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Application Supplement - History
Artorius Collbrande's early days were spent in an orphanage; whether it's due to his parents dying or being either unable or unwilling to care for him is unknown, but either way he lived there until he was nine years old, at which point he was adopted by a man named Claudin Asgard. Artorius was born with a high level of resonance, the ability to see and interact with supernatural beings, and Claudin saw a good amount of potential in him; as such, Artorius was taken in and raised by both Claudin and Claudin's lifelong friend, Melchior, to be an exorcist - one who fights and kills daemons, formerly-human creatures that attack and destroy without thought or reason, for the sake of those who were unable to see or defend against them. He was also designated as the successor of Claudin's legacy as a recognized savior of the people. Over his time with them, he was taught about the true nature of the world - that daemons were created by "malevolence," an energy that humans exude caused by negative emotions and internal contradictions and self-doubt. When humans produce too much malevolence, they lose control and turn into daemons; there's no turning them back once this happens, and the only path that can be taken after someone is no longer human is to kill them. Because the plot of this game is sort of fucked up. The only way to stop this cycle, according to their teachings, is to awaken the long-dormant god, Innominat the Suppressor, which is capable of consuming the world's malevolence and wiping the slate clean.
Artorius' time with them came to an end almost ten years later with the death of his mentor; Claudin had taken an oath (a pact with a supernatural entity that grants someone power in exchange for being bound to specific pre-agreed conditions) to extend his natural lifespan, under the condition that he never take a life - should the oath be broken, the result would be death. Unfortunately, due to an accident during Artorius' training, Claudin was required to kill in order to save Artorius' life. The loss was devastating, and Artorius found himself unable to handle the guilt and fear that the incident had left him with; he effectively disappeared for about a year, wandering the world aimlessly and trying to find solace in both relative anonymity and simply being alone with nothing but nature itself. It was little comfort, and his guilt and self-loathing threatened to be consuming; as such, over his time alone, he learned how to suppress his emotions through meditation and application of willpower, effectively keeping them in check until he no longer emotionally experienced much of anything.
Fairly early into this time, he met a swordsman with high resonance whose first act upon meeting him was to try to kill him; Artorius managed to defend himself, chipping the swordsman's blade in the process, and out of lack of anything else to say and because Artorius is honestly just kind of like this, he tried to explain the current state of the world to the guy, who perhaps unsurprisingly didn't really care. He then proceeded to forcefully introduce his skull to Artorius' face, told him to remember the name "Rangetsu", and left.
Some time later, however, Artorius found himself in the woods on the island of Eastgand, with no supplies, no plans, and no real will to live anymore. He eventually passed out underneath a large tree, where he was found by a woman from a nearby village; the woman, Celica Crowe, managed to wake him up and tried to encourage him to eat - something he refused repeatedly, eventually telling her that he felt he didn't deserve to live. She managed to talk him around to the notion that living wasn't something that needed to be earned or deserved, it was just something that people did; she asked him for his name, which Artorius stumbled over but ultimately lied to her about, telling her that his name was Arthur. Celica didn't question it, but convinced him to come back to the village with her and let her make him dinner, and eventually it was decided that he could stay with her and her family (consisting of her six-year-old sister and her baby brother, who was almost two) for as long as he wanted.
Over the course of the next three years, "Arthur" became a proper member of the family, with Celica making it clear that even if he couldn't like himself, she and her family liked him and wanted him to stay around. Eventually, they fell in love and got married - something that wasn't approved of by most of the village, given that they distrusted outsiders; despite their open distrust of him, Artorius continued to contribute to the village anyway, utilizing both carpentry skills and his abilities as an exorcist to ensure that things kept running smoothly. Eventually, Celica became pregnant with Artorius' son; he embraced her and told her that he had never thought that he could be so happy, and gave her a pendant that he'd made her as a symbol of love.
Shortly after this, the Scarlet Night occurred. So enjoy those last two paragraphs, because it's probably the least fucked-up that the plot of this game is going to be.
The Scarlet Night is more or less the blood moon from hell; it's full of spiritual energy, mostly negative, and renders people incredibly prone to violence, madness, and becoming daemons. That night, the village was attacked by brigands who quickly succumbed to malevolence; Artorius took Celica's sister, Velvet, and her brother, Laphicet, deep into the woods to hide them somewhere relatively safe before he went back to find Celica. He eventually found her at the shrine outside town - a massive sinkhole that was said to be a portal to hell itself; she was surrounded by daemons, and she urged him to take Velvet and Laphicet and run. Artorius refused, saying that he wanted to live with her and their child; he fought off the daemons as best he could, but Celica eventually shoved him out of the way when he began to get overwhelmed, causing one of them to strike her and knock her back into the sinkhole, where she and her unborn child were consumed by some sort of massive entity in the pit below. Enraged, Artorius took up his sword against the daemons again, destroying all of them at a steep price - during the fight he sustained a violent injury, internally severing the nerves at his shoulder and ensuring the complete loss of the use of his right arm.
