Pre-game History
Pre-game
“Once upon a time, there existed a tree that was the source of all mana.
A war, however, caused this tree to wither away,
and a hero's life was sacrificed in order to take its place.”
That is what the world was like when Kratos Aurion came into it. The Giant Kharlan Tree, the source of all mana brought by the elves from Derris Kharlan, started to wither as a 1000 year old war between the countries of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla raged on. Half-elves had been exiled from the village of the elves for some unnamed crime while they were treated as lesser beings by humans. Magitechnology caused great mana depletion, furthering the Great Tree's decay. An end to the war seemed but a mere fantasy.
Little is known about Kratos during this time period other than he resided in the Tethe'allan capital as an aristocrat and the son of the army's leader. By the time he was in his twenties, that leadership position became Kratos', now not only being a captain in the army but also the protector of the royal family of Tethe'alla. Just as all youths fool around, Kratos had been no different. It is mentioned that he had been romantically involved with the future queen, Soleille. Unbeknownst to Kratos, she was engaged to another or perhaps she simply used that excuse to end that relationship abruptly once he ran off with a bunch of half-elves at the disapproval of the royal family. Unlike most sensible Tethe'allans, Kratos had the nerve to believe a couple half-elves who'd attempted to warn everyone that Sylvarant planned to attack the capital. Of course that information could not possibly be true. What did half-elves know, right? Kratos not only listened to this brother and sister, but attempted to grant them audience with the king. He showed nothing but kindness to these half-elves, Martel and Mithos, teaching them how to present themselves to a king and even helping them find a Sylvaranti half-elf captain by the name of Yuan Ka Fei. Mithos captured Kratos' interest, quite likely because of the boy's idealism. He wished to put an end to the war so that maybe he and Martel could return to Heimdall and make a world where half-elves were more accepted. Kratos grew fond of the half-elf to the point that he became his sword instructor. It seemed as though fortune were smiling down upon them.
But all the good came to an abrupt halt when the king did not heed the warning of the two half-elves. Kratos went with them on their journey, being discharged from the knights in the process. And just as Mithos had warned, the Sylvaranti indeed attacked the city. This is when the four companions (Yuan having begrudgingly joined the party to prove Mithos' hypocrisy) set out to put an end to the war. Many things happened between the beginning and end of their journey. At some point they cured Martel and a whole village of the Ozette flu, Kratos drank Aionis which enabled him to use magic, Kratos rescued a Protozoan who he named Noishe, Noishe evolved to his third form, they used Cruxis Crystals to become angels, managed to cure Martel from Chronic Angelus Crystallus Inofficium caused by her Cruxis Crystal, and made pacts with all the Summon Spirits. Origin, the king of the Summon Spirits, gave Mithos the Eternal Sword, a sword only able to wielded by a half-elf, but that probably won't cause any problems later. And so the four of them finally brought about the end of the Kharlan War. The world was temporarily split in two and the Giant Tree turned into the Great Seed to prevent the mana from completely drying up. All that was left to do was wait for Derris Kharlan to get close enough to germinate the great seed. Peace finally spread across the land and they all lived happily ever after.
Only not. None of them could have begun to imagine that the worst was yet to come. Soon after the end of the war while waiting for Derris Kharlan to come, a nameless human killed Martel. The young, idealistic boy who wanted equality and referred to Kratos as teacher vanished in that single instant. Mithos then broke his pact with Origin and kept the two worlds separate in order to keep them from going to war again over mana and to preserve his sister in the remnants of the Great Seed. In order to keep Origin's power as his own even after breaking his vow, Mithos made Kratos the seal.Only by Kratos releasing all his mana and thus dying could Origin be released. Slowly, the people of the worlds began to forget that they had been one, the only trace of them being one is that each world named their respective moons the other world's name.
As time passed, the organization that Mithos, Yuan, and Kratos started, Cruxis, grew into a formidable group. Unlike the 3 of them, the other angels lost their souls and became lifeless, having little in the way of emotion or purpose. With this large of an organization, the time for Mithos to execute his plan arrived. The plan was a brilliant one: create a pseudo-religion and control marriages of the mana lineage to create the perfect vessel for Martel.
