[ToX] The Events Leading Up to the Game
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taleslationsSummary-style version of what led to the events of the game.
Sources: the game itself, the official guide books, backstory novels and CDs, and development team interviews. More detail can be provided upon request.
Note: This only applies to Xillia 1, as Xillia 2 is a mess of retcon when it comes to that part of worldbuilding, and so it would be too difficult to incorporate it.
Warning: spoilers for Tales of Xillia 1.
Sources: the game itself, the official guide books, backstory novels and CDs, and development team interviews. More detail can be provided upon request.
Note: This only applies to Xillia 1, as Xillia 2 is a mess of retcon when it comes to that part of worldbuilding, and so it would be too difficult to incorporate it.
Warning: spoilers for Tales of Xillia 1.
A Long Long Time Ago: Spirits and Spyrixes
Ever since the creation of the world, humans have coexisted with spirits, unawares of their existence. There existed legends and they would channel them instinctively to cast spirit artes. However, despite how practical artes made life, there were a lot of limitations, especially since mana lobe ability would vary from person to person.
A device that would remove these limitations, aka spyrixes, was eventually developed. Casting artes stopped depending on someone’s ability, and spyrixes enabled more powerful artes to be cast instantly. The drawback was that they in fact killed spirits in the process, but the people of the time not only did not know the spirits’ role in the environment, they did not even know spirits existed at all, and spyrixes were thus allowed to take off unhindered.
Maxwell, who had sensed the danger of spyrixes, managed to establish contact with Kresnik the Sage and warned her of the risk they posed. Kresnik gathered followers and tried to warn humanity. But as most people did not believe in the existence of spirits, few listened to her, and spyrixes continued to be used.
So Maxwell decided to create a sealed world where as many spirits, animals and believers that could be gathered would live. His plan was to let Elympios die off on its own and then dispel the schism once spyrixes have disappeared and repopulate the world with those living in Rieze Maxia to prevent its destruction.
Kresnik and her followers established themselves in Rieze Maxia and immediately worked to make the new world forget about Elympios. Through a set of regulations, they rendered talks of their original world taboo to insure that future generations would never know of it. One of such regulation even actively discouraged exploration, which is why it took Rieze Maxia around two thousand years and a daring adventurer to finally have a more or less complete map of their island… which has gone through very little update in two centuries.
700 years after the creation of Rieze Maxia, descendants of Kresnik’s six disciples (Banya, Fenn, Ilbert, Travis, Sharil and Zumay) established states in the southern part of the island, establishing the foundations of the country of Rashugal.
A further 700 years later, the so-called seven descendants of Kresnik herself established their tribes in the North.
1800 years after the creation of Rieze Maxia, the spirits’ existence was finally proven thanks to Dr Howe’s thesis, and from that point on culture really started to flourish around channeling.
The events of Kresnik’s time and the disappearance of the Maxwell believers became legends that are still told to this day.
After Maxwell had sealed off Rieze Maxia, Elympios continued relying more and more on spyrixes. As people stopped casting spirit artes, mana lobes started degenerating because of disuse. Nowadays, most Elympions cannot emit mana anymore.
Though the world was slowly declining due to the loss of spirits, the effects only started manifesting themselves roughly 2000 years later (100 years before the game). Spyrixes started malfunctioning due to spirit shortage, and the government decided to tackle this problem in year 4204 of the Elympion calendar, 2193 years after the creation of Rieze Maxia. However, at the time, the cause of the problem could not be found, and production and the economy started declining 40 years later.
30 years after that, thanks to research based on old documents and legends concerning Maxwell, the existence of the schism could be proved. They also confirmed that the world within the schism held a considerable amount of energy. The government established the “Next Gen Energy Bureau” and proposed the “Otherworld Reactor Plan” (ORP), a project to use the energy on the other side of the schism to resolve Elympios’s own energy problem. The bureau got cooperation from the military to develop a device to break the schism.
A prototype of such device was completed and 12 years later. The device managed to pierce a hole in the schism, but due to loss of control little data could be collected.
Maxwell, who up to then had been hiding in the Temporal Terminus, felt the break in the schism and came out to fix it, fighting off the Elympios army preparing for invasion. He created the Great Spirit Muzét from a part of the schism and sent her to destroy the rest of the army. He later assigned her the task of protecting the schism.
When the hole was made, a luxury cruise ship, the E.S.S. Zenethra, was sailing in the area and got sucked into Rieze Maxia, and then became unable to go back to Elympios after Maxwell sealed the break. Fearing what they could bring to Rieze Maxia but reluctant to show himself, Maxwell created a decoy: a human he called Milla who he would have the Four Great Spirits raise as if she were Maxwell herself.
