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App for Etraya
⏵ player information
name and pronouns: Zen (she/her)
age: 25+
contact:
⏵ character information
name: Rita Mordio
canon: Tales of Vesperia (360 version) + CRAU from Come Sail Away
age: 17 (after two years in Sail; 15 in canon)
canon point: After rescuing Estelle but before heading to Zaude (canon); endgame where everyone is in boat jail (Sail)
history:
Game plot but Rita's own wiki entry is very inadequate so if you'd like more info on her specifically, I wrote up this. TL;DR: feral cat of a teen finally gets some positive human socialization and learns the power of love and friendship while saving the world.
CRAU History - TL;DR: still-spicy teen makes enemies and friends alike on a hellboat, then helps break the whole thing.
abilities:
Rita is a mage, and using her blastia (a magic device), she can generate a small magic barrier around herself as well as cast offensive spells of most elements: fire, darkness, water, earth, and some wind magic. They range in strength from small spells, like a single small fireball, to powerful advanced ones, like a massive fiery tornado. She must have time and space in order to cast, though, and more powerful spells take longer. Her blastia is also required, as is a magic "fuel" called aer that exists everywhere in her canon. It's hinted that she could theoretically use support magic if she wanted to...but she thinks it's boring, and rather prefers flashy magic. Her blastia can also be used for physical attacks, like generating a small shockwave immediately around her, or extending a giant cat paw from her book (seriously). She isn't very strong physically, though, and these attacks require a suitable weapon with good aer conductance.
Being a video game character, it's unclear what non-combat magic she can use, if any. The closest example is a scene where she builds a device to keep nearby blastia activated.
As discussed, she'll be strictly limited to low-level spells only without regaining higher levels of aer, and she'll also likely have a limit on the number of spells she can cast over a period of time. It should be noted that blastia can be configured to use life force instead of aer and Rita knows how to do this, but it's a setup she would only use in dire circumstances as a last resort.
CRAU
Rita's abilities have changed very little, because she's of the opinion that her magic is already far more elegant than any weapon, and she's turned down Clarke's attempts to try and get her to learn how to use a gun. She has collaborated on magic with Jade Curtiss for nearly two full years, however, sharing structures behind their respective unique spells and expanding her previously-limited range of wind spells, as well as learning some powerful ones she wouldn't normally know at her canon point (Meteor Storm and Indignation, and she was also working on altering Meteor Storm to Apurrcalypse). Regaining some magic books from home also allowed her to learn the Magic Combo and Levitation skills. The former allows her to cast an altered arte immediately after the base one, no casting time required, while Levitation does what the name suggests: allows her to float off the ground and move around, and she can still cast magic while in the air. This leaves her very vulnerable to being knocked down and also drains her magic extremely quickly, so she won't be able to use it until she gets some aer level regains.
One of her new friends did finally convince her that stabbing an enemy in an emergency isn't a bad move—all they had to do was tell her to leave the blade in, then she doesn't have to worry about the mess and the enemy has to inflict pain on themselves to pull it out! Win-win.
personality:
Rita considers herself to be all about science, practicality, and logic. This is true to a point--for instance, she dislikes ghosts and other "illogical" phenomena, she prefers not to dwell on the past, and she is more of apessimistrealist than optimist--but she is in fact someone who's far more ruled by emotion than she thinks. One only needs to look at the fact she avoided further human relationships after Marget's betrayal to save herself the potential pain and heartache that she feared was inevitable. Even when the party first meets her, she's not as disinterested or cold as one might initially assume, as they quickly learn when she readily warns them to be careful around slippery rocks or traps, and she's also much chattier than would be expected of someone anti-social. Although she feels these emotions very strongly, she isn't very good at actually dealing with them--again, see: cutting off all interpersonal relationships entirely--and combined with her lacking social skills, her two most common expressive modes are embarrassed awkward or loud anger.
Luckily, she has since learned that there are people worth knowing and worth loving, and she's come to recognize that these relationships are more fulfilling than her lonely time spent with only blastia (but blastia are still important to her, too). Thanks to Estelle, she's not only willing to form bonds but with the right people also does so quickly, even if she still has some very rough edges that she's working on. She's quick to argue and even quicker to casually sling insults like "idiot", but she's also fiercely loyal to those she cares about. Her temper and tendency to run her mouth are just still works in progress.
CRAU
Some baby steps have been made in certain areas! She has relented just slightly on her stubborn assertion that the supernatural doesn't exist, seeing as the ship was full of things that didn't make any scientific sense, although she much prefers when things have a logic to them. And she's still working on her attitude (still very much a work in progress), because it turns out she doesn't like disappointing the people she loves! They deserve better than her failing them (people she doesn't like? She doesn't care what they think). The fear/worry that she'll start to care for someone only to lose them in some way—which has always been there in some way, thanks to her mother's death and Marget's betrayal—has only grown as she's been plucked from her own world, had to accept she'll never see those first precious friends again, and then had to watch those she cared about vanish on the ship, too. But while that fear is present, she isn't allowing it to rule her; for the time being, anyway, it's just a bit of an unhappy undercurrent to her relationships.
samples: Sylvie, Clarke, Krouse.
Canon History
Some vital background
It's impossible to talk about Rita without first explaining blastia. Blastia are a class of magic technology invented by the ancients; after the collapse of this ancient civilization, the blastia were buried underground for ~mysterious~ reasons, but are once again being excavated, studied, and heavily utilized in current human society – their functions include everything from indoor lighting and water purification to massive monster-repelling barriers that enclose all major cities, as well as personal jewelry that allows a person to use magic. Accordingly, in this setting, a mage is essentially a blastia engineer/researcher.