This is what would come to be known as The Church of Martel. Evil Desians, who were the cause of the Kharlan War, used up mana and therefore the world would begin to die. In order to regenerate the world, a Chosen of Mana would be selected. The Chosen would be blessed by the angels of Cruxis and sent to release seals so that they might slowly become an angel. Once all the seals have been released, the Chosen would then journey to the Tower of Salvation where finally they would become a true angel. The Goddess Martel then awakens from her slumber following the heroic sacrifice of the hero, Mithos, and rids the world of the Desians, restoring mana back to the world and making it prosper once more.
No one in either of the worlds knew of the truth: that Martel was not a goddess, that the Desians were actually a part of Cruxis and that the Chosen's journey was a journey to their death.
And so that's how it was. The first Chosen, Spiritua, completed her journey in Sylvarant and became an angel of death and destruction in Tethe'alla. Through the power of the Eternal Sword, Mithos kept on switching the mana flow back and forth between the worlds as Chosens completed their journeys. A little wrench into his plan came in the form of the Renegades, an organization that opposed Cruxis and began trying to kill Chosens to keep them from succeeding. Unbeknownst to Mithos, the leader of this organization had been none other than Yuan, who no longer believed in Mithos' ideals and wished to stop him from reviving Martel no matter what. Kratos' faith in the boy lasted far longer. Despite all this insanity, despite all the lives lost, despite how wrong all this was, he could not make himself betray the boy that once called him teacher. That was, however, until Mithos' insanity reached its peak.
Around 20 years before the start of the game, Mithos revealed to Kratos his ultimate plan: to create an age of lifeless beings so that everyone would be equal. Even Kratos, faithfully loyal up till then, could not stomach such an idea. The angel then descended to Sylvarant, no longer able to blindly follow Mithos as he once had. Noishe joined Kratos during the time the angel was down in the world. At some point, Kratos met an escapee from the Human Ranch outside Luin. It is unclear whether she escaped on her own or if Kratos helped her (in the manga, he was clearly aware of the hidden passage leading inside the ranch), but what is known is that Kratos helped her flee from the Desians. This woman was Anna or, as Kvar and the Desians knew her, A012 - The Angelus Project. The exsphere embedded within her held great importance to Cruxis, which is why the Desians were after her. The ever loyal Kratos now became a fugitive on the run from the very organization he gave a hand in creating. It is during this period that Kratos began researching the Eternal Ring so that he could wield the Eternal Sword himself and stop Mithos. Something unexpected occurred while they were on the run: Kratos and Anna fell in love, the manga even mentioning them having wed. Soon enough, Anna bore a son. They gave him the name Lloyd. All finally seemed perfect, aside from the evil megalomaniac and his lackeys chasing them.
This picture perfect life all came to end once Lloyd turned three. Kvar and his men cornered the family near Iselia atop a cliff. There Kvar removed Anna's keycrestless exsphere and she turned into a monster. Her gaze landed on her infant son. As the woman attacked him, Noishe defended the child and was injured. At that instant, Anna regained her senses, if only for a moment. That is when she asked Kratos the most painful of a request: for him to kill her. Moments later, that lucidness faded and Anna once again moved to attack her son, but a blade which ended her life prevented that. Kratos had just killed the only woman he'd ever loved. To top things off, Lloyd, Noishe, Anna's corpse and the exsphere all fell down the cliff. Once having defeated the remainder of Kvar's men, Kratos descended the cliff only to have his heart torn out again. All that remained at the bottom were Desian corpses, half eaten by monsters, and a single, red baby bootie belonging to Lloyd. His family was dead. Just like that, everything that Kratos held dear no longer existed. All the will Kratos had to oppose Mithos, even his very will to live, vanished. Yuan found him shortly after that tragedy. The half-elf was bent on killing Kratos in order to release Origin, but even Yuan could not bring himself to kill a man who was already dead. Soon thereafter, Kratos was back in Cruxis' clutches, no longer caring about how twisted Mithos' plan was so long as the worlds would eventually be reunited.
~ All information is taken from either Tales of Fandom Vol. 2, Tales of Symphonia PS2, or drama CD
“Once upon a time, there existed a tree that was the source of all mana.
