Talk:Arios Theoman/@comment-24.93.143.205-20170119035017/@comment-27031093-20170119071132

Arios has sadly been reduced to a ghost. An often-referenced but never seen character. If the missing year ever gets a proper game (it almost certainly won't, sadly), we'll finally actually get to see he and Rance have their fateful encounter. Otherwise he's an NPC in Kichikuou and has three tiny cameos in 01, 03 and IX.

One of the Hero's powers is that they can never lose an encounter. They can be seriously injured and draw, but they can never outright lose. That being said, Arios' ability to take on two Dark Lords and Kentarou at the same time and actually defeat them all is a legitimately amazing feat, even taking into account his Hero powers. Considering that only one other Hero is historically known to have defeated a Dark Lord (it was RedEye, though, who is waaaay stronger than Satella and Hawzel), beating two of them plus Kentarou is more than enough proof that Arios actually had his shit together when he wasn't doing side quests.

On how he managed to pierce the invincibility field, either he tricked his opponents into hitting each other (very believable with Kentarou around) or somehow enough people were killed for it to enter Hesitant Mode. This was in the wake of the December Revolution, which had a large number of casualties, and the Free Cities also went to war with the Underground Empire of Buhard, which probably also had a high body count. Still, 30% of the Continent's population does seem way too high, even taking both of those into account.

Helman experienced a severe plague that killed over 12 million people, but that was in LP0004. If it had happened in LP0003, on top of the other two incidents that I listed, I could maybe see there being a big enough death toll for Escude to unlock a new level of power. A shame that isn't the case, because it wraps things together nicely.