Character name: Arianna Wakasa of Caledonia (in canon, just Arianna Caledonia) Character canon: Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight; Airlocked CRAU Canon point: In between the two phases of the battle against the Calamity (canon); a few months after golden end (CRAU) Physical Description: Image! She is 19 years old and 5'3". About the Character:
Born in the Duchy of Caledonia, Arianna was the "Daughter of the Mark," destined to travel to the Temple of Ginnungagap near the town of High Lagaard to perform a ritual. She was kept from learning that this ritual was to transform someone into the "Fafnir Knight," who'd give up his humanity to become a living seal for a monster for a century, because of an older civilization's "Yggdrasil Project" meant to save the environment using giant sufficiently-advanced-technology trees. While on a trip, Arianna met two kids named Sven and Flavio and she accidentally made Sven the new Fafnir Knight, then they both suffered amnesia about the whole thing.
When Arianna turned eighteen, it was time to do the ritual, so she headed High Lagaard to visit Ginnungagap, with Sven and Flavio accompanying her as bodyguards. They met up with an older knight named Bertrand and his not-daughter Chloe, and then when they entered the temple Sven suddenly gained the power to transform because Fafnir Knight, leading Arianna to immediately decide it was her fault he wasn't fully human anymore.
Stuff happened and they ended up having to join the people who were exploring the forest Labyrinth inside Yggdrasil in hopes of reaching a floating castle at the top, so they officially became an exploration guild called Starlight. Along the way they met other explorers in Yggdrasil, like the guy who was planning on committing suicide by boss battle until Starlight convinced him he needed to live for his dog's sake, or the witch and her buddy who were murdering adventurers to stop them from repeatedly killing her sister who'd been turned into an infinitely regenerating monster.
Finally they went to perform the ritual, which meant they finally learned what it actually did. Arianna immediately realized she'd inflicted even more on Sven than she'd thought, and tried to sacrifice herself in his place. But it turned out Bertrand was the previous Fafnir Knight, whose corresponding Daughter of the Mark had found a way to take his place, and the presence of two Knights broke everything and forced them to seek an alternate solution. That meant making their way to the floating castle, in hopes that the Overlord who ruled it could help. That... became a boss fight.
With that done, Starlight headed deep into Ginnungagap to face the Calamity, and defeated it--only for it to rise again and surprise-attack them, knocking Flavio, Bertrand, and Chloe out. Arianna tried again to sacrifice herself to distract the Calamity so that Sven could escape, and Sven told her to stop--
And then Arianna was kidnapped to star in the third season of InterGal 7's hit show Airlocked! as the Champion Sovereign, with her memories reset back to shortly after she met Bertrand and Chloe. Despite not really understanding the situation, Arianna was optimistic, trying to befriend everyone she could. When P.A.L. took control and started encouraging the Champions to kill each other, Arianna sprang into action immediately, exercising her order skills to try to spread that optimism around. This optimism was soon put to the test, though, when her roommate turned out to be the unwitting first culprit, and Arianna's desperate attempt to prolong the trial until they could find a way out of executing Mai went nowhere. She focused on keeping herself together, thinking that the best way she could help was to be strong for everyone... though she found a different way to comfort an inebriated Clarith, who very unexpectedly kissed her.
So Arianna had romance on her mind the next week, when she accidentally caught on to Yuuri's crush on Junpei and began "subtly" attempting to push them together. At the same time, she also started to see Yuuri as more of an older sister figure, someone she could come to for the same kind of support she was offering others. This, combined with her own budding relationship with Clarith, helped keep her in an optimistic mindset, and after the next death she was better able to show the strength she'd meant to all along, even organizing an afterparty herself after the third case ended up being a clusterfuck of tragedy.
