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History Writeup
The long version.
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.
Rita's backstory as described in the novel Tales of Vesperia: Blue Sky
Rita grew up in Aspio, an imperial city inside a massive cavern dedicated to blastia research – essentially one big research centre and the facilities required to house and feed the scholars, it was hardly a homely place. Rita never knew her father, and her mother, a mage, died in an explosion on a research trip when Rita was only five years old. One of her mother's mage colleagues by the name of Marget stepped in to take care of Rita when she discovered the child wasn't being properly looked after by anyone else. Rita quickly became attached to Marget, who encouraged her budding interest in blastia and dedicated time every day to checking in on her. Rita was intelligent but hadn't built any social skills, leading her to get along poorly with the few other children around, who were jealous of her outpacing them in studies to become mages, and so she spent all her free time in the research facility's library learning all she could instead of interacting with her peers. This suited her just fine, though, because she felt that as long as she had Marget, she wasn't lonely and didn't need anyone else.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just the other children in whom jealousy and resentment was brewing: as the years went by, the same also happened to Marget as she realized she was falling behind a mere child. She used an only 9-year-old Rita by getting her to solve a problem related to a newly-excavated blastia and then published the results, copying Rita's notes and presenting the findings as her own research behind Rita's back, all with the intention of getting a promotion away from Aspio. Upon finding out, Rita was devastated—she swore off all human relationships, finding solace by immersing herself only in blastia and ignoring all else, becoming a certified mage at the age of just ten. Marget got her promotion, and the two never saw each other again.
Main Canon
Five years later, Mordio is now the name of a famous genius mage, although within Aspio itself, she's more infamous for her eccentricities and bad temper. Perhaps taking advantage of that fame, a blastia thief used the name Mordio to swindle people and steal blastia cores in the imperial capital, and this is how Rita comes to meet the party.
Yuri—accompanied by Estelle, Repede, and Karol—comes to Aspio in his pursuit of the blastia thief; they sneak into the city and break into Rita's house. Estelle is able to defuse the situation by speaking apologetically to Rita, who suggests the real thieves may be in some ruins not far from the city. Rita leads them there, and while they do find one of the thieves, Rita is injured in the ensuing fight. When Estelle heals her using magic, Rita immediately notices something strange about Estelle's abilities: that Estelle's blastia is only for show, and she is in fact using magic naturally. Intrigued and fascinated by this, Rita opts to join the party as they continue towards other cities—even crossing continents—in their pursuit of the thieves, much to Estelle's excitement.
Along the way, they run into several strange incidents involving blastia. Rita notices that the blastia in each case are running unusual and abnormal formulae, but all of them also end up destroyed by a mysterious armoured figure riding a dragon, furiously upsetting Rita each time. Another incident occurs when the group reaches the city of Heliord: there, the barrier blastia goes out of control, outputting a life-threatening level of aer while simultaneously at risk of an explosion that could take the entire city with it. Ignoring the danger of getting too close, Rita approaches the blastia to try and fix it, though she starts to succumb to the high aer levels—until Estelle follows to help and her presence somehow dissipates some of the aer, allowing Rita to finish fixing the formula. However, a smaller explosion still ends up happening, and Rita incurs what likely would be a fatal injury if Estelle didn't heal her. Waking up to find Estelle asleep at her bedside after watching over her recovery, Rita finally accepts Estelle as her first friend, an important step that allows Rita to gradually forge friendships with the rest of the party.
Joined by Raven and Judith—the latter of whom is actually the blastia-destroying Dragon Rider, unbeknownst to Rita—the group eventually finds and defeats the thieves' ringleader. However, Estelle is subsequently attacked by a large talking monster named Phaeroh, who calls her a poison to the world that must be purged. Judith secretly convinces Phaeroh to back off and later tells Estelle, who wants to meet Phaeroh and learn about her power, that he resides in the desert. Since Estelle is determined to go despite the danger, the party accompanies her—including Rita, although she uses the excuse that she's doing blastia research. They learn that Phaeroh is an Entelexeia but are unable to find him, and instead meet with another Entelexeia, Belius. Unfortunately, Belius is attacked by monster hunters before she can explain Estelle's nature, and when Estelle instinctively tries to heal her, her powers cause Belius to lose control and the party is forced to kill her; in her death, her body leaves behind an incredibly dense and crystallized mass of aer called an apatheia. The party flees when the knights move in to arrest all involved, but just as Rita notices an abnormally high output from the blastia powering their ship, Judith destroys it and flies away on the dragon Ba'ul, revealing her true identity and leaving behind Rita, who screams after her in hurt and betrayal.