Meanwhile, the stranded Elympions tried to settle in Rieze Maxia, but their inability to cast spirit artes prevented them from mingling well with the population. They eventually got back together and lived in a hidden community on a small island. The organisation Exodus was at first created by an ex-soldier to support the civilians, but its structure and goals changed once Gilland took over.
Though the experiment had failed for all intent and purpose, the ORP was not completely abandoned. Six year after the disappearance of the Zenethra, Gilland managed to establish contact with the Elympion military by chance, confirming the existence of Rieze Maxia once and for all. Together with the military and the government, they plotted the development of the plan, deciding to make use of Rieze Maxians as well as spirits. For that purpose, the “Next Gen Energy Bureau” was renamed “Department of Otherworld Affairs” and given more power.
Two years later, Gilland introduced spyrixes to Nachtigal in order to have him build the Lance of Kresnik, another device to break the schism. One year later, spyrix research data is stolen from insurgent tribes from Auj Oule, and they start developing boosters in Labari Hollow.
Spyrite research made a breakthrough six years later, when Wingul, who had resumed the research after the laboratory was seized at the end of Gaius’s conquest, volunteered himself as a human experiment. It took a further six years for the research to be completed, at which point Exodus sent Alvin as a spy to steal the data. However, Alvin was discovered and only managed to bring back data on old models. Data from the third generation model was finally obtained one year later, over the course of the game, when Exodus members took it from Teepo.
Thanks to the stolen booster research, Gilland and a team of researchers from Elympios were able to develop a new technology that would, if it worked, have the same function as spyrixes without harming spirits.
Meanwhile, the ORP was put into motion and forces were sent to invade Rieze Maxia. One of the goals of the invasion was to bring Rieze Maxians to Elympios and force them to cooperate with spyrite research, as the help of spirit artes users was required for the research to progress. Gilland and the Elympion government were planning to use the ORP as intended, using Rieze Maxia as a source of energy, while the researchers tested whether spyrites were a viable solution.
Elympios was opposed by two sides:
* King Gaius, who was planning to destroy all spyrixes with the help of Muzét before dispelling the schism, as he deemed the opening of the schism while spyrixes still existed too risky and was reluctant to bet on an uncertain technology yet at the early stages of development.
* The party, who decided to bet on spyrites and dispel the schism immediately and use its mana to fuel Elympios’s spyrixes until spyrites can replace them.
In the end, the latter won, and the three parties started to work together to further spyrite development, though many obstacles still lie ahead.
Ever since the creation of the world, humans have coexisted with spirits, unawares of their existence. There existed legends and they would channel them instinctively to cast spirit artes. However, despite how practical artes made life, there were a lot of limitations, especially since mana lobe ability would vary from person to person.
A device that would remove these limitations, aka spyrixes, was eventually developed. Casting artes stopped depending on someone’s ability, and spyrixes enabled more powerful artes to be cast instantly. The drawback was that they in fact killed spirits in the process, but the people of the time not only did not know the spirits’ role in the environment, they did not even know spirits existed at all, and spyrixes were thus allowed to take off unhindered.
Maxwell, who had sensed the danger of spyrixes, managed to establish contact with Kresnik the Sage and warned her of the risk they posed. Kresnik gathered followers and tried to warn humanity. But as most people did not believe in the existence of spirits, few listened to her, and spyrixes continued to be used.
So Maxwell decided to create a sealed world where as many spirits, animals and believers that could be gathered would live. His plan was to let Elympios die off on its own and then dispel the schism once spyrixes have disappeared and repopulate the world with those living in Rieze Maxia to prevent its destruction.
After the Schism: Rieze Maxia
Kresnik and her followers established themselves in Rieze Maxia and immediately worked to make the new world forget about Elympios. Through a set of regulations, they rendered talks of their original world taboo to insure that future generations would never know of it. One of such regulation even actively discouraged exploration, which is why it took Rieze Maxia around two thousand years and a daring adventurer to finally have a more or less complete map of their island… which has gone through very little update in two centuries.
700 years after the creation of Rieze Maxia, descendants of Kresnik’s six disciples (Banya, Fenn, Ilbert, Travis, Sharil and Zumay) established states in the southern part of the island, establishing the foundations of the country of Rashugal.
A further 700 years later, the so-called seven descendants of Kresnik herself established their tribes in the North.
1800 years after the creation of Rieze Maxia, the spirits’ existence was finally proven thanks to Dr Howe’s thesis, and from that point on culture really started to flourish around channeling.
