archaeological mania

[ruinsprofessor]

Player Information:
Name: Makari
Age: 23
Contact: makari.crow@gmail.com; makaricrow
Other Characters Played:
Most Recent AC Link:

Character Information:
Name: Raine Sage
Canon: Tales of Symphonia
Canon Point: The end of the first game, directly after the germination of the Seed.
Age: 23
Reference Links: Raine's wiki page and the game's wiki page. For bonus points, the game script.

Setting Concepts:

mana;
Mana is a substance even more vital to life than air or water; every living being has it, and to lose all mana is to die. If mana fades from the world, crops wither and the land itself eventually begins to die. Humans cannot sense mana without assistance. Elves and half-elves, by contrast, can not only sense mana but manipulate it as well, and are therefore capable of magic.

elves;
Long enough ago that it is lost to recorded history, the elves came to Aselia riding a comet. They brought with them the Great Tree, settled the world, and have lived there ever since. It is unknown if humans are a mutation from the same original stock or have a different origin, but humans and elves can interbreed with no trouble. However, there is enormous societal prejudice against half-elves on both sides.

the Great Tree;
The source of mana. Four thousand years ago, it withered away thanks to a war that over-consumed mana, leaving a supply of mana that could not sustain an entire world.

Sylvarant and Tethe’alla;
Two warring kingdoms, which were split into two separate worlds when the Great Tree withered. The remaining supply of mana was set to flow between them, as an hourglass, and occasionally reversed. Thus, at any given time, one world was prospering, and the other slowly dying. At the time of the game, Tethe’alla is the prospering world, and Sylvarant waning.

arte;
the formal name for any technique, usually combat-oriented, that involves the conscious application of mana. Humans, while they cannot manipulate mana, can become aware enough of themselves to channel their own to augment their abilities, especially with an exsphere. Elves or half-elves can learn powerful elemental and healing magic, though they often choose to specialize in one element.
n.b. that 'arte' is a term adopted in later Tales games, and as of Tales of Symphonia 2. Given that Raine refers to 'healing arts' in this game, I feel it reasonable to take that piece of canon from ToS2.

exsphere;
A lifeless being, a parasite, which fuses with a host and absorbs its mana, becoming part of the mana circulatory system and unbalancing it. In return, it augments the host’s natural powers, but will eventually kill them. However, if an exsphere is used with a specific defensive charm called a key crest, the benefits can be received without the detriments.

magitechnology;
Technology that runs on mana. While an arte permanently consumes only a tiny fraction of the mana used, magitechnology burns through somewhat more, and, owing to its wider-spread use and the fact that one doesn’t need to have elven blood to use it, is capable of doing great environmental harm.

Church of Martel;
The primary and only religion in Sylvarant and Tethe'alla, the Church revolves around the worship of the Goddess Martel, who sleeps at the center of the world, waiting for the Chosen One to wake her. Every so often, the Chosen of the waning world undertakes the journey of world regeneration, thereby reversing the mana flow and putting her world in a position to prosper again. Raine serves as the tutor to the current Chosen of Sylvarant, and accompanies her on that journey.

Desians and Cruxis;
The Desians are a hostile organization composed primarily of half-elves, which contributes to the general distrust of half-elves in both worlds. The Church teaches that they are the cause of the Kharlan War, and the source of evil. However, they are secretly run by the organization Cruxis, which also runs the Church of Martel. By controlling both Church and opposition, the two worlds are maintained in careful stagnancy for approximately four thousand years.

Personality:

From an early age, Raine possessed exceptional reasoning skills and aptitude for learning. In addition to those natural qualities, she had a certain thirst for knowledge that simply would not be denied. Over the years she has cultivated and honed these, learning anything and everything that came her way, from ancient languages to advanced math to the operation and theory of magitechnology.

When she was eleven, she and her then-infant brother were abandoned by their parents. Alone in a strange place with nothing but her wits, Raine managed somehow to survive. She told people she and Genis were elves, not half-elves, to avoid the inevitable persecution; she learned healing spells to help keep them safe. Some days she got by on pure determination. During the next five or six years, Raine either forgot or repressed a significant portion of her early years, to the point that she no longer remembered that she and Genis had been born in Tethe’alla, not Sylvarant. All she retained were vague impressions, a severe phobia of large bodies of water, and her passion for learning.

While they traveled, Raine simultaneously raised and taught her brother and continued to learn herself, visiting many of the ruins and other historical locations scattered across Sylvarant. Later she would surmise she had always been looking for the ruins where they were abandoned as children, but by that time her love of the past was more than just an excuse to find one place. She enthuses honestly and loudly about the remnants of history, at length, to anyone who will listen, and is apt to unleash fury on those who disrespect it.

Violent fury, at that. Raine is no close-quarters combatant, but on those very few occasions when her temper gets the best of her, she has a tendency to slap the object of her ire upside the head. As a healer she can easily fix any problems she inadvertently causes, but on those rare occasions when passion overrules the rational mind, she can lash out. Those occasions in the past have mostly had to do with the desecration of ancient relics.

