Character 1 – Ivan

Note: Characters are numbered in order of in-game appearance.

Full Name: Ivan Lawrence Rokata
Age: 18
Sex: Male
Height: 5’10″ (178 cm)
Weight: 142 lbs. (64.5 kg)
Hair: Blond with a hint of orange
Eyes: Blue
Blood Type: A

Character Summary:

Ivan is our extremely reluctant yet strangely lovable hero. His hometown is Gaia, where he shares a house with his father (Lawrence Rokata). His mother, the earth mage, went into exile after committing a terrible crime. Though she disappeared when he was only a child, he remembers her well.

Cold to those around him and even more so to women, Ivan remains an enigma to most of the town. Only those close to him have any clue of why he is like this, and even then, there is much that Ivan keeps to himself. He is the product of a troubled childhood, scarred by the memory of watching helplessly as his best friend was murdered before his eyes. From time to time, traces of his old, more carefree side start to peek out, but he tends to stifle them very quickly.

Despite his “attitude problems”, as [Character #2] cheerfully labels them, Ivan has his personal strengths. For one, he does not anger easily. He also feels like he has an obligation to protect those around him, perhaps because of his traumatic childhood experience. Ivan is also as stubborn as a mule. Once he has made up his mind about something, the decision is final. This works both to his advantage and his disadvantage throughout the game. We also learn as the story progresses that Ivan is, in fact, incredibly intelligent and even a bit on the shy side. Strangely enough, he has a “soft spot” (as worded by [C#2]) for [Character #3] and tends to act less cold toward her than the other characters for reasons unknown.

Of course, as you may have gathered already, Ivan is not without plenty of flaws. I would say that, as far as the main characters go, he’s probably about #2 or #3 on that list. As mentioned before, he is cold to almost everyone to the point of being a bit ruthless at times. He is not afraid to speak his mind if there is something negative for him to point out. Ivan approaches most things in life with a “Why bother?” attitude ever since the death of his dear friend. He does not want to learn earth magic. In fact, he could care less that his self-trained swordsmanship is sloppy and inadequate. As you can imagine, his lack of ability to fight creates problems when he is forced into a situation that requires him to use his sword.

Author’s Notes about this Character:

Ivan is actually one of my favorites for the reason that he is a fun character to work with, especially in conjunction with the other characters. The fact that he is very blunt and cold allows me to use him for some wry comedy in the game’s script. If a mean hero isn’t your cup of tea, have no fear! He is also one of the most dynamic characters in Phoenix and…well…Like I said, he’s fun to work with. I won’t say much about what happens to him yet, but let’s just say that our reluctant hero is not such a straightforward character as he might first appear to be.

As for the blond hair and blue eyes thing, you might immediately think of Cloud from FF7 or Isaac from Golden Sun or the 1,000,001 other blond main characters and wonder if I’m just pulling off a cliché. Well, I don’t really like clichés. I try to keep my heroes original with strengths, flaws, and interesting background stories. I originally pictured Ivan’s hair as more orange than blond, but then I realized that this did not quite fit with the rest of the game. In the world of Phoenix, blond hair is in fact a very rare trait present only in those with an affinity for earth magic. It is a product of the magical energy in one’s body rather than of genetics. For this reason, there are very few characters in the game with blond hair (I can think of 4 others off the top of my head, and that includes NPC’s!). Ivan also originally had brown eyes, as evident by a picture of him that I drew about a year ago in photoshop. I’m not sure when I changed this, but I think I did it just to add a bit more variety to eye color. You will see what I mean when I post the rest of the character profiles.

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