In week 7 she said a fuck after finding an exciting new way to doubt herself: suspecting that she'd been deliberately raised to be naive, so she wouldn't question anything about the Ginnungagap ritual. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing at the time, as it led to her reevaluating how she'd been thinking of P.A.L., realizing she'd been edging toward a dehumanizing hatred that's dangerous in a ruler. In any case it kind of got lost when the last case became an emotional roller coaster. First she found herself suspecting Yuuri, then Clarith managed to knock herself out for part of the trial, then actual culprit Queenie didn't even know she was the culprit, and Arianna did a frankly amazing job of publicly appearing to be holding herself together while privately staying up all night banging on Clarith's door until she let her in. Then Queenie miraculously turned up alive, and then Clarith offered to perform weddings which somehow turned into them getting married and it was all very exciting and also panic-y but they were happy and that was what really mattered, and she maintained that good cheer through the final investigation, escaping, and meeting the season 2 survivors.
Then some of the survivors fell into a trap. Despite her worries, this was initially a shining moment for Arianna as she successfully led a team to infiltrate the prison where their friends were being held, but things started going south for her in the aftermath--heated arguments broke out that she couldn't seem to calm down, and her doubts came back with a vengeance. She carried on, continuing to lend the other Champions her support wherever she could and watching out for anyone who seemed particularly affected by the fourth season or the re-airing of the first, but she never felt like it was good enough. She hated not being able to do much other than support people emotionally, and in particular she was never satisfied with her mastery of futuristic technology. Privately, she also constantly compared herself to the various leaders, seeing them as having leadership skills she felt she lacked. (It didn't help that the fandom seemed to largely regard her as "one of the kids.") After the first trial of season 1 was re-aired, she finally admitted this to Yuuri, whose vote of confidence helped a little. It also helped when, through shenanigans, they all got to talk to their dead friends, and as season 5 approached Arianna felt much better about herself..
Finally an opportunity to do something came up: an apparent chance to rescue the dead. Arianna was assigned to a team that would be acting as a distraction by pretending to be their "actors"... only for everything to come crashing down when it turned out to have been a setup all along and everyone got captured by Rox Petuu. She was left in a prison cell with Clarith, hating Rox and trying desperately to sound hopeful.
The next time Arianna awakened, she was in the unfamiliar environment of a mall, with her memories now reset to the last moments in Ginnungagap, unaware that she was now starring in Airlocked!'s fifth and final season. Although she seemed much the same, starting from this new "canon point" left her with a sometimes painful awareness that the relationships she formed couldn't last forever. Still, while her memories were gone, she still felt emotional connections to the people she'd been close to before, particularly Yuuri and Clarith. With their support, and that of the mysterious "Lady Consequence" who was sending them messages, she kept her optimism up... for a while.
Two weeks in, Yuuri turned up dead in the Starbucks, and that was the start of a downward spiral. In that first trial, Arianna realized that she'd had a chance to stop the killer. In the second trial people accused her the murder, and pushed her to admit there were circumstances where she would kill. The third murder happened as a result of people not trusting each other, just when a disaster of a meeting had her blaming herself for divisions between the three groups of Champions. Her memory regains made things worse, showing her a group that got along better and close friendships with people who were now gone. Still, despite everything, she managed to at least put on the appearance of bouncing back every time, and in week 5 she started to cheer up a bit upon learning that her dead friends were still alive in some form and could potentially be saved.
Then Lady Consequence was exposed and killed, and the next morning Arianna woke up to an explosion; despite her Dauntless Order, she watched Clarith die. This was, at last, too much, and she found herself tempted by the Doctor's plan to prevent the whole game from happening. A sudden awakening in an even more futuristic spaceport with new Overseer PAL 7.0 didn't help, either, and as the motives got even worse and her remaining close friends kept dying, she began contemplating suicide. After learning Junpei had considered the same thing and regaining memories of Choromatsu's close call, she resolved not to go through with it, but that didn't make the thoughts go away, not when she felt so useless and increasingly alone.
