Profile
[Character Name] Rita Mordio
[Canon] Tales of Vesperia
[Point Taken from Canon]
During the fight with Schwann - she ‘fainted’ was knocked out, and a dream self was created in Somarium.
[Age] 15
[Gender] Female
[Sexual Orientation] Ristelle Heterosexual
[Eye Color] Green
[Hair Color] Brownish orange, or orangish brown
[Height] Short
[Other] Calloused palms and fingers
[Clothing]
Looks like this
Notes:
[Background]
Note: Orz, this was so badly done. Will be revamped to something legible sometime soon.
Canon… did not give Rita a past. I hope that’s going to change in the PS3 port, but for now, anything before the beginning of the game is all speculation on my part based on the little that was given during the game.
She was born in Aspio* under unfortunate circumstances. Given the nature of the city, she was probably born to a pair of researchers that had absolutely no interest in raising a child, and unwanted children were generally left to fend for themselves at a young age. It’s never explicitly stated whether or not she remembers her parents, but she did profess to ‘not having any family’, from which could be derived that she has not been in contact with them for quite some time now.
Given her personality, there are several things that can be derived: 1) she did not have any friends while growing up, 2) she did not have any adult figures while growing up 3) she was rarely taken seriously because of her age 4) her current place in life was achieved purely through her own hard work. That being said, it can already be seen that Rita’s childhood was probably a very lonely one. She had to grow up quickly in order to fend for herself. Sometime during her childhood, she came into contact with blastia, which spurred on a life-long love for learning and a near-obsession with the technology that eventually became the basis for her existence.
We first meet Rita in the game in the scholarly city of Aspio. Well, more like the party (consisting of Yuri, Estelle and Karol) first meet Rita when they break into her house in search of incriminating evidence that would connect its residence with the string of blastia thefts across the capital. They didn’t find anything particularly incriminating except for a short, blunt and arrogant 15-year-old hidden in a pile of books, who promptly got up and shot fireballs at the nearest moving thing. She really didn’t take well to having her house ‘raided’ so to speak, and even more so since she thought the reason was for stealing her research. When the party accused her with being a thief, she didn’t take that too well either. However, she immediately saw a use for the band of ragamuffins that littered her doorstep, and proceeded to take to Shaikos Ruins under the pretense of ‘clearing her name’ (though that to, was a part of it. It just happened to be a bonus of a sorts, seeing as she knows that she didn’t do it. It’s just a matter of finding who did.).
At Shaikos Ruins, the party navigates more or less through the wreckage. There, Rita demonstrates knowledge of her field though expanding on the various applications of the blastia in the ruins. She also reveals that she has been studying at these ruins for some time now, and being in possession of a Sorcerer’s Ring, which are only given to a special group of people (presumably highly-ranked researchers), marked her as someone who was important, if not a little famous. However, the party ended up having to fight the golem that she had been studying previously - having ended up this way because it turns out that there was a man in the ruins who was going around stealing blastia, and he reactivated the golem in order to get away from the party. Rita was knocked into a pillar by the golem, and Estelle jumped to heal her - and it was here that Rita first had suspicions about Estelle’s blastia and her healing artes. However, there was not any time to analyze that thought, for their ‘culprit’ was getting away, and the golem was still rampaging. Because Rita disliked injuring her beloved blastia, especially since she’s been studying this golem for quite a while now, she was very disappointed, or sad even, to have to shut down the poor thing. Which only made her angrier at the man who set the golem on them in the first place.
The man turned out not to be the blastia thief, but knew the real culprit, who was a part of a blastia-thieving scheme that seemed to stretch far beyond local organized crime. With this, however, Rita’s name was cleared, and they returned to Aspio to regroup and decide on their next course of action. Rita did not have any particular reason to continue on with the rest of them, seeing as she had accomplished a part of what she set out to do. However, her golem had been neutralized, and… well, it was hard to say, but Aspio was starting to lose that spark. Being with company for the first time in who knows how long, it was invigorating, and though she had inkling that they were all idiots to the T, it could be considered as pleasant. With that feeling of discomfort in mind, she drudged up the excuse of needing to go take a look at Halure’s barrier blastia, the one which had previously been mysteriously broken, and ended up following the party to Halure. And as it turned out, beyond. Way beyond.
She ended up deciding to go along with the party to Nor Harbour, though the reasons behind it are not specified - it’s a combination of the chaotic confusion left following the attack from the knights, and her own curiosity about Estelle’s ‘blastia’, as well as the power that was used to make Halure’s tree bloom like that. The party travels then to Ehmead Hill, which is directly between them and Nor Harbour, and is also where Rita first comes into contact with the doings of the ‘Dragon Rider’.
The destroyed blastia at Ehmead Hill had a very strange formula. But what ticked her off more was that someone would go along and destroy that blastia, and when it comes to blastia, no reason’s fair enough. Because of her reckless actions in trying to examine the broken blastia, the party flees Ehmead hill with knights on their heels, and manages to take cover in the nearby woods. On the path, they come across a picturesque view of the ocean, in which Rita professes that she has never seen the ocean before.
