A manga adaptation was drawn by PrinceOfRedRoses
, aka Kei, and hosted on the ImpQueen website.
In 2018, Rinmaru briefly removed the games and the manga from the internet due to harassing messages she had been receiving from younger fans. She also dropped the fourth chapter she was working on, "Echoes in the Dark", and has no plans to continue any development on the series. The games were reinstated on RinmaruGames, but only until the shutdown of Adobe Flash in December 2020 and the subsequent shuttering of the RinmaruGames website. They can no longer be played.
Not to be confused with Ascension (Miniseries) or especially fellow visual novel Ascension (2021).
Ascension contains examples of:
- Action Girl: Aida most prominently, but Tillie and Sky have their moments.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: For exploring the world. There are also several outfits available for purchase throughout all three chapters.
- Anger Born of Worry: Sky goes so far as to attack Aida in Chapter 2 because she believed she was dead while in hiding on Sundrop Island.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Any of the 3 love interests Aida chooses in Chapter 2 will do this when they believe Aida is going to die.
- Aroused by Their Voice: It is revealed that all Kaleiks have heavenly voices, and Monochromatic Eyes.
- Art Evolution: Each chapter gets progressively more polished, with better spelling, grammar, and UI, as well as additional features like the inventory screen, relationship and mood indicators for companions, and the varieties of choices for Aida's dialogues.
- Badass Army: The Eagles and the Silver Order. Subverted by the Knight Order who were manipulated by the Eagles and masssacred.
- Badass Crew: Aida's team. The Eagles also count.
- Bar Brawl: In the first chapter, Aida and Sky fake a bar brawl to get the other customers riled up, providing them with a distraction to steal their money.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: Aida and Jace's romance has shades of this early in the story.
- Beta Couple: Tillie and Airdan; they begin a relationship off-screen and get married in Chapter 3. Also, in Chapter 3, Sky and Diego.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead:
- Aida's friends in chapter two, Seena (blonde), Sky (brunette), and Tillie (redhead). Also, Aida herself as the blonde (technically, white hair) with Tillie and Sky.
- Aida's love interests also count: Jace, Faelern (blonde), Zander (brunette), and Kole (redhead).
- Body Horror: The Silver Order's weapons are made from the molten, petrified flesh of unwanted Valondian civilians, they burn the flesh they touch, and being wounded by one of these will turn you into metal.
- Combat Pragmatist: Aida and Sky, mainly because they're thieves at the beginning of the game.
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: This happens in Chapter 1 when Aida and Jace are imprisoned in the Eagles Hideout.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Aida is subjected to this in the third chapter when she is captured by Kael.
- Danger Deadpan: During every battle scene, there is a good amount of this in play.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Necromancy, the Black Magic, is implied to be this, and in the first chapter, if you discuss it with the librarian, she implies that to bring one back to life, you must take the life of another. Either way, practicing necromancy is a crime punishable by death in the Ascension verse. If Aida romanced Zander in Chapter 1, it's revealed he dabbled in necromancy to try and bring Aida back due to believing she was dead. Tillie, believing he actually did it, will slap him across the face, whilst Aida herself is shocked and can potentially break up with him over it.
- Deadpan Snarker: Aida has shades of this. Zander too, especially with Jace, Faelern, and Tillie.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Seena's tribe exiled her from her clan for rightfully slapping a kid insulting her father.
- Drinking Contest: One occurs in the third chapter. If you win, you get a pair of blue earrings.
- Elemental Powers: It is revealed by Sky that humans can learn magic by training to become an Alchemist, but they are limited to one elemental power to use.
- Elves Versus Dwarves/Slobs Versus Snobs:
- During the party scene in the beginning of the third chapter, when you speak with Tillie, she alludes to this sort of thing, with Moon elves hiring dwarves to mine for them in Ildis. Tillie and Zander actually get on very well, though Zander's parents aren't impressed by him palling around with a dwarf.
- Ildisian society still enforces this, with Tillie telling Aida that the Moon elves still see dwarves as "dirty miners from Doregon" despite having lived in Ildis for generations. Aida protests the idea.
- Emotionless Girl: Female Nobles are this, while female Moon elves try to be this.
- Evil Twin: Kael, Aida's twin brother.
- Evil Uncle: Inverted with Aida's uncle, who helps Aida defeat Kael in Chapter 3.
- Faceless Mooks: The Eagles thugs usually have their faces concealed by hoods, with no discernable features.
- Fanservice: Many of Aida's outfits are this, featuring corsets and bared midriffs. Jace walks around half shirtless, whilst all Faelern wears is leather pants and some straps across his chest. Tillie's outfit in Chapter 2 shows a lot of cleavage.
- Fanservice Pack: Zander and especially Tillie both get a lot more attractive in Chapter 2, wearing more revealing outfits.
- Fantastic Racism: The Moon elves show this towards dwarves and Lith. It is implied that young Lith are taken in as slaves by Moon elves.
- Fantasy World Map: Shows up in the loading pages when the team or Aida is travelling.