Near the end, she finally started improving again, with a little help from Fukawa and, thanks to her new Animal Voice Choker, her pigeon companion Sir Canaan. It helped even more when Nari turned up alive after her "execution," and she went into endgame resolved to do everything she could, whether that meant fighting a robot or interrogating a pigeon. In the end she argued for letting the mastermind live, but pointedly did not forgive her. Fortunately she didn't have to dwell on that for long, though, as in relatively short order Nina was arrested, the PIPs were removed, and the dead Champions were revived. The introduction of worldhopping technology even meant she could "commute" to Caledonia, so she didn't have to choose between her duties and her new family, whom she decided to stay with in a version of Japan, where she's lived for a couple of months now.
Despite everything, Arianna still looks for the best in everybody, believes in them, and wants them to be happy, no matter who or what they are, and naturally that attitude makes her a lot of friends. Her cheerfulness is infectious to the point that it's literally one of her class skills. And since she's so sure that there's always a right solution that's best for everyone, she always looks for that solution, and won't quit until either she's found it or she's exhausted every possibility, even if that means going through another 10 floors of the Labyrinth.
All these traits would be great if they were attached to someone with any damn sense. Sadly, Arianna is not that person. She's not stupid, per se, but it's an easy impression to get. She's easily distracted, somewhat lacking in common sense, and not what you'd call the world's foremost expert on situational appropriateness. Things like deciding a mushroom must be edible because it's a pretty color, or discussing whether the monster that just ambushed the party would be good at playing hide and seek (instead of actually, you know, fighting the monster), are just normal behavior for her. She has good observation skills when she pays attention, but she's not always all that good at following observations to conclusions--even ones that seem obvious such as "waiting for people from x to do y + people from x have arrived to do y = these are the people I'm waiting for." She's not nearly as bad about this as she used to be, after going through two rounds of a murdergame, but she's never going to exactly be an ace detective.
Of course, those problems aren't as severe as long as she has friends to "babysit" her, which is rarely something she lacks for very long. What's more of an issue is what happens when things start to go wrong--when her optimism fails her, she goes downhill fast, and if there's a way for it to be her fault then she will find it and beat herself up over it. Despite her friends' efforts, this has only gotten worse in Airlocked.
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Character name: Arianna Wakasa of Caledonia (in canon, just Arianna Caledonia)
Character canon: Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight; Airlocked CRAU
Canon point: In between the two phases of the battle against the Calamity (canon); a few months after golden end (CRAU)
Physical Description: Image! She is 19 years old and 5'3".
About the Character:
Born in the Duchy of Caledonia, Arianna was the "Daughter of the Mark," destined to travel to the Temple of Ginnungagap near the town of High Lagaard to perform a ritual. She was kept from learning that this ritual was to transform someone into the "Fafnir Knight," who'd give up his humanity to become a living seal for a monster for a century, because of an older civilization's "Yggdrasil Project" meant to save the environment using giant sufficiently-advanced-technology trees. While on a trip, Arianna met two kids named Sven and Flavio and she accidentally made Sven the new Fafnir Knight, then they both suffered amnesia about the whole thing.
When Arianna turned eighteen, it was time to do the ritual, so she headed High Lagaard to visit Ginnungagap, with Sven and Flavio accompanying her as bodyguards. They met up with an older knight named Bertrand and his not-daughter Chloe, and then when they entered the temple Sven suddenly gained the power to transform because Fafnir Knight, leading Arianna to immediately decide it was her fault he wasn't fully human anymore.
Stuff happened and they ended up having to join the people who were exploring the forest Labyrinth inside Yggdrasil in hopes of reaching a floating castle at the top, so they officially became an exploration guild called Starlight. Along the way they met other explorers in Yggdrasil, like the guy who was planning on committing suicide by boss battle until Starlight convinced him he needed to live for his dog's sake, or the witch and her buddy who were murdering adventurers to stop them from repeatedly killing her sister who'd been turned into an infinitely regenerating monster.
Finally they went to perform the ritual, which meant they finally learned what it actually did. Arianna immediately realized she'd inflicted even more on Sven than she'd thought, and tried to sacrifice herself in his place. But it turned out Bertrand was the previous Fafnir Knight, whose corresponding Daughter of the Mark had found a way to take his place, and the presence of two Knights broke everything and forced them to seek an alternate solution. That meant making their way to the floating castle, in hopes that the Overlord who ruled it could help. That... became a boss fight.
