It's fare, like in "farewell."
Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete
- Thread starter SoaringHawk218
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Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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- The other side of the mirror
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- He/His/Him
As a Tellius Dragon Laguz? Depends on if she got the PoR or RD version of Breath (and if it keyed off Magic or Strength). Having a lightning-based version of Naesala's "Vortex" skill would make her pretty unique, especially coming this early in the game.
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
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For someone who isn't familiar with Fire Emblem, what are the manaketes in the series like?
Depends on the game. Most are, like Ryza, small girls by appearance, but can turn into dragons. One difference is that they're usually in their late hundreds or thousands and still look like children.
Another difference is the idea that, rather than dual human and dragon just being the way they are, many manakete were originally dragons that were going mad and were forced to seal away their draconic power and form into a stone to avoid that.
There are some exceptions: the Tellius dragons (FE 9 and 10) don't have the same madness issues (though apparently when they start fighting, they have a hard time stopping), and are just one subspecies of an entire group of transformers called Laguz.
TaliesinSkye
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Are the divinities with a dragon form a totally separate thing? The only other FE stuff I've seen are some things from Three Houses.
Brainbow
Jamais vu
Naga is another example of a Dragon crossing into Divinity. Loptyr and Grima are more villainous variations, as far as worship is concerned.
Vote closed
As with lots of Fire Emblem setting things this is a "Depends on the game" answer.
Some settings have Divinities with Dragon forms alongside Manakete. For instance:
In one case one such divinity has an heir and another schemes to return to the world by having its followers enact a generations long breeding program to create a human vessel it can possess. Those divinities aren't immortal, though killing them can sometimes be... difficult, with conventional defeat tending to just make them go away for a long (thousands of years) time. Manakete there also have at least a limited psychic connection to the divinities such that they can communicate to the manakete.
But then you have, say Fire Emblem 6 and 7's setting where Dragons/Manakete were their own people with no such divinities (unless I've forgotten something) that lived with humans until there was a war between humans and dragons (In that setting it was called "The Scouring" and honestly it was what immediately came to mind for me with this setting's war) that resulted in a total human victory. Dragons were effectively wiped out in their entirety, with most of the survivors fleeing to another world and sealing the gateway behind them... until of course a mage opens it up again. There was also a hidden village where coexistence continued unknown to almost everyone in the world.
Three Houses definitely falls closer to the former than the latter. Pretty much the only constant between all cases is that humans and manakete are capable of having children together and said kids tend to retain all the manakete traits.
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TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
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That's extremely interesting.
I guess rebuilding the manakete race is possible, if Ryza has kids.
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Do hey live as long? That was never explained.
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- He
This reminds me of the Tiki!Morgan vs Nowi!Morgan problem I had in awakening because I wanted a kid that was a dragon lmao.
Edit: Morgan would totally wreck Ryza tho. No contest.
Yeah, I don't think we know. I feel like anecdotally the answer may be "...Probably?" though.
(FE7) Ninian and Nils and (Three Houses) Flayn, assuming we accept Nabateans as the manakete stand-in both suggest that they are certainly well beyond human lifespans at least.
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Doubt that's going to be an issue until several centuries after the quest ends, given how young Ryza is.
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
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This reminds me of a funny story. I once played in a World of Darkness MUSH where my character ran into two separate players who were playing dragons capable of taking human form to resist the effects of paradox. Having in character thought dragons were long extinct, and the two dragon characters being male and female, my first reaction was of course to attempt to convince them that they were an endangered species and thus had a responsibility to institute a breeding program to restore the population at once, before it was too late. Cue puppy dog eyes as I attempted to persuade the stubborn grumps to ask one another out on a date.
It was hilarious.
Who knows? Narratives can do big timeskips. I'd enjoy seeing multiple chapters of Ryza's life set through various time periods. Maybe she would eventually become the 'immortal' Dragon Empress or something, uniting the continent under her benevolent rule, or some such.
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Ryumancer
Dragons Are Romance
On the other hand, diluting your manakete ancestry with too much human ancestry can result in manakete-traits weakening until they outright fade from the bloodline. In Fates, for example, it's considered extremely rare that the main character can dragonshift, simply because the dragon ancestors of the Hoshidan and Nohrian royal families were so far back that in the current generation of each bloodline, only the main character has a strong enough bloodline to shift, and even then, only as a result of backstory fuckery where neither Hoshido nor Nohr are the main character's 'true' genetic family, and he is instead much closer related to the currently insane dragon causing problems in the background.. In 6 and 7, it's... left unsaid who Eliwood marries, but implied strongly enough that Ninian, whose own mother and father were a dragon and a human respectively, is generally accepted by the fans as Roy's mother, which would make Roy 1/4 Manakete, though he never shows any dragon-related traits. Though that at least can be chalked up to 7 being a prequel to 6, and therefor, introducing stuff retroactively than hadn't yet been thought of when 6 was made.
