to determine lordship of Viscint opened his eyes to how much pain and suffering the Renans' Crown Contest was causing for people in general. He initially tried to run away from his guilt by refusing to take part in the Crown Contest, treating the Dahnans of his realm better so he didn't have to think about how much pain the Renans caused, believing he was unable and unworthy to do more. Alphen and the rest of the party inspire him to fight to put an end to the Crown Contest entirely.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Dohalim’s elegance and good looks have won him a lot of admirers, both Dahnan and Renan, who even fantasize about marrying him. One particularly passionate fan on Lenegis says she tells everyone about him, and she seems to have “researched” him because she knows all about his nerdy hobbies and interests, like the arts and artifacts.
• Not So Above It All: He exudes and appreciates etiquette to the point Dohalim feels the need to impart some to all his new Dahnan companions, yet he is no stranger to wanting and even instigating his male friends to peep on the girls.
• Oblivious to Hints: As far as Kisara's growing attraction to him. At one point, he recites poetry to her, only to completely forget what he said to her by morning, nor does he grasp why she refuses to tell him. It's also lampshaded by the following banter between him and Rinwell (mid battle):
  Rinwell: "Maybe show Kisara a little more kindness, yeah?"
  Dohalim: (misses the point entirely) "She's a strong woman, she can look after herself."
  Rinwell: "You... can be really dense sometimes, Dohalim."
• Picky Eater: Downplayed Trope. He will eat anything gameplay wise, but as a cook he has the least amount of food options of the entire cast. Notably, all of the food he is good at making have several ingredients and are rather out there in terms of tastes, reflecting his more upper class status.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: After he reveals his selfish motivations for promoting co-existence between Renans and Dahnans, he permits an enraged Kisara to kill him for having misled her for so long. Alphen manages to break her out of her murderous rage, so she instead just tells him to get out of her sight. He also makes this offer to Fahria much later in the story, on the condition that she follow through only after he's finished with his mission.
• Rebuilt Pedestal: It takes time, but after she forgives Dohalim for his shortcomings and giving him the chance to redeem himself, Kisara's respect and admiration for him gradually returns as she witnesses his newfound resolve and dedication to make Renan and Dahnan co-existence a reality.
• Redemption Demotion: Justified. When fought as a boss, he is going through a mental breakdown that awakens the powers in his Master Core, as mass amounts of Earth Astral energy are collected only a few rooms over, like how Balseph (though notably he could fight as he did without his core) and Ganabelt before him were near a source of power they could call on to combat multiple people at once. His stint as a villain is short-lived, and when he returns to his senses and joins the party officially, he abstains from using the Master Core again, as all that power comes in part from the deaths and hollowing of Dahnan slaves, something he disagrees with on a moral level.
• Reluctant Ruler: Dohalim never wanted to be a Lord or participate in the Crown Contest; he would have been perfectly happy as a violinist. Unfortunately, Renans with sufficiently strong astral artes are not given a choice in the matter. Subverted at the end of his character arc when he realizes he needs to lead the Renans since the Sovereign isn't the ruler of Rena, like they always believed he was, and it's the best way to bring about his visions of equality and Renan-Dahnan coexistence.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: The luxuries of his life as a noble have given him a somewhat skewed view on how the world of the lower classes operates. It's somewhat of a Running Gag for him to attempt to signal servants for whenever he needs something, only to be informed that no one's coming to pamper him. His perception of a "cheap gift" is somewhere in the region of 100,000-200,000 Gald, where most basic supplies and forging weapons and accessories cost between 1000-10,000. He naturally is a little weirded out when the party starts internally calculating how to sell said rings to set them up for a comfortable life for eternity.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Deconstructed. After killing his best friend to become the ruler of Viscint, he chose to go against the Crown Contest out of guilt for his actions, and so he worked to make Elde Menancia a place of equality between the Renans and Dahnans. However, his motivation wasn't out of purely altruistic reasons, or because he saw the suffering of those people under him, but rather because he was struggling with the guilt of his actions and thought he could escape it by making his land as peaceful and happy as possible. When confronted on the truth of the peace he built, and the fact he was unaware of The Conspiracy, he falls into a Heroic BSoD. He comes back around to a Reconstructed example after this however, as he realizes that while he was selfish, the work he put into his realm has indeed borne fruit, and decides to join the party to put a stop to the Crown Contest once and for all and bring equality to the other regions.
• Secret A.I. Moves: Since Dohalim refuses to use his Earth Master Core after he joins the party, his most devastating Earth Artes he had as a boss aren't available to the player, but thankfully he can develop many other useful Artes to compensate. It becomes a moot point when the Red Woman steals all of the Master Cores.
• Secretly Selfish: He admits his ideals of bringing peaceful co-existence between Renans and Dahnans were mostly him just trying to avoid being reminded of what he had to do to become a Lord, rather than any kindness on his part, meaning he doesn't have much interest in long-term planning to keep his utopia going, or the courage and willpower to psychologically handle a serious crisis. Kisara is pissed once she figures it out, but the other party members are a lot more easygoing, since he at least recognized that he didn't like hurting people. Ultimately subverted, when he's convinced that running away won't assuage his guilt and he whole-heartedly embraces his professed ideals. Alphen points out that despite his mixed motivations and failures, he still created a realm where Renans and Dahnans live side by side.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: He is by far the most eloquent member of the cast, not even his fellow Lords or any other Renan speak like Dohalim does, his prim and proper speech occasionally drifts into something incomprehensible to the comparably uneducated Alphen and Law, with Kisara needing to translate what Dohalim is saying to them.
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: When the party discovers that Elde Menencia is a seemingly benevolent city where Dahnans are treated with dignity and coexist peacefully with the Renans without any form of oppression, some of them (particularly Shionne and Rimwell) are mistrustful of Dohalim's true intentions, and there are hints of a darker conspiracy brewing in the shadows. While there is indeed a nefarious conspiracy at play, Dohalim himself has no part in it, with his biggest character flaw not being any hidden malice, but rather having a Secretly Selfish motive for ruling the way that he did that has left him shortsighted, conflict-avoidant, and emotionally fragile. As the story goes on, he becomes more heroic through Character Development, and dubious motives aside, his vision for Elde Menencia also stands thoroughly vindicated.
• Ship Tease: With Kisara. Though not as obvious as Alphen/Shionne, moments throughout the game hint of a growing attraction between the two of them. The "Her Place" sub-quest has Dohalim reciting a bunch of romantic poetry to Kisara, causing her to blush. The “Fishing Fiends” sub-quest has them mistaken as a couple, and neither do anything to refute it. The "Missing Lover" sub-quest centers on a Renan and Dahnan in love and Dohalim being quite invested in the relationship, and concludes with Kisara putting forth the idea of the same thing happening to him, Dohalim giving a somewhat longing reply. By the end of the game, Kisara has even taken to calling Dohalim by his nickname "Do", a gesture shared only by old friends on Lenegis. In the same conversation where she starts doing this, Kisara notes that he'll "always have a home in Menancia" and that it feels like a wall between them has come down. Dohalim thanks her for her "patience" as he figures out how to handle his responsibilities.
• Spectacular Spinning: Nearly every move he does with the staff involves spinning it around one way or another.
• Telescoping Staff: Upon a perfect dodge, his staff grows in size.
• Tritagonist: The most important person in the story after Alphen and Shionne. Alphen’s goal of liberating the Dahnans, Shionne’s goal of getting rid of her thorns, and Dohalim’s goal of ending the Crown Contest are all connected to each other and make up the core of the plot. Thus, everything the party does, from defeating the Renan lords to stopping Rena’s Great Spirit from absorbing Dahna’s astral energy, is a step towards completing all three characters’ goals. Also, Dohalim’s secondary goal of Renan-Dahnan coexistence sets up what the party will be working towards post-game. He is also, along with Rinwell, the most affected by the reveal that the Renans are genetically modified Dahnan mages.
• Token Good Teammate: To the Renan Lords. Dohalim is the only one among the five who makes an effort to improve the livelihoods of his people, whether they be Renans or Dahnans. Even after it turns out he wasn't truly sincere and was only doing so to alleviate his own guilt after he killed his friend by accident, support from the rest of the party convinces Dohalim to truly act on and promote the ideals he worked towards in full earnest.
• Weapon Twirling: Very fond of doing this with his staff, so much that his attacks with it consist of almost nothing but flashy, acrobatic spins. At one point, he even does this with Shionne's rifle of all things and makes it look easy, right after prying the weapon out of Shionne's hands, if nothing else than to taunt and psych her out for trying to assassinate him with it.
• Willfully Weak: Why he's weaker as a party member than as a boss. He refuses to use his Master Core out of principle and only did so at the time because he was too emotionally compromised to realize he was drawing power from it. He then loses his Master Core at the halfway point in the game as it merges with the others to form the Renas Alma, ending his time of being this trope.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: He's frequently the subject of speeches to this effect due to his immense guilt complex. It takes much of the game for the speeches to stick, a turning point being when Kisara convinces him that he's wrong to believe she has more reason to want to kill him than care for him, and that she does not blame him for Migal's death.

Supporting Cast

Hootle

Voiced by: Ai Nonaka (JP), Megan Taylor Harvey (EN)

A Dahnan owlet and Rinwell's loyal pet. United by their feelings of loneliness, Hootle's bond with Rinwell is such that he takes an immediate dislike to anyone Rinwell doesn't trust.

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• Berserk Button: Hootle may be tiny, but he's fiercely loyal to Rinwell and appears to be attuned to her feelings. So anything that upsets her will set him off, causing him angrily peck the offender. 9 times out of 10, it's usually Law whose insensitive remarks about Rinwell often lands him in hot water with both of them.
• Cute Owl: He's a tiny and adorably round owlet.
• Dub Name Change: Went from Fururu to Hootle.
• Faint in Shock: After Rinwell is hurt during the first fight against Vholran, Hootle tries to put himself between them. Vholran attempts to kill him, causing Hootle to faint after being narrowly saved by Alphen.
• Humanlike Animal Aging: Real life owls hatch from the egg and develop into full-weighted adults around 8-9 weeks. Despite the game having a time-skip that's one month long and some scenes in the credits depicting events that happen after the game's end, Hootle doesn't appear to age at all and remains the same baby owl size.
• Jealous Pet:
  • When the party completes a sidequest that involves using Boomies as mascots, Hootle is upset when Rinwell shows interest in the Boomies.
  • Law believes Hootle's animosity towards him is because he's taking Rinwell's attention.
• Jerkass to One: Hootle quickly warms up to the party, with Law being the exception. Mainly because Law has a habit of speaking without thinking first, especially when it comes to Rinwell as noted in the Berserk Button example.
• Meaningful Look: Hootle's big, expressive eyes tend to convey his thoughts and reactions to whatever shenanigans his human companions get into, such as making a sneaky, mischievious squint while Law and Rinwell fumble around each other.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: He's a small, fluffy white owl with big, round eyes.
• Team Pet: The little guy is practically adored by everyone in the party.
• Telepathy: Seems to possess some form of this with Rinwell, though it's never expanded on as to just how it works or how much Hootle can communicate with Rinwell and vice versa. It's shown most explicitly when he communicates to Rinwell that Law is planning on peeping on her in the hot spring, while Rinwell's resulting attack spell hits all three men on the other side of the wall it's shown she was specifically aiming at Law.
• True Companions: When having found all the owls, Rinwell sadly tries to part ways since he's found his own kind, but Hootle chooses to stay with her regardless. He can still visit the Owl Forest whenever he wants and make new friends, but clearly he prefers to be with her.

Zephyr

Voiced by: Jin Yamanoi (JP), Patrick Seitz (EN)

Leader of the resistance group known as "Crimson Crows", noted for his excellent fighting skills, tactical knowledge, and sound judgment in any situation - traits which have earned him the trust and loyalty of his crew. He works with Alphen and Shionne to take down Balseph, and later, the other Renan lords as well.