Melchior found Artorius after the fight was over, telling him that he should take what happened as a lesson to stop running away and trying to have a normal life, and that he should fulfill his duty to the people in awakening Innominat; just then, a burst of power came from the shrine, leading them to realize that Innominat's current resting place was deep within the pit itself, and that was the entity that consumed Celica and her unborn child. Along with the energy expelled from the pit, a pair of people known as malakhim (a type of supernatural being that could only be seen by those with high resonance) were created, reincarnations of Celica and her son both. Artorius picked up the pendant he had made for Celica - which had fallen at the edge of the pit when she was knocked in - and showed it to the malak that she had become, only to receive no reaction or sign of recognition; he then swore that he would give up everything that he had become, reclaim his place as Claudin's successor, and raise Innominat, making a pact with the malak that had once been his wife in the process. He named her Seres, and effectively bound her to him, ensuring that she would serve him from then on. Meanwhile, Melchior took the remaining unnamed malak for himself and left.
Artorius found Velvet and Laphicet where he had left them in the woods and brought them back to the village; he remained there for seven more years, continuing his research into Innominat and how it could be fully revived and maintained, while raising Velvet and Laphicet on his own. He spent this time trying to act like everything was fine, like he was fine, and as though everything was entirely normal despite the fact that it clearly wasn't. His right arm was completely paralyzed and he was unable to move or feel it, but he adapted well enough and retaught himself how to do everything with his left hand, including swordsmanship and basic carpentry; he often went into the woods to provide the family with food until Velvet was old enough to do it, at which point he taught her how to hunt wild animals and field dress her kills. Laphicet had been born frail, and after a while it became obvious to Artorius that he had what was known as the Twelve-Year Sickness, characterized by high fevers and a fragile cardiovascular system and named for the fact that those who have it die shortly after turning twelve. Laphicet also liked to borrow Arthur's books and read them, and as such also became aware of the prophecies surrounding Innominat - namely, one that stated that two human sacrifices were needed to revive it. Shortly before his twelfth birthday, Laphicet asked to speak to Artorius alone.
He asked Artorius about Innominat, and about the human sacrifices needed to revive it; Artorius was honest with him and told him that his unborn son had been one of the sacrifices given to the shrine, leaving one more required before Innominat would fully awaken. Laphicet asked if he could be the sacrifice needed, stating that he knew he was going to die soon and he wanted to create a world free of malevolence so his sister Velvet could be happy. After Artorius asked Laphicet some questions to ensure that he was ready and knew what he was doing, they agreed that Laphicet would be sacrificed on the next Scarlet Night, which would be occurring a few days from then, and Laphicet made Artorius promise never to tell Velvet about the arrangement they had made.
On the day before the Scarlet Night, Artorius talked to Velvet about how she needed to be more careful with her emotions, telling her that they ran too hot and they would be her undoing; he also told her that he wouldn't be coming home that night, so she shouldn't wait up for him and he'd see her the next day, and he warned her to be careful because there had been daemons sighted in the nearby areas. Velvet and Laphicet went out to sit near the shrine that evening, only to be attacked by one of the daemons she had been warned about; Velvet was solidly concussed during the fight that ensued, only to wake up in her house after Artorius had saved both Laphicet and her from being devoured. Artorius let Laphicet talk to Velvet a bit after she woke up, just until she passed out again, and then left to take Laphicet to the shrine.
Shortly after they arrived and began making preparations for the sacrifice, Velvet arrived at the scene, having awakened shortly after they left and becoming frightened for Laphicet when she couldn't find him anywhere. While she was originally relieved to see them and assumed that Artorius had brought Laphicet away from the village to protect him, she soon realized something was wrong due to the way they were both acting; to keep her from interfering, Artorius used his powers to pin her to the ground and set her on fire, then turned back to Laphicet. He proceeded to stab him, impaling him clear through the abdomen front-to-back while Velvet screamed and writhed on the ground. While on fire. Because the plot of this game is sort of fucked up.
Velvet managed to break free of her bindings as Artorius lowered Laphicet's body and threw it into the pit; she caught Laphicet by the wrist, clinging to the edge of the pit with her free hand but unable to pull both of them back up. Artorius told her that Laphicet was already dead and she needed to let go of him; when she refused, he berated her for being a "slave to emotion" and cut her arm off at the elbow, sending both Velvet and Laphicet plunging downward into the depths of the shrine. Laphicet was consumed as the second sacrifice needed to begin properly resurrecting Innominat. And Velvet...
Well, she didn't stay down there.