Looking for Judith, the party travels to the destroyed Krityan city on Mt. Temza where they see the remnants of a terrible war, and learn that the Great War ten years prior (of which most people know very little) was fought between the Empire and the Entelexeia. Upon reuniting with Judith and demanding an explanation, she reveals that all the blastia she destroyed were a special type called Hermes blastia, which were so efficient and powerful that they consumed staggering amounts of aer and caused the aer krene to overcompensate, leading to an overall increase in the world's aer that could lead to catastrophe. Therefore, the Entelexeia had been trying to protect the world by going to war with the humans who used the Hermes blastia, and Judith was doing the same by destroying any Hermes blastia she came across. Faced with such a signficant reason behind Judith's actions, Rita was still angry but chose to accept it—although she still scolded Judith for not telling them sooner and trying to take on something so important by herself.
Properly reunited, Judith brings them to Phaeroh, who—as Rita suspected after hearing Judith's story—explains that Estelle's powers are just like the Hermes blastia, and that she will bring disaster to the world if she isn't killed. Yuri and Judith are able to convince him to allow them time to search for an alternative, and he points them in the direction of the ancient Krityan city of Myorzo, which is isolated from the rest of the world. There, they learn that blastia cores are made from crushed and processed apatheia, but all blastia, not just Hermes models, contribute to the aer imbalance problem. This problem is even more dire than expected: they learn that when the aer imbalance grew severe enough in ancient times, it summoned a massive creature, the Adephagos, which tried to devour the entire planet—and that the same thing is at risk of happening again as the aer imbalance grows. The Adephagos was previously defeated by sacrificing the lives of the Children of the Full Moon—in other words, people like Estelle—to power a giant blastia to stop it.
An upset Estelle runs out of the room and Yuri dissuades Rita from following, feeling she needs space, so the party borrows a house to stay in and consider what they've learned, although it's an unhappy discussion, and Raven also steps outside after a while. Eventually, however, the party discovers they can't find Estelle or Raven anywhere in the city, and they discover a teleportation blastia that's been activated. Upon following its trail thanks to Ba'ul, they discover that Estelle is being held captive by Alexei, the commandant of the imperial knights, who intends to use her power for his own ends. He escapes with Estelle while the party is forced to fight Raven, who had secretly been one of Alexei's knights all along—however, during the fight, they discover that his heart has been replaced with a blastia powered by his life force, which was done by Alexei. Alexei tries to have all of them buried together within the shrine where they were fighting, but the party gets through to Raven, who seemingly sacrifices himself to allow them to escape—although he reappears not long after, having been rescued by some of his own knights, and gives the party the chance to end his life as punishment for his betrayal. Instead, they all smack him one and leave it at that, allowing him to rejoin them and face Alexei.
Although they fail two more rescue attempts—first falling for a decoy and then getting blown clear across the continent—they finally manage to get into the imperial capital and confront Alexei. They aren't in time to stop him from using Estelle's power to activate a secret function of the capital's barrier blastia, however, and the giant blastia which stopped the Adephagos is summoned from the ocean. Alexei heads for that location, leading the party to have to fight Estelle, who is being controlled. Yuri is thankfully able to call her back to her senses and Rita makes an adjustment to the control formula that Alexei made, and Estelle is able to control her powers again—but since the formula is currently drawing all power from the barrier blastia which is needed to protect the city, Rita stays up all night working on a more long-term fix. The only thing she can come up with, though, is to use Estelle's own life force to power it, since Estelle's ability could interfere with any aer-based formula. Although unsatisfied with this result, they need to stop Alexei from disturbing the giant blastia, so she prepares to head there with the party the next morning...and this is her canon point!