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• Authority Sounds Deep: He has a deep and commanding voice, fitting his role as The Leader of his own La Résistance and as a mentor figure for Alphen and the group early on.
• Big Good: To the Crimson Crows and Dahnans of Calaglia, serving as both their leader and moral center.
• Blind Obedience: Defied. He wants his followers to be aware of what they're accomplishing by fighting alongside him rather than just following his orders without question, since he doesn't like the idea of them being his slaves. This may explain why the Crimson Crows continue to operate smoothly after his death.
• Defiant to the End: Even as he is gravely injured and laying out for all of Cyslodia to see, he refuses to give up where the party is, instead using the chance to urge the civilians to not make the same mistakes he did and to protect their loved ones. He dies restoring trust in his son, not backing down even as he succumbs from poisoning.
• Duel Boss: In Beyond the Dawn, the player has to control Law in a solo battle against Zephyr, who has much lower stats than in the main game to compensate.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Helps the party in the early segment of the game. Though he's not directly controllable, he does fight on the front lines and is genuinely helpful.
• The Heart: Despite being a Guest-Star Party Member, Zephyr is the one who acts as the connecting force between the group early on thanks to his wisdom and leadership skills. This is what makes Alphen grow to respect him as he is able to be the person people need, especially when keeping the group together. After his death, Alphen notes how hard it is to try and be one himself, but strives to be like him in that regard.
• Inspirational Martyr: During his public execution, he urges the Dahnans of Cyslodia to cherish their loved ones and to fix their mistakes before its too late. Ganabelt kills him, but the Dahnans take his words to heart and try to make amends for participating in Ganabelt's reporting system.
• La Résistance: He leads one against the oppressive Renan lord of Calaglia.
• Large and in Charge: The physically biggest and most imposing member of the Crimson Crows as well as their leader.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: His return in the quest "The Reminiscence Device" implies that the Zephyr encountered there truly is the real one who somehow returned in order to check up on how Alphen, Law, and the others were doing after his death.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Zephyr is the closest thing Alphen and to a lesser extent Shionne and Rinwell get to a teacher and moral guide throughout the early goings, but he's murdered by Ganabelt in Cyslodia.
• Mighty Glacier: As a guest, Zephyr generally tends to be a little slower than Alphen, but he hits just as hard and thanks to being, for all purposes invincible, can handle most foes you encounter. Downplayed as a boss, since while he still doesn't move as fast as Alphen and Law, he can still easily sucker punch the player with Thunder Punch, which lets him close in on faraway targets.
• My Greatest Failure: He considers neglecting his family in favor of his crusade against the Renan lords to be this.
• Parents as People: He genuinely loved his family, and part of the reason he even fought was to help them and give them a chance to have a better life. However, as a father he put his goals first despite loving his son, something that caused Law to grow to resent him. He realizes how much he should have fixed it, and urges people not to be like him before his death.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Zephyr is well-aware of the long-term consequences of fanning the Cycle of Revenge so he urges his Crimson Crows to never engage in barbaric actions like their Renan oppressors, and instead follow a strict code of ethics by showing mercy to their enemies and killing only when necessary. They also prioritize the livelihood of the Dahnan civilians under their watch through honest cooperation and care rather than exploitation.
• Sacrificial Lion: Zephyr plays a fairly prominent role throughout the first arc and becomes one of Alphen's staunchest allies early on, but tragically meets his end halfway during the second arc to showcase how cunning, merciless and vile a Renan Lord like Ganabelt can be.
• So Proud of You: At the end of his boss fight in "The Reminiscence Device", Zephyr's spirit bids Law and his former companions a fond farewell, noting how proud he is of how far they've come just before he returns to the afterlife.
• Superboss: He serves as the last boss fought in the side quest "The Reminiscence Device" after the party defeats the Phantom copies of the Renan lords. At level 100, he is the ultimate challenge of the game, surpassing even the cameo boss Chronos and the arena boss Sword Ranker.
• Warrior Therapist: He's a brutish-looking fighter and has the skills to prove it, but Zephyr is also a wise and kind-hearted man, readily offering sound advice to his younger companions like a father-figure. His calming presence keeps the hostility between Shionne and Rinwell from spiraling out of control, which almost turns volatile the moment Zephyr disappears (though they do eventually work out their differences).
• What Would X Do?: In Law's second character quest in the DLC, Law wonders what Zephyr would think of his reluctance to wear the latter's ring, since he doesn't believe he can fill Zephyr's shoes. Law then daydreams about Zephyr challenging him to a duel to knock some sense into him, which turns into an actual playable battle. Afterwards, Nayth and Grenar agree that this is exactly what Zephyr would do if he could come back from the dead.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Ganabelt stabs him In the Back with a dagger laced with poison that was specifically obtained to counteract Shionne's healing artes, which ultimately does Zephyr in.

Bregon

Voiced by: Dai Matsumoto (JP), Brad Venable (EN)

One of the leading members of the Silver Swords. He manages a secret base that Meneck and Rinwell don't know about.

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• Reasonable Authority Figure: Upon taking charge of Cysloden, he forbids any act of revenge against informants of the Snake Eyes, both because many of the informants want to turn over a new leaf and because the newly established government needs more time to set up a proper legal system to judge people. He also asks the party to survey public opinion so that the Silver Swords know what tasks they need to prioritize.
• Redeeming Replacement: After Meneck is revealed to be Ganabelt, Bregon takes over leadership of the Silver Swords. Fortunately, he's much more trustworthy than the person he replaced.

Migal

Voiced by: Daisuke Hirakawa (JP), Armen Taylor (EN)

Kisara's brother and leader of the Gold Dust Cats operating out of Elde Menancia. He wants to expose The Conspiracy in the land to save the people in it.

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• Dub Name Change: Mikyuda to Migal.
• Heroic Suicide: To prove to Dohalim that he's right about The Conspiracy, he willingly eats another Fruit of Helgan in front of him, causing him to fully go through the Hollowing and die. While it takes a bit for it to work, he ends up managing to convince Dohalim of the truth. That said, he knew he was going to die soon from the Hollowing anyway, and so decided to speed up his death while making it worth something.
• House Husband: He was the parental figure and substitute to all of the Gold Dust Cats and various other orphans of Renan occupation, cooking, cleaning, sewing, doing the laundry, and every other chore that needed doing to maintain a relatively safe, healthy, and dignified standard of living.
• Promotion to Parent: After he and Kisara were orphaned, Migal essentially took up the role of raising her and looking after her.
• Real Men Cook: He's a chef out of necessity to feed himself and the rest of the orphans, but Kisara's compliments and talk about how she learned her incredible skills from Migal says he was quite the cook.
• The Scapegoat: He was actually a loyal guard of Dohalim, but upon learning of The Conspiracy, he tried to warn Dohalim. He was captured and labeled an assassin to hide his discovery of the truth. It was claimed he escaped and went into hiding, when in truth his captors kept him imprisoned and fed him Fruit of Helgan until they were sure he was doomed, then left him for dead. Somehow he survived and escaped, only then going into hiding for real and starting the Gold Dust Cats formed of other people who either believed in the conspiracy or had almost become victims of it.
• Secretly Dying: As a result of having been forced to eat the Fruit of Helgan while in captivity, he's already started the process of Hollowing. By the time he meets the heroes, his right hand is already afflicted, and its implied more of his body is as well. He notes that once it gets to this point the damage is irreversible, and in his final moments admits that he did not have much time left even if he hadn't gone for a Heroic Suicide.
• Undying Loyalty: He is deeply loyal to Dohalim as a result of the man saving the people of the province. For his part, despite Migal being accused of an assassination plot, Dohalim has enough trust in him to listen to him even though he is very much on guard when they remeet.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Migal is completely loyal to Dohalim, but his dying words to him include this when he is telling him about the Dahnans who died due to the Hollowing of their astral energy.
  Migal: Here is your proof, my lord. The proof of the bounds of your knowledge. The proof of the countless Dahnan deaths under your watch.

Dedyme

Voiced by: Masafumi Kimura (JP), Nathan Hedrick (EN)

The leader of the Dark Wing resistance in Mahag Saar. Standing in stark contrast to both Zephyr and Migal, Dedyme is an unpleasant individual with a strong hatred for Renans and is willing to do whatever it takes to see them all dead including bringing harm to his fellow Dahnans.

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• Aloof Leader, Affable Subordinate: Dedyme is an exaggerated aloof leader in a manner that he's a rude Jerkass. His Number Two, Baephon, on the other hand, is much more affable and level-headed. He also survived Almeidrea's massacre by simply not being in the public execution.
• Asshole Victim: Double-subverted and downplayed. While he was a piece of shit who abused his power, several Dark Wings members that don't wholly agree with his methods nonetheless felt not even he deserved his fate at Almeidrea's hands. The party doesn't comment on this much, but they think of Dedyme more as the unpleasant resistance leader whose short-sightedness brought upon his own demise, while his extremist methods puts him on the same level as his oppressors (although Almeidrea still trumps him on asshattery). However, a late-game sidequest does have Dedyme's loved ones mourning him, or at least, the person he used to be.
• Bullying a Dragon: He tries to get under Alphen's skin by verbally degrading him and his companions in front of their faces despite the fact that each of them is more than capable of taking him out with ease. He never even realizes how lucky he got it to receive just one punch for his insults.
• Cult of Personality: Dedyme cultivates an image of the savior of Niez. A lot of Dark Wings members follow this image, worship him, and believe that he can do no wrong. Those who think he may have gone too far are usually shunned and saddled with either bad intels or meddlesome jobs. Ultimately, it bites him in the ass as this cult blinds him from Almeidrea's true machinations. He and his most hardcore followers are massacred by Almeidrea, while those that do not overly worship him survived.
• Dark Is Evil: He wears all black, leads a group called the Dark Wings, and is willing to sacrifice his own people in order to drive out the Renans. Ironically, the legend that he named his group after portrays a more benevolent revolution aided by a black owl, whose chosen hero resembles Alphen more than Dedyme.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: For all of Dedyme's faults, he always made sure to look out for his mother, and apparently kept her from knowing just how ruthless he had become.
• Foil:
  • To Alphen and to a lesser extent Zephyr, fellow rebel fighters who also seek to overthrow the Renan lords, but doing so while preserving and protecting Dahnan life and trying to grant the people genuine freedom, in contrast to Dedyme's amoral and oppressive methods.
  • He also serves as an Evil Counterpart to Rinwell, since he hates Renans even more than she does and also has a grudge against Almeidrea. Both have Dahnan owl pets and admire the legend of the Dark Wing rebellion. However, Dedyme is willing to sacrifice his own people to take down Almeidrea and ignores Baephon's concerns about his sanity while Rinwell backs down from attacking Almeidrea when Law acts as a human shield, and ultimately gives up on revenge after realizing how much her friends are concerned about her.
• Freudian Excuse: Dedyme was once a good man, but losing many of his family and friends over the years to the Renans filled him with bitterness and hate, and he became everything he once stood against.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Dedyme's actions are highlighted next to the actions of other Dahnan leaders in each region at multiple points, all of whom suffered like he did but ended up as good people despite what they went through, up to Zephyr losing his son due to his dedication to liberating the people of Calaglia but continuing on anyway. No one denies that what Dedyme went through was terrible beyond words, but everyone in the party agrees he went way too far in his quest, and ended up becoming what he hated. Almeidrea even makes it a point to mention her entire plan hinged on him being just as horrible, bitter, and full of hate as she hoped he'd be; she may have produced that hate, but it stuck around long after she pretended to go on the run, and Dedyme's every word and action made clear he was intent on being just as destructive and just as cruel an extremist long after Almeidrea was dealt with. By the time the party first entered the region, Mahag Saar was starting to become divided between the Dahnans who supported Dedyme and the Dahnans who feared him or hated him.
• Glory Hound: Has shades of this. He intentionally gives Alphen's party the wrong directions to Almeidrea's whereabouts, sending them on a wild goose chase just to get them out of the way while he and his Dark Wings go track her down themselves and claim sole credit for her capture/demise. All this amounts to nothing in the end, however, since while the heroes are away, Almeidrea herself soon shows up at the Dark Wings' doorstep, feigns surrender, and then proceeds to massacre Dedyme and his loyalists before they even see it coming.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Regardless of his reasons, it becomes clear to everyone that Dedyme has become no different than the Renans he so despises, seeking to rule over Mahag Saar himself and drive out/slaughter any Renan left in the region, while excluding (at best) any Dahnan who doesn't enthusiastically endorse his methods.
  Dohalim: It's a little ironic how little his manner differs from that of a lord.
• Heroic Wannabe: In his youth, he wanted to be a hero just like in the legend of the Dark Wings, to the point of keeping a black owl as a pet because of her resemblance to the owl in the legend. Sadly, years of fruitless rebellion and losses caused him to become more similar to the despot in the story than the hero.
• Horrible Judge of Character: His main weakness. Dedyme's biases and inflated ego have made him inept at assessing people. He judges based on surface-level traits and lacks foresight, which ends up costing him big when Almeidrea, his hated foe, appears to throw herself at his feet. Some of his men actually express doubts at this sudden turn of events and try to warn him about it, but Dedyme just brushes them all off, convinced that he was somehow able to instill debilitating fear on a dreaded Renan lord and got her to surrender without a fight. Suffice to say, he falls right into Almeidrea's trap, and dies for it.
• Jerkass: His first act in the story after his introduction is to mock Alphen and the party to the point that Law of all people is appalled by his rudeness. He then proceeds to insinuate that Shionne is kept in the group in exchange for giving Alphen sexual favors, angering the latter enough to punch Dedyme in the face. He's also the one responsible for Niez being left in ruins due to his choice to bomb the city.
• Knight of Cerebus: Though he doesn't stick around long, Dedyme and the environmental storytelling within his region exist to further expound on the narrative nuance of a slave uprising. Dedyme, despite being a liberator like Alphen, is not a good person, introducing the concept of sexism within the setting ^note He is the first person you can meet who makes disparaging comments about women in the story, insulting the female half of the party's contributions and singling out Shionne as being nothing more than a tramp Alphen keeps around for sexual favors and proudly declaring he kicked the Renans out of Mahag Saar by bombing everything, including Dahnans who he considered to be necessary casualties. The region he's in is full of ancient Dahnan ruins that suggest Dahnans themselves used to rule over each other with castles and kingdoms, and Dedyme's cruelty is further likened to being comparable to a Renan Lord's. Essentially, Dedyme makes it clear that heroes and villains can be anyone, regardless of ancestry or race, and the rest of the game has the heroes pontificating on the moral implications of his actions and what needs to happen to avoid simply making Dahnans the new oppressors in the long run, which mutes a lot of the optimism and hopefulness inherent to their quest up until his introduction. ^note  Kisara in particular is left wondering for a time if the quest will even be worth it if people like Dedyme are among the Dahnans they're saving, and Law fears that Rinwell's own hatred towards Renans could make her into the next Dedyme.
• Meet the New Boss: Dedyme's regime begins with every indication of being as cruel, oppressive, and autocratic as Almeidrea's.
• Motive Decay: He used to be a genuine liberator, but after years of failures and the loss of his loved ones, he's now more concerned with getting revenge against Renans and gaining political power than uplifting his fellow Dahnans.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: He has any Dahnan citizens who disagree with him ostracized from Almeidrea's public execution. As a result, they don't consume the final dose of the Fruit of Helgan and don't get riled up to the point of expending all their Astral Energy, allowing them to survive and recover.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The only reason he doesn't try to kill Shionne and Dohalim is because of Alphen's presence. It's implied that despite underestimating Alphen, he realizes that he would suffer significant losses if he picked a fight with the Blazing Sword of Calaglia.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Dedyme's win came at the expense of the lives of many Dahnans due to his indiscriminate use of explosives to drive out the Renans. Niez is nearly in ruins when you get to it, and the victory turns out to be short lived when Almeidrea comes back and kills most of the Dark Wings, including Dedyme himself, after baiting them into a trap they never saw coming.
• Recurring Element: He's the leader of the Dark Wings, a recurring group seen throughout the whole series as bumbling and inept adventurers that serve as comic relief. As you can see from the tropes surrounding Dedyme, this game instead puts emphasis on his and the Dark Wings' ineptness in serious things with dire consequences.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Dedyme's methods were harsh and indiscriminate, he quite openly admitted he made no effort to avoid damaging the town or harming his fellow Dahnans.
• Shadow Archetype: He represents what Rinwell could become if she lets her hatred of Renans and Almeidrea in particular consume her.
• Small Name, Big Ego: He fancies himself as Alphen's superior and tries to throw his weight around when they meet, ignorant of the fact that by that point, he's nothing but a deluded thug compared to The Blazing Sword of Calaglia's skills, strength, and feats of heroism.
• Smug Snake: He's a rude and unpleasant man with an egotistical view of himself thanks to his dubious accomplishments as "liberator" of Mahag Saar, blind to the fact that his efforts are ultimately ineffective and bound to self-destruct in the long run. His attitude also blinds him from how Almeidrea is actually playing him like a fool by handing out some victories that would lead to his demise.
• Tragic Keepsake: The only thing his mother and pet owl have to remember him by is one of his eyepatches.
• Underestimating Badassery: Thrice. He does this to Alphen's group and to both Balseph and Ganabelt for losing to the former. He also thinks he's got Almeidrea on the ropes when it's clear to everyone that she's planning something which is proven true when she slaughters nearly everyone in the Dark Wings including Dedyme later on.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: It's implied by many of the people closest to him that Dedyme wasn't always the rude, ruthless, and egotistical douche you meet by the time of the game. His Number Two Baephon states that this is due to constantly fighting a Renan Lord for so long without a considerable success.

