Abert Safety

"Abert Safety"

- on his ideal woman.

About
Abert Safety is a former Apostle of the Dark Lord Camilla who later became a Dark Lord himself, as well as one of the main antagonists of Rance VI.

Personal History
Hundreds of year in the past, Abert served as the gallant captain of the royal knights of the ancient kingdom of Moemoe. At some point before the country's destruction, Camilla, captivated by his beauty, decided to transform him into one of her Apostles. Abert loyally acted as Camilla's servant for several years until the cataclysmic period know as "RedEye Dark", where the Dark Lord RedEye gained control of the nation of Zeth's security system, the Mazeel Line, and caused chaos across the country for several years. During this time, Abert was caught in a massive magical explosion that left him with a severe case of amnesia. While he had lost his memories, the binding pact of loyalty that ties an Apostle to their master allowed Abert to recall that he served a woman that was both beautiful and impossibly strong, causing him to set out into the world in search of someone who fit this description.

Abert wandered across The Continent for several years attempting to find the ideal woman to serve, placing every woman who he believed possessed a firm will through incredibly stressful and traumatic challenges to test their resolve. The extremely emotionally taxing weight of these challenges ensured that no woman would ever be able to complete them, resulting in the majority of the women he tested being driven to insanity. At some point, Abert had a child with one of these women, who he named Daniel and took with him on his travels to assist him in finding a woman that met his standards. While Abert remained dedicated to his mission, he developed genuine paternal love for his son. At some point during this period, while acting as a teacher at a prestigious magic academy in Zeth, Abert chose Rizna Lanfbitt, a beautiful girl that was one of his students, as a potential woman who was worthy of serving under. Using his charm, Abert easily gained the naive Rizna's love and trust, and convinced her to enter the highly dangerous pocket dimension Genbu Castle by presenting it as a final test of her skill as a mage before graduating. Rizna became trapped within the castle for thirty years, where both her mind and body were steadily driven to madness, resulting in her failing to meet Abert's standards. Later, he would perform a similar test with the brilliant young mage Papaya Server, who he gave the occult spell book known as Nomicon, resulting in her losing her mind due to the book's corrupting influence.

Sometime later, Abert became fascinated by Urza Pranaice, a young woman who served as one of the 8 Knights of the Zeth-based non-magic user activist group the Pentagon that his son Daniel had become a part of. As Daniel, an ordinary human, had grown old while Abert retained his youth, Abert presented himself as Daniel's son when he introduced himself to Urza. When Urza and her family made the decision to break away from the increasingly radical Pentagon to form their own organization, Abert assisted them in forming it, becoming one of the founding members of Ice Flame in the process, acting as the captain of its scouting division the Blue Corps. Not long after, however, Abert decided to test Urza's inner strength by tipping off Zeth authorities to an illegal rescue mission she and her family were performing, resulting in an act of police brutality that ended with the deaths of Urza's parents and brother. While the shock from the trauma resulted in Urza losing the ability to move her legs, she chose to continue leading Ice Flame out of respect for her family, causing Abert to remain loyal to Ice Flame as he made further attempts at testing her resolve. After Urza failed to recover over the course of a year, Abert attempted to leave Ice Flame and resume his travels but was stopped by his son, who begged him to remain in the group for slightly longer. As Abert had not found a woman who had interested him at the time, he agreed to his son's request. During the events of Rance VI, Abert broke into the slave arena of Zeth's Secretary of Education Radon Alphorne in search of potential recruits for Ice Flame. It was during this time that he encountered the warrior Rance, who had recently been captured and placed into the arena. Abert became enthralled by Rance's strength and requested that he join Ice Flame, incentivizing him with the promise of sex with Kimchi Drive. As Rance's ally, Abert proved to be highly useful, recruiting talented women to join his group while also assisting him whenever he was in a dangerous situation, earning him a certain amount of Rance's respect. Abert finally regained his memories of his identity following the dismantling of the Maginot Line, which allowed for a monster army led by Camilla to enter Zeth. While Abert dutifully returned to serving Camilla without hesitation, his time away from her caused him to question whether she truly met his ideals as a woman. Abert's suspicions were proven correct when he killed his fellow Apostle and Camilla's beloved pet Reincock as a test of her resolve, which resulted in Camilla being momentarily thrown into despair. This perceived failure to live up to his ideals resulted in Abert losing any and all loyalty he previously had to Camilla. Unsatisfied with serving Camilla, Abert assisted Rance in defeating his master by throwing his weapon at her as a distraction during his battle against her, allowing Rance to deliver the final blow to Camilla and seal her away. Following Camilla's defeat, Abert consumed the Demonic Blood Soul of Sieg, a Dark Lord serving in the monster army who was defeated by Rance. Abert's strong will allowed him to override Sieg's soul and become a Dark Lord himself, granting him complete freedom from his desire to serve Camilla. Rather than search for a single perfect woman, however, Abert decided to instead search for several women who each possessed a singular trait of his ideal and make them his own, planning to use their combined power to assist in defeating the other Dark Lords and become the Demon King himself. During this time, he scouted Anise Sawatari, an immensely powerful and very scatterbrained mage, and successfully convinced her into serving as his Apostle through oath. Elizabeth Lacock, the former second in command of the Pentagon, later caught his attention by reforming the group despite the loss of most of its power, causing him to test her emotional fortitude by convincing her subordinates to turn against her, which resulted in her losing her mind, ending the Pentagon's brief revival.