After the Schism: Elympios
The events of Kresnik’s time and the disappearance of the Maxwell believers became legends that are still told to this day.
After Maxwell had sealed off Rieze Maxia, Elympios continued relying more and more on spyrixes. As people stopped casting spirit artes, mana lobes started degenerating because of disuse. Nowadays, most Elympions cannot emit mana anymore.
Though the world was slowly declining due to the loss of spirits, the effects only started manifesting themselves roughly 2000 years later (100 years before the game). Spyrixes started malfunctioning due to spirit shortage, and the government decided to tackle this problem in year 4204 of the Elympion calendar, 2193 years after the creation of Rieze Maxia. However, at the time, the cause of the problem could not be found, and production and the economy started declining 40 years later.
30 years after that, thanks to research based on old documents and legends concerning Maxwell, the existence of the schism could be proved. They also confirmed that the world within the schism held a considerable amount of energy. The government established the “Next Gen Energy Bureau” and proposed the “Otherworld Reactor Plan” (ORP), a project to use the energy on the other side of the schism to resolve Elympios’s own energy problem. The bureau got cooperation from the military to develop a device to break the schism.
A prototype of such device was completed and 12 years later. The device managed to pierce a hole in the schism, but due to loss of control little data could be collected.
The Hole in the Schism: Maxwell’s Intervention and Exodus
Maxwell, who up to then had been hiding in the Temporal Terminus, felt the break in the schism and came out to fix it, fighting off the Elympios army preparing for invasion. He created the Great Spirit Muzét from a part of the schism and sent her to destroy the rest of the army. He later assigned her the task of protecting the schism.
When the hole was made, a luxury cruise ship, the E.S.S. Zenethra, was sailing in the area and got sucked into Rieze Maxia, and then became unable to go back to Elympios after Maxwell sealed the break. Fearing what they could bring to Rieze Maxia but reluctant to show himself, Maxwell created a decoy: a human he called Milla who he would have the Four Great Spirits raise as if she were Maxwell herself.
Meanwhile, the stranded Elympions tried to settle in Rieze Maxia, but their inability to cast spirit artes prevented them from mingling well with the population. They eventually got back together and lived in a hidden community on a small island. The organisation Exodus was at first created by an ex-soldier to support the civilians, but its structure and goals changed once Gilland took over.
Renewal of the Otherworld Reactor Plan
Though the experiment had failed for all intent and purpose, the ORP was not completely abandoned. Six year after the disappearance of the Zenethra, Gilland managed to establish contact with the Elympion military by chance, confirming the existence of Rieze Maxia once and for all. Together with the military and the government, they plotted the development of the plan, deciding to make use of Rieze Maxians as well as spirits. For that purpose, the “Next Gen Energy Bureau” was renamed “Department of Otherworld Affairs” and given more power.
Two years later, Gilland introduced spyrixes to Nachtigal in order to have him build the Lance of Kresnik, another device to break the schism. One year later, spyrix research data is stolen from insurgent tribes from Auj Oule, and they start developing boosters in Labari Hollow.
Boosters and Spyrites
Spyrite research made a breakthrough six years later, when Wingul, who had resumed the research after the laboratory was seized at the end of Gaius’s conquest, volunteered himself as a human experiment. It took a further six years for the research to be completed, at which point Exodus sent Alvin as a spy to steal the data. However, Alvin was discovered and only managed to bring back data on old models. Data from the third generation model was finally obtained one year later, over the course of the game, when Exodus members took it from Teepo.
Thanks to the stolen booster research, Gilland and a team of researchers from Elympios were able to develop a new technology that would, if it worked, have the same function as spyrixes without harming spirits.
Meanwhile, the ORP was put into motion and forces were sent to invade Rieze Maxia. One of the goals of the invasion was to bring Rieze Maxians to Elympios and force them to cooperate with spyrite research, as the help of spirit artes users was required for the research to progress. Gilland and the Elympion government were planning to use the ORP as intended, using Rieze Maxia as a source of energy, while the researchers tested whether spyrites were a viable solution.
Elympios was opposed by two sides:
* King Gaius, who was planning to destroy all spyrixes with the help of Muzét before dispelling the schism, as he deemed the opening of the schism while spyrixes still existed too risky and was reluctant to bet on an uncertain technology yet at the early stages of development.
* The party, who decided to bet on spyrites and dispel the schism immediately and use its mana to fuel Elympios’s spyrixes until spyrites can replace them.
In the end, the latter won, and the three parties started to work together to further spyrite development, though many obstacles still lie ahead.