Naori (Spoilers)

Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (JP), Reba Buhr (EN)

A woman from Alphen's memories who bears a strong resemblance to Shionne. Her full name is Naori Imeris, one of Shionne's ancestors.

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• Apocalypse Maiden: The original host of the "thorns," a fragment of the Great Spirit of Rena, that she passes down to her descendants until it falls to Shionne.
• Fling a Light into the Future: Why she willingly became an Apocalypse Maiden to begin with. She also leaves behind a message containing useful information for the heroes, entrusting them with her hopes while lamenting the fact that she had to pass such great burden and responsibility onto someone else.
• Identical Ancestor: Looks physically identical to her descendant Shionne, with the only difference being their hair color.
• Posthumous Character: She died a long time before the start of the story, though the hows and whys are never explained. Albeit the fact her help was necessary to help Lenegis survive and recover, and that she had descendants, indicates she lived for a number of years after the ceremony.
• Spanner in the Works: Her selection as the Maiden causes the Ceremony with Alphen as the Sovereign to fail, and her sending him down to Dahna forces the Great Spirit of Rena to wait 300 years for another successful sovereign to be created.
• Token Good Teammate: The only Renan from the sovereign experiments to ever treat Alphen as a human being. She even saves his life after the experiment fails.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Alphen keeps dreaming of her face while he has amnesia. When he meets her distant descendant Shionne, he asks if they've met before. Aside from hair color, there is little that physically differs about her from Naori.
• Walking Spoiler: She's very important to the plot, but everything other than her name and appearance is explained very late in the story.

Hevrekt 35 (Spoilers)

Voiced by: Kozo Mito (JP), Joe Zieja (EN)

A hundred years before the events of the main story, a maintenance satellite called Daeq Faezol drifted away from Lenegis due to an accident. In so doing it stranded a research team of Renans and a single Helganquil out of reach of the Great Spirit's influence for the first time. Thus that Helganquil, Hevrekt 35, known also as "The Overseer", watched and waited, prolonging its life through every means available, wishing to see just what would become of Rena and Dahna.

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• Deus ex Machina: Interestingly, Hevrekt views the party's mere existence, in particular the fact that Alphen is still alive, as this trope, pondering how it is possible that so many unlikely coincidences could have coincided at the right time to offer a way to save Dahna.
• Living on Borrowed Time: It has used every means available to extend its lifespan, and while it is stable for the time being it would have died some time ago were it not kept inside a special chamber. It is seemingly unable to move, and even speaking is implied to take a lot of effort.
• Mr. Exposition: Aside from its pragmatic nature and desire for vengeance against the Great Astral Spirit, Hevrekt 35 primarily serves to explain some major aspects of the truth about Rena and Dahna, then directs the party to its human workers to explain more.
• The Needs of the Many: Hevrekt tells the party to kill the Great Spirit even if it means sacrificing the maiden, Shionne, in order to save the Dahnans and Renans. When the party proposes an alternative plan that would seal the Great Spirit's astral energy into the Renas Alma without killing Shionne, Hevrekt rejects the plan as being too risky and initially refuses to fix their ship until they agree with it, though it eventually relents.
• No Biological Sex: It speaks with a male voice but looks identical (aside from color) to the other Helganquil and is never referred to as male or female.
• Token Good Teammate: The only Helganquil you meet who is not antagonistic towards the party, as well as the only one to bother speaking. This is due to it being the only one free of Rena's will.

Will of Dahna (Spoilers)

Dahna's Astral Energy is normally too thinly distributed to form its own will, but the Helganquil's machinations cause it to be concentrated in a path that goes between Dahna, Lenegis, and Rena, causing it to become sentient to some extent.

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• Big Good: Once enough Dahnan Astral Energy is gathered in one place, it develops some degree of sentience that wants to help the party. It does so by showing Naori's memories, giving Alphen and Shionne their Sovereign and Maiden clothes, and fusing with Rena in order to placate Rena's Great Astral Spirit.
• Fusion Dance: It fuses with the Great Spirit of Rena to put an end to its rampage.
• Mind Hive: The party states that all Dahnans make up the Will of Dahna, since Dahna's Astral Energy has no sentience on its own. It's implied that Renans are included too, since the Will of Dahna shows Naori's memories, which makes sense because Renans are descended from Dahnan mages. Due to the party's efforts in uniting the people of Dahna and Dohalim's efforts to redeem the people of Lenegis, Dahna ultimately saves both Rena and Shionne by fusing with Rena.

Nazamil

Voiced by: Atsumi Tanezaki (JP), Ryan Bartley (EN)

A young girl who was born to a Renan Lord father and a Dahnan slave mother. She has a deep sense of inferiority due to her unique blood and powers, and has already given up on being accepted by anyone. While wandering alone after being chased out of a town she had stopped in, she meets Alphen and his friends.

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• Abusive Parents: Her father never saw her as his heir or child, much less a human being, and treated her more like a living weapon, to the point where he sent her to the Forbidden Zone for Sovereign experimentation. Whenever Nazamil did something he didn't like, he punished her and locked her up.
• The Archmage: As a child of both Dahna and Rena, she can use all six elements on top of having an incomplete Sovereign power from the Helganquil's experiments.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Deconstructed. She can power her astral artes by draining the astral energy of another being, which allows her to easily defeat Zeugles in Niez by draining them to the point of hollowing and using their own energy for her attacks. However, the Dahnans of Niez are still traumatized by the hollowing, so this just causes them to fear her more despite her attempts to save them.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Nazamil quickly bonds with the party, especially Alphen, because they're the first people to show her so much as a shred of kindness. This serves as the main reason why she becomes the Arc Villain of the DLC as she can't stand the sight of Alphen suffering under the expectations of the Dahnans and Renans.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While Nazamil prefers to avoid conflict if at all possible, she is not to be underestimated; threaten her and you'll face a very powerful mage.
• Blue Blood: Her father was the Renan Lord of Ganath Haros before Vholran killed him and took over. Despite this, she's treated like absolute crap because of her Dahnan heritage. Even her father saw her as less of a person and more as a human weapon.
• Broken Bird: When Alphen and the party meet her, she's depressed and despondant, and has given up all hope of ever being accepted anywhere in the new world.
• Chameleon Camouflage: She can use some form of Sovereign-like power to hide herself and blend in almost perfectly to the area around her.
• Duality Motif: Her mismatched-colored eyes are said to be a part of her Dahnan-Renan heritage.
• Foil: To Shionne, as another person raised in Renan culture who has only ever known loneliness before meeting the rest of the party. Both bond with Alphen because he's the first person in their lives to ever show them genuine kindness, but whereas Shionne was akin to an Apocalypse Maiden and inherited her Maiden powers from her family, Nazamil received an incomplete Sovereign crest through experimentation, with her control over six elements being the only power she was born with. Furthermore, it's thanks to Alphen's kindness that Shionne resolves to break free from her "curse" and stay by his side whereas Nazamil becomes an Arc Villain to lessen Alphen's burdens after seeing how troubled he is by the Renans and Dahnans constant expectations of him.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: She's treated like utter shit by both the Renans and the Dahnans; the Renans hate her because of her "tainted" blood from her Dahnan mother's side, and the Dahnans hate her because her father was a Renan Lord.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Lord of Ganath Haros, Urwagil Hildris, treated her miserably since he saw her more as a weapon than as a person. When Vholran came knocking at his front door, Nazamil stood by and refused her father's orders to defend him. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy...
• Non-Player Character: Despite being a major character in Beyond the Dawn, Nazamil is not a playable character nor does she assist the party in battle.
• One Degree of Separation: Her father is the former Renan Lord of Ganath Haros, the same Lord Vholran killed and replaced to take part in the Crown Contest.
• Promoted to Playable: She became a playable character in Tales Of The Rays less than a month after the release of Beyond the Dawn.
• Trademark Favorite Food: She really likes the Social Mabo Curry that the party made for her, to the point where she keeps a stockpile of Adan Peppers in the Jungle Mausoleum and in the Keystone.

