Crimson Swordsman Ran Online
Eboni Kleifgen
"I am a young man who constantly seeks the wonders of new lands. I intend to write many, many volumes of travelogue during my journeys, hopefully leaving behind a legacy of discovery for future generations to discuss."
Adol Christin (アドルクリスティン?) is the main protagonist of the Ys series. He is an adventurer and a swordsman who has a knack for arriving at the right place at the wrong time. Despite being a silent protagonist throughout the entire series, he is shown to be the type of person who can never leave those in trouble and will try to help him or her in any way he can. Known to many as a master swordsman, he also carries the nickname "Adol the Red" due to his fiery-red hair; a rather unique trait among those he visits during his travels, thus earning him that title. Being a man of adventure and of few words, he never stays in the same place for long and always expresses himself through motivation and his will to fight and help those in need.
Adol is a young adventurer who is portrayed as a silent protagonist, allowing players to project themselves onto him and experience the adventure through his eyes. The iconic red-haired appearance of Adol was born out of the technical limitations faced by the development team during the creation of Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished: Omen. With the limited color palette of the PC-8801, the team chose red as the primary color for the character's design. Over time, this signature red look became synonymous with the "red-haired adventurer" and has since become a defining characteristic of Adol's appearance.[4]
Despite his lack of dialogue, Adol's character has grown and developed over the years through his actions and adventures. Fans of the series have come to know and love Adol in the same way as a popular historical figure, with their own interpretations of who he is and what he stands for. Throughout the Ys series, players have been able to imagine who Adol is, and their common thoughts have shaped the character's development. In that sense, Adol has become a character that has been fostered and molded by the players.[4]
Not much is known about Adol's past, except that he was born in a small nameless mountain village in the northeast of the Europe region. Adol came from a humble background, born to a peasant family, but still managed to live a normal daily life. It's shown in the intro of Ys I that during his childhood, he was taught the basics of swordsmanship by his father, a skill that he excelled in and made his own. Sometime later, an elderly traveling merchant came to his village. His stories of far off lands captured Adol's imagination early on. Between this, and his father's bedtime stories of dragon-slaying heroes, Adol decided to one day become an adventurer. He continued to dream of far-off lands, and when he turned 16, left his home village to begin his own adventures.
The first destination he had in mind was the largely unexplored continent of Afroca. However, fate threw a spanner into his plans. While resting in a tavern halfway to Promalock, Adol overheard local merchants talking. He learned that war had broken out between the Mercantile Kingdom of Altago and the Romun Empire. Having absolutely no desire to be caught in the middle of a war, he made an abrupt change of plans and headed west instead. Upon the arrival at the port town of Promalock, he heard about the island of Esteria. Once a peaceful hub of trade, a veil of storms suddenly appeared out of nowhere, cutting off all shipping. Rumors were starting to spread that Esteria had become overrun by monsters. This motivated Adol to go to the island of Esteria to investigate. After working some odd jobs to obtain a ship of his own, Adol set out on a small boat for Esteria on a clear day. However, the weather changed when he hit the Stormveil, and he was shipwrecked on the shores of Esteria. This shipwreck started his first real adventure that would go on to reveal what happened to the ancient kingdom of Ys.
After the first adventure in Esteria, Adol would go to Celceta in the following year. There, he meets Eldeel, the last of the mythical Eldeen civilization. Even though Eldeel offers Adol the knowledge of the world, Adol refuses and insteads explore the world for himself. Thus, it is at this point that Adol would start calling himself an adventurer and get recognized by the world as such.
Adol would go onto many adventures, bringing hope and revelation to wherever he visited. Many of his adventures would be related to the Eldeen civilization but not all of them as some, like the Five Dragons of Altago, would be completely unrelated to the Eldeen civilization.
Sometime past his fifties, Adol went back to his village and started making records of his adventures. At one point, he tried to reach the north pole but failed. He is said to have died at the age of 63.[1][2]
Despite having a reputation for wielding ancient mystical powers at various times in his life, Adol does not have any innate magical power of his own. All magical abilities that he gains during his adventures come from magical artifacts, or were bestowed upon him by powerful mystical entities (The Six Priests of Ys, the Five Great Dragons of Altago). However, Adol demonstrates a nearly impeccable mastery in the utilization of these abilities.