With that done, Starlight headed deep into Ginnungagap to face the Calamity, and defeated it--only for it to rise again and surprise-attack them, knocking Flavio, Bertrand, and Chloe out. Arianna tried again to sacrifice herself to distract the Calamity so that Sven could escape, and Sven told her to stop--
And then Arianna was kidnapped to star in the third season of InterGal 7's hit show Airlocked! as the Champion Sovereign, with her memories reset back to shortly after she met Bertrand and Chloe. Despite not really understanding the situation, Arianna was optimistic, trying to befriend everyone she could. When P.A.L. took control and started encouraging the Champions to kill each other, Arianna sprang into action immediately, exercising her order skills to try to spread that optimism around. This optimism was soon put to the test, though, when her roommate turned out to be the unwitting first culprit, and Arianna's desperate attempt to prolong the trial until they could find a way out of executing Mai went nowhere. She focused on keeping herself together, thinking that the best way she could help was to be strong for everyone... though she found a different way to comfort an inebriated Clarith, who very unexpectedly kissed her.
So Arianna had romance on her mind the next week, when she accidentally caught on to Yuuri's crush on Junpei and began "subtly" attempting to push them together. At the same time, she also started to see Yuuri as more of an older sister figure, someone she could come to for the same kind of support she was offering others. This, combined with her own budding relationship with Clarith, helped keep her in an optimistic mindset, and after the next death she was better able to show the strength she'd meant to all along, even organizing an afterparty herself after the third case ended up being a clusterfuck of tragedy.
In week 7 she said a fuck after finding an exciting new way to doubt herself: suspecting that she'd been deliberately raised to be naive, so she wouldn't question anything about the Ginnungagap ritual. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing at the time, as it led to her reevaluating how she'd been thinking of P.A.L., realizing she'd been edging toward a dehumanizing hatred that's dangerous in a ruler. In any case it kind of got lost when the last case became an emotional roller coaster. First she found herself suspecting Yuuri, then Clarith managed to knock herself out for part of the trial, then actual culprit Queenie didn't even know she was the culprit, and Arianna did a frankly amazing job of publicly appearing to be holding herself together while privately staying up all night banging on Clarith's door until she let her in. Then Queenie miraculously turned up alive, and then Clarith offered to perform weddings which somehow turned into them getting married and it was all very exciting and also panic-y but they were happy and that was what really mattered, and she maintained that good cheer through the final investigation, escaping, and meeting the season 2 survivors.
Then some of the survivors fell into a trap. Despite her worries, this was initially a shining moment for Arianna as she successfully led a team to infiltrate the prison where their friends were being held, but things started going south for her in the aftermath--heated arguments broke out that she couldn't seem to calm down, and her doubts came back with a vengeance. She carried on, continuing to lend the other Champions her support wherever she could and watching out for anyone who seemed particularly affected by the fourth season or the re-airing of the first, but she never felt like it was good enough. She hated not being able to do much other than support people emotionally, and in particular she was never satisfied with her mastery of futuristic technology. Privately, she also constantly compared herself to the various leaders, seeing them as having leadership skills she felt she lacked. (It didn't help that the fandom seemed to largely regard her as "one of the kids.") After the first trial of season 1 was re-aired, she finally admitted this to Yuuri, whose vote of confidence helped a little. It also helped when, through shenanigans, they all got to talk to their dead friends, and as season 5 approached Arianna felt much better about herself..
Finally an opportunity to do something came up: an apparent chance to rescue the dead. Arianna was assigned to a team that would be acting as a distraction by pretending to be their "actors"... only for everything to come crashing down when it turned out to have been a setup all along and everyone got captured by Rox Petuu. She was left in a prison cell with Clarith, hating Rox and trying desperately to sound hopeful.