Antagonists

Erwolsey "Balseph" Teldilys

Voiced by: Fumihiko Tachiki (JP), Jason Vande Brake (EN)

The Renan Lord of Calaglia who holds control over his domain's Dahnan slaves with an iron fist. He collects fire elementals and imposes hard labor on the Dahnans. On the surface he appears to care for his fellow Renans, but in truth all he wants is to look better than the other generals.

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• Bald of Evil: Not a strand of head hair left on this brutish slaver.
• Bad Boss: In his first cutscene appearance he's seen having just beaten up one soldier as an example for others in the room for failing him. Ironically this doesn't stop the game from much later claiming he was A Father to His Men. May be justified in that the protective treatment was stated specifically to refer to those under him in his own house.
• Beard of Evil: Spiky sideburns and a full goatee to complete his sinister look.
• Brought Down to Badass: Balseph is a beast to fight, with wide, sweeping attacks that can wipe out your party if you're inexperienced (which is likely given this fight's early juncture). And keep in mind, he's the one lord you fight not powered by a Master core - even Shionne confesses to not being completely sure the combination of her, Alphen, and Balseph's own Master core that she stole from him (in the form of the Blazing Sword) can take him down. He's just that big and strong.
• The Brute: Balseph serves this role to the main evil faction within the game, the Renan lords, given his immense size, monstrous strength, and reliance on slow, powerful attacks.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: He's a large, hulking man who rules Calaglia with an iron fist and generally acts in a very aggresive manner. Beffiting his character, he wields a giant ax in battle.
• Cleavage Window: A rare male example. He's garbed in thick, heavy armor for the most part, but keeps his chest area bare for seemingly no other reason than to show off how scarily musclebound he is.
• Climax Boss: Is of course fought at the end of the opening Calagia arc. Also serves as a Wakeup Call Boss due to being the first true challenge Alphen and Shionne (and by extension the player) face both story and gameplay wise.
• Covered in Scars: His face is a mixture of natural skin and darker scar tissue.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: In this case, being burned to death while suffocating under the vice-like grip of a giant fire demon. Judging from the pained expression on Balseph's corpse, his last moments must've been in pure agony.
• Dies Wide Open: The last time the camera pans on Balseph is a quick shot of his now lifeless face, eyes and mouth agape like he's still screaming in pain while the fire astral spirit continues to fry him under its grasp.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Balseph is utterly dumbfounded by the fact that Shionne, a fellow Renan, would willingly betray her own people for the sake of Dahnan liberty, finding the whole thing both absurd and blasphemous to the Renan way of life. Although Shionne's motivations at the time had nothing to do with sympathy for the Dahnans, Balseph didn't know this, and the fact that it never even crossed his mind goes to show how basic concepts of human morality are beyond his understanding.
• Evil Is Bigger: He towers over each and every one of the heroic characters out to oppose him, even Zephyr who's quite an imposing figure himself.
• A Father to His Men: A late-game sub-quest reveals that he actually did legitimately care about those under him in his house, noting that despite his position his was not a particularly powerful family among lords and he acted to keep them from being mistreated by more influential houses.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Some nasty ones all over his face, most notably an ugly burn mark that covers almost the entire left side, as well as a Glasgow Grin formed by the jagged cuts running down his cheeks and across his mouth.
• Karmic Death: Mid-way through his boss fight, the astral energy he'd been harvesting from the Dahnan slaves in his region goes berserk, manifesting into a massive monster made of fire that attacks both him and the heroes with its indiscriminate attacks. The Coup de Grâce blow Alphen gives him involves overpowering him head-on with the Blazing Sword, knocking him backwards into the monster's grip to be immolated by the flaming energy he'd harvested from so many slaves.
• Large and in Charge: The Renan general who rules over Calaglia's slaves also happens to be a towering ogre of a man.
• Mighty Glacier: Balseph moves and attacks slowly, but hits incredibly hard and barely flinches from any damage taken. A single hit from him will almost one-shot Alphen, and beating him requires knowing when to attack rather then just going in swinging.
• No Body Left Behind: When Alphen releases the unrestrained power of the Blazing Sword to destroy the fire astral spirit, the resulting beam of destructive flame ends up totally disintegrating both the giant monster and Balsepth's corpse (still stuck in the monster's grasp), leaving no trace of them left.
• Playing with Fire: The Fire Lord. Even after Shionne stole his Master Core, Balseph still has some heavy-hitting fire attacks.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His armor is black with red details. He also has a red scar on his face and his axe is imbued with fire energy. You know, just in case the skulls on his hip didn't tip you.
• Red Baron: "Balseph" is not his actual name, but a moniker that in Renan language means "Wild Beast". Ganabelt finds the nickname ridiculous.
• The Social Darwinist: It's traditional belief among Renans that only the strongest deserve to live, and Balseph's no exception. He sees all Dahnans as trash fit only for slavery because he thinks their race is inferior to his by nature.
• Starter Villain: He's the very first Renan lord to be introduced and encountered in the game, and also the first to get killed off about three hours in.
• Wakeup Call Boss: As noted above Balseph is a Mighty Glacier who hits like a bulldozer, and his two phase boss fight tests whether players have gotten a handle on the game's combat, especially dodging attacks and looking for openings.

Ganabelt Valkyris

^{Click here to see the real Ganabelt}

Voiced by: Joji Nakata (JP), Kyle McCarley (EN)

The Renan Lord of Cyslodia who governs from the city of Cysloden. Similar to Balseph, he rules the area with an iron fist, using the Snake Eyes to arrest any and all potential dissidents among the populace. He is known to use Renan technology in battle.

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• The Archmage: As a Renan Lord, he's one of the most powerful magical beings on the two worlds, and his use of his light magic is both potent and imaginative, making deft use of both illusions and electrical blasts.
• Badass Bookworm: He's most notorious as a scientist and spymaster, but he's also a Master Swordsman and The Archmage who fights with courage and determination when cornered.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: As Meneck, he acts like a Reasonable Authority Figure to the Silver Swords with the goal of saving Cyslodia. In reality, he's a ruthless tyrant who controls the system.
• Clark Kenting: Ganabelt's "Meneck" disguise simply consists of him putting on glasses, wearing mundane clothes, tying his hair up, and adopting an amicable demeanor. Somehow it works even though his face still has Obviously Evil written all over it.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Balseph. Balseph is a brute who preferred to keep his slaves in line through physical force. He also didn't seem to think much of the resistance forces in his realm, leaving whole towns unguarded. Ganabelt fancied himself The Spymaster on the other hand, keeping his entire realm paralyzed in fear from his agents and Secret Police. As Meneck he ran a resistance cell against himself, only to betray and kill its members when he saw an opening. It probably wasn't the first resistance group he'd taken down that way, either. Their fighting styles are also disparate; Balseph (albeit working with a bit of a handicap) preferred taking down his enemies with a single stroke of his axe. Ganabelt was (literally) lightning-quick and made heavy use of astral artes.
• Faux Affably Evil: He calls Balseph and politely offers to help the latter fight the Crimson Crows, but Balseph knows that Ganabelt just wants to take advantage of the situation to undermine him in the Crown Contest. Right before his boss battle, Ganabelt admits that he sees Balseph as Dumb Muscle and doesn't really care about the latter's death.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After fatally wounding Law's father right in front of him, Law kills him in return.
• Lean and Mean: He's a gaunt, sleazy-looking bastard who's every bit as treacherous as his appearance suggests.
• Light Is Not Good: His main element is light and he is one of the Renan lords who brutally oppress Dahnans. Notably, Renans cannot use light, only dark astral energy directly, so the light he uses is, by necessity, taken from his region's slaves.
• Limit Break: He has one in the form of Indignation. Failing to destroy his clones and prevent him from casting will hurt your party badly.
• Master Swordsman: He's internationally famous for his skill with a rapier, and puts on a very respectable show during his boss battle.
• Mole in Charge: Meneck, leader of the Silver Swords, is actually Ganabelt in disguise, having used a body double to appear in public as his "normal" self while he masquerades as a heroic Dahnan, sabotaging the rebellion movement's efforts right from under their noses. His end goal is to lure his enemies into a trap and then wipe them out in one fell swoop.
• Mythology Gag: His chant when using Indignation is similar to the one used by Armatized Heldalf, a fellow villain and the final boss of Tales of Zestiria.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • He publicizes Zephyr's execution in order to crush the hopes of the rebels, but Zephyr uses this opportunity to convince the Dahnans in Cyslodia that they can still change for the better despite Ganabelt's cruel reporting system. Although Ganabelt succeeds in killing Zephyr, the latter's speech made it easier for Bregon to unite the Dahnans and establish a functioning government.
  • He was apparently a little too invested in his role as Meneck, as he both allowed and encouraged the Silver Swords to keep secrets from each other, to the point that there were whole hideouts that members of the group, including himself, did not know about. This prevents him from hunting down all the rebels after he's shown his true colors, though he fully believes that he'll be able to quash them when they come running to him.
• Punched Across the Room: Law deals the killing blow to him this way, punching his face so hard that he's sent flying upwards before crashing into his machine with brutal impact, getting electrocuted for good measure. He expires shortly afterward.
• Renaissance Man: He's a cruelly capable spymaster and social engineer, an accomplished Emperor Scientist, and a fearsome Master Swordsman who also happens to be as much of The Archmage as any other Renan Lord. He and his predecessors also preserved several Dahnan texts, weapons, and armor, presumably as a means to analyze their enemies. Even his many enemies respect him as much as they hate him.
• Royal Rapier: He makes use of one as his basic weapon of choice, though his attacks are primarily magic based.
• Secret Police: The Snake Eyes have a system of informants that spy on Dahnans, and incentivise them to rat each other out in exchange for being spared the ugly fate of conscripted slave labor.
• Self-Duplication: After his HP goes below certain threshold, he spawns three phantom doubles and starts casting Indignation. If the party fails to kill all those doubles in time, they will still remain after Indignation and attack the party.
• Shock and Awe: Evidently, "Light" includes "Lightning," as he has a major electricity focus. His Mystic Arte is Tales Series staple Indignation. It causes a massive amount of lightning damage to the party.
• Undignified Death: Despite his Villainous Valour during his boss battle, his death is hardly glorious. Law punches him in the jaw just as he's trying to summon more power, contorting his face into a ridiculous expression as he sails backwards into a deadly mass of aetherial energy and gets fatally electrocuted.
• Villain Respect: Downplayed. He acknowledges that Alphen is the first real threat the Renans ever faced and that the latter's spark of rebellion could become an inferno. However, he also subtly implies that Alphen only succeeded in Calaglia because of Balseph's incompetence.
• Villainous Cheekbones: What separates the real Ganabelt from his body double is the real one having sharp, prominent cheekbones and overall harsher features. Very noticeable even when he's posing as a different man.
• Villainous Valour: As much of a bastard as he is, one can't deny that Ganabelt has ironclad guts, taking on the entire party by himself and refusing to back down even when it becomes clear he's about to lose. He literally fights to his last breath, his final moments being spent trying in vain to summon his power. Law fatally disrupting his attack by smacking him across the face deflates a certain amount of his dignity, but he gets points for effort.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: A late-game sub-quest reveals that he wanted to colonize Dahna to bring prosperity to Rena, which is actually implied by his final words where he laments what will happen to his subjects if he dies. Of course, his extreme prejudice towards Dahnans is what keeps this goal from being wholly sympathetic.
• You Killed My Father: He murders Zephyr in front of the man's son, who, in turn, wants his head because of it.

Almeidrea Kaineris

Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka (JP), Laura Post (EN)

The Renan Lord of Mahag Saar who governs from the city of Niez. When the party arrives, they discover that she had already been run out of town by the local resistance and is currently in hiding. Knowing how dangerous a lord is, and how suspicious the manner of her "defeat" was, they decide to pursue her.