Velvet was expelled from the pit, having undergone a change that stripped her of her humanity; she was turned into a powerful daemon known as a therion, with a mutated left arm that she could use to consume other living organisms. (We don't ever really get into the logistics of the demon arm; we just accept that it works. We also accept that Berseria really, really hates arms.) Consumed by her hatred, Velvet went on a rampage, destroying several other daemons that were entering the area; after she was done, Artorius told her to look around at what she'd done - the daemons that she'd defeated were all reverted back to their original human forms, revealing them to be the members of her own village, all of them slaughtered by Velvet.
Meanwhile, as Velvet understandably had a breakdown at all of this, the collective resonance of the world increased due to Innominat's awakening, revealing several malakhim being drawn into the area and immediately wiped of their free will, leaving them as blank slates willing to do whatever Artorius commanded them to do; Velvet eventually passed out and was immediately captured and imprisoned in a dark cell on the prison island Titania, where Artorius would eventually command that experiments on her therion powers should be done on her and that she should be tasked with consuming large amounts of malevolence to aid in reviving Innominat. Artorius himself left the village for a nearby city to purify it with the malakhim's assistance, and went on to use those malakhim to rid large portions of the world of daemons.
And once his work had been carried out, the world was by and large stabilized, and many new exorcists were brought into his fold, he was hailed as the savior of the world.
Artorius became the head exorcist of an organization called the Abbey; over the next three years, he continued spreading his influence and his teachings throughout the world, insisting that the world needed to let go of its attachment to emotion and follow the path of "true reason" instead - a cold, purely logical point of view with very little room for human emotion or free thought, one that condemned self-interest and promoted the safety of the many before the desires of the few. He also heavily endorsed the worship of the god Innominat, and established many new laws among the people; most of these laws were good things, albeit strict - laws against gambling and limiting the consumption of vices like alcohol, for example - and it was made clear that anyone who broke the laws of the land would be punished with banishment from the cities or embargos on their trade until the crimes were atoned for in some way. There was some pushback against him, but generally speaking the people were grateful to him for saving them from the immediate threat of the daemons, and to the Abbey for continuing to keep their cities safe.
During this time, he instated Melchior as one of his legates, one of two of the highest-ranking exorcists in the Abbey; the other slot went to the swordsman that had attacked Artorius years before, now known as Shigure Rangetsu. Melchior served as both his advisor and his "shadow" - basically, the person whose job it is to be a shitty person in the name of the Lord and do all the dirty work so Artorius didn't have to. Shigure, on the other hand, became his bodyguard, presumably on the logic of keeping one's friends close but one's enemies closer - Shigure wanted to kill Artorius more than anyone else in the world, and as such he presumably would keep someone else from stealing his kill. (Melchior is good at his job. Shigure is not, on merit of "Shigure does not give a fuck.")
Also during this span of time, Artorius embedded a special experimental formula in Seres' body that would crystallize upon her death, for the sake of creating a device that he hoped would grant him full control over Innominat at the time of his complete revival; he also ordered that six other therions should be found or created, and placed at certain locations spread out over the continent, where their purpose would be to join Velvet in eating malevolence and channeling it to Innominat to aid in completing his return to power. As Innominat strengthened, Artorius had a temple called the Empyrean's Throne built at what was to be the site of his true reawakening; he spent longer and longer periods of time there, only leaving when called to the capital to give a speech and be officially granted a position of political power by the royal family. Even after Velvet broke out of prison and made no secret of the fact that she was out to kill him, he spent most of his time meditating and offering prayers to Innominat; he was interrupted during one such session by Velvet and the rest of the party, having shown up to do exactly what she'd been claiming she was going to do and kill Artorius.
So naturally, Artorius kicked her ass.
The fight was short, due to the fact that he effectively curbstomped the entire party, at one point impaling Velvet through the abdomen in the same way he had stabbed Laphicet three years prior; after he was done handing Velvet's ass to her, other high-ranking members of the Abbey burst into the chamber, joining the fight against the party until one of the members - the malak that was the reincarnation of Artorius' unborn son, now named "Laphicet" by Velvet due to his uncanny resemblence to her dead brother - opened a rift between dimensions that allowed them to escape. One of the exorcists, a woman named Eleanor, followed them into the rift; Artorius, intrigued with the malak's power, managed to contact her with Melchior's assistance, and told her to bring the malak to the Abbey headquarters. (Eleanor succeeded heroically in doing the exact opposite of any of that.)