- Feminist Fantasy: The central protagonist is Aida, a snarky, asskicking thief-turned-hero who is unapologetic about any of this. Other major characters include Sky and Tillie; although Sky spends a lot of the first chapter as rather timid and Prone to Tears, she's still quite brave and loyal, and later takes some serious levels in badass to become a powerful magic user. Tillie is a very intelligent alchemist who defied dwarf stereotypes to follow her passion and aspires to open a magic school. There are also numerous supporting or minor badass and strong-minded female characters.
- First Guy Wins: If you choose to romance Zander, who is the first romantic interest that Aida meets.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Aida has a single, diagonal scar on her stomach from Kael's attempt to kill her.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Sky and Aida.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: During the third chapter, the player meets some male prostitutes in The Silk.
- Inhuman Emotion: Zander is prone to this as he is a mage, and they are known have 10 times greater emotions than other people.
- It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Aida spends a good part of the second chapter avoiding her True Companions and would've never met up with them again if she hadn't run into Zander while in Taran because she believes she's being hunted by the Eagles and doesn't want to endanger her friends. Zander calls Aida out on this.Zander: To avoid the pain of losing anyone you care about...You made us suffer instead.
- Lady Land: Adeshia. Thanks to mythology about a man having cursed Adeshia, Adeshia is not very male-friendly. Many men are sold into prostitution at The Silk, which is owned by a woman. In Ascension: Echoes in the Dark, there is even a small group fighting for men's rights, similar to feminism in the real world.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Many of the Ascension-verse males are this, including Zander, Faelern, Victor and Kole.
- Luminescent Blush: Often with the protagonists, especially Zander and Aida.
- The Man Behind the Man: Synius is the one who controls King Kael.
- Mood Whiplash: During the ship scene of the third chapter, Aida goes from brawling with stray pirates to watching on the sidelines as Captain Nina chides the pirates and settles for a date with a pirate revealed to be her estranged, on-off husband. The music even changes during this scene.
- Mystical White Hair: Aida has this due to her Noble heritage, which makes them stand out (to the point where in the first chapter Aida has to obtain a cloak to hide her hair and make herself less noticeable).
- Noodle Incident: For some reason, the events that happened in a place called "Appletown" are never fully explained, and Aida and Sky reportedly laugh whenever it is mentioned.
- No One Could Survive That!: All nobles who try to open the gates are killed. Aida survives.
- No Woman's Land:
- Ildis, as folk believe that women cannot control their emotions, and they either become subservient to men, or the more outspoken ones are objects of lust.
- Inverted in Adeshia, where the men are looked down upon, and even sold into sex slavery.
- Official Couple: Played with, as Aida can choose between a few different love interests (or none at all if the player prefers) and none of them are mandated by canon. Her options include Zander, Jace, Faelern and Kole (although Zander seems to be
the most popular choice).
- Polyamory: Justified in Adeshia, as Adeshian people believe that people need great deals of affection and emotional support due to the strain of poverty.
- Poor Communication Kills: Diego and the Eagles ambush Aida in the temple on Valond Mountain in the second chapter because he believes that she wants to take control of the Silver Army for herself. She's actually there to stop them, same as the Eagles.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits/True Companions: Aida and company.
- Really Royalty Reveal: Aida is revealed to be the Crown Princess of Valond at the end of Chapter 2. Subverted in that Aida decides that she doesn't want to reign over Valond, and wishes to live for herself and her True Companions.
- Second Love: Possible if you romance one guy in one chapter, then break it off and romance another in the next.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The third chapter's plot includes rescuing Victor from King Kael. He dies by Aida's hand.
- Shirtless Scene: Often, including Walking Shirtless Scene characters Faelern and Victor. Also, Zander if you speak with him during the first scene of the third chapter and use the "Cunning" option. There was much Squee-ing.
- Stepford Suburbia: Valond, where the homeless and such are hidden away in dungeons, courtesy of King Kael.
- The Stoic: The Nobles and most Moon elves are this.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Aida bears a striking similarity to her mother, Queen Kathleen.
- Super-Deformed: Plenty of this in the manga.
- Training from Hell: If you speak to the librarian, Rin, in the first chapter about mages, she reveals that mages are starved, have induced nightmares,and such for months until they can use their magic without the risk of Power Incontinence. It's implied that many mages are Driven to Suicide from it.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Faelern and Victor.
- Wham Episode:
- Aida's dream in chapter 2 which reveals that the Old Kingdom was a prison, and that the old kings ordered the nobles to slaughter everyone for taking part in an uprising against them.
- Also earlier in chapter 2, Malvin (the old bearded guy on Sundrop Island) revealing that the opening of the gates will allow the nobles from the Old Kingdom to escape and carry out their orders of mass murder. And it's Aida's fault.
- White Hair, Black Heart: Most Nobles are emotionless "perfect soldiers". Kael in particular stands out.
- Worldbuilding: Very intricately developed, from differing views on sexuality, to various different types of magic and views regarding magic, to seven different races of people, to a rich history of Arunia's lands.
- You Are Not Alone: Aida is constantly being reminded of this throughout the chapters, especially the second one.