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• Asshole Victim: Considering all the evil she's done and how unrepentantly smug she is even after defeat and being shown mercy by Rinwell (whose parents she murdered), nobody sheds tears for Almeidrea when Vholran suddenly arrives, stabs her through the chest, and then unceremoniously dumps her into the ocean to be fed on by fishes. The only regret is that they don't get to process the proper punishment procedure to make sure she pays for her crimes.
• Bad Boss: Despite being a One-Woman Army who defeated an entire clan of Dahnan mages by herself, she allows the Dark Wings to run roughshod over Niez in order to set them up for a Hollowing, even though doing so would put the Renan citizens of Niez in harm's way. Worse yet, it's implied that she allowed the Dark Wings to steal her explosives in the first place. The only Renans she presumably saved are the soldiers, but only because she needs them to protect her ship.
• Batman Gambit: She pulls a doozy on the people of Niez. She laced all of the food in her castle with the Fruit of Helgan, then allowed them to believe that they chased her away, knowing that they would feast on the spoils she left behind. Once they were sufficiently affected by the Fruit, she allowed herself to be captured, knowing that they would want to execute her in the most painful way possible as payback. With the crowd sufficiently riled up, the Fruit's effect kicked in, allowing Almeidrea to Hollow hundreds of people at once to harvest their astral energy. She points out to the party later that her plan would have been stopped cold if the Dark Wings had just refused to do any of the things that she expected them to.
• Beauty Is Bad: A scantily clad, attractive woman who also happens to be a murderously dangerous, elitist sociopath.
• Blow You Away: She's the Wind Lord. It's implied her control of wind elements keeps the fire that is lit under her from actually harming her, and shows she can instantly snuff out the flames once her facade of helplessness is no longer needed.
• Burn the Witch!: Subverted. Upon learning she had voluntarily surrendered herself to the Dark Wings, the party bears witness as Almeidrea is sentenced to public execution by burning at the stake in front of a large crowd of former Dahnan slaves yelling for her blood. The woman's desperate cries for mercy almost move Alphen and friends to sympathize with her situation... until Almeidrea reveals that she's been faking it all along and the Fruit of Helgan the assembled crowd had consumed is activated, reducing the crowd and her would-be executioner into piles of melted sludge.
• Card-Carrying Villain: During her boss battle, she states that every step Rinwell takes in taking revenge "brings you closer to being me," showing that Almeidrea is self-aware of how terrible she is and revels in it, to the point where she wants to see her enemies become just like her.
• The Chessmaster: As smug as she is, she certainly can set up a chain of events to her advantage. This is how she takes out the Dark Wings: She forced a continuous battle against the Dark Wings that Dedyme eventually transformed from an upstanding man into a ruthless asshole. It's implied that she let the Dark Wings steal the explosives in her castle so they could be used by Dedyme to blow up Niez, which is only possible after he discarded any notions of decency. She then ran off, leaving behind some supplies in her castle so the Dark Wings could loot and feast on them. Those foods were already covered with the Fruit of Helgan. Once the time is right, she surrenders without resistance and pretends to be a helpless victim, preaching the futility of hatred, all to speed up the process of Hollowing. And it all works according to her plan.
• The Corrupter: She enjoys seeing people sink into hatred and then getting destroyed because of it for her own entertainment. She has two cases in this:
  • She succeeds in making the Dark Wings turn into a hateful Cult of Personality and their leader Dedyme into a ruthless, hateful man solely due to her own long attrition war against his resistance. Because of that, they became such easy pawns to fool and manipulate, leading to the massacre with her Fruit of Helgan.
  • She keeps goading Rinwell to hate her as much as she can, continuously reminding about how she murdered her parents gleefully and wants her to strike her down with complete hatred and vengeance, thus becoming just as bad as her. Unlike Dedyme, however, Rinwell ends up not taking the bait because of her friends' support.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Her boss fight is a massive war of attrition. Not only does she have 160000 HP (DOUBLE the amount of the boss fought in the dungeon prior to hers), but her God's Breath spell forces the player to waste time zipping around the battlefield. Once her health bar is down to the last quarter, she starts spamming Chaotic Disaster, a powerful, unblockable spell that keeps the player from getting close to the boss and dealing damage, forcing them to waste even more time, items and healing in order to chip away at her last quarter of health. Considering that items in this game cost a lot and money is hard to come by, you have to spend a lot of time farming for rare enemy drops to sell in order to stand a chance.
• Dual Boss: She fights alongside the Mesmald dragon. Defeating the dragon ends the battle.
• Establishing Character Moment: Her very first on-screen scene is luring a bunch of resistance members to what would be her own execution, then completely turns it around by having them experience Hollowing due to a plan she has concocted before. Then she starts her own very long Evil Laugh to emphasize on how much she's having a kick on this brutal massacre, followed with shrugging off and mocking Rinwell's rage against her. All of these are enough to establish that she's by far the most loathsome and despicable Renan Lord encountered so far. Furthering this are the reactions of the heroes aside of Rinwell about her: Alphen immediately remarks that Balseph and Ganabelt, previous evil Renan Lords that they have fought, look like saints compared to her, while Shionne is visibly shaking her fist when she said that Almeidrea has to be killed; she usually takes the task of defeating a Renan Lord with indifference as merely "what needs to be done to achieve her goal", but this time, she personally wants Almeidrea dead beyond that goal.
• Evil Laugh: And how. Right after massacring much of a city's population to her Fruit of Helgan, Almeidrea bursts into mad, sadistic laughter, clearly having enjoyed playing them for fools when she made them think they had her captured and helpless. Also, she spams this throughout her battle, so get used to it.
• Evil Redhead: Her thick, wavy orange-red hair brings to mind the shape and color of fire—very fitting for a woman with such a bombastic, hellish personality.
• Eviler than Thou: The Dark Wings resorted to such brutal methods to fight against her, including blowing up her town without care of the lives of the citizens. But in the end, Almeidrea plays them for fools and slaughters them en masse, making it clear who's more evil.
• Fan Disservice: She's very provocatively dressed, but the various wicked facial expressions she makes seriously distort her face.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The right side of her dress consists of an elegant white one-piece, while the left is a much more stripperiffic black that barely covers anything.
• Faux Affably Evil: She's even more faux than Ganabelt, who at least showed some genuine Villain Respect towards Alphen. She speaks in a friendly tone while gloating about her atrocities, all so she can cloud Rinwell's mind with hatred. She drops the act as she takes more damage in her boss fight.
• For Science!: She killed Rinwell's parents and the other Dahnan mages simply because she wanted to learn how their Artes worked and take their knowledge for herself to further her own life long research.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: A late game sub-quest reveals that as one of the few female lords in Renan history, Almeidria was especially pressured to succeed by going to the extremes of Renan society's focus on achieving power and dominance. Her supporters outright claim her methods of using everyone and everything without restraint were morally right by their interpretation of Renan meritocracy. The party is quick to point out however that none of these pressures can truly justify the extremes she went to, and they also note that Almeidria's supporters seem ignorant to just how selfish and twisted Almeidria became from this worldview, in particular her betrayal of the Renan people's trust by abandoning them in their hour of need, severing her duty as their guardian in pursuit of her own goals.
• Hate Sink: She is this, even in comparison to other lords who similarly brutalized Dahnans in their own domains. A late-game sidequest reveals that Balseph and Ganabelt had Hidden Depths; the former cared about those under his command while the latter had a vision to expand the colonization of Dahna for the sake of Rena's prosperity. Vholran at least gets a Freudian Excuse which explains why he is so messed up. Meanwhile, Almeidrea is revealed to have always been a ruthless and sociopathic woman who wrested control of the house from her father using despicable methods. Alphen even outright says that Almeidrea makes Balseph and Ganabelt look like saints in comparison. The most she gets in terms of sympathy are repeated explanations for how the pressures of Renan society may have helped push her to become what she did.
• I Surrender, Suckers: Almeidrea willingly lets herself get captured by Dahnan resistance fighters and then presented in front of a large crowd of freed slaves who've come to see her burn at the stake as punishment for her crimes, all while she begs them to reconsider. It's all an act, of course. In truth, she just set up a perfect scenario for activating her Fruit of Helgan, which promptly massacres the gathered slaves as soon as fire makes contact with her while she remains unharmed.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How she meets her end at Vholran's hands, who stabs her with his sword as punishment for her failure to stop Alphen and Shionne's party (and possibly other reasons, given he exhibits some personal disdain for her) and then throws her into the sea.
• Mad Scientist: She was (possibly) the creator of the Fruit of Helgan, a poisonous substance that drains life energy from Dahnans till they turn into a matterless, substanceless fluid. She is directly responsible for the troubles in Elde Menancia and Mahag Saar, her own realm. She is also said to have used her knowledge to find ways to turn humans into Zeugles, or at least use their bodies and astral energy as the raw components to make new Zeugles.
• The Man Behind the Man: She's effectively the unseen main villain of the Elde Menancia arc; she's Kelzalik's true master and using the realm as a testing ground for the Fruit of Helgan before eventually using them to wipe out the people of Niez.
• Ms. Fanservice: The most provocatively dressed female in the game by default.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Has a tendency to erupt in loud, obnoxious laugher whenever she's in the mood for gloating about how powerless her enemies are before her. Bonus points for being an actual noblewoman with a deep, sultry voice to match.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: She's the most underdressed woman in the game, and by far the most vicious.
• Stealth Insult: Even her fake desperate speech about nothing good coming out from hatred before she will be 'burnt at the stake' can be interpreted at insulting the Dark Wings: Her oppression of Niez in the first place was the reason why Dedyme became a hateful, ruthless resistance leader. The hatred instead clouded his judgment so he became susceptible of her own machinations, eventually leading to the mass Hollowing that she planned and clearly enjoys. Beneath the fake desperate speech, Almeidrea is basically insulting the Dark Wings and the people of Niez to be idiots for letting the hatred she propagated cloud their minds that they will die for it.^note Had Dedyme not let hatred cloud his mind, he might have detected and foiled her massacre in time and survive, just like Baephon.
  Almeidrea: I told you that nothing good comes from hatred, didn't I? (Laughs maniacally)
• Villain Has a Point: While she is an irredeemable black hearted fiend, she does make a point that she only had some small parts in the massacre of Niez. Her plans so went swimmingly well because Dedyme and the Black Wings were so consumed with hatred that they let their emotions get the better of them and jump right into her plan. It still counts as some sort of victim-blaming (and thus, another reason why she's still the vilest of them all), but things really could have turned out differently if Dedyme did not fall into his own hatred that she sowed.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: She is at the receiving end of this courtesy of Vholran after she loses to the party. It's unclear specifically why he killed her^note In addition of how she needs to be killed if Vholran wants a shot of winning the Crown Contest., but she had ceased to be useful to him regardless.
• You Killed My Father: She is responsible for the deaths of Rinwell's parents.

Vholran Igniseri

Voiced by: Show Hayami (JP), Joe Zieja (EN)

A mysterious man dressed in an all-black outfit who relentlessly pursues after Alphen with an icy hatred. He is, in fact, the Renan Lord of Ganath Haros and the most dangerous one out of them all.