At Capua Nor, they meet up with Flynn, childhood friend of Yuri and an Imperial Knight of Zaphias. After a series of events, the party realizes the corruption of the local magistrate, Ragou. However, the knights are unable to take action, since there are plenty of ‘exceptions’ that prevent them from exercising their power of search on a magistrate’s home. Thus, the party decides to infiltrate the mansion and ‘cause a commotion’, which would give the knights an excuse to barge in. At then entrance, while debating on the proper method of execution, Rita encounters Raven, an ‘old friend’ of Yuri’s (Well, they just met in jail, and he did help Yuri escape out of there, but that’s where ‘friendship’ draws a line), who ‘helps’ them enter the mansion by drawing the attention of the guards to them. They ended up barging their way into the mansion, and after uncovering some heinous deeds, find a weather-influencing blastia in Ragou’s house. Rita, insanely curious about the blastia, would obviously go on to study it.
However, the party was discovered, and in making a ‘commotion’, the Flynn brigade also shows up, as per planned. What was not planned, was the entrance of the Dragon Rider, who swooped in, dodged fireballs, and destroyed the weather-altering blastia, before disappearing the way he came. Enraged, Rita swore to destroy the Dragon Rider at the next opportune encounter for his despicable acts against Blastia.
This is repeated again when they encounter the Dragon Rider at Caer Bocram, and then at the tower of Ghasfarost, where the identity of the Dragon Rider is more or less revealed to be Judith, though only to Yuri. Judith then joins the party, which Rita isn’t really sure what to think about that.
Nothing else happens Rita-wise in the game for a while. The party travel to Capua Torim, Caer Bocram, then to Heliord, Dahngrest, and then, in the forests of Keiv Moc, they met up once more with Raven, and discovered the existence of ‘Aer Krenes’. Areas where Aer is constantly being created.
The rest of the story is long and convoluted. After a series of events, including a certain joyride on a certain Ghost Ship (where it’s revealed that Rita’s very frightened of the paranormal), the (full) party learns of the identity of the Dragon Rider, Judith, her plight, and Estelle’s plight - that of the Child of the Full Moon. They become acquainted with the Entelexeia, including its death and subsequent transformation into Apatheia, and the Hermes Blastia. They learn of the Adephagos, and the danger of the Aer imbalance of the world. It is here, that Rita begins to truly understand the danger her beloved blastia poses to the world, and begins to truly open to the party, Estelle in particular. Throughout the journey itself, Rita is shown to be slowly opening up to her party members - at first with little things, like calling Estelle by her nickname rather than insisting on her full name, or actually attempting to help with Karol’s fear of insects. However, it is during their visit to Myorzo, the homeland of the Kritiyan, when Estelle is spirited off the floating city, by, it’s later revealed, Raven, who takes her to Alexei.
Alexei tortures Estelle (breaks Rita’s heartstrings), and forces the use of her power (for reasons yet unknown), which further breaks down the world’s Aer equilibrium. They chase Alexei to the Forgotten Shrine of Baction. After fighting their way into the Shrine, they finally catch up with the Commandant, where words are exchanged, and a surprising foe is revealed. Schwann shows up to delay the party, and it didn’t take the party long to realize that Schwann is in actuality, Raven.
In the ensuing fight that followed, Rita is fainted knocked out, and a dream self was created in Somarium.
*She may or may not have been born in Aspio, actually. It’s never explicitly stated in the game, and I have my bets on Halure being her actual birthplace. My reasoning being that she knows the city of Halure quite well (she runs directly up to Halure’s tree without the need for directions), and from her words, she seems to know the regular blooming patterns of Halure’s tree pretty well. This is interesting, since she doesn’t travel much, and professes to never have sent the ocean. She also professes that she’s only been studying in Aspio for the past 5 years, and though she could have been very well lived in Aspio since her youth, it’s unlike that she did not study blastia at all during her childhood. If it wasn’t at Aspio, then where is it?
[Personality]
Note: TL;DR and a whole bucketful of speculations. Once again, will be revamped. All you need to know, is that the following 1423 words give or take can be summarized into the single word 'Tsundere'.
“You should be thankful. I stopped reading to come here and eat with you, you know!”
Rita… Is a complex individual. Most of her personality has been molded due to her past circumstances - her orphan status, her lack of friends and family at her very impressionable young age, the lack of acceptance from society due to her gender and age, the lack of an adult figure in her life and subsequently her lack of respect for authority - it all accumulates into a single, emotionally train-wrecked, bitter and conflicted bundle named Rita Mordio.
