Zeroth Directive

Archive II

Very few know that Santalla is the same 'Witch' who haunts the border between Sami and Ursus, causing untold headaches to the Ursine authorities. Her actions used to border on hysterical: lashing out against the Ursine people at all costs, and not even noticing the damage that Originium was doing to her body. When one of our operators happened to discover her while on a field mission in the area, she had already been unconscious in the icefield for quite some time. Santalla never imagined that she would be rescued by an outlander, but there was no denying the obvious fact. She pledged unconditionally to repay her savior for their kindness, but the outlander—an operator of Rhodes Island—proposed that she leave Sami and come to us for Oripathy treatment. She had never been far from Sami, and had no knowledge of the situation outside. At first she instinctively refused, but upon remembering the promise she just made, she reluctantly boarded the metallic landship along with her rescuer. Santalla initially had a difficult time getting accustomed to life at Rhodes Island. For one thing, she was not used to living inside a steel giant. For another, the ubiquitous presence of people from Ursus made her feel instinctively threatened. Her homeland had been destroyed by an Ursus invasion, but the Ursine here greeted her as if nothing had happened. Had she not agreed to refrain from attacking them on her first day of treatment, she may well have gotten into a fight. However, what Santalla never expected was that she would once again be able to experience the warmth of trust and friendship on this vessel of cold steel. Although her heart still sought to reject everything that was not of Sami—such was the cruelty of Ursus's violence and the prejudice of the tourists who deemed themselves superior—when she set those things aside to truly look at the various people on Rhodes Island in an objective light, she began to realize that she was no different from any of them. They were also people who could suffer, tormented by illness. They were also struggling to survive in a harsh world. They could also vent their emotions onto others because they did not understand, did not want to understand, or would even impose their own pain upon others. This kind of narrow-minded and selfish mentality was not something that she, as a Samifjod or as a shaman, should have. So she put aside her resentment and prejudice and tried to change. Her friends took notice of her efforts, and picked a suitable time to gift her a custom-made outfit. After that, she slowly became the person we know today.

Archive III

Santalla's tribe, 'Colddeath,' once existed on the border between Sami and Ursus, in a forested area near the icefield's entrance. Due to the harsh environment, the tribe had a tradition of leaving some of their newborns behind. Santalla was originally meant to be one such abandoned child, left to be scavenged by some wild beast, but just as she was about to be thrown out into the wilderness, a gust of wind happened to blow across the branches of the tribe's old tree, catching the cloth wrapped around her. Thus, her fate of death was reversed by the dead tree. Her tribe regarded this accident as Sami's will, so they brought her back and her parents continued to raise her. When her parents lost their lives during a hunt, the tribe's Snowpriest personally took her in, teaching her the tribe's shamanic heritage as well as Originium Arts. At the time, everyone believed that when she grew up, she would become the new Snowpriest and leader of the clan. However, things rarely go as planned, and blizzards from the north continued to ravage the forest. If they tried to cling to their land, they would suffer disaster, but if they left the old tree behind, they would become the laughingstock of Sami's tribes. Eventually, the tribe was forced to split into two: one group moved south to find another woodland more suitable for survival, while the other stayed behind to guard the old tree to the very end. Survival trumped faith, however, and most people ultimately followed the Snowpriest and left the tree. Only Santalla and a handful of devout believers remained behind. Those who stayed built a camp around the old tree, and Santalla used her Arts to control the direction of the blizzard, guiding the wildest winds elsewhere in order to ensure the tree's safety. Her life began with this tree, and thus, she was ready to let it end with the tree as well. She had contemplated all possibilities, but what she never anticipated was for Ursus to suddenly arrive and claim the land as their own. Everyone else was slaughtered for refusing to leave or surrender, and only Santalla, who happened to be out on patrol at the time, managed to escape. When the Ursus border guards tried to encircle her, she summoned a blizzard to engulf everything. The Ursine slew her people, so she harnessed nature to do the same to them. Amidst the flurry of snow and wind, a crazed Ursus soldier impaled her eye with an Originium spike, cursing her with the pain and suffering of Oripathy. But to her and her alone, it was no more than another piece of tinder to fuel her endlessly burning rage. Since then, she started to haunt the Ursus border and hunt down all Ursine targets in sight, granting her the epithet of Witch by the people of Ursus, as well as a large bounty on her head. And her hatred has yet to melt.

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Santalla

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Archive I

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Archive II

Archive III

Archive IV