Velvet then spent a good while causing massive amounts of destruction wherever she went, earning Velvet the title "Lord of Calamity" among the people. Having learned about the therions and the role they played in reviving Innominat, Velvet and the party set out around the continent freeing them from the Abbey's control; they also chased out all the daemons at the prison Velvet had been incarcerated in, claiming it for their own as a hideout and keeping the therions there. Artorius, recognizing the need to strengthen the Abbey and take down the threat his sister-in-law was comprising, summoned one of the non-essential Abbey members (a praetor named Oscar) to the temple; with his legates as witnesses, he bestowed a special power called armatization upon Oscar, something that would grant him the ability to fuse with his malakhim into a far more powerful being with stronger powers and physical capabilities, though the means Artorius gave him by which to do so was incomplete and untested, with the possibility of killing the user. Oscar willingly accepted the risks, though the entire procedure upset his sister Teresa, who tried to convince Artorius to let her do it instead; Artorius' response was to strip her of her tethered malak in order to prevent her from interfering, rendering her powerless and telling her that he'd give it back after Oscar's mission was complete.
Oscar's assignment, uh, technically went well for the Abbey...? It did a great job of teaching them how not to armatize, seeing as Oscar pushed it too hard, started to turn into some sort of horrible monster as a result (nearly killing him a whole lot), and required having the malak forcibly punched out of him (actually killing him a whole lot). To add insult to injury, Teresa followed him out there and also got killed a whole lot. With all of this in mind, Artorius managed to fix the armatization process a bit - by which we mean he installed a magical killswitch on it that would destroy both the malak and the exorcist if they overdid it, so instead of turning into monsters, they just sort of...exploded. He then decided to call that good enough for government work and bestow armatization upon every damn exorcist in the Abbey, because the plot of this game is sort of fucked up.
Shortly after this was done, news reached the Abbey that the therions were being held on Titania; Artorius and several other exorcists invaded the prison, holding it under seige and drawing Velvet out for a confrontation. This time, however, Artorius didn't fight her himself; rather, he called on Innominat, who was not at his full power but now capable of becoming a corporeal being, using a reincarnated malak as his vessel... And it just happened to be that the vessel he was using was Velvet's brother.
Innominat proceeded to nearly consume the party by way of opening a void in the ground, only for them to escape again using malak!Laphicet's power; Innominat pursued them, engaging them in battle twice, only to be badly defeated by the party both times. Artorius met up with Innominat after the second battle, chiding him for being beaten so easily but eventually forgiving him for it, saying that it was all right as long as Innominat learned from his mistakes and did better next time. He also told Innominat not to pursue the party at this time, telling him that they needed to prepare for the Ceremony of Suppression, which has a perfectly happy name that is not ominous at all, and was to be held the next day.
The ceremony in question went well in a slightly more legitimate way than "everybody died", in that it did exactly what it was supposed to do; it's just that "exactly what it was supposed to do" was horrific. It amplified Innominat's power, spreading his sphere of influence to cover most of the main island comprising the continent and suppressing the collective will of the people - stripping them of all emotion and ability to think and act for themselves, making them into perfectly obedient creatures that adhered to the concept of "true reason" above all else. It stopped all conflict, all negativity, all tears and fears and hatred, and perhaps most importantly, all generation of malevolence, effectively saving humanity from itself at the cost of all free will. However, it also had a great deal of unintended negative consequences: those who perceived themselves as bad people according to "true reason" quickly came to the conclusion that they didn't deserve to live anymore due to being full of sin, leading to mass suicides. They also quickly began justifying passing judgement on others for being too worldly, too sinful, or too generally useless to society to deserve to live.
Basically, this was probably going to turn into Lord of the Flies really, really quickly.
Velvet and the party, having gotten a better idea of what they were up against and being completely wigged out by the suppression party that was happening right in front of them, decided to resurrect the four elemental Empyreans - in other words, the elder gods who created the world - to help them defeat Innominat; they eventually succeeded, but in order to do so, they sacrificed several high-ranking members of the Abbey and terrorized several towns in the process. Facing mounting pressure to go on the offensive and confident in his ability to control Innominat, Artorius publicized the notion that he was going to engage the Lord of Calamity in battle.
The party met with Artorius and Innominat deep within Innominat's domain, at a place atop the Empyrean's Throne that could be said to be an extension of Innominat's body itself; rather than another immediate defeat, however, the party managed to hold its own, eventually driving Artorius to finish reawakening Innominat himself - he allowed the deity to consume his own malevolence, revealing that he had been harboring so much pain and despair over the years that it was on the verge of killing him. Innominat consumed his despair and Artorius revealed that he'd finally managed to get his shit together with regards to armatization, drawing Innominat into his body and fusing them together into a stronger, more powerful form - one that notably gave Artorius use of his right arm back for the duration of the battle, which was something of a worry now that he was literally an eight-foot tall multi-haloed angel with eight wings and a sword almost twice his size. (They could have been anything; they decided to be the archangel Michael. It's stupid. Cool-looking, but stupid.) The party engaged Artorius and Innominat in battle one last time, narrowly securing a victory against them at the hands of Velvet: she bit them on the neck, seizing Innominat and physically separating them by dragging him out of Artorius' body, reverting the physical alterations they'd undergone. She got Artorius' weapon away from him, slammed him into the ground and stabbed him with it, impaling him the same way he had impaled both Laphicet and Velvet earlier on.