...Though even from the two examples I gave, you can see variance from game-to-game. Not sure how other games handle it; I know there's just a general thing that happens when a Laguz and a Beorc (another term for humans, in PoR/RD) have a kid together, but having never played those two games myself, I don't recall what actually happens. Not sure how the other games handle mixed blood lineages either, so I can't comment on the whole of the series, naturally.
But really, Ryza's best bet is still hoping to find survivors of her species, tbh. For genepool considerations, if nothing else.
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TaliesinSkye
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A good option if it's available. If not, there's always MAD SCIENCE, I suppose.
I think it would make a more interesting story if manakete ancestry bred true, though. It'd even suggest something fairly interesting, that perhaps manaketes started with one individual (a divinity maybe, or someone who transformed themselves by magic) who interbred with humanity to create the entire race.
Ah, that.
In Tellius, a Beorc/Laguz pairing that results in a child causes the Laguz parent to lose their powers for unexplained reasons. Once that became known the powers that be at the time quickly suppressed the truth and covered it up with a lie saying that hybrids were a crime against the Goddess (not a draconic divinity in case you're curious.), leading to centuries-long persecution of hybrids. As for the child, they were known as "Branded" as they would have a marking on their body. They also had extended lifespans and slowed aging.
Though, that part, as well as the fact that the children do not retain the non-human traits in the Tellius games are the exception rather than the general rule in FE settings AFAIK.
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Well to be fair, Morgan has the avatar of a functional god for a parent, so it's not really a fair comparison. Yet
In other news, my painting of a miniature to have the coloration of Older Ryza is going pretty well (IMHO). She's not done yet, but she's to the point where I can show her without feeling too embarrassed
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
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- The other side of the mirror
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Fire Emblem has been very different with its dragons depending on the setting, and even the same settings can have different kinds of dragon. The two or three big features are these: human form acts as something of a stabilizer for dragons who will eventually degenerate into beasts otherwise, dragons can live for a very very long time, and they are powerful as dragons but less so in human form.
FE1 and 3 take place in Archanea, which had a dragon civilization prior to the rise of humanity for at least 3,000 years. Something about their long lives and their magic led to infertility and sickness of both body and mind. They discovered the way to stop this was to take human form. One tribe disagreed: the Earth Dragons, led by their prince Medeus (yes, the one who recently showed up in FE Heroes), including a dragon known as Loptous (who becomes more relevant in FE4, but that's another story and we'll get there). Within 3 centuries, the earth dragons degenerated into monstrous beasts without a flicker of reason behind their eyes, leading to their attacking the fledgling human race. Naga and the divine dragons fought them. This ended with both the earth dragons and the divine dragons mostly wiped out through the use of artifacts made from Naga's fangs. The earth dragons were sealed and left in the care of Medeus. He got upset about how Manakete in their humanoid forms were getting mistreated and, well...how far he went and what he did is the plot of those games.
FE Awakening takes place a few thousand years later on that continent and eventually Manakete became rare and shrouded in myth.
In FE 4/5, Loptous made a blood pact with a bishop from Jugdral, binding most of his power to a dark magic tome, eventually possessing the bishop and forming the Loptyrian Empire. They crushed all resistance and ruled for 17 generations until a group of heroes arose to try to liberate the people. They fought for 20 years. Eventually the pleas of the crusaders reached Naga and 11 other dragons who formed pacts with heroes. These dragons gave the heroes weapons with a dragonstone inlaid as a means of giving them the power to turn the tide.
In FE 6/7, there was a time when dragons and humans lived in harmony. Everything changed when the Human Nation attacked, resulting in the Scouring, a war where humans sought to purge dragons. The dragons responded by forming a Demon Dragon to generate empty-husk "War Dragons", leading the humans to counter by forming legendary weapons so strong with magic they distorted reality such that dragons had to take on human form. The vast majority of dragons fled at that time. A few fled to an enclave of peace. One sought vengeance. The result is the plot of FE 7 and FE 6.
FE 8 has only two dragons we ever meet, Myrrh and her dad. Reanimated dragon corpses suggest there used to be more.
FE 9 / 10 has dragon laguz, one of a few different tribes of shapeshifters, who are bound by the rule of their king to a policy of isolation and neutrality in pursuit of a "peace" defined as the absence of outright war.
FE 2 / Echoes has two divine dragons in the roles of gods of neighboring lands. They are, unfortunately, starting to degenerate, leading to a certain degree of insanity and negative effects on their lands and the people within them.
3 Houses has the Nabateans in their varying degrees of sanity, ability to become dragons, and friendliness towards humanity.
Conclusions:
Dragons can live a long time, always.
Dragons are stronger as dragons than in human form, always.
Dragons need to go into human form to avoid risking "degeneration" into a mindless and aggressive beast.
