#headcanon; dhaos.

[olberic]

back into phantasia again and thinking a lot about claus. anyways ive subjected myself to liking a canon divergence for post-dhaos more than whatever canon actually says SO! this is my sort-of-redesign for 12 yrs after he returns to his time.

elaborate headcanon below the cut (bc its. so niche. im not subjecting you all to it)

SO first and foremost i like claus with. other ppl. who aren’t milard. anyways to ME when the party goes back to their respective times he and arche decide to stick together and explore the world and teach magic to humans and half-elves. she’s very cognizant of her crazy long lifespan and how claus will be dead before she meets back up with cress+mint+chester btw. anyways like it takes a couple of years but they fall in love and get married and have 3 kids.

so have this (ft. slight mods to arche’s design/redrawing my fave pic of her in my style)

[akashicmuses]

I’VE DONE IT, I’VE FINISHED DHAOS’ ABOUT PAGE!!!

Bio is under the cut for convenience. This is mandatory reading because a lot of the information we have on Dhaos’ backstory comes from a Japanese novel that never got translated into English.

Much of Dhaos' past is shrouded in mystery, but what we know is that he is a prince of the kingdom of Elysium, a country on the planet Derris-Kharlan. He ruled his people fairly and was widely respected as the strongest being in his world, though it was a respect mixed with jealousy from other countries who wished they had more power. Unfortunately, Dhaos' reign was during a time of fierce war. Two other countries: Palace Ggdra and Palace Sadum, were engaged in a brutal war.

Dhaos despised war, but despite his desire to see it end, he was unwilling to step in and send his men to die in a war that had nothing to do with them. Even if it was foolish, there was still a part of him that hoped for peace between the two countries. Dhaos went out of his way to begin organizing relief aid to help the citizens of those countries. However, his efforts would bear no fruit. Palace Ggdra had been hiding a horrible weapon. A large machine called a Mana Cannon, which they fired at Palace Sadum in a last-ditch effort to win. Instantly over 150,000 people were killed, and the Kharlan Tree that supported all mana on the planet died.

Without the Kharlan Mana Tree, the world began to calcify, and people began to die. They could no longer produce food, and starvation began to ravage the planet. Their only hope lay in acquiring a new Mana Seed. If they could grow a new tree, they would be saved. All hope fell to Dhaos, the strongest of them.

Dhaos was initially reluctant to take on this responsibility, and he felt as if the destruction of the Mana Tree had been his fault. If he had acted sooner, he thought this would have never happened. Dhaos' guilt was so strong that he believed he should die with his world... Only the words of the woman he loved, Karion, brought Dhaos out of this despair. She believed that Dhaos would have the strength to carry out this mission, that it was incredibly foolish to let their world die when there was something he could do about it.

Karion and many members of Dhaos' council prepared a capsule for him, as well as a spell that would grant Dhaos the power to travel through time and space a finite number of times. However, there was no longer enough mana in the environment to support this level of magic. Instead, it would be fueled by the lives of those who cast it. Deliberately kept unaware of this and unable to do anything, Dhaos is forced to watch his beloved take her own life for the sake of their world, and the last words he heard were Karion telling him that she will always love him.

Dhaos then spent decades wandering through space, eventually arriving on Aselia with only one jump left. By the time he arrived, Dhaos was very weak and suffering from extreme mana depletion. A woman named Winona Peckham found Dhaos and nursed him back to health. Extremely grateful and incredibly demoralized, he spends some time traveling with her and her circus troupe. He meets a man named Edward D. Morrison through them, who believes he may be some sort of spirit based on how Aselia's dwindling mana levels are affecting him (aka, not helping his slow recovery from mana depletion).

Despite his demoralized state, Dhaos realizes that he cannot give up, or all of his people's sacrifices would be for nothing. Dhaos makes the journey to the Yggdrasil Mana Tree as soon as he can. Dhaos is met with nothing but horror when he discovers that the tree is dying and will not be able to produce a seed. Even worse: this is happening due to the same technology that destroyed Derris-Kharlan. The Aselians had begun to develop their own magitechnology, including their own Mana Cannon.

Winona helps Dhaos to meet with the man spearheading the Mana Cannon project: a half-elf from the city of Midgard named Reisen. Dhaos approaches Midgard as an emissary of peace, but Reisen is able to sense that there is something wrong with Dhaos' mana and distrusts him. Especially when Dhaos starts telling him that he must stop the production of the magitechnology, which he had been creating to fight against demons that threatened the kingdom. Reisen began to believe that Dhaos himself was a demon and began to fight with him. During this fight, Winona loses her right arm.

Reisen realizes that he has gone too far and, fearing for his career, tells everyone that Dhaos had attacked first and that he was a terrible demon who had come to destroy their country. A furious Dhaos decides that he must stop Midgard, no matter the cost. He believes that further interaction with him will endanger Winona and leaves her behind to side with the demons attacking Midgard. He makes a deal with the demons of the Daemonium, seeing Midgard as their mutual enemy. However, unbeknownst to Dhaos, the demons seek the destruction of the Yggdrasil Mana Tree. They go behind his back on several occasions to cause harm that Dhaos knows nothing about, including the death of Winona's friend: Rhea Scarlet.

During this time, he visits the Mana Tree frequently to check on it.