She is proud, stubborn and blunt, unwilling, or unable to pull punches or to sweeten her words for the sake of anther’s ego. Growing up as an orphan, Rita was too intelligent for her age, and did not have the life experiences needed to make good use of it. What happened was that she became very distant from her peers at a young age due to that intelligence, but that she was also heavily distant from the adult figures in her life. She was easily bored by the antics of the children around her, and frightened the adults, threatened them, with her far too old for her five-year-old face demeanor. Stuck between thinking that all her peers were idiots and all adults were heavily disappointing, she withdrew from society at a young age, and has never quite opened up since.
Because of her self-upbringing, she is proud. The way she’d put it is, “I fed myself, clothed myself, made a name for myself. I know my own worth, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone else tell me otherwise!” Because of her confidence in her own abilities, the abilities that were all she had to rely on for the first 15 years of her life, Rita comes off as quite arrogant. She doesn’t deny it, she is arrogant, and she’ll be quick to tell you that she has the skills to back it up - and indeed she does, though she tends to remind others far too often for it not to be irritating.
However, her constant reminder to others about her self-worth is not only there to remind them that she isn’t just a bratty 15-year-old, but also to solidify this fact for herself. Despite all she claims with a confident front, Rita is still very much a child, and an insecure one at that. Because of her lonely upbringing, she craves recognition of any kind at all, be it from acquaintances, colleagues, society at large. The way she sees it, she lacks the social standing, and even the societal charisma that would bring the recognition, and thus the only way she will be recognized is if she becomes incredibly good at what she does - if she can impress and surpass others who are in the same field, stand out enough so that her name becomes known for who she is. She claims, however, that recognition is hardly the same as friendship, and while she does acknowledge that she is searching for recognition (she doesn’t make a secret out of it, with all of her ‘I’m not just ‘Mordio’, I’m Rita Mordio, get it right, idiots!’), she claims that she doesn’t need companionship beyond her beloved blastia and research.
Despite her intelligent and logical mind, she is still liable to see the world in black and white the way a child does. At the age of 15, she’s realized that despite reaching that pinnacle, despite becoming the most intelligent researcher in Aspio, possibly the most ingenious researcher on Terca Lumireis, her standing only seems to alienate even further, if that’s even possible, those around her. The logical and practical part of her understands the reason - that when others look at her, they see a teenager striving too hard to play the role of the intelligent researcher, and that most people are unable to look past that. However, the emotional, 15-year-old side of her cries foul play, for she knows that she has worked harder than anyone to reach her current standing, and that writing it off because of her age is simply unfair. The logical side of her understand that life is not about being fair, but it doesn’t stop the child-like side of her from becoming bitter.
However, in hindsight, she is used to not being taken seriously because of her age. It was the backdrop of her life when she first set foot in the academic world of Aspio, and it too has shaped her personality. To make herself heard in a world that judges by seniority, she had to be firm and unwavering. When researchers attempt to skirt about the subject, she stomps her foot down. When she finds that she has been excluded from a tech conference, she invites herself. When professors try to be patronizing, she throws their words back at their faces. Teenagers rebel and throw tantrums, and that’s the equivalent of what she’s doing. And it works - it gets them talking. Talking about the rude little upstart that thinks she’s all that just because she knows a couple of formula. It gets them talking about her rudeness, but it also gets them talking about her, and her ideas circulate because of that. Her intelligence is what makes her ideas brilliant, but it’s her rudeness that makes her famous.
Because of that, she developed a hardened personality - untrusting, and cynical, blunt and stubborn as a mule. She found that an arrogant front worked best - it intimidated others, but also showed her confidence in her work, which in turn got gears turning in the right direction. However, it also made her unapologetic. To change her mind or to admit wrongdoing was weakness, and to show weakness in front of those researchers was to discredit her integrity, and in the academic world, integrity was everything. It’s safe to say that she didn’t, couldn’t, make any friends that way. Paranoia had set in, and every other word directed at her that was neither an insult nor an agreement was trying to discredit her somehow, prove her wrong, find her weaknesses, exploit them. She couldn’t let that happen, and in panic, she let her iron curtain drop, and doesn’t allow herself to regret it.
Logically, she understands that this is effectively a path of self-destructions, but she also understands that it’s gotten to a point in which if her research is taken away from her, she would lose all purpose. It’s come to the point where she herself admits that she does not have any hobbies outside of blastia, which has dominated her life for the past five years or so. Her research is both a friend and a companion, one that she believes as long as she remains good at what she does, will never betray her. In return, she places all of her trust into her research and blastia, and is fiercely proud of her understanding of the blastia world.
Rita expects the world of herself, but doesn’t expect much of the world. Thus, she is liable to be surprised when she is recognized for her work, because even though it is what she’s gunning for, she doesn’t expect to have it. Oftentimes, we see her emotionally overwhelmed by little acts of recognition, which shows that despite what she claims otherwise, the opinions of others do matter. However, she dislikes the fact that they do, because it is almost an admittance of her weakness.