Apart from those temporary lapses in judgment, Raine is an eminently calm and logical individual. Among the party she will always be the one who advocates stopping to think things through rather than acting on pure emotional impulse, no matter how good-hearted the intent. She doesn’t panic, but rather assesses, always pushing for a solution rather than worrying over how bad the problem at hand is. To her mind, that’s a waste of time. She can keep her emotions separate from her reasoning, and this has on multiple occasions made her seem cold when she lays out a situation and the most effective solutions to her students. This is a hard-won trait, one she learned in the raising of her brother; it’s not something she was naturally born to. That still occasionally shows when she’s startled enough or passionate enough to lose her composure.

She’s not quite a mama bear, but she does possess a strong protective instinct. Initially this was solely toward her younger brother, but once she settled in Iselia and began to teach at the school, that quickly expanded to include all those under her care. There are certain people she judges the sacrifice of her life to be worth, and her precious students, most specifically Lloyd, Genis, and Colette, definitely fall under that heading.

It’s telling, then, that on the initial journey, Raine set out in full willingness, with full knowledge of what awaited Colette. She knew the Chosen would have to give up her soul if not her life to save the world, and she intended to see that journey through anyway. Sometimes, sacrifices must be made for the greater good, and Raine knows this. Not only is she fully conscious of the nature of the world, that sometimes to achieve sacrifices must be made, but also she has the heart and mind to be able to make them. She has a working grasp of the bigger picture, and while this does not always sit well with her compatriots, it is often useful.

That’s not to say that she likes or relishes such things. In all truth, she’d often rather it was herself in harm’s way. But she has the determination not to falter, if necessary. She is a healer and it is in her nature to be kind; however, kind does not always coincide with nice. She will do what is best for her brother and her students, without fail.

She doesn’t think herself capable of the sort of idealism that defines her pupil Lloyd. She’s seen rather too much of people being terrible to each other for the thinnest of reasons for that. All the same, though, she finds it hard to ignore someone obviously injured or in need. This often wars with her cool head, and she is more easily swayed by her students than she’d like.

Even so, that’s not always a bad thing.

Raine is slow to trust. It’s a side effect of being naturally suspicious and hiding a basic fact of her identity for the better part of her life. In finding a group of people who were at ease with the fact she was a half-elf, some of that eased, but a lifetime’s habits are not so easily unlearned. Raine watches and waits and observes and finally comes to a conclusion, and only then does she trust. When she does, however, she puts her entire self into it: there is no sense in doing something halfway. If Lloyd believes there can be a world where no one has to be sacrificed, she will certainly do her best to make that come about-- even if she can’t quite believe it herself.

In the same vein, she bears great reluctance to betray any weakness. When she was young, she fell off a ship into the ocean, and though she does not now remember the event beyond vague impressions, the fear remains. Every time she’s found crossing water to be a necessity, though, she has faced up to it and done her utmost to pretend nothing is wrong. She does not do this gracefully or well, and the effort at pretending is fairly transparent, but in this case it really is the principle of the thing that matters. She is not afraid, will not be afraid, cannot afford to be afraid, and if she cannot exert that level of control over herself, she will put on the best show she can.

Overall, Raine is a highly cerebral person. She rarely acts before thinking through all the options, she assesses and compiles data rather than voice her suspicions before she’s sure, and even in battle she is usually the one pointing out the enemy’s weaknesses and staying at the rear to support rather than charging in. The downside to this, of course, is that she tends to get fairly caught up in her own head and her thoughts, occasionally to the detriment of other things.

This is most evident when it comes to history. On one notable occasion she spent over twenty-four hours translating ancient script, and the need for sleep, food, or indeed keeping track of her companions completely fell by the wayside. When she gets caught up in her work, her passion, sometimes it’s as if she’s in another place entirely. The two easiest ways to snap her abruptly into the present moment are danger to precious historical relics, and danger to her brother.

Though she would eventually find out the truth of her parents, and meet her mother, Raine would never quite be able to forgive the way she and Genis had been abandoned. She considers her mother weak, someone so completely unable to deal with the reality of having half-elven children that she retreated within her own mind. That relationship will likely always remain unresolved: her mother isn’t lucid enough to recognize her daughter, and Raine herself, though she has the diary her mother kept, can’t bring herself to understand that point of view.

That in itself speaks to the fact that Raine has more optimism to her than she’d like to admit. She’s spent years and years constantly afraid, constantly worrying, constantly expecting the worst out of people and rarely being disappointed in that. But even for all that she would never have abandoned Genis, even when it would have been easier to go it alone.

In the new world it’ll be doubly hard. Not only will there be racial tensions, but political problems as well. And even in the midst of all that, despite it not being perhaps the smartest thing to do, Raine plans to journey in order to teach and to heal and to spread understanding. Danger is implied, hardship probable.

And yet, for the sake of her students and the world to come, won’t it be worth it?

Appearance: Best visual reference here.

Raine is 5'5", and her build reflects the fact she's scholar rather than warrior. She has pointed ears, a product of her mother's elven blood, though they're usually hidden beneath her hair.