As he lay dying, he called Velvet a true hero, and confessed that after Celica died, some part of him had always wished that Velvet and Laphicet had died instead of her. However, he also admitted that if they had died and Celica had lived, he would have been trying to save the world for them instead, because all he had wanted was to save his family. Velvet cried for him as he died; he offered no apologies or gratitude for her tears or her understanding, though he did express regret in a very muted way, calling the entire thing "such a pity" before he passed on.
Artorius' time with them came to an end almost ten years later with the death of his mentor; Claudin had taken an oath (a pact with a supernatural entity that grants someone power in exchange for being bound to specific pre-agreed conditions) to extend his natural lifespan, under the condition that he never take a life - should the oath be broken, the result would be death. Unfortunately, due to an accident during Artorius' training, Claudin was required to kill in order to save Artorius' life. The loss was devastating, and Artorius found himself unable to handle the guilt and fear that the incident had left him with; he effectively disappeared for about a year, wandering the world aimlessly and trying to find solace in both relative anonymity and simply being alone with nothing but nature itself. It was little comfort, and his guilt and self-loathing threatened to be consuming; as such, over his time alone, he learned how to suppress his emotions through meditation and application of willpower, effectively keeping them in check until he no longer emotionally experienced much of anything.
Fairly early into this time, he met a swordsman with high resonance whose first act upon meeting him was to try to kill him; Artorius managed to defend himself, chipping the swordsman's blade in the process, and out of lack of anything else to say and because Artorius is honestly just kind of like this, he tried to explain the current state of the world to the guy, who perhaps unsurprisingly didn't really care. He then proceeded to forcefully introduce his skull to Artorius' face, told him to remember the name "Rangetsu", and left.
Some time later, however, Artorius found himself in the woods on the island of Eastgand, with no supplies, no plans, and no real will to live anymore. He eventually passed out underneath a large tree, where he was found by a woman from a nearby village; the woman, Celica Crowe, managed to wake him up and tried to encourage him to eat - something he refused repeatedly, eventually telling her that he felt he didn't deserve to live. She managed to talk him around to the notion that living wasn't something that needed to be earned or deserved, it was just something that people did; she asked him for his name, which Artorius stumbled over but ultimately lied to her about, telling her that his name was Arthur. Celica didn't question it, but convinced him to come back to the village with her and let her make him dinner, and eventually it was decided that he could stay with her and her family (consisting of her six-year-old sister and her baby brother, who was almost two) for as long as he wanted.
Over the course of the next three years, "Arthur" became a proper member of the family, with Celica making it clear that even if he couldn't like himself, she and her family liked him and wanted him to stay around. Eventually, they fell in love and got married - something that wasn't approved of by most of the village, given that they distrusted outsiders; despite their open distrust of him, Artorius continued to contribute to the village anyway, utilizing both carpentry skills and his abilities as an exorcist to ensure that things kept running smoothly. Eventually, Celica became pregnant with Artorius' son; he embraced her and told her that he had never thought that he could be so happy, and gave her a pendant that he'd made her as a symbol of love.
Shortly after this, the Scarlet Night occurred. So enjoy those last two paragraphs, because it's probably the least fucked-up that the plot of this game is going to be.
The Scarlet Night is more or less the blood moon from hell; it's full of spiritual energy, mostly negative, and renders people incredibly prone to violence, madness, and becoming daemons. That night, the village was attacked by brigands who quickly succumbed to malevolence; Artorius took Celica's sister, Velvet, and her brother, Laphicet, deep into the woods to hide them somewhere relatively safe before he went back to find Celica. He eventually found her at the shrine outside town - a massive sinkhole that was said to be a portal to hell itself; she was surrounded by daemons, and she urged him to take Velvet and Laphicet and run. Artorius refused, saying that he wanted to live with her and their child; he fought off the daemons as best he could, but Celica eventually shoved him out of the way when he began to get overwhelmed, causing one of them to strike her and knock her back into the sinkhole, where she and her unborn child were consumed by some sort of massive entity in the pit below. Enraged, Artorius took up his sword against the daemons again, destroying all of them at a steep price - during the fight he sustained a violent injury, internally severing the nerves at his shoulder and ensuring the complete loss of the use of his right arm.