The next time Arianna awakened, she was in the unfamiliar environment of a mall, with her memories now reset to the last moments in Ginnungagap, unaware that she was now starring in Airlocked!'s fifth and final season. Although she seemed much the same, starting from this new "canon point" left her with a sometimes painful awareness that the relationships she formed couldn't last forever. Still, while her memories were gone, she still felt emotional connections to the people she'd been close to before, particularly Yuuri and Clarith. With their support, and that of the mysterious "Lady Consequence" who was sending them messages, she kept her optimism up... for a while.
Two weeks in, Yuuri turned up dead in the Starbucks, and that was the start of a downward spiral. In that first trial, Arianna realized that she'd had a chance to stop the killer. In the second trial people accused her the murder, and pushed her to admit there were circumstances where she would kill. The third murder happened as a result of people not trusting each other, just when a disaster of a meeting had her blaming herself for divisions between the three groups of Champions. Her memory regains made things worse, showing her a group that got along better and close friendships with people who were now gone. Still, despite everything, she managed to at least put on the appearance of bouncing back every time, and in week 5 she started to cheer up a bit upon learning that her dead friends were still alive in some form and could potentially be saved.
Then Lady Consequence was exposed and killed, and the next morning Arianna woke up to an explosion; despite her Dauntless Order, she watched Clarith die. This was, at last, too much, and she found herself tempted by the Doctor's plan to prevent the whole game from happening. A sudden awakening in an even more futuristic spaceport with new Overseer PAL 7.0 didn't help, either, and as the motives got even worse and her remaining close friends kept dying, she began contemplating suicide. After learning Junpei had considered the same thing and regaining memories of Choromatsu's close call, she resolved not to go through with it, but that didn't make the thoughts go away, not when she felt so useless and increasingly alone.
Near the end, she finally started improving again, with a little help from Fukawa and, thanks to her new Animal Voice Choker, her pigeon companion Sir Canaan. It helped even more when Nari turned up alive after her "execution," and she went into endgame resolved to do everything she could, whether that meant fighting a robot or interrogating a pigeon. In the end she argued for letting the mastermind live, but pointedly did not forgive her. Fortunately she didn't have to dwell on that for long, though, as in relatively short order Nina was arrested, the PIPs were removed, and the dead Champions were revived. The introduction of worldhopping technology even meant she could "commute" to Caledonia, so she didn't have to choose between her duties and her new family, whom she decided to stay with in a version of Japan, where she's lived for a couple of months now.
Despite everything, Arianna still looks for the best in everybody, believes in them, and wants them to be happy, no matter who or what they are, and naturally that attitude makes her a lot of friends. Her cheerfulness is infectious to the point that it's literally one of her class skills. And since she's so sure that there's always a right solution that's best for everyone, she always looks for that solution, and won't quit until either she's found it or she's exhausted every possibility, even if that means going through another 10 floors of the Labyrinth.
All these traits would be great if they were attached to someone with any damn sense. Sadly, Arianna is not that person. She's not stupid, per se, but it's an easy impression to get. She's easily distracted, somewhat lacking in common sense, and not what you'd call the world's foremost expert on situational appropriateness. Things like deciding a mushroom must be edible because it's a pretty color, or discussing whether the monster that just ambushed the party would be good at playing hide and seek (instead of actually, you know, fighting the monster), are just normal behavior for her. She has good observation skills when she pays attention, but she's not always all that good at following observations to conclusions--even ones that seem obvious such as "waiting for people from x to do y + people from x have arrived to do y = these are the people I'm waiting for." She's not nearly as bad about this as she used to be, after going through two rounds of a murdergame, but she's never going to exactly be an ace detective.
Of course, those problems aren't as severe as long as she has friends to "babysit" her, which is rarely something she lacks for very long. What's more of an issue is what happens when things start to go wrong--when her optimism fails her, she goes downhill fast, and if there's a way for it to be her fault then she will find it and beat herself up over it. Despite her friends' efforts, this has only gotten worse in Airlocked.