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[untwisted]

Player: Kaito
Age: 21+
Contact: kaitodoushi, Kaito#0721
Current Characters: Rob | The Amazing World of Gumball | nulland

Character: Martel Yggdrasill
Canon: Tales of Symphonia, right after Mithos starts severing Derris-Kharlan from the world after she speaks to him.
Age: 4000+, but she's actually been dead for the vast majority of it. She's been completely aware of what was happening around her and witnessing it as though she were alive, though.


Background Information: Martel was born and raised in Heimdall, a village of elves. However, she was just a half-elf in an era of extreme prejudice against the race. Her younger brother Mithos was left solely in her care, and the pair was eventually banished from the village.

They traveled the world after this, unable to settle anywhere for long as humans were even more discriminatory. A war was also raging at the time over what little mana remained in the Giant Kharlan Tree. The Yggdrasills decided that they wanted to save the tree and end the war to prove it was possible to build a world where all races could live together in harmony. They were joined later by Mithos' sword instructor Kratos and Martel's eventual fiancé Yuan. The four of them obtained Hi-Expheres (later known as Cruxis Crystals) to become angels, and Mithos started making pacts with the world's many Summon Spirits to achieve their goals. She notably suffered from Chronic Angelus Crystallus Inofficium at one point and was cured before she became fully crystallized, but it left her pretty weak.

Mithos used his pact with Origin to split the two warring nations into interconnected worlds and negotiate peace. They then intended to leave the worlds separated only until the approaching comet Derris-Kharlan could germinate the final remnant of the Kharlan Tree, the Great Seed, with mana and prevent the world from dying. As the time neared, however, they were betrayed by a former human ally who wanted to monopolize the mana. Martel defended the Great Seed, but was fatally wounded in the process. She stated that she wanted to see a world free from discrimination before she died.

Then, things got worse!

Mithos became obsessed with reuniting with his sister and he formed Cruxis with the others to achieve this end. Martel's mana and consciousness had absorbed into her Exshpere, so she was fused into the Great Seed and its mana was used to keep her in existence until they could get a new body for her. This left Martel watching everything that Mithos was doing but unable to say or do anything about it.

Mithos kept the nations as split worlds and fixed Derris-Kharlan above to ensure a mana supply for the Great Seed. Over the next 4000 years, he built an entire religion around her, worked towards an age of "lifeless beings" with artificial bodies that rendered race meaningless, and ran a human breeding program for her new vessel that, if successful, would result in the death of the Great Seed and therefore the world, and those are just the highlights.

Things were looking very dire when a near-exact match to her mana signature, Colette, finished her vessel preparation. Fortunately she was besties with Lloyd, Kratos' lost son, who was just as idealistic and persistent as Mithos used to be, and this greatly hindered Cruxis' plans. When Lloyd's group severed the mana links between the Summon Spirits, the mana of the Great Seed went out of control, and due to their symbioses, so did Martel's. They stopped it by blasting it with mana, but she screamed really loudly.

Mithos refused to abandon his plans even though Kratos and Yuan were openly working against him now too. Martel was only able to speak to her brother directly when she was forced into Colette's body. She pleaded with him to stop and remember the world they had actually wanted to see. She went back to the Great Seed, but Mithos, still warping her words, tried to split them and Derris-Kharlan away from the world. Martel used her connection to Colette to call out to Lloyd's group to stop him, and they did.

Later, after Mithos was finished for good, the Great Seed successfully germinated, and the worlds reunited, Martel's soul joined into what became the guardian spirit of the new world tree, who was also named Martel.

Personality: The first thing anyone who knows Martel will tell you is how kind and compassionate she is. She essentially devoted her life to helping others. From raising her little brother to helping end an apocalyptic war, everyone else's wellbeing is her primary concern. She's very nurturing as well, telling people supportive statements when they're struggling while also not pushing them. However this is a double-edged sword for her. During the outbreak of the Ozette flu, she was so insistent on nursing the humans who didn't even want her there that she contracted it as well. Martel also died protecting the Great Seed and therefore the future of the world and its inhabitants.

She's the sort to not desire much for herself, including praise and attention. She downplays her own capabilities and she is entirely selfless, up to and including sacrificing herself, but this extends to less extreme situations as well. More often than not when someone asks her if she's okay or can see something is wrong, she insists she's fine even if she's not. If she does end up needing help, she is very apologetic about it. This is why she is said to smile through her suffering, and suffer she did. As a half-elf, she had to endure discrimination, betrayal, despair, and more. It was certainly not easy, especially since she had Mithos to care for.

Martel didn't literally smile through everything and had normal reactions to her hardships. After she briefly took over Colette, the teen talked about the great sadness she could feel coming from her. Four millennia of watching Mithos transform into a monster without being able to do anything probably caused a good portion of this, but Colette mentions that she was hurt by "so many people". She also reports that in spite of all this, she could feel how strongly Martel loved the world.

These feelings are yet another extension of her great kindness. In Tales of the Rays (which has canon her in a jamjar game essentially), she talks about how grateful she feels to the world for giving her life and also the people she loves. Martel wants to express her appreciation when someone does something good for her, and it usually involves finding some way to assist them in return. She basically just wants to help others by nature and it's one of the things that makes her happiest.