Melchior found Artorius after the fight was over, telling him that he should take what happened as a lesson to stop running away and trying to have a normal life, and that he should fulfill his duty to the people in awakening Innominat; just then, a burst of power came from the shrine, leading them to realize that Innominat's current resting place was deep within the pit itself, and that was the entity that consumed Celica and her unborn child. Along with the energy expelled from the pit, a pair of people known as malakhim (a type of supernatural being that could only be seen by those with high resonance) were created, reincarnations of Celica and her son both. Artorius picked up the pendant he had made for Celica - which had fallen at the edge of the pit when she was knocked in - and showed it to the malak that she had become, only to receive no reaction or sign of recognition; he then swore that he would give up everything that he had become, reclaim his place as Claudin's successor, and raise Innominat, making a pact with the malak that had once been his wife in the process. He named her Seres, and effectively bound her to him, ensuring that she would serve him from then on. Meanwhile, Melchior took the remaining unnamed malak for himself and left.
Artorius found Velvet and Laphicet where he had left them in the woods and brought them back to the village; he remained there for seven more years, continuing his research into Innominat and how it could be fully revived and maintained, while raising Velvet and Laphicet on his own. He spent this time trying to act like everything was fine, like he was fine, and as though everything was entirely normal despite the fact that it clearly wasn't. His right arm was completely paralyzed and he was unable to move or feel it, but he adapted well enough and retaught himself how to do everything with his left hand, including swordsmanship and basic carpentry; he often went into the woods to provide the family with food until Velvet was old enough to do it, at which point he taught her how to hunt wild animals and field dress her kills. Laphicet had been born frail, and after a while it became obvious to Artorius that he had what was known as the Twelve-Year Sickness, characterized by high fevers and a fragile cardiovascular system and named for the fact that those who have it die shortly after turning twelve. Laphicet also liked to borrow Arthur's books and read them, and as such also became aware of the prophecies surrounding Innominat - namely, one that stated that two human sacrifices were needed to revive it. Shortly before his twelfth birthday, Laphicet asked to speak to Artorius alone.
He asked Artorius about Innominat, and about the human sacrifices needed to revive it; Artorius was honest with him and told him that his unborn son had been one of the sacrifices given to the shrine, leaving one more required before Innominat would fully awaken. Laphicet asked if he could be the sacrifice needed, stating that he knew he was going to die soon and he wanted to create a world free of malevolence so his sister Velvet could be happy. After Artorius asked Laphicet some questions to ensure that he was ready and knew what he was doing, they agreed that Laphicet would be sacrificed on the next Scarlet Night, which would be occurring a few days from then, and Laphicet made Artorius promise never to tell Velvet about the arrangement they had made.
On the day before the Scarlet Night, Artorius talked to Velvet about how she needed to be more careful with her emotions, telling her that they ran too hot and they would be her undoing; he also told her that he wouldn't be coming home that night, so she shouldn't wait up for him and he'd see her the next day, and he warned her to be careful because there had been daemons sighted in the nearby areas. Velvet and Laphicet went out to sit near the shrine that evening, only to be attacked by one of the daemons she had been warned about; Velvet was solidly concussed during the fight that ensued, only to wake up in her house after Artorius had saved both Laphicet and her from being devoured. Artorius let Laphicet talk to Velvet a bit after she woke up, just until she passed out again, and then left to take Laphicet to the shrine.
Shortly after they arrived and began making preparations for the sacrifice, Velvet arrived at the scene, having awakened shortly after they left and becoming frightened for Laphicet when she couldn't find him anywhere. While she was originally relieved to see them and assumed that Artorius had brought Laphicet away from the village to protect him, she soon realized something was wrong due to the way they were both acting; to keep her from interfering, Artorius used his powers to pin her to the ground and set her on fire, then turned back to Laphicet. He proceeded to stab him, impaling him clear through the abdomen front-to-back while Velvet screamed and writhed on the ground. While on fire. Because the plot of this game is sort of fucked up.
Velvet managed to break free of her bindings as Artorius lowered Laphicet's body and threw it into the pit; she caught Laphicet by the wrist, clinging to the edge of the pit with her free hand but unable to pull both of them back up. Artorius told her that Laphicet was already dead and she needed to let go of him; when she refused, he berated her for being a "slave to emotion" and cut her arm off at the elbow, sending both Velvet and Laphicet plunging downward into the depths of the shrine. Laphicet was consumed as the second sacrifice needed to begin properly resurrecting Innominat. And Velvet...
Well, she didn't stay down there.
Velvet was expelled from the pit, having undergone a change that stripped her of her humanity; she was turned into a powerful daemon known as a therion, with a mutated left arm that she could use to consume other living organisms. (We don't ever really get into the logistics of the demon arm; we just accept that it works. We also accept that Berseria really, really hates arms.) Consumed by her hatred, Velvet went on a rampage, destroying several other daemons that were entering the area; after she was done, Artorius told her to look around at what she'd done - the daemons that she'd defeated were all reverted back to their original human forms, revealing them to be the members of her own village, all of them slaughtered by Velvet.