Because of her hard-headed and single-tracked mindset, when Rita feels as though she’s being backed into a corner by idiots, or when she finds herself stuck in a situation which she doesn’t know how to react to, she has a tendency to strike preemptively and violently, in which she almost acts and fights back like a trapped animal. This rashness is partially influenced by her arrogance, which allows her to believe that she would be able to solve and conquer any and all obstacles in her path, and if she comes across something that she truly cannot comprehend, she tends to fry it out of a misguided sense of panic or confusion. It’s also partially influence by the fact that she doesn’t suffer idiots well (you have a brain, use it damn you), and lacks the patience to deal with them in a civil manner.
It could be said, that her entire being seems to be set on the battlegrounds of a conflict between her logical, intelligent side and her emotional, pessimistic outlook.
And somehow, it’s consistently a losing battle.
[Specialties/Abilities]
Rita is first and foremost a mage. In her own words, she is used to casting spells and cultivating a calm mind, and while the latter may not be very apparent, judging from her dynamic attitude, the former is very impressive. Her casting times generally depend on the complexity or power of the spell, though it’s mostly rather short, and to enhance her casting, she relies on ‘conducting Aer’ through various ‘weapons’, or ‘Aer-conductant materials’, such as books, scarves, chains, whips, scrolls, or other flat, flapping things that she can whip at people. In fact, she can use just about any book as a weapon, though it’s effectiveness is ultimately determined by how Aer-conductant the book is. (In canon, she was able to use a cook book as a weapon to good effect, but complained about how it was ‘weak and flimsy’.) She’s able to use the full range of elements, sans wind, which she mysteriously is unable to conjure at all.
For a full list of spells Because I'm lazy and can't be bothered, see here.
She is essentially a child genius. Rita professes that she knows a lot of things simply because ‘you never know when something will be important for research’, but in reality, it’s because of her almost rabid obsession with blastia. She lives and breathes her research, and can be considered a leading authority on blastia - she goes on to prove this time and again throughout the journey by explaining to the party Aer and it’s effects on the body, blastia and their applications, and just dropping little tidbits of knowledge in general. She is not very well-traveled, but she is able to recognize flowers by sight, and she is quite a bit more mature than she lets on.
Her powers of observation is very well-developed, it seems, and she is also very astute when it comes to inter-personal relationships. (That don’t deal with her.) Her social awkwardness should also totally be considered an ability.
She has a mean right hook. (And left, for the particularly idiotic)
[Affection]
Rita highly dislikes skin contact, human contact, or any kind of contact at all (unless she's initiating it, which usually means a punch or a kick of some kind. She's fine with those.). Her personal bubble sports a wide radius, and she tends to be extremely paranoid about people staring at her. Generally, this means fireballs, and violence when anyone violates her personal space, and she's not likely to give anyone any exceptions. (Besides Estelle. Estelle's always an exception.)
[Fighting]
Rita's always up for a fight. She tends to initiate them almost as much as she is attacked. She doesn't care much for fighting, it's sort of a 'do it when I have to, can live without' kind of thing, but if it comes to kill or be killed, she's killing dammit. If you want to kill her, go ahead! I encourage it, very much so. She's always been curious about life after death anyway. Just give me a heads up, and let's see what we can work out.
[Other Facts]
Rita doesn’t like being called simply ‘Mordio’. She’d rather you call her Rita, or Rita Mordio. But simply ‘Mordio’ implies that she is connected to her family, and implying that her lineage had anything to do with who she is today generally pisses her off. She believes that she came to where she is today because of her own hard-work, and she will not allow her family name to take the credit for it. That being said, she actually doesn’t know if ‘Mordio’ is actually her last name, given the fact that she’s been ‘Rita Mordio’ before she could remember.
She detests cooking, and often does weird things to recipes. Karol relates an interesting cooking tale in which “I remember Rita serving a sandwich that was just two pieces of bread with a raw egg in between.” Her concept of food is ‘just for energy’ and ‘it’s all the same mush in your stomach anyway’, which pretty much reinforces the fact that she can’t really cook well. However, she does find the concept of cooking to the easy - ‘it’s like mixing chemicals’, but she just doesn’t put her heart into it. (However, if she did put her heart into it, she’d most likely end up something like Raine Sage from ToS. That is to say, horrible.)
Rita’s extremely afraid of the paranormal. It’s unknown whether or not it’s connected to something in her childhood (she did grow up in the most sunlight-deprived city on Terca Lumireis, which is pretty impressive, considering the name of the world), but what is known is that she tends to scream like a little kid when anything even remotely paranormal enters her range of hearing. She also suffers from severe vertigo, and tends to stay in the middle of their whale-drawn airship when it’s in motion.
Her dislike for animals is also pretty well-known. She doesn’t treat Repede well at all, and is seen happy when she learns that Repede is afraid of water. However, it’s also seen that she became jealous when watching Repede and Yuri communicate.
She really doesn’t deal well with heat.
Her name face recognition… leaves a lot to be desired. “Witcher? I get the feeling he might have passed through my field of vision once or twice… It’s nothing more than a vague memory, though”
[Canon] Tales of Vesperia
[Point Taken from Canon]
During the fight with Schwann - she ‘fainted’ was knocked out, and a dream self was created in Somarium.