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• 0% Approval Rating: Mostly double-subverted. When the party arrives at Ganath Haros, the citizens worship him fervently. But it later becomes clear that a majority of them has been brainwashed into Empty Shells so they're not in complete adoration of him. Later, the party arrives at Leneghis to see if there are supporters of the Lords. When even the dreadful Almeidrea still has her own supporters that believed her example would make it easier for women to become Lords in the future... Vholran has none. There are only supporters of the previous Renan Lord he murdered to replace.
• Arch-Enemy: Subverted. He goes out of his way to enforce this with Alphen: kidnapping and almost killing the woman he loves twice and sending countless Dahnans to their deaths to torment him, with his spite for him only growing throughout the story as Alphen proves himself the superior Sovereign again and again. This culminates in his madness growing to threaten all of existence by the climax. He even lampshades their similarities during their final encounter on Rena. For Alphen's part, while he clearly despises Vholran, it can't manage to outweigh the pity he feels for him due to his self-inflicted loneliness. Alphen's forgiveness of Vholran's misdeeds pushes the latter over the edge, making him commit suicide by overloading the Renas Alma and seemingly dooming Shionne, but even that fails thanks to Alphen's quick thinking. However, the DLC reveals that Alphen fears he will succumb to Vholran's mindset, to the point where he fights Vholran in a nightmare while the latter mocks him for struggling to maintain peace in the New World.
• Bad Boss: The people of his realm, both Renan and Dahnan alike, have been reduced to empty husks of their former selves thanks to his cruel abuse of them.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work:
  • No one does much complaining when he kills Almeidrea, a tyrant who's almost if not just as cruel and monstrous as he is. The only minor problem for that is that the party's original intention was to bring Almeidrea to true justice according to the law, making sure she's punished by the book (if it means death sentence, then only after being approved by the rules). Vholran denies that chance by just killing her right there, thus they won't be able to process the procedure of punishment at all.
  • He also killed and usurped Urwagil Hildris, the previous Lord of Ganath Haros. Beyond the Dawn reveals that Urwagil mistreated his daughter Nazamil for being half-Dahnan. Of course, Vholran only did this for the sake of power and couldn't care less about Nazamil.
• Becoming the Mask: He was given the title of "sovereign" as only the second successful test subject after Alphen. After then traveling to Dahna to take part in the Crown Contest (implicitly murdering a current lord to take his realm), Vholran ruled Ganath Haros as a pure tyrant, and while his people only knew him as a lord, the title of sovereign is what really went to his head, shown when he reveals his sovereign crest to the party and commands them to "bow before [their] Sovereign!". However, as the party later learns (and throws back to his face), "sovereign" was nothing more than a codeword used for the conduit of the Spirit Summoning ceremony that was later co-opted as the title of the Shadow Dictator that supposedly rules Rena. Vholran clearly took the latter more to heart but applies it to all people — not just Renans.
• Beyond Redemption: Discussed in Beyond the Dawn. Dohalim believes that convincing Vholran to redeem himself was impossible and nothing Alphen says could have changed the outcome. However, Alphen notes that Vholran likely considered his refusal the only bit of freedom he has left, and that it's a folly to forgive Vholran without considering how the latter feels. Alphen fears that he might fail to redeem Nazamil as well if he makes another half-baked attempt at forgiveness.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Though he begins as a pawn of the Helganquil, who serve the Great Spirit of Rena, he makes it clear that he plans to usurp control from them after he's made aware of his role in their schemes and serves as the Final Boss.
• Black Swords Are Better: Wields a black sword, and, as shown in the opening, goes toe to toe with Alphen while the latter uses the Blazing Sword. Unlike Alphen, this sword is his main weapon. During the Climax Boss fight, he reveals his Sovereign abilities and coats his sword in ice to combat Alphen's party for round two, as a counterpart to Alphen's Blazing Sword. From then on, this Ice Katana becomes his main weapon for all subsequent fights with him.
• Blood Is the New Black: After he survives his apparent death chained up in the Maiden Chamber as it sets ablaze, he returns with blood splattered all over his face, as markings of how close to death he was rendered and how driven he was that he survived his wounds and returned for one final fight regardless.
• Blood Knight: Look at that sick smile he makes right after being grazed by Shionne's gunshot, followed immediately by him turning more aggressive than ever. Vholran clearly loves the adrenaline rush of combat and is hinted to enjoy feeling pain just as much as he can inflict it.
• The Caligula: Sees everyone else as playthings for him to command and kill.
• Clothing Damage: His outfit never changes throughout the game, but it and his general appearance become more and more ragged and battle-worn as he faces off with Alphen's party again and again. By the time of the final battle, he's a shabby, blood-soaked mess after nearly dying pinned down in the Maiden Chamber as it burned and collapsed. It also contrasts with Alphen's changing appearances as the game progresses, showcasing his refusal to undergo Character Development from the spiteful man he's become following the Renan Experiments he endured.
• Defiant to the End: After losing to Alphen for the final time, he chooses to blow himself up along with the Renas Alma rather than accept Alphen's forgiveness.
• Despotism Justifies the Means: In the end, his motive is power for the sake of power, nothing more or less. As a Dahnan slave who had nobody he could trust, all he ever saw in the world were slaves and masters, and he would do anything to avoid being a slave again. He also goes out of his way to make his subjects miserable and completely bent to his will, making this an example of Dystopia Justifies the Means too.
• Determinator: Even after being impaled by the Blazing Sword at the climax of the second fight with him, losing his Master Core in the process to Alphen's party and with himself collapsing apparently dead with his insides aflame, Vholran survives due to his own willpower and thanks to the interference of the Red Women, who save him from death to use his Sovereign powers as a component in their plan to empower the Renas Alma. When the party finds him again, chained up in a chamber designed to mimic the power of the Maiden to begin the Spirit Channeling Ceremony, Vholran spits on their sympathy and perception of him being an Unwitting Pawn, partially breaks the energy chains around him as a sign he's willingly aiding the ceremony to gain access to the Renas Alma himself, and swears he'll kill them all despite his apparent helplessness. He's left behind when one of the Red women steals the Alma and causes a chain reaction that sets the room ablaze, immolated by the fires, but swears to survive and settle his grudge with Alphen. Aside from his power as successful Sovereign, he succeeds mostly out of sheer stubborn defiance, spite and hatred, despite suffering serious injuries in the process and returns to interfere right as Shionne and Alphen are on the verge of finishing off the Great Astral Spirit, stealing the Renas Alma and forcing Alphen to finish him off in one final Duel as the True Final Boss.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Subverted. Similar to Van from Tales of the Abyss, Vholran is defeated and then the party learns he and the other Renan Lords were just tools of the Great Astral Spirit and Helganquil. However, he turns out to have survived, and when the Great Astral Spirit is subdued, he ambushes the party one last time, and fights Alphen in the actual final boss fight.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He would rather kill himself and doom the world than accept Alphen's sympathy and forgiveness, since he views this as submission to his enemy. When Shionne claims his threats to kill Alphen are just bluffs due to him being chained up and restrained as a component to empower the Renas Alma, he partially breaks his bonds to defy this perception and prove that his remaining in this situation is voluntary, that he was waiting for an opportunity to strike against the Helganquil.
• Duel Boss:
  • Alphen has to fight him one-on-one as the final battle in the game.
  • In the DLC, Alphen has to fight him again in a nightmare, but in this case, Vholran is a representation of Alphen's doubts rather than the genuine article.
• Establishing Character Moment: He's introduced to the heroes having single-handedly slaughtered a small army of Zeugals and shooting them a Death Glare when he notices their presence observing him, showcasing his combat skills and malicious intent towards them. When he next confronts the party he attacks Alphen unprovoked and proceeds to easily overwhelm the entire party throughout head-on combat, refusing to explain his actions and utilizing vicious blows to knock them all down one by one in ways that emphasize his creative and cruel nature, as well as the genuine joy he takes in beating them down, even willing to cut down the Team Pet without hesitation, revealing his sadistic intent and malice towards them for his own reasons. When Shionne actually manages to land a glancing shot on him, it just gets him more fired up and intense with his fighting, showing how unstable he is.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Alphen. Both are skilled swordsmen who have elemental based powers (fire for Alphen, water/ice for Vholran) and wear dark clothing. However, whereas Alphen uses his powers for the sake of bringing peace for everyone, Vholran utilizes his in order to assert his dominance over everyone regardless of whether they're Dahnans or Renans. The differences become more pronounced when Vholran is revealed to be a Dahnan slave like Alphen who was turned into a Sovereign. It also extends to their weapons. Alphen wields a blade of fire, and in his own words, wants to make a world of warmth and kindness. Vholran wields a blade of ice, and he's cold, detached, and wants to make a fortress of death to wipe out both races.
  • Dohalim was a Renan lord who treated his subjects with care and called for co-existence between both Renans and Dahnans alike, even going so far as to enact numerous reforms. Vholran cares nothing about his subjects and soldiers, be they Renan or Dahnan, treating both groups so horribly they become mindless thralls who blindly follow his every order even if they die and cares for no one but himself.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: He favors the ice half of water magic, and he's a heartless bastard.
• Evil Wears Black: Dressed in all blacks and is one merciless bastard.
• Excessive Evil Eyeshadow: He's got these, and in pure black ink, no less, just to further emphasize his wicked nature.
• Final Boss: He is the last enemy Alphen has to defeat in order to save the world, making him one of the few main antagonists in the Tales series to not be just a Disc-One Final Boss.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: The Water Lord (who favours ice-based attacks) is the Evil Counterpart to the Blazing Sword wielder Alphen.
• Flat Character:
  • While he does have a backstory as a Dahnan slave, he doesn't get much depth aside from being a sadistic, power-hungry Omnicidal Maniac. This is intentional, since the story is trying to show what happens when he's essentially a slave to his hatred and to the Renan ideology, even after he is supposedly free from the Helganquil. He truly believes he has nothing and no one to live for outside of his Sovereign title, to the point where he would rather blow himself up than give up on his evil ambitions.
  • In Beyond the Dawn, Alphen notes that he only has a surface-level understanding of Vholran's character, which would make any attempt at forgiving him ring hollow and come off as Condescending Compassion, since he doesn't truly understand how Vholran feels. This retroactively turns Vholran's rather basic characterization into a tool to deconstruct the main game's forgiveness aesop.
• For the Evulz: In Pelegion, he admits that he brainwashed his citizens into worshipping him and hollowed them in order to stave off the tedium of having absolute power.
• Freudian Excuse: He was enslaved and then turned into a lab rat with nobody who could give him help or even comfort him, so naturally, the moment he got his hands on a bit of power, he used it subjugate everyone in order to get back at the world after being powerless for so long.
• Freudian Excuse Denial: Despite his tragic origins, he isn't generally framed in the narrative in a sympathetic light, with more focus given to his self-centeredness and malicious nature. In fact, he spitefully shoots down every attempt Alphen makes to sympathize with him. It should be noted that Alphen suffered from similar circumstances but chose instead to help others rather than dominate them. The only reason Alphen offers any sympathy to him is because he recognizes how similar they are, not because he agrees with him or feels he deserves to be redeemed.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was once a mere slave who later became a powerful Lord.
• A God Am I: He allows his Sovereign power to get to his head after he reveals it. Even his Mystic Arte has him declare how everything is his right to control/own.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Vholran couldn't care less for all the racial tensions between Dahnans and Renans. The only thing that matters to him is whether someone's already dead or is yet to die by his hand.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The first battle with him cannot be won, with the best the heroes can do being to somewhat deplete his health bar enough before the post-battle cutscene takes over and Alphen drives him off by activating his Sovereign abilities. This is even reflected in the after-battle gameplay, as Alphen's party don't receive Exp or Sp from the fight.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: He holds back in the first fight against him, not utilizing his water and ice-based powers to fight the party at all because he's rightfully confident that his sword skills and sheer physical strength are more than enough to deal with them. Then, upon his next proper boss fight, he brings them out along with his Sovereign powers.
• An Ice Person: As an extension of his Water elemental powers, Vholran shows the ability to use ice (ice is not considered a separate element in this world). He can coat his sword in it which makes it somewhat similar in nature to Alphen's Blazing Sword. He can also create a sword made from ice that can stand up to the Blazing Sword despite the obvious elemental weakness.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Subverted, but invoked by imagery and brought up (uncomfortably) by Law during Shionne's kidnapping by Vholran. Everyone tries hard to avoid the elephant in the room, but while Shionne is missing, Law bitterly gripes that Vholran had better not make any perverted actions on Shionne. When everyone gasps in shock, he simply responds "We were all thinking it!", making it clear that everyone was worried about the possibility...especially Alphen. Normally, Shionne's thorns would limit such a worry, but it's likewise noted that Vholran seemed to outright enjoy the pain they inflicted on him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • The first encounter with him ends with Vholran stabbing Shionne through the chest after she takes the hit in Alphen's place though she fortunately survives. He later tries it again with Alphen himself but fails due to the latter's armor protecting him. Prior to that, this is how he executes Almeidrea for her failure.
  • Vholran himself is on the receiving end of this later on when he and Alphen have their first climatic battle. Alphen runs him through with the Blazing Sword, seemingly putting an end to his evil. He survives the encounter.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He has an intense hatred for Alphen even before the two officially meet. He also hates the idea that there could be another Sovereign besides him, since it exposes the lie of the Sovereign being a position of authority, which he clings to as his only purpose in life.
• In the Hood: In his first few appearances, Vholran keeps his face shrouded within his hooded black cape, giving him a mysterious assassin-like presence as he stalks the party from time to time, ambushing them with intent to kill. He stops wearing the hood after the reveal of his true identity.
• Ironic Name: His last name starts with 'Ignis' the Latin word for fire which is the opposite of his Realm and Element of choice. It's likely not a real name either, given as a Dahnan he would have had no last name, and an NPC on Lenegis notes how he had never heard of a House Igniseri until Vholran suddenly took the title of Lord and claimed to have said name.
• Irony:
  • One of the Renan lords is a former Dahnan slave.
  • Although the ending shows that the majority of Renans are slowly abandoning their twisted ideals of hierarchy, Vholran remains the strongest advocate of it despite or because of his origins as a Dahnan slave.
• It's All About Me: In his mind, there are only two sides: "Me and everyone else". This is because he had no one to turn to in the times he was a slave and then a test subject, so when the Renans sent him back to Dahna and he became a lord (implied to have murdered the previous lord of the realm), he used his Sovereign powers to subjugate both Dahnans and Renans equally.
• Kneel Before Zod: He commands everyone, Renan and Dhanan alike, to "Bow before your Sovereign!".
• Made of Iron: He gives Alphen a run for his money in this department. He shows no issue taking Shionne hostage despite her curse of thorns (notable in that, unlike Alphen he does feel the pain of the thorns, but just completely ignores it or perhaps even enjoys it to the point of No-Sell), and during the second boss battle with him, Vholran endures numerous attacks and slashes from the party yet keeps getting back up. It takes being impaled by the Blazing Sword and getting his insides set ablaze by it to finally beat him, and even then he still somehow survives.
• Making a Splash: This is his main power as the owner of the Water Master Core until he activates his Sovereign power for the second phase of his boss fight. Other notable displays of his water elemental powers include transporting himself via a huge column of water and sinking a ship by parting the water beside it so that it capsizes and falls into the abyss. He also teleports using water. Even when he activates his Soveriegn power, he still shows a clear and obvious preference for water and ice, as his primary combo and Mystic Arte continue to use those powers.
• Might Makes Right:
  • He believes that his Sovereign powers entitles him to rule over others however he wants.
  • He considers Urwagil Hildris, the previous Water Lord, a weak and unworthy ruler for relying on Nazamil's strength rather than his own.
• Never Be Hurt Again: As he himself says in his final boss fight, even his ostensible fellow slaves sold him out for the sake of survival, so he closed himself off from everyone and dedicated himself to ambition for the sake of it.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Vholran's end goal is to take the Renas Alma for himself and then erect a fortress of death that would ensure the complete annihilation of Dahnans and Renans alike out of sheer hatred for both races, while he ruled them in the process of their destruction..
• Randomly Gifted: Most people are predisposed to just one or two forms of astral energy. Vholran has an equal disposition to all forms of Dahnan astral energy. This trait is necessary to successfully create a Sovereign and is so rare that the last person to have it was born three hundred years before Vholran.
• Redemption Rejection: Near the end of the game, right after his final defeat, Alphen tries to give Vholran a Last-Second Chance to mend his ways, but the defiant villain merely scoffs at the offer, too proud and too demented to see any other path in life that doesn't revolve around bloodshed and ruin. He picks self-destruction.
  Vholran: I don't need your victor's pity. And you can choke on your vain forgiveness.
• Scars Are Forever: Shionne gives him a large one above his right eye when she shoots him to save Alphen. This leaves him scarred for the rest of the story, despite him having access to Rena's advanced medical technology and healing artes. Presumably, he kept the scar willingly.
• Shadow Archetype: Vholran represents what Alphen could have become from the experiments of the people of Leneghis if he didn't have Naori on his side, supporting and helping him. While Alphen develops into a compassionate All-Loving Hero thanks to Naori's support, Vholran develops into a spiteful sociopath.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: When Alphen tries to tell him that controlling others simply to avoid being controlled won't get Vholran anywhere and would just perpetuate a vicious cycle, Vholran angrily retorts that Alphen's ideals are that of a weakling and a coward.
• Slouch of Villainy: He's shown sitting like this on his crystal ice throne in Garath Haros when Alphen's party comes to challenge him.
• The Sociopath: He's a cruel man who views everyone else as his playthings and mocks the very concept of compassion to the extent of being incensed when it's given to him.
• Spiteful Suicide: He blows himself up along with the Renas Alma rather than accept his loss to Alphen and the latter's forgiveness towards him, denying Alphen the chance to use the Alma to seal the Great Spirit and forcing him to use a Mercy Kill on Shionne to destroy the spirit instead, venomously telling him he'll see him in hell. Luckily, Alphen is able to Take a Third Option, but it showcases how spiteful and petty Vholran is, so much that he'd deny the heroes their chance at victory up to his final breath.
  Vholran: You wish to save this world? To make your selfish dreams into reality? If you choose to walk that path... you choose a path of betrayal, despair and corruption. And in the darkness at the end I will be waiting for you!
• The Starscream: The moment he realizes he's being used by the original Renans as a tool to channel the Great Astral Spirit, he starts calculating how best to usurp them.
• Straw Nihilist: He finds the very world around him to be disgusting and sees nothing wrong with letting the misery from Renan occupation fester. It's why he never bothers to inform anyone that the Crown Contest is a farce.
• Superior Successor: Subverted. Vholran initially seems to be a better Sovereign than Alphen, since he has access to all six elements and can cast Astral Artes while Alphen can only use Strike Artes and lacks the dark element. However, Vholran's bloodlust and inferiority complex makes him so unstable that he blows himself up instead of choosing redemption, while Alphen goes on to use his Sovereign powers in a way that appeases the Great Spirit of Rena and allows both Dahnans and Renans to survive.
• Unwitting Pawn: Partially Defied. When Shionne points out that he's chained up and being used as a cog in a machine to empower the Renas Alma for the Spirit Channeling Ceremony, he shatters one of his energy chains as a sign that he's voluntarily cooperating with his current situation to gain the Alma for himself, spitting on any perception of himself as somebody's tool. That said, the Red Woman is able to stop him taking the Alma and abscond with it, so despite his claims, he really was used and discarded as a tool by the rulers of Rena, though he makes it clear that he'll be coming for them after he's dealt with Alphen's party regardless.
• Villain Has a Point: In the ending, Vholran tells Alphen that his pursuit of peace will lead to treachery and despair. In the DLC, Alphen admits Vholran has a point and that if he had continued trying to live up to everyone's image of him as a hero, he would just get burnt out.
• Villain Teleportation: With water of all things. Part of what makes him such a dangerous threat is that he can appear from anywhere given his ability to move about freely using this power, and it means he has an easy time getting away with Shionne before the rest of the party can move to help her when Alphen fails to retrieve her during the party's third encounter with him.
• Virtue Is Weakness: He calls Alphen a coward and a weakling for wanting him to forgive others, but Alphen insists it takes true strength to forgive.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Tries to invoke this when he notes how Alphen is willing to risk all life for the small chance that Shionne can be saved with everyone else, but given his own desires for the world it doesn't have much impact.
• Would Hurt a Child: Has no issue striking Rinwell so hard that she crashes through a stone wall during the first fight with him, and immediately after he was just about to kill Hootle before Alphen intervened.
• You Are Number 6: He was referred to as Test Subject #10105 during the time he was experimented on in Lenegis.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The last phase of his Final Boss fight (when both he and Alphen have activated their Super Mode) cannot be lost. You are restricted to only using Alphen's Blazing Sword artes which for this fight will not drain his HP meaning you can spam Alphen's most powerful artes and completely destroy Vholran.