FE1 and 3 take place in Archanea, which had a dragon civilization prior to the rise of humanity for at least 3,000 years. Something about their long lives and their magic led to infertility and sickness of both body and mind. They discovered the way to stop this was to take human form. One tribe disagreed: the Earth Dragons, led by their prince Medeus (yes, the one who recently showed up in FE Heroes), including a dragon known as Loptous (who becomes more relevant in FE4, but that's another story and we'll get there). Within 3 centuries, the earth dragons degenerated into monstrous beasts without a flicker of reason behind their eyes, leading to their attacking the fledgling human race. Naga and the divine dragons fought them. This ended with both the earth dragons and the divine dragons mostly wiped out through the use of artifacts made from Naga's fangs. The earth dragons were sealed and left in the care of Medeus. He got upset about how Manakete in their humanoid forms were getting mistreated and, well...how far he went and what he did is the plot of those games.
FE Awakening takes place a few thousand years later on that continent and eventually Manakete became rare and shrouded in myth.
In FE 4/5, Loptous made a blood pact with a bishop from Jugdral, binding most of his power to a dark magic tome, eventually possessing the bishop and forming the Loptyrian Empire. They crushed all resistance and ruled for 17 generations until a group of heroes arose to try to liberate the people. They fought for 20 years. Eventually the pleas of the crusaders reached Naga and 11 other dragons who formed pacts with heroes. These dragons gave the heroes weapons with a dragonstone inlaid as a means of giving them the power to turn the tide.
In FE 6/7, there was a time when dragons and humans lived in harmony. Everything changed when the Human Nation attacked, resulting in the Scouring, a war where humans sought to purge dragons. The dragons responded by forming a Demon Dragon to generate empty-husk "War Dragons", leading the humans to counter by forming legendary weapons so strong with magic they distorted reality such that dragons had to take on human form. The vast majority of dragons fled at that time. A few fled to an enclave of peace. One sought vengeance. The result is the plot of FE 7 and FE 6.
FE 8 has only two dragons we ever meet, Myrrh and her dad. Reanimated dragon corpses suggest there used to be more.
FE 9 / 10 has dragon laguz, one of a few different tribes of shapeshifters, who are bound by the rule of their king to a policy of isolation and neutrality in pursuit of a "peace" defined as the absence of outright war.
FE 2 / Echoes has two divine dragons in the roles of gods of neighboring lands. They are, unfortunately, starting to degenerate, leading to a certain degree of insanity and negative effects on their lands and the people within them.
3 Houses has the Nabateans in their varying degrees of sanity, ability to become dragons, and friendliness towards humanity.
Conclusions:
Dragons can live a long time, always.
Dragons are stronger as dragons than in human form, always.
Dragons need to go into human form to avoid risking "degeneration" into a mindless and aggressive beast.
Brainbow
Jamais vu
It should be noted that these pacts the crusaders made with the manaketes had included a blood transfusion, endowing the former with greater ability that allows them to wield their new weapons. Similarly, the Pact between Naga and House Ylisse had a blood transfusion as well with similar boosts to their abilities.
In this setting I can't help but wonder if the heroes of this setting and mages might have been products of such pacts, whether fairly done or by bloodier means.
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
- Location
- The other side of the mirror
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Currently, I've successfully managed to keep it relatively limited in scope and informative.
Could I take the full headlong leap and get into how far the rabbit hole goes, track connections, and go entirely mad? Absolutely.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9733697/Charlie___Sunny.jpg)
What I'm gonna go with is this: I have been a fire emblem fan for 19 years since the release of Blazing Sword (FE7). I have been searching out lore as much as possible and I have played FE 4-10 and FE12-16; FE1 got remade as FE11, FE3 got remade as FE12 (small wonder the franchise was in such peril before Awakening), and FE2 got remade as FE15 (Echoes). My avatar is a pixel-art splice of a couple of Fire Emblem characters.
If there are questions I can generally either answer them offhand or look them up. This is a franchise and a collection of settings I know very well.
ThatOtherSatori
Lover of Spicy Food
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Another thing to note is that 1/3, Awakening, 2/Echoes, and 4/5 all take place in the same 'World'. just on different continents. (And in Awakening's case, a few thousand years in the future)
Duma from 2/Echoes is explicitly a Dragon who Degenerated.
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I'm still wondering if laguz (as in the ones that turn into things other then dragons) are a thing in this world or not.
Barondoctor
The things I chase come to me.
- Location
- The other side of the mirror
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Considering we lived in a rock (i.e. not even having the exposure of living under a rock) until like two weeks ago when we joined Artemis and her band, there are a lot of things we don't know.
TaliesinSkye
Occasional Editor
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- Northeast Ohio, United States
On the other hand, Ryza no doubt learned important lessons from living in a mountain fortress. Like 'always evaluate plans that involve water or magma carefully before constructing them', 'don't stand under raised bridges', and 'don't dig too deep unless you're ready to deal with the clowns'.