Meanwhile, as Velvet understandably had a breakdown at all of this, the collective resonance of the world increased due to Innominat's awakening, revealing several malakhim being drawn into the area and immediately wiped of their free will, leaving them as blank slates willing to do whatever Artorius commanded them to do; Velvet eventually passed out and was immediately captured and imprisoned in a dark cell on the prison island Titania, where Artorius would eventually command that experiments on her therion powers should be done on her and that she should be tasked with consuming large amounts of malevolence to aid in reviving Innominat. Artorius himself left the village for a nearby city to purify it with the malakhim's assistance, and went on to use those malakhim to rid large portions of the world of daemons.
And once his work had been carried out, the world was by and large stabilized, and many new exorcists were brought into his fold, he was hailed as the savior of the world.
Artorius became the head exorcist of an organization called the Abbey; over the next three years, he continued spreading his influence and his teachings throughout the world, insisting that the world needed to let go of its attachment to emotion and follow the path of "true reason" instead - a cold, purely logical point of view with very little room for human emotion or free thought, one that condemned self-interest and promoted the safety of the many before the desires of the few. He also heavily endorsed the worship of the god Innominat, and established many new laws among the people; most of these laws were good things, albeit strict - laws against gambling and limiting the consumption of vices like alcohol, for example - and it was made clear that anyone who broke the laws of the land would be punished with banishment from the cities or embargos on their trade until the crimes were atoned for in some way. There was some pushback against him, but generally speaking the people were grateful to him for saving them from the immediate threat of the daemons, and to the Abbey for continuing to keep their cities safe.
During this time, he instated Melchior as one of his legates, one of two of the highest-ranking exorcists in the Abbey; the other slot went to the swordsman that had attacked Artorius years before, now known as Shigure Rangetsu. Melchior served as both his advisor and his "shadow" - basically, the person whose job it is to be a shitty person in the name of the Lord and do all the dirty work so Artorius didn't have to. Shigure, on the other hand, became his bodyguard, presumably on the logic of keeping one's friends close but one's enemies closer - Shigure wanted to kill Artorius more than anyone else in the world, and as such he presumably would keep someone else from stealing his kill. (Melchior is good at his job. Shigure is not, on merit of "Shigure does not give a fuck.")
Also during this span of time, Artorius embedded a special experimental formula in Seres' body that would crystallize upon her death, for the sake of creating a device that he hoped would grant him full control over Innominat at the time of his complete revival; he also ordered that six other therions should be found or created, and placed at certain locations spread out over the continent, where their purpose would be to join Velvet in eating malevolence and channeling it to Innominat to aid in completing his return to power. As Innominat strengthened, Artorius had a temple called the Empyrean's Throne built at what was to be the site of his true reawakening; he spent longer and longer periods of time there, only leaving when called to the capital to give a speech and be officially granted a position of political power by the royal family. Even after Velvet broke out of prison and made no secret of the fact that she was out to kill him, he spent most of his time meditating and offering prayers to Innominat; he was interrupted during one such session by Velvet and the rest of the party, having shown up to do exactly what she'd been claiming she was going to do and kill Artorius.
So naturally, Artorius kicked her ass.
The fight was short, due to the fact that he effectively curbstomped the entire party, at one point impaling Velvet through the abdomen in the same way he had stabbed Laphicet three years prior; after he was done handing Velvet's ass to her, other high-ranking members of the Abbey burst into the chamber, joining the fight against the party until one of the members - the malak that was the reincarnation of Artorius' unborn son, now named "Laphicet" by Velvet due to his uncanny resemblence to her dead brother - opened a rift between dimensions that allowed them to escape. One of the exorcists, a woman named Eleanor, followed them into the rift; Artorius, intrigued with the malak's power, managed to contact her with Melchior's assistance, and told her to bring the malak to the Abbey headquarters. (Eleanor succeeded heroically in doing the exact opposite of any of that.)
Velvet then spent a good while causing massive amounts of destruction wherever she went, earning Velvet the title "Lord of Calamity" among the people. Having learned about the therions and the role they played in reviving Innominat, Velvet and the party set out around the continent freeing them from the Abbey's control; they also chased out all the daemons at the prison Velvet had been incarcerated in, claiming it for their own as a hideout and keeping the therions there. Artorius, recognizing the need to strengthen the Abbey and take down the threat his sister-in-law was comprising, summoned one of the non-essential Abbey members (a praetor named Oscar) to the temple; with his legates as witnesses, he bestowed a special power called armatization upon Oscar, something that would grant him the ability to fuse with his malakhim into a far more powerful being with stronger powers and physical capabilities, though the means Artorius gave him by which to do so was incomplete and untested, with the possibility of killing the user. Oscar willingly accepted the risks, though the entire procedure upset his sister Teresa, who tried to convince Artorius to let her do it instead; Artorius' response was to strip her of her tethered malak in order to prevent her from interfering, rendering her powerless and telling her that he'd give it back after Oscar's mission was complete.