Kelzalik

Voiced by Dai Matsumoto (JP), Brad Venable (EN)

Dohalim's aid, who turns out to have been secretly expoiting Dohalim's naivite in an attempt to subvert the realm. Dohalim spares him when it's revealed he tried to start a revolt in Elde Menancia, and returns to his true master, Almeidrea.

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• Alas, Poor Villain: Despite being a Smug Snake and a Dirty Coward, seeing him reduced to a babbling, incoherent mess at the end, secluded from the rest of civilization while being tormented by the weight of his sins is quite a pitiful and pathetic sight.
• Arc Villain: For the Elde Menancia arc of the game.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Initially appears to be just a harmless (if rather snooty) manservant, but once exposed as a conspirator, he reveals his true colors as yet another vile, elitist Renan full of racist disdain towards all Dahnans.
• Evil All Along: According to Kisara, Kelzalik treated the Dahnans of Elde Menancia with cordiality and respect, same as any other Renan under Dohalim's command, as far as the general public could see, which is why she's very taken aback when he addresses her with dehumanizing contempt for the first time, right after being unmasked for the murderous racist that he actually is.
• Evil Reactionary: He turns against Dohalim for his intent on treating Dahnans on relatively equal footing while not having any intention of continuing the Crown Contest.
• The Exile: As punishment for his crimes, Dohalim banishes him from Elde Menancia.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: A possible interpretation. Despite a merchant being present on the island, the story treats Kelzanik like he's the only person who's been on said island for at least a couple of months when the party finds him there—a delirious, broken shell of a man, rambling incessantly about the "Silver Death" and how it cursed him as punishment for all his crimes.
• Ignored Epiphany: He comes to regret killing so many people through the Fruit of Helgan, but he refuses to admit that the Crown Contest and the Renan oppression of Dahnans are wrong, so he goes insane with fear out of a "Silver Death" coming to kill him.
• The Mole: He's the one behind the Fruit of Helgan's presence within Dohalim's realm, secretly developing them inside a hidden factory as per Almeidrea's orders, all to victimize the unwary Dahnan population.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: While Renans treating Dahnans as lesser beings is far from unusual (and, in fact, is outright stated to be the norm), Kelzalik is much more up-front about it, ranting about how the "rightful state" is with Dahnans being subservient to and oppressed by Renans.
• Shadow Archetype: To Dohalim. After he is rescued from Almeidrea's dragon, Dohalim comments on how this could have been him, as Kelzalik was wallowing in guilt and had essentially gone insane.
• Smug Snake: He always has a self-assured smile on his face when gloating about his plans to ensure the continued xenophobic treatment of Dahnans and how he'll dispose of the heroes, only to turn into a nervous, cowering wretch once he's beaten and put in his place.
• Sole Survivor: He's the last villain left standing by the end of the main story, with all the evil Renan lords having been disposed of.
• The Unfought: He is never fought directly, befitting his status of being more of an administrative assistant.
• Vicariously Ambitious: He knows he's not strong enough to be a Renan Lord, so he supports Almeidrea in order to return Elde Menancia to its former Renan supremacist ways.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Two aspects. Following his downfall, he seems to just vanish from the plot altogether, but the player can later discover a very well-hidden sub-quest that reveals his fate. Upon said quest's completion, he runs off and is never seen again, though it can be assumed that he jumped off the cliff.
• With Us or Against Us: He has his faction keep tabs on all Renan soldiers to see which ones support coexistence with the Dahnans. When he enacts his coup, he has all the pro-coexistence Renans beaten and arrested.

The Red Woman (Spoilers)

A mysterious female figure who appears in the courts of the Renan Lords. There are actually many of them and they are called the Helganquil, the true people of Rena, in disguise.

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• Black Eyes of Evil: When she makes her move against the party, she opens her eyes to reveal that she only has black sclera, one of the first big signs that she is neither Dahnan nor Renan.
• Ditto Aliens: They're virtually identical whether in human form or Helganquin form.
• Dying Race: The Red Women AKA the Helganquil are dying out as a consequence of the Great Spirit's actions, and are nearly extinct by the time of the game's events. It is because of this that they engineered the creation of the "Renan" people from Dahnans, needing them to help continue the Great Spirit of Rena's plans in their stead.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: You can spot her hidden in the background in several scenes featuring the Renan Lords. What the player doesn't learn until later on is that she's invisible to Renans so long as she doesn't do anything to attract attention.
• Higher-Tech Species: Renan technology is actually Helganquil technology, and at least some the Helganquil's seemingly supernatural abilities come from their advanced technology. The Renans are actually the descendants of Dahnans kidnapped and altered by the Helganquil in service to the Great Spirit of Rena, and while the Renans have gained some understanding of Helganquil technology and can repair/maintain it, it's noted they are still generations away at least from actually being able to produce it themselves.
• Manipulative Bastard: While the Helganquil were effectively brainwashed into carrying out the Great Spirit's will, the Renans themselves were not, leading to the Helganquil subtly manipulating events by preying on their human instincts to make them the imperialist, oppressive people they became. A bit of outright hypnosis and a great deal of information control and conditioning from birth to not question the world around them was also involved.
• Named After Their Planet: Subverted and played with. The "Renans" the player meets throughout the game are in fact Dahnans altered by the Helganquil, who are its actual natives. While the name means "people of Rena" in their language, obviously their name is a bit more creative than the trope. Point of fact, "Rena" is what the people of Dahna named their sister world. Rena's own natives named their world Helgan.
• No Biological Sex: Implied, for while the Helganquil disguise themselves as human women, the humans who understand the species best never refer to them as male or female, and neither does the one individual of their species who speaks (though they use a male voice).
• Slave Race: They are forced to serve the Great Spirit of Rena from the moment they're born. They can only be freed from its influence should they get far enough away from the planet.
• Taking You with Me: One self-destructs upon defeat, leading the party to speculate it could be this trope. The story never clarifies if this is the real reason or not.
• They Look Like Us Now: When disguised, the Red Women look Dahnan/Renan except for their monochrome black eyes.
• Villainous Legacy: In the DLC, all the remaining Helganquil other than Hevrekt 35 are in stasis, but their technology is used by Nazamil to brainwash people.
• Walking Spoiler: Her role isn't really explained until well into the story.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • When they built Lenegis, they didn't design the residential area to survive Lenegis's transformation for the Spirit Channeling Ceremony, since they figured that they wouldn't need the Renans anymore once they have the Renas Alma.
  • They are also on the receiving end from the Great Spirit, whose control over them caused them to prioritize the Great Spirit's hunger over their own species' survival, causing them to go extinct.