A war, however, caused this tree to wither away,
and a hero's life was sacrificed in order to take its place.”
That is what the world was like when Kratos Aurion came into it. The Giant Kharlan Tree, the source of all mana brought by the elves from Derris Kharlan, started to wither as a 1000 year old war between the countries of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla raged on. Half-elves had been exiled from the village of the elves for some unnamed crime while they were treated as lesser beings by humans. Magitechnology caused great mana depletion, furthering the Great Tree's decay. An end to the war seemed but a mere fantasy.
Little is known about Kratos during this time period other than he resided in the Tethe'allan capital as an aristocrat and the son of the army's leader. By the time he was in his twenties, that leadership position became Kratos', now not only being a captain in the army but also the protector of the royal family of Tethe'alla. Just as all youths fool around, Kratos had been no different. It is mentioned that he had been romantically involved with the future queen, Soleille. Unbeknownst to Kratos, she was engaged to another or perhaps she simply used that excuse to end that relationship abruptly once he ran off with a bunch of half-elves at the disapproval of the royal family. Unlike most sensible Tethe'allans, Kratos had the nerve to believe a couple half-elves who'd attempted to warn everyone that Sylvarant planned to attack the capital. Of course that information could not possibly be true. What did half-elves know, right? Kratos not only listened to this brother and sister, but attempted to grant them audience with the king. He showed nothing but kindness to these half-elves, Martel and Mithos, teaching them how to present themselves to a king and even helping them find a Sylvaranti half-elf captain by the name of Yuan Ka Fei. Mithos captured Kratos' interest, quite likely because of the boy's idealism. He wished to put an end to the war so that maybe he and Martel could return to Heimdall and make a world where half-elves were more accepted. Kratos grew fond of the half-elf to the point that he became his sword instructor. It seemed as though fortune were smiling down upon them.
But all the good came to an abrupt halt when the king did not heed the warning of the two half-elves. Kratos went with them on their journey, being discharged from the knights in the process. And just as Mithos had warned, the Sylvaranti indeed attacked the city. This is when the four companions (Yuan having begrudgingly joined the party to prove Mithos' hypocrisy) set out to put an end to the war. Many things happened between the beginning and end of their journey. At some point they cured Martel and a whole village of the Ozette flu, Kratos drank Aionis which enabled him to use magic, Kratos rescued a Protozoan who he named Noishe, Noishe evolved to his third form, they used Cruxis Crystals to become angels, managed to cure Martel from Chronic Angelus Crystallus Inofficium caused by her Cruxis Crystal, and made pacts with all the Summon Spirits. Origin, the king of the Summon Spirits, gave Mithos the Eternal Sword, a sword only able to wielded by a half-elf, but that probably won't cause any problems later. And so the four of them finally brought about the end of the Kharlan War. The world was temporarily split in two and the Giant Tree turned into the Great Seed to prevent the mana from completely drying up. All that was left to do was wait for Derris Kharlan to get close enough to germinate the great seed. Peace finally spread across the land and they all lived happily ever after.
Only not. None of them could have begun to imagine that the worst was yet to come. Soon after the end of the war while waiting for Derris Kharlan to come, a nameless human killed Martel. The young, idealistic boy who wanted equality and referred to Kratos as teacher vanished in that single instant. Mithos then broke his pact with Origin and kept the two worlds separate in order to keep them from going to war again over mana and to preserve his sister in the remnants of the Great Seed. In order to keep Origin's power as his own even after breaking his vow, Mithos made Kratos the seal.Only by Kratos releasing all his mana and thus dying could Origin be released. Slowly, the people of the worlds began to forget that they had been one, the only trace of them being one is that each world named their respective moons the other world's name.
As time passed, the organization that Mithos, Yuan, and Kratos started, Cruxis, grew into a formidable group. Unlike the 3 of them, the other angels lost their souls and became lifeless, having little in the way of emotion or purpose. With this large of an organization, the time for Mithos to execute his plan arrived. The plan was a brilliant one: create a pseudo-religion and control marriages of the mana lineage to create the perfect vessel for Martel.