Blastia run on a fuel called aer, which is described as some sort of non-matter substance that gradually transitions into matter in stages, and it is presumably the energy released from these phase transitions that powers the blastia. Magic in Rita's world is therefore considered scientific rather than something supernatural. Aer exists everywhere in the world and affects everything, from one's health to the very weather. An imbalance of aer therefore has detrimental effects to both blastia as well as living organisms. Aer at standard levels is generally invisible to the naked eye but when concentrations are high enough (at which point they're also dangerous enough), it becomes visible, resembling glowing particles. Although it is not widely known, blastia can also be configured to be powered by human life force instead of aer, and Rita knows how to do this.
Rita's backstory as described in the novel Tales of Vesperia: Blue Sky
Rita grew up in Aspio, an imperial city dedicated to blastia research. She never knew her father and her mage mother died in an explosion when Rita was only five; subsequently, another mage named Marget stepped in and looked after her. She got along poorly with the few other children around due in part to her own lack of social skills and their jealousy and resentment towards her intelligence, so she generally spent her free time studying everything she could about blastia instead, feeling that she didn't need anyone else besides Marget in her life anyway. Unfortunately, the same happened with Marget as she gradually realized she was falling behind a mere child, and she ended up using Rita to solve problems for her, then plagiarized the child's notes to earn herself an award and a promotion away from Aspio. Upon discovering this, an only nine-year-old Rita was devastated and betrayed, and swore of all human relationships, finding solace by immersing herself only in blastia and ignoring all else. She became a certified mage at the age of just ten; Marget got her promotion, and the two never saw each other again.
Main Canon
Now fifteen, Rita was infamous as a genius mage but also avoided due to her terrible temper and eccentricities. The party encountered her when they broke into her house in pursuit of a blastia thief using her name, and while attempting to track down the real thieves, Rita was injured and healed by Estelle's magic. Immediately recognizing something strange—that Estelle was using magic naturally, and not via her blastia, which was actually just for show—Rita continued to travel with them. This was initially out of interest and fascination towards Estelle's power, but despite her reticence at first, Estelle's friendly disposition and efforts to help Rita eventually won her over, and Rita accepted Estelle as her first ever friend—thereby opening the door to accepting more people into her heart, as she would with the remainder of the party.
Judith seemingly betrayed the party when she destroyed the blastia on the ship, and revealed that she had destroyed numerous other blastia up to that point, drawing Rita's anger. However, she revealed a very good reason for this: the blastia were causing an aer imbalance harmful to the planet. Rita therefore forgave her, though not without a scolding for keeping that information to herself since she was still angry. Unfortunately, Estelle's abilities meant that she was also just as dangerous as the blastia, and so the party started desperately trying to look for a way to fix the aer imbalance so that Estelle would not have to die for the sake of the planet. She was kidnapped by Commandant Alexei of the imperial knights by way of Raven, who had joined the party, and they were forced to fight him—but like Judith, there was more beneath the surface than a purely selfish betrayal: Raven had died and been resurrected by Alexei ten years prior, now kept alive by Alexei's blastia in his chest in place of a heart. He had given up and was going to allow Alexei to kill him along with the party, but at Yuri's protagonist speech, he instead saved them from the collapsing building and appeared to sacrifice himself to save them. He would turn up again alive shortly thereafter and offer to let them kill him in revenge for his betrayal, but instead they all gave him a good walloping and welcomed him back into the fold so they could all go rescue Estelle and try to prevent the aer imbalance from unleashing a catastrophe on the world.
They were able to get Estelle back, and Rita found a temporary solution for her powers that involved using a control formula powered by Estelle's own life force. She was then about to set off with the party to stop Alexei from using a potentially dangerous blastia, and this was her canonpoint.
Come Sail Away CRAU History
Rita spent ~2 years aboard the Serena Eterna, a cruise ship pocket dimension powered by characters' suffering where they were just the latest batch of passengers to serve as batteries, while previous passengers were reduced to ghosts maintaining the ship's amenities. Much like in canon, Rita became most well-known among the others for being loud and temperamental thanks to some very loud arguments and almost-fights, but she also collected a small circle of close, precious friends—including fellow nerd and not-examining-those-feelings-too-closely dad figure Jade Curtiss and from fraught to sorta friends to basically sisters Clarke Griffin—as well as sweet vampire boyfriend Natsuno Yuuki. They're gross and embarrassing with interlocking matching cat necklaces and everything. Rita has doodled Catsunos in her notebook and claimed it's "research" to anyone who caught it.
Having a group of people she cared about only gave her more reason to pursue an out from the ship that wouldn't involve their internal torture, of course. She did spend some time having a little existential crisis when it was revealed that they were all doubles of their original selves still at home (aside from those who were dead at home) and were unable to return to their original worlds, but while some passengers chose to try working with the captain and convince him of a better way to do things, Rita stubbornly remained part of ~Team Mutiny~. She helped launch a space probe beyond the pocket dimension and didn't talk Clarke out of using the red string they received in response, which ended up enslaving the captain again and landing them all in prison—which is not how she'd hoped things would go, but with nothing but a bare concrete cell, she had little to do but think about regrets. And that's when she ended up in Etraya instead.
Throughout her time on the ship, among a battle royale, a desert zombie escape, a spate of ghostly possessions, and a conformity village pocket dimension, she's died a few times and been brainwashed on a couple occasions as well. With a major brainwashing being relatively recent, she despises choices being made for her or her friends, even if it goes against her desire to keep them safe. She won't force anything on them; their future is theirs to decide, and to make.