Abilities: Raine primarily fills the role of white mage. As such, she knows a great number of healing artes. First aid is her first and most commonly used arte, and between that and its evolutions heal and cure she can heal almost any physical trauma. Others of her artes cure physical and magical ailments, such as poison, petrification, paralysis, or any magically induced weakness. She also has access to some support skills, to bolster an ally’s strength or defense, and a magical scan, inspect magic, which allows her a range of feedback from elemental weaknesses to current wounds on the subject.

If in possession of the unicorn horn, a catalyst for healing magic, Raine can also cast the spell resurrection, which while not suitable for actually raising the dead, can instantly pick up knocked out people, and is implied to reset any mana irregularities within a person’s body. This arte has been used to help fix dead trees, to restore people who have been negatively affected by exspheres, and to cure a mana-based curse with no apparent cure.

Her healing artes work by using her own energy to boost and fuel her patient's regeneration. Thus, the faster someone heals naturally, the easier it is for her to heal them.

She does have some offensive artes, but they're limited to the light element. Photon is a low-level blast of light with two impacts, centralized to one enemy, and holy lance an upper-tier arte that generates several vastly damaging spears of light within a certain radius.

All artes take her somewhere from three to fifteen seconds to cast, depending on their power level and her practice with them.

A complete list of her available artes can be found here. I am playing Raine as though she has taken the strike tech tree.

On the less-than-magical side, Raine has very sharp observation skills. On multiple occasions she has put details together into a cohesive whole before the inevitable villainous monologue provides the relevant exposition, simply by virtue of a handful of scraps she’s witnessed over the past few days or weeks. Unfortunately, her tendency is to not share with the group until she is absolutely certain of her hypothesis, which can take significantly longer than optimal.

Inventory:

Rune Staff; one of the best weapons available for her, eminently suited for channeling magic. A sleek wooden staff a little shorter than she is tall, engraved with runes and capped with a set of concentric gold circles that rotate slowly.
Moonstone; a small charm made of moonstone. Boosts the wearer’s maximum mana reserves.
Pineapple Gel; Raine keeps a few of these in her pockets for insurance. They replenish the user's mana.
Unicorn Horn; the graceful, spiraling horn that belonged to a mythical animal long since dead.This serves as an important catalyst to some of Raine’s healing magics.
Virginia’s Diary; the diary Raine’s mother kept. Raine rarely reads through it, but it’s something better kept close.
Exsphere and Key Crest; affixed just below her collarbone, hidden from view if her shirt and jacket are fastened.

Soul Gem:
A marquise-cut stone the green of new growth. Set in a bracelet that evokes intertwined tree branches, worn on her left wrist.

Writing Samples:
Third Person:

There was something wrong with Genis' new friend.

It wasn’t that she didn’t like him, per se. Mithos was cheerful, good-hearted in most matters, and an excellent cook. Even better, he was a companion to Genis, a friend of his own age and race. What sister could ask more for her brother?

And yet... and yet.

His story wasn’t even that which was concerning her, not really. It had holes in it, surely, but it didn’t ring false. Impossible to fake that kind of loss, the sincere melancholy in the brief moments when he mentioned his dead sister. No, the problem was, she concluded, that the massive chunks which Mithos had not seen fit to relay were hiding something significant.

There were moments, too, when it seemed like he didn’t think anyone was looking, when his open, friendly expression dropped into something flatter, less kind. It was only ever momentary, and Raine was beginning to notice that it happened most often around Lloyd.

Maybe jealousy. Maybe Mithos feared his new friend would side with Lloyd over him and leave him alone once more. That only barely fit, though, and Raine was unsatisfied with the theory. If it was only jealousy, the child wouldn’t make the back of her neck prickle in his less-guarded moments.

She had no proof that anything was wrong. There was no real reason to think it anything more, no evidence, nothing concrete. Even Kratos, careful as he was, had given her more reason than this to doubt him.

But still Raine found herself ill at ease when the two boys went out alone together, and resolved to keep a very close eye on Mithos, friend of Genis’ or no.

She would wish, later, that she hadn’t been quite so right.

Network:

[She’s as blasé about this as she knows how to be, considering the circumstances. It’s not like other worlds are entirely a new idea to her, anyway.]

My name is Raine Sage. I suppose I should start this out by saying that I’m a skilled healer, and if anyone here has need of one such, you should seek me out. [The ghost of a rueful smile. What can you do? Teenagers especially don’t care to be convenient about when they get injured.] Yes, even if it’s in the middle of the night. As I understand it, danger is becoming more and more prominent, and sleep is easier to reclaim than life. [This is old, old news.]

And, of course, if there's anyone out there who traveled with us, or knew of Colette, I would welcome a familiar face. [That’s an understatement. She’s still not sure whether or not it’s a good thing Genis is safe where she left him with Lloyd and the others, but it’s been a long time since she was this alone.]

...now, what was it I heard them saying about ruined villages... [She’s probably going to have to be dissuaded from mounting a full-scale expedition.]