Spoiler Character

The Great Spirit of Rena

The will of Planet Rena, that seeks to fuse with all the astral energy of its neighbor, Dahna, by any means necessary. This resulted in enslaving its native species and in turn the native species kidnapping, manipulating, experimenting on and enslaving the Dahnans.

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• Almighty Idiot: It's a being capable of consuming the energy of planets, and it can effortlessly brainwash anything born directly from its planet just by its presence. However, while it is sentient, it's only just; it has no honest concept of morality and is only smart enough to recognize it is hungry and understand it can have others help it sate its hunger. It is entirely unaware of the full implications of how its efforts to feed itself cause pain, misery, and loss, and how its Horror Hunger means that its habit of overeating has practically destroyed the planet it was meant to subsist on peacefully. This also means that the Renans don't get off easily for the Helganquill's efforts to manipulate them into feeding Rena; as the party notes, because Rena has no concept of creativity, it literally could not have come up with the transferal plan, meaning it was ultimately the people of Lenegis who came up with the Crown Contest and the idea of enslaving the Dahnans. At most, Rena gave the Helganquill an order that the Helganquill made an objective for the people of Lenegis to fulfill; how they chose to fulfill it was on them.
• Anti-Villain: It genuinely doesn't realize what it's doing is wrong. Once it gets what it wants and is incorporated into Dahna (as shown by its blue flowers), it ceases to cause any problems.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Downplayed. It gets what it wants, not through its own efforts, but as a result of a Take a Third Option act by Alphen to get around Vholran's final spiteful act. It DOES fuse with Dahna, but in a way that allowed everyone on both planets to survive.
• Big Bad: It's responsible for virtually everything bad that happens in the story and is fought at the end of the last dungeon.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Though it's the primary villain of the story, Vholran serves as the final opponent, with motives of his own.
• Casting a Shadow: Is Dark Aligned, thus it's weak to Light and lightning artes.
• Dark Is Not Evil: It's the Big Bad, but it's simply hungry, not malevolent. It can't be strictly called benevolent, either, but it's not actively out to hurt anyone and doesn't realize what it's doing is wrong. It's also the physical manifestation of dark astral energy, and has the powers to match.
• Flower Motifs: It's associated with blue roses, which announce its presence in a given area - the further the party ventures down the massive, Lastalia-esque shaft leading to the core of the planet of Rena, the more blue flowers crop up, and the Great Spirit of Rena itself visualizes the power it retrieves as a massive blue flower erupting from Rena's core. This symbolizes both its danger, as a rose's thorns are known to prick the unwary, but also its overall innocence and potential for beauty, as the color blue is often associated with youth, kindness, and naivete.
• God Is Evil: Zig-Zagged. It can be interpreted as a god, but in actuality it is closer to a Genius Loci compared to the bottom, and it turns out to be more Obliviously Evil.
• Genius Loci: Is essentially this for the entire planet of Rena.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's the being responsible for everything the characters (including Vholran) go through, though they don't learn of its existence until just before going to Rena.
• Heel–Face Turn: Once Dahna fuses with Rena, the Great Spirit of Rena presumably fuses with Dahna's spirit as well, putting an end to its desire to consume all Astral Energy.
• Horror Hunger: Developing such a strong, concentrated will caused Rena to also develop an insatiable hunger for more astral energy to sustain itself, to the point that it devoured almost all life on the planet and even much of the planet itself.
• Mind Control: How it controls the Helganquil, the true people of Rena. Due to its Astral Energy being concentrated so much, it was able to impose its will on the people, pushing them to fulfill its desires. That said, it could only express its basic desires; the Helganquil had to figure out how to fulfill these desires, and thus it was the Helganquil who came up with the actual plans and details.
• Non-Malicious Monster: Originally, Dahna and Rena were a single proto planet, but something happened during formation that caused the mass to split into two planets, and while Rena got the strong will, Dahna had a more sustainable life, with the Rena Astral Spirit's appetite causing it to cannibalize its own inhabitants. As a result, it is motivated by a desire to absorb/merge with Dahna to preserve its existence at all costs.
• Obliviously Evil: Due to acting by pure instinct, it is unaware of how much suffering it is causing to other beings in its attempt to preserve its existence. After realizing its fundamental fear-based motivations, Rinwell notes that it is rather like a scared animal but even less rational.
• Planet Eater: Downplayed; it has spent centuries literally sucking the life out of Dahna, but in truth it just wants to fuse with it. It would be fine if it instead merged with Dahna and spread its consciousness through all life the way Dahna did, but it does not comprehend this. In the end Dahna's spirit manages to help it do just this using Alphen and Shionne as a conduit, symbolized by the blue flowers that represent its will now sprouting on Dahna.
• The Power of Hate: What allows it to keep going several rounds with the party is that, while it doesn't understand morality, it does understand that the party is trying to keep it from sating its hunger. The resulting hatred it feels for what it perceives as an unwarranted cruelty against it spurs it to manifest a physical form it can fight with.
• Save the Villain: On the receiving end of this by the party. It is the antagonistic force behind everything, but it genuinely could not understand what it was doing was wrong, so Alphen comes to the conclusion it itself was a slave to impulses it could not comprehend or act on appropriately. With this in mind, when Alphen and Shionne are given an opportunity to spare the Great Spirit of Rena, they do so, giving it exactly what it wants content with the knowledge it will leave everyone alone and cause no further issues - which it does.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Its role in the story, the way the central conflict is resolved, and the planet it exists on are all very similar to Lambda, the Little Queens, and the world of Fodra from Tales of Graces. The final dungeon of Arise is even conceptually identical to the Lastalia Shaft and carries the same overall purpose. Just like its inspirations, it is spared by the party and incorporated into a more benevolent force that allows it to find peace.
• Tragic Monster: The party note that the Great Spirit of Rena isn't evil at all, but merely a being of instinct and will not unlike that of an animal, if less intelligent and conscious of its nature than one. All it wants to do is protect itself and do what it was meant to do. Due to this, it simply doesn't have the ability to understand what it is doing as wrong or harmful. The party all note that they don't see it as evil, and feel sorry for it, but they have to stop it or else existence itself will end.
• Unskilled, but Strong: As the party notes, it's mostly just operating on hatred when it forms a body to fight the party with; all the 'tactics' it utilizes when fighting them actually leave it wide open ^note During the transitition to the second phase, it increases its mass to get more powerful, which Kisara notes will only slow down the structure it is flying on so that the party's own will catch it if they just try to hold out - while Rena was actively attempting to escape. and it likely never manifested a body to fight with, before, because it never really had to fight anything. It's still the physical manifestation of all the magic on a planet steeped in dark energy, though, meaning it has the capability to form black holes, conjure massive beams of darkness, and form other manifestations of elemental energy through the Renas Alma.
• Walking Spoiler: Its very existence is the biggest reveal in the plot.

The Oppressor (Full spoilers for Beyond the Dawn)

Nazamil

After seeing Alphen suffer under the expectations Dahnans and Renans have for him, Nazamil decides to relieve his burden by using Suppresor masks to end all conflict.

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• Ability Mixing: Nazamil can use several extremely powerful multi-element spells. It's noted to be very unusual by the mages of the group, and Rinwell can't quite steal these spells, acquiring only normal single-element ones instead. And then there's her Mystic Arte, in which she uses all six elements.
• Animal Motifs: Cats. The Reigning Visage mask has cat ears and her Oppressor form looks like a giant cat. Like a cat, she is slow to trust, loyal to her friends, and vicious when provoked.
• Anti-Villain: Compared to the Renan Lords besides Dohalim, Nazamil is the first Arc Villain in Arise to act for well-meaning purposes; she's not out to cause havoc, but to just get everyone to stop being assholes and to stop causing trouble for Alphen. The party also notes that she made sure not to seriously injure anyone even when she has Cal Beisal go on a masking crusade.
• Arc Villain: Nazamil becomes this toward the end of Beyond the Dawn, wanting to help Alphen and his burden of creating peace by using Suppressor Masks to brainwash the Dahnans and Renans in order to get both sides to cease their squabbling.
• Big Bad Friend: Nazamil wants to brainwash everyone with the Suppressor masks in a twisted attempt to help the party, and she takes it hard when they disapprove of her methods.
• Big Bad Slippage: Nazamil starts off with no goals of her own and seemingly accepts the hatred of others towards her. Once she meets the party, she befriends them and considers them her whole world, but seeing them struggle to maintain peace between the races hurts Nazamil more than the discrimination against her, so she tries to brainwash people in a misguided attempt to help the party. Unfortunately, the party rejects her methods, causing her to brainwash herself with the Reigning Visage so that she won't have to feel pain, which has the side-effect of causing everyone wearing the Suppressor masks to be completely catatonic.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Vholran is one of the main antagonists of the main story, and Nazamil is written to be his opposite in many ways. Both went through discrimination, with Vholran being enslaved by the Renans and Nazamil being used as a living weapon by her father. Both went through the Helganquil's Sovereign experiments, but Vholran received complete Sovereign powers while Nazamil received incomplete Sovereign powers. Both are capable of using all six elements, but Nazamil's mastery is greater and is more focused on astral artes while Vholran's usage of the six elements is mainly focused in strike artes. Both are willing to use force to accomplish their goals, but Nazamil tries to avoid injuring people even when she tries to brainwash them while Vholran is eager to kill and hollow people. For their boss battles, Vholran never has a One-Winged Angel form and never gets a chance to use the Renas Alma in a meaningful way while Nazamil unwillingly transforms into a powerful catlike monster with the Keystone. Finally, the party never learns much of Vholran's mysterious past and fails to negotiate with him, and they make sure to better understand Nazamil's feelings to avoid making the same mistake.
• Evil Counterpart: Becomes this for Alphen upon becoming the DLC's Arc Villain. Nazamil comes to believe in Alphen's dream of co-existence between Renans and Dahnans, but her version of achieving that goal is to enact Brainwashing for the Greater Good and strip both groups of free-will. She even dons the same mask Alphen wore in the main game and gets her own version of his Blazing Sword, which she can use without the caveat of burning herself.
• The Evils of Free Will: Nazamil wants to use the Suppressor masks to strip the Dahnans and Renans of their free-will, if only so they'll stop their rampant Fantastic Racism and lessen Alphen's burdens.
• Fighting from the Inside: During the party's final attack on the Emergence Suppressor, Nazamil grants the party her crests to help them overpower the boss's Limit Break.
• Final-Exam Boss: In her first phase of the final fight, Nazamil can wield the weapons and artes of the five Renan Lords. Hitting her with the Boost Artes that Broke the original user of each weapon likewise breaks her.
• Invincible Villain: Nazamil has mastered all six elements and it's unclear if the party could defeat her even if they wanted to hurt her. The Emergence Suppressor is completely invincible and the party only wins by reminding her of their friendship. It's justified for each fight, since the party actively refuses to hurt her the first time, and by the time they recognize they can go all-out with her in the rematch, she's directly connected to a machine that is feeding her the New World's astral energy, meaning she can only be stunned briefly before attacking again - the party would have to run out the astral energy of the entire planet to keep her down, and unlike with the Great Spirit of Rena, the Oppressor has a near-limitless supply.
• Mythology Gag: Her glowing angel wings she uses to float in combat and her goal of ending racism through ending free will are a nod to Lord Yggdrasill from Tales of Symphonia. She even makes the same conclusion as Yggdrasill that making everyone the same will end racism. Though unlike Yggdrasill, her friends are able to convince her to change her ways and accept herself before it's too late.
• Obliviously Evil: Thanks to her extremely sheltered upbringing, she doesn't understand why mass-brainwashing is wrong.
• One-Winged Angel: After Nazamil starts to doubt her plan, the Reigning Visage turns her into a giant, masked catlike monster, the Oppressor. After the party defeats the Oppressor, it turns into the even more powerful Emergence Suppressor.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The Emergence Suppressor is an unloseable fight, as the party has infinite HP and will enter permanent Over Limit early in the fight.