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.
Rita's backstory as described in the novel Tales of Vesperia: Blue Sky
Rita grew up in Aspio, an imperial city inside a massive cavern dedicated to blastia research – essentially one big research centre and the facilities required to house and feed the scholars, it was hardly a homely place. Rita never knew her father, and her mother, a mage, died in an explosion on a research trip when Rita was only five years old. One of her mother's mage colleagues by the name of Marget stepped in to take care of Rita when she discovered the child wasn't being properly looked after by anyone else. Rita quickly became attached to Marget, who encouraged her budding interest in blastia and dedicated time every day to checking in on her. Rita was intelligent but hadn't built any social skills, leading her to get along poorly with the few other children around, who were jealous of her outpacing them in studies to become mages, and so she spent all her free time in the research facility's library learning all she could instead of interacting with her peers. This suited her just fine, though, because she felt that as long as she had Marget, she wasn't lonely and didn't need anyone else.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just the other children in whom jealousy and resentment was brewing: as the years went by, the same also happened to Marget as she realized she was falling behind a mere child. She used an only 9-year-old Rita by getting her to solve a problem related to a newly-excavated blastia and then published the results, copying Rita's notes and presenting the findings as her own research behind Rita's back, all with the intention of getting a promotion away from Aspio. Upon finding out, Rita was devastated—she swore off all human relationships, finding solace by immersing herself only in blastia and ignoring all else, becoming a certified mage at the age of just ten. Marget got her promotion, and the two never saw each other again.
Main Canon
Five years later, Mordio is now the name of a famous genius mage, although within Aspio itself, she's more infamous for her eccentricities and bad temper. Perhaps taking advantage of that fame, a blastia thief used the name Mordio to swindle people and steal blastia cores in the imperial capital, and this is how Rita comes to meet the party.
Yuri—accompanied by Estelle, Repede, and Karol—comes to Aspio in his pursuit of the blastia thief; they sneak into the city and break into Rita's house. Estelle is able to defuse the situation by speaking apologetically to Rita, who suggests the real thieves may be in some ruins not far from the city. Rita leads them there, and while they do find one of the thieves, Rita is injured in the ensuing fight. When Estelle heals her using magic, Rita immediately notices something strange about Estelle's abilities: that Estelle's blastia is only for show, and she is in fact using magic naturally. Intrigued and fascinated by this, Rita opts to join the party as they continue towards other cities—even crossing continents—in their pursuit of the thieves, much to Estelle's excitement.
Along the way, they run into several strange incidents involving blastia. Rita notices that the blastia in each case are running unusual and abnormal formulae, but all of them also end up destroyed by a mysterious armoured figure riding a dragon, furiously upsetting Rita each time. Another incident occurs when the group reaches the city of Heliord: there, the barrier blastia goes out of control, outputting a life-threatening level of aer while simultaneously at risk of an explosion that could take the entire city with it. Ignoring the danger of getting too close, Rita approaches the blastia to try and fix it, though she starts to succumb to the high aer levels—until Estelle follows to help and her presence somehow dissipates some of the aer, allowing Rita to finish fixing the formula. However, a smaller explosion still ends up happening, and Rita incurs what likely would be a fatal injury if Estelle didn't heal her. Waking up to find Estelle asleep at her bedside after watching over her recovery, Rita finally accepts Estelle as her first friend, an important step that allows Rita to gradually forge friendships with the rest of the party.
Joined by Raven and Judith—the latter of whom is actually the blastia-destroying Dragon Rider, unbeknownst to Rita—the group eventually finds and defeats the thieves' ringleader. However, Estelle is subsequently attacked by a large talking monster named Phaeroh, who calls her a poison to the world that must be purged. Judith secretly convinces Phaeroh to back off and later tells Estelle, who wants to meet Phaeroh and learn about her power, that he resides in the desert. Since Estelle is determined to go despite the danger, the party accompanies her—including Rita, although she uses the excuse that she's doing blastia research. They learn that Phaeroh is an Entelexeia but are unable to find him, and instead meet with another Entelexeia, Belius. Unfortunately, Belius is attacked by monster hunters before she can explain Estelle's nature, and when Estelle instinctively tries to heal her, her powers cause Belius to lose control and the party is forced to kill her; in her death, her body leaves behind an incredibly dense and crystallized mass of aer called an apatheia. The party flees when the knights move in to arrest all involved, but just as Rita notices an abnormally high output from the blastia powering their ship, Judith destroys it and flies away on the dragon Ba'ul, revealing her true identity and leaving behind Rita, who screams after her in hurt and betrayal.