Nevertheless, Adol's main strengths are his near-superhuman endurance, and master-level swordsmanship. This is best demonstrated in Ys I: Ancient Ys Vanished: Omen where he goes through Darm Tower, a place filled with ferocious monsters, treacherous traps, and ancient demons, and reaches the top within one day. Due to his adventures, Adol is adept at crowd control, proving to be very proficient at dealing with large groups of enemies at once.
As the series goes on, his swordsmanship improves significantly. In Ys: The Oath in Felghana, he defeats Chester Stoddart, a Felghanan knight who is a master swordsman in his own right, twice in a duel. In Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, he manages to critically weaken the Ash Emelas creature Demi-Galba, which can only be destroyed by weapons made of Emelas, with only a steel sword (his steel Long Sword then snaps. Then in Ys Seven, he slays a gigantic beast in the coliseum, despite having gone through days of torture, and being given bare-bones equipment to defend himself with. He then proceeds to be the only Dragon Warrior ever to prevent the Rite of Destruction. Adol's skills, combined with his unwavering determination, have helped him overcome any obstacles in his way, earning him fame as a great adventurer and master swordsman.
Crimson Line: A Gift that allows one to warp to remote locations, leaving only a trail of dusky crimson in their wake. By transforming its user into a shadow, it is capable of transporting them through solid obstacles, such as rocks and iron walls. As an added bonus, Crimson Line knocks back and inflicts damage upon enemies caught in its direct path.
XaXa's overall design revolved around the color red. He customized his hair and eyes to be crimson,[5] and wore a skeletal mask with glowing red eyepieces alongside a ragged, black[6] hooded cloak marked with a red reverse cross, seemingly mocking the crest and colors of the Knights of the Blood.[5] In combat, XaXa utilized an estoc so powerful that the metal gleamed in what appeared to be the colour of blood.[6] He bore the Laughing Coffin guild tattoo on his right forearm.[citation needed]
Shouichi's avatar in Gun Gale Online, Sterben, is similar to XaXa in Sword Art Online. Like his SAO avatar, Sterben wears a skeletal mask[5] with black goggles containing red lenses, along with a dark gray, tattered[7] optical camouflage mantle[8] and grungy, faded boots.[7] On his right forearm, he re-tattooed the emblem of Laughing Coffin: a half-opened coffin with a eerie, leering smile on the lid and a white skeletal arm extending from the darkness within, beckoning the viewer.[7]
Shouichi is a cold and sadistic person who believed in PoH's principles. He enjoys killing other players, even with full knowledge that they would be killed in real life as well, due to relishing the feeling of being feared by others.[1] Shouichi's sense of reality began wearing thin since he joined Laughing Coffin, feeling that only things beneficial to him were real.[citation needed]
When Shouichi began playing Gun Gale Online, he maintained interest in observing other players on the streets and imagining ways of killing them, rather than fighting monsters. His obsession only grew after obtaining his camouflage mantle, as he began practicing ways of obscuring himself from others, feeling that it was interesting to stalk someone from behind.[1]
Since an early age, Shouichi had been rather frail and sick, thus resulting in frequent hospitalisations until he finished middle school. Due to him entering high school a year late, his father abandoned his hopes for Shouichi to inherit family business, thus pushing the burden onto his younger brother Kyouji instead. Shouichi eventually quit his high school and sought solace in the online world, where he started playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) until he became trapped in Sword Art Online.[1]
In April 2024, XaXa, along with PoH and Johnny Black, was hired by Grimlock to kill Schmitt, Yolko, and Caynz to prevent anyone from discovering the truth behind the death of Griselda, the leader of the Golden Apple guild. On April 23, after Johnny Black paralysed Schmitt while he was being confronted by Yolko and Caynz at the Hill of the Cross, XaXa seized the estoc Yolko and Caynz had requested to intimidate Schmitt, complementing on its design and deciding to add it to his collection. However, before the red players could accomplish their mission, they were forced to withdraw when Kirito arrived on a horse and warned them that he had arranged for reinforcements to arrive and had enough healing items to stall for time. As the Laughing Coffin members departed, XaXa promised Kirito that he would hunt him down on a horse like the Black Swordsman had done to them.
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