Category:Four Spirits



The Four Spirits are major characters that empower their wielders with four traditional elements; which are wind, earth, water, and fire. Luka meets and battles them in order to earn their abilities over the first two parts of the game. According to legend, Heinrich recruited the Four Spirits and "moving like the wind, with the strength of the earth, heart calm and flowing like water, with attacks holding the blazing power of fire", he was able to defeat Black Alice. Alice hints that it's a secret way of fighting.

Their identities are:


 * Sylph: A fairy with an active personality that is the spirit of wind. This personality results her getting comically beat up by the other spirits.
 * Gnome: An extremely quiet and shy girl that is the spirit of earth. Due to her being untalkative, her personality is mysterious.
 * Undine: A slime/mermaid-looking creature that is the spirit of water. She has a gentle and calm personality but initially despised humans for polluting waters and making them uninhabitable to slimes.
 * Salamander: The prideful and wild spirit of fire. She acknowledges those who can defeat her and even mentored Granberia and Luka.

They were worshipped in the ancient times as the avatar of the elements, but as the faith in Ilias grew and as the goddess wanted to be the sole being worshipped, the faith in them waned and they've been mostly living isolated since then.

After earning their abilities, Luka can summon a spirit to use their corresponding element to aid him in battle, most of which are used to counter an enemy's abilities that would otherwise spell Luka's doom, however he can only use them one at a time. Later in Chapter 2, the spirits' powers are upgraded through training or instruction and later Luka's willpower and he gains the ability to use multiple spirit powers simultaneously, however Undine and Salamander are not much use without the upgrade. Luka also learns skills that correspond to an element, further adding to the skill's power if selected while its respective spirit is in battle.

Besides being tests of strength and character, the battles also serve to test the player's knowledge of the usage of the spirits, sometimes unlocking more potential from within them. Gnome’s battle relies on Sylph for the eventual win, Undine unlocks the ability to summon Sylph and Gnome simultaneously while Salamander unlocks Undine's true potential.

In Chapter 3, Promestein analyzed the Four Spirits to produce artificial copies of them to empower her armies. Additionally, she devised a world-wide seal that drastically weakens all four elements by forcing them to the element's opposite habitat to weaken them; destroying them outright would set the world off balance due to no one maintaining them. According to Undine’s second monsterpedia entry, it is believed that the fake copies were intended to replace the originals, preventing global catastrophes from occurring and thus making it possible for the original to be killed without consequences. This seal results in Luka temporarily losing the Four Spirits until he gets them back, downgrading them, and prevents them from being used simultaneously. This seal is eventually removed upon Arc-En-Ciel's defeat.

In the epilogue, as the faith in Ilias collapsed, the worship of the Four Spirits gradually return and they no longer live in isolation, instead living with everyone else.

Paradox
The Four Spirits make a return in Paradox both as party members and buffs for Luka, Heinrich, and any party member getting the Spirit Summoner advanced job. They roughly retain their role, but have a more limited part in the story so far. They're beaten and recruited like any bosses, appear in camps afterward and have occasional tidbits of dialog about the status of the world they are in.

Furthermore, TTR's blog presented four different spirits in a post the 24th December 2019. Those spirits are those managing the elements in the Monster World, and it is not known yet why the four classic ones are missing. They are:


 * Ambrosia, the silent spirit of wind
 * Loa, the playful spirit of earth
 * Ghatanothoa, the torrential spirit of the water
 * Grimoire, the reserved spirit of fire

The only noteworthy information is that each spirit has the personality of its counterpart's polar opposite.

Trivia

 * The phrase "moving like the wind, with the strength of the earth, heart calm and flowing like water, with attacks holding the blazing power of fire" is derived from Fūrinkazan and Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which said "as swift as wind, as silent as forest, as fierce as fire, as unshakeable as mountain."
 * The names of the spirits are derived from Paracelsus's alchemical work Liber de Nymphis, sylphis, pygmaeis et salamandris et de caeteris spiritibus.


 * According to Torotoro's blog it is possible for the Four Spirits to get pregnant.


 * Due to their nature as elemental avatars, and as confirmed by their Monsterpedia profiles regarding their nature, they don't fully count as monsters:
 * Their bodies are made of dark energy, but their soul and mind are born from the nature.
 * They do not need sex as they pull their power from their natural environment, as confirmed in part 3. It is, however, way more effective to regenerate their power.
 * Finally, they're associated to Monster Race in Paradox for the sake of gameplay.