Oscar's assignment, uh, technically went well for the Abbey...? It did a great job of teaching them how not to armatize, seeing as Oscar pushed it too hard, started to turn into some sort of horrible monster as a result (nearly killing him a whole lot), and required having the malak forcibly punched out of him (actually killing him a whole lot). To add insult to injury, Teresa followed him out there and also got killed a whole lot. With all of this in mind, Artorius managed to fix the armatization process a bit - by which we mean he installed a magical killswitch on it that would destroy both the malak and the exorcist if they overdid it, so instead of turning into monsters, they just sort of...exploded. He then decided to call that good enough for government work and bestow armatization upon every damn exorcist in the Abbey, because the plot of this game is sort of fucked up.
Shortly after this was done, news reached the Abbey that the therions were being held on Titania; Artorius and several other exorcists invaded the prison, holding it under seige and drawing Velvet out for a confrontation. This time, however, Artorius didn't fight her himself; rather, he called on Innominat, who was not at his full power but now capable of becoming a corporeal being, using a reincarnated malak as his vessel... And it just happened to be that the vessel he was using was Velvet's brother.
Innominat proceeded to nearly consume the party by way of opening a void in the ground, only for them to escape again using malak!Laphicet's power; Innominat pursued them, engaging them in battle twice, only to be badly defeated by the party both times. Artorius met up with Innominat after the second battle, chiding him for being beaten so easily but eventually forgiving him for it, saying that it was all right as long as Innominat learned from his mistakes and did better next time. He also told Innominat not to pursue the party at this time, telling him that they needed to prepare for the Ceremony of Suppression, which has a perfectly happy name that is not ominous at all, and was to be held the next day.
The ceremony in question went well in a slightly more legitimate way than "everybody died", in that it did exactly what it was supposed to do; it's just that "exactly what it was supposed to do" was horrific. It amplified Innominat's power, spreading his sphere of influence to cover most of the main island comprising the continent and suppressing the collective will of the people - stripping them of all emotion and ability to think and act for themselves, making them into perfectly obedient creatures that adhered to the concept of "true reason" above all else. It stopped all conflict, all negativity, all tears and fears and hatred, and perhaps most importantly, all generation of malevolence, effectively saving humanity from itself at the cost of all free will. However, it also had a great deal of unintended negative consequences: those who perceived themselves as bad people according to "true reason" quickly came to the conclusion that they didn't deserve to live anymore due to being full of sin, leading to mass suicides. They also quickly began justifying passing judgement on others for being too worldly, too sinful, or too generally useless to society to deserve to live.
Basically, this was probably going to turn into Lord of the Flies really, really quickly.
Velvet and the party, having gotten a better idea of what they were up against and being completely wigged out by the suppression party that was happening right in front of them, decided to resurrect the four elemental Empyreans - in other words, the elder gods who created the world - to help them defeat Innominat; they eventually succeeded, but in order to do so, they sacrificed several high-ranking members of the Abbey and terrorized several towns in the process. Facing mounting pressure to go on the offensive and confident in his ability to control Innominat, Artorius publicized the notion that he was going to engage the Lord of Calamity in battle.
The party met with Artorius and Innominat deep within Innominat's domain, at a place atop the Empyrean's Throne that could be said to be an extension of Innominat's body itself; rather than another immediate defeat, however, the party managed to hold its own, eventually driving Artorius to finish reawakening Innominat himself - he allowed the deity to consume his own malevolence, revealing that he had been harboring so much pain and despair over the years that it was on the verge of killing him. Innominat consumed his despair and Artorius revealed that he'd finally managed to get his shit together with regards to armatization, drawing Innominat into his body and fusing them together into a stronger, more powerful form - one that notably gave Artorius use of his right arm back for the duration of the battle, which was something of a worry now that he was literally an eight-foot tall multi-haloed angel with eight wings and a sword almost twice his size. (They could have been anything; they decided to be the archangel Michael. It's stupid. Cool-looking, but stupid.) The party engaged Artorius and Innominat in battle one last time, narrowly securing a victory against them at the hands of Velvet: she bit them on the neck, seizing Innominat and physically separating them by dragging him out of Artorius' body, reverting the physical alterations they'd undergone. She got Artorius' weapon away from him, slammed him into the ground and stabbed him with it, impaling him the same way he had impaled both Laphicet and Velvet earlier on.
As he lay dying, he called Velvet a true hero, and confessed that after Celica died, some part of him had always wished that Velvet and Laphicet had died instead of her. However, he also admitted that if they had died and Celica had lived, he would have been trying to save the world for them instead, because all he had wanted was to save his family. Velvet cried for him as he died; he offered no apologies or gratitude for her tears or her understanding, though he did express regret in a very muted way, calling the entire thing "such a pity" before he passed on.