[Age] 15
[Gender] Female
[Sexual Orientation] Ristelle Heterosexual
[Eye Color] Green
[Hair Color] Brownish orange, or orangish brown
[Height] Short
[Other] Calloused palms and fingers
[Clothing]
Looks like this
Notes:
- - Consistently asymmetrical
- Bunch of random field equipment as accessories (they come in handy for New!Discoveries!)
- Blastia choker-thing
- Heels WTF
- Goggles that do nothing
[Background]
Note: Orz, this was so badly done. Will be revamped to something legible sometime soon.
Canon… did not give Rita a past. I hope that’s going to change in the PS3 port, but for now, anything before the beginning of the game is all speculation on my part based on the little that was given during the game.
She was born in Aspio* under unfortunate circumstances. Given the nature of the city, she was probably born to a pair of researchers that had absolutely no interest in raising a child, and unwanted children were generally left to fend for themselves at a young age. It’s never explicitly stated whether or not she remembers her parents, but she did profess to ‘not having any family’, from which could be derived that she has not been in contact with them for quite some time now.
Given her personality, there are several things that can be derived: 1) she did not have any friends while growing up, 2) she did not have any adult figures while growing up 3) she was rarely taken seriously because of her age 4) her current place in life was achieved purely through her own hard work. That being said, it can already be seen that Rita’s childhood was probably a very lonely one. She had to grow up quickly in order to fend for herself. Sometime during her childhood, she came into contact with blastia, which spurred on a life-long love for learning and a near-obsession with the technology that eventually became the basis for her existence.
We first meet Rita in the game in the scholarly city of Aspio. Well, more like the party (consisting of Yuri, Estelle and Karol) first meet Rita when they break into her house in search of incriminating evidence that would connect its residence with the string of blastia thefts across the capital. They didn’t find anything particularly incriminating except for a short, blunt and arrogant 15-year-old hidden in a pile of books, who promptly got up and shot fireballs at the nearest moving thing. She really didn’t take well to having her house ‘raided’ so to speak, and even more so since she thought the reason was for stealing her research. When the party accused her with being a thief, she didn’t take that too well either. However, she immediately saw a use for the band of ragamuffins that littered her doorstep, and proceeded to take to Shaikos Ruins under the pretense of ‘clearing her name’ (though that to, was a part of it. It just happened to be a bonus of a sorts, seeing as she knows that she didn’t do it. It’s just a matter of finding who did.).
At Shaikos Ruins, the party navigates more or less through the wreckage. There, Rita demonstrates knowledge of her field though expanding on the various applications of the blastia in the ruins. She also reveals that she has been studying at these ruins for some time now, and being in possession of a Sorcerer’s Ring, which are only given to a special group of people (presumably highly-ranked researchers), marked her as someone who was important, if not a little famous. However, the party ended up having to fight the golem that she had been studying previously - having ended up this way because it turns out that there was a man in the ruins who was going around stealing blastia, and he reactivated the golem in order to get away from the party. Rita was knocked into a pillar by the golem, and Estelle jumped to heal her - and it was here that Rita first had suspicions about Estelle’s blastia and her healing artes. However, there was not any time to analyze that thought, for their ‘culprit’ was getting away, and the golem was still rampaging. Because Rita disliked injuring her beloved blastia, especially since she’s been studying this golem for quite a while now, she was very disappointed, or sad even, to have to shut down the poor thing. Which only made her angrier at the man who set the golem on them in the first place.
The man turned out not to be the blastia thief, but knew the real culprit, who was a part of a blastia-thieving scheme that seemed to stretch far beyond local organized crime. With this, however, Rita’s name was cleared, and they returned to Aspio to regroup and decide on their next course of action. Rita did not have any particular reason to continue on with the rest of them, seeing as she had accomplished a part of what she set out to do. However, her golem had been neutralized, and… well, it was hard to say, but Aspio was starting to lose that spark. Being with company for the first time in who knows how long, it was invigorating, and though she had inkling that they were all idiots to the T, it could be considered as pleasant. With that feeling of discomfort in mind, she drudged up the excuse of needing to go take a look at Halure’s barrier blastia, the one which had previously been mysteriously broken, and ended up following the party to Halure. And as it turned out, beyond. Way beyond.
She ended up deciding to go along with the party to Nor Harbour, though the reasons behind it are not specified - it’s a combination of the chaotic confusion left following the attack from the knights, and her own curiosity about Estelle’s ‘blastia’, as well as the power that was used to make Halure’s tree bloom like that. The party travels then to Ehmead Hill, which is directly between them and Nor Harbour, and is also where Rita first comes into contact with the doings of the ‘Dragon Rider’.
The destroyed blastia at Ehmead Hill had a very strange formula. But what ticked her off more was that someone would go along and destroy that blastia, and when it comes to blastia, no reason’s fair enough. Because of her reckless actions in trying to examine the broken blastia, the party flees Ehmead hill with knights on their heels, and manages to take cover in the nearby woods. On the path, they come across a picturesque view of the ocean, in which Rita professes that she has never seen the ocean before.