At this point, Cress arrives from the future and begins to fight against Dhaos. Cress and his friends manage to infiltrate his castle and challenge Dhaos. Dhaos had initially been curious as to why these people wished to fight him, but when all they did was yell about him being a demon, he assumed that they were nothing but pawns of Midgard and became extremely dismissive of them. He believed there was no point in any discussion, assuming they knew what had happened between him and Reisen. He and the main party come to blows. Still, it ends with Dhaos escaping to the future to preserve his life (specifically because he does not want to accidentally do something that would cause Winona not to exist).

However, that had been his last jump. Even if he were to secure the Mana Seed, there would be no way for him to return home. Dhaos' despair drives him into wild violence, and he begins to destroy all involved in magitechnology indiscriminately. He floods the seas, the skies, and the land with monsters. Winona and her friends are long dead, and there is no reason for him to restrain himself. He further asserts his power by brainwashing a village of ninjas for his army and attacks Alvanista, who he suspects of building another Mana Cannon. All fear the power of Aselia's Demon King. Even if returning home is impossible now, he believes he must find a way to obtain a Mana Seed so that Karion's death is not for nothing.

If this world insisted that he was a Demon King, he would give them a Demon King.

Unbeknownst to him, Cress and his friends had chased him to the future. At this point, he rarely leaves his palace, save for visits to the Mana Tree. He keeps himself safe by using his magic to hide his castle between the folds of time and space. It's only when Cress obtains the Eternal Sword that his defenses fall. They rend his castle back into normal space-time and storm it.

This is where Dhaos fights them for the last time, and it's a fight that he nearly wins. It's only when he is on the cusp of victory—when he has nearly killed Mint—that Mint uses what little strength she has left to cast a barrier on Cress and tells him the very same words Karion had said to him all those years ago.

    ("I will always love you.")

It's at this moment that Dhaos fully realizes what he is doing. That he is ravaging Cress' world, that he is killing his loved ones, that he is making Cress the same as him. In spite of everything that he has done so far for his people, he decides that he cannot continue to cause this kind of pain. The blood price of reviving Derris-Kharlan has become too high.

He does nothing as Cress unleashes a mystic arte on him, and Dhaos dies thinking of his beloved Karion and Derris-Kharlan.

Then, Martel, the Spirit of the Yggdrasil Mana Tree summons Dhaos' body, changes him into a Mana Seed, and sends him into space towards Derris-Kharlan to become the spirit of the new Mana Tree that will grow there.

[stxllarxclipsx-a-blog]

Musing: Ancestry

This is strictly based on what I’ve been told and as a majority of my muses are from these games, I feel like it makes sense.

Readmore for potential spoilers.

Symphonia/Phantasia seems to be in the same universe as Berseria/Zestiria. This is supported by the similar maps used, Eizen sharing the same voice actor as two characters of the games, and a specific skit that mentions the battle between Martel and Dhaos.

General Headcanons: These are the most likely ancestral lines. The N/A’s are characters who are not really important to the games and likely would not be remembered. This is also ignoring any seraphs that weren’t confirmed to have once been human, such as Eizen and Edna. 

Also as a note, the first two are matched either by appearance/personality, magical abilities and physical skills. When it went to Berseria, I tried to focus on how much their families would have changed as a result of possibly thousand of years.

Lloyd - Cress - Rokurou - Sorey 

Colette - Mint - N/A - Alisha 

Sheena - Suzu - N/A - Rose 

Genis - Claus - Magilou - N/A 

Regal - Chester - Eleanor - Mikleo 

Zelos - Arche - Velvet - N/A

Specific Headcanons:

- Magilou is the last living half elf as of Berseria. There is no known proof of elves existing and it’s likely that elves may have evolved into seraphs, due to their penchant for magic and that, normally, only those of elven descent can use magic (ie, elves, half elves and quarter elves like Seles) unless they are from a family with chosen heritage (aka, Mint knowing healing magic despite Colette not being elven in descent )

 - It is likely that the group from Symphonia’s descendants are meant to constantly unite together to get rid of the newest threat to their world. For people who are listed as N/A on the chart listed above, it’s likely they were too young at the time of the crisis to join in and help the group, or not even born yet.

 - The summon spirits likely do not exist past Phantasia, due to the crisis caused by Dhaos. They could have also possibly caused for the seraphs to become created, by separating their mana into new forms. 

 - Daemons existed long before Berseria, such as Abyssian in Symphonia. However, the catalyst caused for more daemons to slip into the world from their once sealed home.

[aurantia-ignis]

I thought we’d gotten past all that stuff about Tales games that are not direct sequels/prequels being considered ‘all part of the same continuity’.  Can we please, please, PLEASE not.  Yeah, Eizen has a Dhaos coin. But guess what, Jade has a Pacman on his belt. Same universe, right? And hey, Presea gets a Klonoa costume! Guntz must be around somewhere!  It’s okay to want to create a headcanon timeline or something where you try to make all these worlds match up for crossover purposes and such. But these are headcanons. Not theories. And I really, really dislike people spreading misinformation as fact.  Somewhere out there, someone said that it’s ‘confirmed in ‘the anniversary book’ that they’re set within the same world’. I’d dearly love to know which anniversary book that is, thank you.