This is what would come to be known as The Church of Martel. Evil Desians, who were the cause of the Kharlan War, used up mana and therefore the world would begin to die. In order to regenerate the world, a Chosen of Mana would be selected. The Chosen would be blessed by the angels of Cruxis and sent to release seals so that they might slowly become an angel. Once all the seals have been released, the Chosen would then journey to the Tower of Salvation where finally they would become a true angel. The Goddess Martel then awakens from her slumber following the heroic sacrifice of the hero, Mithos, and rids the world of the Desians, restoring mana back to the world and making it prosper once more.
No one in either of the worlds knew of the truth: that Martel was not a goddess, that the Desians were actually a part of Cruxis and that the Chosen's journey was a journey to their death.
And so that's how it was. The first Chosen, Spiritua, completed her journey in Sylvarant and became an angel of death and destruction in Tethe'alla. Through the power of the Eternal Sword, Mithos kept on switching the mana flow back and forth between the worlds as Chosens completed their journeys. A little wrench into his plan came in the form of the Renegades, an organization that opposed Cruxis and began trying to kill Chosens to keep them from succeeding. Unbeknownst to Mithos, the leader of this organization had been none other than Yuan, who no longer believed in Mithos' ideals and wished to stop him from reviving Martel no matter what. Kratos' faith in the boy lasted far longer. Despite all this insanity, despite all the lives lost, despite how wrong all this was, he could not make himself betray the boy that once called him teacher. That was, however, until Mithos' insanity reached its peak.
Around 20 years before the start of the game, Mithos revealed to Kratos his ultimate plan: to create an age of lifeless beings so that everyone would be equal. Even Kratos, faithfully loyal up till then, could not stomach such an idea. The angel then descended to Sylvarant, no longer able to blindly follow Mithos as he once had. Noishe joined Kratos during the time the angel was down in the world. At some point, Kratos met an escapee from the Human Ranch outside Luin. It is unclear whether she escaped on her own or if Kratos helped her (in the manga, he was clearly aware of the hidden passage leading inside the ranch), but what is known is that Kratos helped her flee from the Desians. This woman was Anna or, as Kvar and the Desians knew her, A012 - The Angelus Project. The exsphere embedded within her held great importance to Cruxis, which is why the Desians were after her. The ever loyal Kratos now became a fugitive on the run from the very organization he gave a hand in creating. It is during this period that Kratos began researching the Eternal Ring so that he could wield the Eternal Sword himself and stop Mithos. Something unexpected occurred while they were on the run: Kratos and Anna fell in love, the manga even mentioning them having wed. Soon enough, Anna bore a son. They gave him the name Lloyd. All finally seemed perfect, aside from the evil megalomaniac and his lackeys chasing them.
This picture perfect life all came to end once Lloyd turned three. Kvar and his men cornered the family near Iselia atop a cliff. There Kvar removed Anna's keycrestless exsphere and she turned into a monster. Her gaze landed on her infant son. As the woman attacked him, Noishe defended the child and was injured. At that instant, Anna regained her senses, if only for a moment. That is when she asked Kratos the most painful of a request: for him to kill her. Moments later, that lucidness faded and Anna once again moved to attack her son, but a blade which ended her life prevented that. Kratos had just killed the only woman he'd ever loved. To top things off, Lloyd, Noishe, Anna's corpse and the exsphere all fell down the cliff. Once having defeated the remainder of Kvar's men, Kratos descended the cliff only to have his heart torn out again. All that remained at the bottom were Desian corpses, half eaten by monsters, and a single, red baby bootie belonging to Lloyd. His family was dead. Just like that, everything that Kratos held dear no longer existed. All the will Kratos had to oppose Mithos, even his very will to live, vanished. Yuan found him shortly after that tragedy. The half-elf was bent on killing Kratos in order to release Origin, but even Yuan could not bring himself to kill a man who was already dead. Soon thereafter, Kratos was back in Cruxis' clutches, no longer caring about how twisted Mithos' plan was so long as the worlds would eventually be reunited.
~ All information is taken from either Tales of Fandom Vol. 2, Tales of Symphonia PS2, or drama CD