At Capua Nor, they meet up with Flynn, childhood friend of Yuri and an Imperial Knight of Zaphias. After a series of events, the party realizes the corruption of the local magistrate, Ragou. However, the knights are unable to take action, since there are plenty of ‘exceptions’ that prevent them from exercising their power of search on a magistrate’s home. Thus, the party decides to infiltrate the mansion and ‘cause a commotion’, which would give the knights an excuse to barge in. At then entrance, while debating on the proper method of execution, Rita encounters Raven, an ‘old friend’ of Yuri’s (Well, they just met in jail, and he did help Yuri escape out of there, but that’s where ‘friendship’ draws a line), who ‘helps’ them enter the mansion by drawing the attention of the guards to them. They ended up barging their way into the mansion, and after uncovering some heinous deeds, find a weather-influencing blastia in Ragou’s house. Rita, insanely curious about the blastia, would obviously go on to study it.
However, the party was discovered, and in making a ‘commotion’, the Flynn brigade also shows up, as per planned. What was not planned, was the entrance of the Dragon Rider, who swooped in, dodged fireballs, and destroyed the weather-altering blastia, before disappearing the way he came. Enraged, Rita swore to destroy the Dragon Rider at the next opportune encounter for his despicable acts against Blastia.
This is repeated again when they encounter the Dragon Rider at Caer Bocram, and then at the tower of Ghasfarost, where the identity of the Dragon Rider is more or less revealed to be Judith, though only to Yuri. Judith then joins the party, which Rita isn’t really sure what to think about that.
Nothing else happens Rita-wise in the game for a while. The party travel to Capua Torim, Caer Bocram, then to Heliord, Dahngrest, and then, in the forests of Keiv Moc, they met up once more with Raven, and discovered the existence of ‘Aer Krenes’. Areas where Aer is constantly being created.
The rest of the story is long and convoluted. After a series of events, including a certain joyride on a certain Ghost Ship (where it’s revealed that Rita’s very frightened of the paranormal), the (full) party learns of the identity of the Dragon Rider, Judith, her plight, and Estelle’s plight - that of the Child of the Full Moon. They become acquainted with the Entelexeia, including its death and subsequent transformation into Apatheia, and the Hermes Blastia. They learn of the Adephagos, and the danger of the Aer imbalance of the world. It is here, that Rita begins to truly understand the danger her beloved blastia poses to the world, and begins to truly open to the party, Estelle in particular. Throughout the journey itself, Rita is shown to be slowly opening up to her party members - at first with little things, like calling Estelle by her nickname rather than insisting on her full name, or actually attempting to help with Karol’s fear of insects. However, it is during their visit to Myorzo, the homeland of the Kritiyan, when Estelle is spirited off the floating city, by, it’s later revealed, Raven, who takes her to Alexei.
Alexei tortures Estelle (breaks Rita’s heartstrings), and forces the use of her power (for reasons yet unknown), which further breaks down the world’s Aer equilibrium. They chase Alexei to the Forgotten Shrine of Baction. After fighting their way into the Shrine, they finally catch up with the Commandant, where words are exchanged, and a surprising foe is revealed. Schwann shows up to delay the party, and it didn’t take the party long to realize that Schwann is in actuality, Raven.
In the ensuing fight that followed, Rita is fainted knocked out, and a dream self was created in Somarium.
*She may or may not have been born in Aspio, actually. It’s never explicitly stated in the game, and I have my bets on Halure being her actual birthplace. My reasoning being that she knows the city of Halure quite well (she runs directly up to Halure’s tree without the need for directions), and from her words, she seems to know the regular blooming patterns of Halure’s tree pretty well. This is interesting, since she doesn’t travel much, and professes to never have sent the ocean. She also professes that she’s only been studying in Aspio for the past 5 years, and though she could have been very well lived in Aspio since her youth, it’s unlike that she did not study blastia at all during her childhood. If it wasn’t at Aspio, then where is it?
[Personality]
Note: TL;DR and a whole bucketful of speculations. Once again, will be revamped. All you need to know, is that the following 1423 words give or take can be summarized into the single word 'Tsundere'.
“You should be thankful. I stopped reading to come here and eat with you, you know!”
Rita… Is a complex individual. Most of her personality has been molded due to her past circumstances - her orphan status, her lack of friends and family at her very impressionable young age, the lack of acceptance from society due to her gender and age, the lack of an adult figure in her life and subsequently her lack of respect for authority - it all accumulates into a single, emotionally train-wrecked, bitter and conflicted bundle named Rita Mordio.