It may sound like she's the perfect goddess Mithos made her out to be, but she's really not. Martel can be very playful, for one. In the Tales of Fandom 2 flashback, she thinks that playing janken to decide who goes to which dangerous place sounds like fun. She is apparently very good at gambling as well, though whether this is learned or dumb luck isn't clear. Either way, she enjoys it. She's also not all niceness in her compassion. As supportive as she is, Martel also doesn't hesitate to scold her brother publicly. She is obviously willing to battle as well, given her skills as her group's main healer and support mage. She has attacks in her arsenal, too.

Martel is very curious, according to Mithos and Kratos. If anything interesting or some kind of disturbance seems to be going on, she heads right to it. Her brother and his teacher have gone on to say that this usually gets her (and them by extension) into trouble. If someone in the situation is having a problem, she will immediately offer to help, for one. It can also get her caught in traps, draw unwanted attention, and more. Also Martel can be kind of, for lack of a better word, a ditz. She'll get important parts of her sentences backwards, such as reassuring Mithos that Yuan would have her with him when he expressed concerns about whether or not she'd be safe. On that note, during the looks we've gotten at the group's travels, Yuan is doing a horrible job of pretending he doesn't have a massive crush on her and yet she seems completely oblivious.

This is actually weird for her because in spite of her airheaded moments, Martel can be a very perceptive person a lot of the time. She saw Mithos' potential for great darkness when he was in despair about their future after Tethe'alla's captiol was destroyed, and asked Kratos to look over him due to her concern. Martel assessed the knight very accurately as well; that even though he's the sort to help others in need, he might need that himself.

The fact that she told Kratos she wanted to believe Mithos would be all right shows another one of her traits that leads to mixed results: her optimism. She dreams of a world where all the races can live together peacefully, and her dying wish was to see a world free from discrimination. Even during her final conversation with her brother she holds on to some hope as she truly believes he can go back to his old self and fulfill their original goal.

It's impressive that she's been able to retain this given the horrible existence she had for 4000 years. She was forced to watch as Mithos' plans grew more and more horrible while the others kept their support behind him for the most part, and she was unable to speak or do anything. It definitely led her into a deep depression, as the last thing she said to him summed up to wondering if things would be better off if they'd never been born. It hasn't destroyed her as it did Mithos, though. Yuan describes it as her heart fighting to never be consumed by whatever is trying to corrode it. This is how Martel is able to be one of the most caring people anyone will ever meet while simultaneously having one of the absolute worst histories ever.

Abilities & Inventory: It's hard to find a list of Martel's full set of artes, and very hard to find some of it in English, but here's my best compilation.

Her main skills are for healing and support artes, much like the moves of those nature that Raine Sage has in the linked page. As an angel, she also has access to the magic artes listed here, as her intended new body Colette also has them. On that note, she has mana wings she can make appear at will. Martel doesn't use her angelic powers very often, though. Like, we've never actually seen her use any but we know she is one.

She finally has her very own canon skills too, but as you can see, several descriptions are in Japanese. Also while some of the skills characters use in this game match up with powers they have in their original games, others don't. There are videos of all of these available on the linked page, but I'll try to list what she'd have and what it does to the best of my Google Translate understanding:

Leaf Wind: What it says on the tin. A wind with leaves in it circles around her and does damage.
Gaia Swell: This raises the ground a couple feet around someone in a circle while healing that person.
Growth: Some pointy tree branches come up from under the target and damage it while pushing it upwards.
Disruption: Two walls of rock slide in and trap the target and then a pillar of fire shoots out from under them.
Relief Heal: Heals one person's HP (however that translates) plus any ailments like poisoning or burns.
Air Pressure: A column forms around the target and these localized blast of air hit them from above a few times. The description here says something about a vacuum but let's leave it at that.
Leaf Stream: A few trees materialize and form a forest floor in a circle, then a vertical vortex shoots leaves around. You know, attack leaves.
Forest Stream: Leaf Stream but bigger.
Anti-Magic: Cures magical ailments/curses on one person.
Anti-Force: Anti-Magic plus the target is surround by magic that attacks enemies around them.
Rustling Trees: A barrier of trees shoots up in front of her and injures enemies.
Forest Rail: A much larger barrier with taller trees that also hurts them.
Ining Bind: Tree spears shoot up out of the ground in a circle and bind the enemy while its surrounded and attacked with more spears.

For inventory, she is only coming with the clothes on her back. ...Or, her soul. Not sure how that works.

Suitability & Plans: I think Martel will work very well because she is so devoted to helping others and putting good things out in the world. It should really contribute to what's going on in Reverein as of late. She's a healer, and as long as you're not out for blood she's nice to everyone, but she also has a playful side. After everything she's been through in canon, she really deserves to get to live someplace where racism doesn't really seem to be a thing in the first place, too.

From my own perspective, I'd like to explore her character coming from a moment of such horrible depression when she's generally the sort to hide her problems. I've done so in the past but that was several years ago, and since then we've gotten more canon (albeit supplemental) information on her and have more looks at her character from when she was alive. Obviously that's not going to be exactly the same as this Martel who has four millennia worth of trauma, but I really want to see where she goes now that I know more about her.

Test Drive Sample: Sample

Questions: Let me know if any of her powers need to be nerfed or translated to fit the setting, otherwise nope!