Looking for Judith, the party travels to the destroyed Krityan city on Mt. Temza where they see the remnants of a terrible war, and learn that the Great War ten years prior (of which most people know very little) was fought between the Empire and the Entelexeia. Upon reuniting with Judith and demanding an explanation, she reveals that all the blastia she destroyed were a special type called Hermes blastia, which were so efficient and powerful that they consumed staggering amounts of aer and caused the aer krene to overcompensate, leading to an overall increase in the world's aer that could lead to catastrophe. Therefore, the Entelexeia had been trying to protect the world by going to war with the humans who used the Hermes blastia, and Judith was doing the same by destroying any Hermes blastia she came across. Faced with such a signficant reason behind Judith's actions, Rita was still angry but chose to accept it—although she still scolded Judith for not telling them sooner and trying to take on something so important by herself.
Properly reunited, Judith brings them to Phaeroh, who—as Rita suspected after hearing Judith's story—explains that Estelle's powers are just like the Hermes blastia, and that she will bring disaster to the world if she isn't killed. Yuri and Judith are able to convince him to allow them time to search for an alternative, and he points them in the direction of the ancient Krityan city of Myorzo, which is isolated from the rest of the world. There, they learn that blastia cores are made from crushed and processed apatheia, but all blastia, not just Hermes models, contribute to the aer imbalance problem. This problem is even more dire than expected: they learn that when the aer imbalance grew severe enough in ancient times, it summoned a massive creature, the Adephagos, which tried to devour the entire planet—and that the same thing is at risk of happening again as the aer imbalance grows. The Adephagos was previously defeated by sacrificing the lives of the Children of the Full Moon—in other words, people like Estelle—to power a giant blastia to stop it.
An upset Estelle runs out of the room and Yuri dissuades Rita from following, feeling she needs space, so the party borrows a house to stay in and consider what they've learned, although it's an unhappy discussion, and Raven also steps outside after a while. Eventually, however, the party discovers they can't find Estelle or Raven anywhere in the city, and they discover a teleportation blastia that's been activated. Upon following its trail thanks to Ba'ul, they discover that Estelle is being held captive by Alexei, the commandant of the imperial knights, who intends to use her power for his own ends. He escapes with Estelle while the party is forced to fight Raven, who had secretly been one of Alexei's knights all along—however, during the fight, they discover that his heart has been replaced with a blastia powered by his life force, which was done by Alexei. Alexei tries to have all of them buried together within the shrine where they were fighting, but the party gets through to Raven, who seemingly sacrifices himself to allow them to escape—although he reappears not long after, having been rescued by some of his own knights, and gives the party the chance to end his life as punishment for his betrayal. Instead, they all smack him one and leave it at that, allowing him to rejoin them and face Alexei.
Although they fail two more rescue attempts—first falling for a decoy and then getting blown clear across the continent—they finally manage to get into the imperial capital and confront Alexei. They aren't in time to stop him from using Estelle's power to activate a secret function of the capital's barrier blastia, however, and the giant blastia which stopped the Adephagos is summoned from the ocean. Alexei heads for that location, leading the party to have to fight Estelle, who is being controlled. Yuri is thankfully able to call her back to her senses and Rita makes an adjustment to the control formula that Alexei made, and Estelle is able to control her powers again—but since the formula is currently drawing all power from the barrier blastia which is needed to protect the city, Rita stays up all night working on a more long-term fix. The only thing she can come up with, though, is to use Estelle's own life force to power it, since Estelle's ability could interfere with any aer-based formula. Although unsatisfied with this result, they need to stop Alexei from disturbing the giant blastia, so she prepares to head there with the party the next morning...and this is her canon point!