She is proud, stubborn and blunt, unwilling, or unable to pull punches or to sweeten her words for the sake of anther’s ego. Growing up as an orphan, Rita was too intelligent for her age, and did not have the life experiences needed to make good use of it. What happened was that she became very distant from her peers at a young age due to that intelligence, but that she was also heavily distant from the adult figures in her life. She was easily bored by the antics of the children around her, and frightened the adults, threatened them, with her far too old for her five-year-old face demeanor. Stuck between thinking that all her peers were idiots and all adults were heavily disappointing, she withdrew from society at a young age, and has never quite opened up since.
Because of her self-upbringing, she is proud. The way she’d put it is, “I fed myself, clothed myself, made a name for myself. I know my own worth, and I’ll be damned if I let anyone else tell me otherwise!” Because of her confidence in her own abilities, the abilities that were all she had to rely on for the first 15 years of her life, Rita comes off as quite arrogant. She doesn’t deny it, she is arrogant, and she’ll be quick to tell you that she has the skills to back it up - and indeed she does, though she tends to remind others far too often for it not to be irritating.
However, her constant reminder to others about her self-worth is not only there to remind them that she isn’t just a bratty 15-year-old, but also to solidify this fact for herself. Despite all she claims with a confident front, Rita is still very much a child, and an insecure one at that. Because of her lonely upbringing, she craves recognition of any kind at all, be it from acquaintances, colleagues, society at large. The way she sees it, she lacks the social standing, and even the societal charisma that would bring the recognition, and thus the only way she will be recognized is if she becomes incredibly good at what she does - if she can impress and surpass others who are in the same field, stand out enough so that her name becomes known for who she is. She claims, however, that recognition is hardly the same as friendship, and while she does acknowledge that she is searching for recognition (she doesn’t make a secret out of it, with all of her ‘I’m not just ‘Mordio’, I’m Rita Mordio, get it right, idiots!’), she claims that she doesn’t need companionship beyond her beloved blastia and research.
Despite her intelligent and logical mind, she is still liable to see the world in black and white the way a child does. At the age of 15, she’s realized that despite reaching that pinnacle, despite becoming the most intelligent researcher in Aspio, possibly the most ingenious researcher on Terca Lumireis, her standing only seems to alienate even further, if that’s even possible, those around her. The logical and practical part of her understands the reason - that when others look at her, they see a teenager striving too hard to play the role of the intelligent researcher, and that most people are unable to look past that. However, the emotional, 15-year-old side of her cries foul play, for she knows that she has worked harder than anyone to reach her current standing, and that writing it off because of her age is simply unfair. The logical side of her understand that life is not about being fair, but it doesn’t stop the child-like side of her from becoming bitter.
However, in hindsight, she is used to not being taken seriously because of her age. It was the backdrop of her life when she first set foot in the academic world of Aspio, and it too has shaped her personality. To make herself heard in a world that judges by seniority, she had to be firm and unwavering. When researchers attempt to skirt about the subject, she stomps her foot down. When she finds that she has been excluded from a tech conference, she invites herself. When professors try to be patronizing, she throws their words back at their faces. Teenagers rebel and throw tantrums, and that’s the equivalent of what she’s doing. And it works - it gets them talking. Talking about the rude little upstart that thinks she’s all that just because she knows a couple of formula. It gets them talking about her rudeness, but it also gets them talking about her, and her ideas circulate because of that. Her intelligence is what makes her ideas brilliant, but it’s her rudeness that makes her famous.
Because of that, she developed a hardened personality - untrusting, and cynical, blunt and stubborn as a mule. She found that an arrogant front worked best - it intimidated others, but also showed her confidence in her work, which in turn got gears turning in the right direction. However, it also made her unapologetic. To change her mind or to admit wrongdoing was weakness, and to show weakness in front of those researchers was to discredit her integrity, and in the academic world, integrity was everything. It’s safe to say that she didn’t, couldn’t, make any friends that way. Paranoia had set in, and every other word directed at her that was neither an insult nor an agreement was trying to discredit her somehow, prove her wrong, find her weaknesses, exploit them. She couldn’t let that happen, and in panic, she let her iron curtain drop, and doesn’t allow herself to regret it.
Logically, she understands that this is effectively a path of self-destructions, but she also understands that it’s gotten to a point in which if her research is taken away from her, she would lose all purpose. It’s come to the point where she herself admits that she does not have any hobbies outside of blastia, which has dominated her life for the past five years or so. Her research is both a friend and a companion, one that she believes as long as she remains good at what she does, will never betray her. In return, she places all of her trust into her research and blastia, and is fiercely proud of her understanding of the blastia world.
Rita expects the world of herself, but doesn’t expect much of the world. Thus, she is liable to be surprised when she is recognized for her work, because even though it is what she’s gunning for, she doesn’t expect to have it. Oftentimes, we see her emotionally overwhelmed by little acts of recognition, which shows that despite what she claims otherwise, the opinions of others do matter. However, she dislikes the fact that they do, because it is almost an admittance of her weakness.
Because of her hard-headed and single-tracked mindset, when Rita feels as though she’s being backed into a corner by idiots, or when she finds herself stuck in a situation which she doesn’t know how to react to, she has a tendency to strike preemptively and violently, in which she almost acts and fights back like a trapped animal. This rashness is partially influenced by her arrogance, which allows her to believe that she would be able to solve and conquer any and all obstacles in her path, and if she comes across something that she truly cannot comprehend, she tends to fry it out of a misguided sense of panic or confusion. It’s also partially influence by the fact that she doesn’t suffer idiots well (you have a brain, use it damn you), and lacks the patience to deal with them in a civil manner.
It could be said, that her entire being seems to be set on the battlegrounds of a conflict between her logical, intelligent side and her emotional, pessimistic outlook.
And somehow, it’s consistently a losing battle.
[Specialties/Abilities]
Rita is first and foremost a mage. In her own words, she is used to casting spells and cultivating a calm mind, and while the latter may not be very apparent, judging from her dynamic attitude, the former is very impressive. Her casting times generally depend on the complexity or power of the spell, though it’s mostly rather short, and to enhance her casting, she relies on ‘conducting Aer’ through various ‘weapons’, or ‘Aer-conductant materials’, such as books, scarves, chains, whips, scrolls, or other flat, flapping things that she can whip at people. In fact, she can use just about any book as a weapon, though it’s effectiveness is ultimately determined by how Aer-conductant the book is. (In canon, she was able to use a cook book as a weapon to good effect, but complained about how it was ‘weak and flimsy’.) She’s able to use the full range of elements, sans wind, which she mysteriously is unable to conjure at all.
For a full list of spells Because I'm lazy and can't be bothered, see here.
She is essentially a child genius. Rita professes that she knows a lot of things simply because ‘you never know when something will be important for research’, but in reality, it’s because of her almost rabid obsession with blastia. She lives and breathes her research, and can be considered a leading authority on blastia - she goes on to prove this time and again throughout the journey by explaining to the party Aer and it’s effects on the body, blastia and their applications, and just dropping little tidbits of knowledge in general. She is not very well-traveled, but she is able to recognize flowers by sight, and she is quite a bit more mature than she lets on.
Her powers of observation is very well-developed, it seems, and she is also very astute when it comes to inter-personal relationships. (That don’t deal with her.) Her social awkwardness should also totally be considered an ability.
She has a mean right hook. (And left, for the particularly idiotic)
[Affection]
Rita highly dislikes skin contact, human contact, or any kind of contact at all (unless she's initiating it, which usually means a punch or a kick of some kind. She's fine with those.). Her personal bubble sports a wide radius, and she tends to be extremely paranoid about people staring at her. Generally, this means fireballs, and violence when anyone violates her personal space, and she's not likely to give anyone any exceptions. (Besides Estelle. Estelle's always an exception.)
[Fighting]
Rita's always up for a fight. She tends to initiate them almost as much as she is attacked. She doesn't care much for fighting, it's sort of a 'do it when I have to, can live without' kind of thing, but if it comes to kill or be killed, she's killing dammit. If you want to kill her, go ahead! I encourage it, very much so. She's always been curious about life after death anyway. Just give me a heads up, and let's see what we can work out.
[Other Facts]
Rita doesn’t like being called simply ‘Mordio’. She’d rather you call her Rita, or Rita Mordio. But simply ‘Mordio’ implies that she is connected to her family, and implying that her lineage had anything to do with who she is today generally pisses her off. She believes that she came to where she is today because of her own hard-work, and she will not allow her family name to take the credit for it. That being said, she actually doesn’t know if ‘Mordio’ is actually her last name, given the fact that she’s been ‘Rita Mordio’ before she could remember.
She detests cooking, and often does weird things to recipes. Karol relates an interesting cooking tale in which “I remember Rita serving a sandwich that was just two pieces of bread with a raw egg in between.” Her concept of food is ‘just for energy’ and ‘it’s all the same mush in your stomach anyway’, which pretty much reinforces the fact that she can’t really cook well. However, she does find the concept of cooking to the easy - ‘it’s like mixing chemicals’, but she just doesn’t put her heart into it. (However, if she did put her heart into it, she’d most likely end up something like Raine Sage from ToS. That is to say, horrible.)
Rita’s extremely afraid of the paranormal. It’s unknown whether or not it’s connected to something in her childhood (she did grow up in the most sunlight-deprived city on Terca Lumireis, which is pretty impressive, considering the name of the world), but what is known is that she tends to scream like a little kid when anything even remotely paranormal enters her range of hearing. She also suffers from severe vertigo, and tends to stay in the middle of their whale-drawn airship when it’s in motion.
Her dislike for animals is also pretty well-known. She doesn’t treat Repede well at all, and is seen happy when she learns that Repede is afraid of water. However, it’s also seen that she became jealous when watching Repede and Yuri communicate.
She really doesn’t deal well with heat.
Her name face recognition… leaves a lot to be desired. “Witcher? I get the feeling he might have passed through my field of vision once or twice… It’s nothing more than a vague memory, though”