Sometime after this, Abert was successfully tracked down by Rance and his allies, who fought and defeated him, reducing him to a demonic blood soul. Abert's blood soul is currently in the possession of Zeth authorities, with his Apostle-through-inheritance Aurora desperately in search of a way to revive her former master Sieg from it instead of him.

Personality and Appearance
Abert is a very handsome man, with soft features, short, wavy silver hair, cool blue eyes and a lean muscular build. He is never seen without an open, charming smile on his face, giving him a very pleasant expression at all times. When serving as a member of Ice Flame, he wore a standard Blue Corps uniform consisting of a blue vest with the group's logo on it, a dark blue undershirt, white pants and a pair of black gloves. When acting as Camilla's Apostle, he wore an elegant dark purple collared shirt with gold trimming and a large blue cape with gold designs on each shoulder while also gaining a pair of long blue nails. After becoming a Dark Lord, an additional plate of ornate armor was added to his Apostle outfit. Abert could be considered to be a twisted take on the classic image of a gallant knight loyally serving his lady. While he initially appears to be a kind, cheerful and brave young man, his true character is far more sinister. His innate drive to serve his master as an Apostle became distorted and strained following the loss of his memories, causing him to singlemindedly search for a woman who matches his vague recollections of his master's qualities of being strong, flexible, beautiful and possessing unbreakable willpower. After finding women that appear to meet this criteria, Abert will intentionally engineer impossibly stressful and traumatic events to put them through in order to test whether they are worthy of his loyalty. Because Abert spends all of his time seeking out a woman to serve, he is excellent at reading them and is capable of personalizing their trials to ensure that they are as arduous as possible for that particular person. As a result of this, none of the women that Abert has chosen have successfully completed one of his tests, with nearly all of them being reduced to insanity or having their spirits irreparably broken. While Abert acts unconditionally devoted, loyal and caring to the woman he is currently testing, he will callously abandon them without hesitation the instant they fail to meet his standards, resulting in him leaving a trail of broken women in his wake for over eighty years.

When interacting with people that he does not believe meet his ideal at all, Abert will act pleasantly but will be completely indifferent and even outright dismissive of them. This is immediately apparent during his attempts to recruit Rance into Ice Flame, where Rocky Bank expresses an interest in joining the group only for Abert to cheerfully tell him that he didn't care either way. As a result of this behavior, people who are outside of his range of interest are much more likely to become suspicious of his character, with Rocky claiming that handsome men like him should never be trusted and Cessna Benville calling his perpetual cheerfulness unsettling.

As Camilla was Abert's master while he was still an Apostle, his standards for the perfect woman are based on his faint memories of her general character, showing that he was as devoted to her as any other Apostle would be prior to losing his memories. As a result of his amnesia, Abert was allowed to function for nearly a century without having to follow Camilla, causing his loyalty to her to weaken. After reassuming his place as her Apostle, Abert had grown so obsessed with assessing the woman he was currently serving that he continued to do so for Camilla, despite her being the person that he had based his criteria for the ideal woman on. After seeing Camilla become distressed following the death of Reincock, Abert completely abandoned her, showing that his amnesia allowed him to act independently from her even after regaining his memories.

Abert had a somewhat complicated relationship with his son Daniel, who was born from one of the many women that Abert unsuccessfully tested. While Abert allowed his son to come with him on his travels and always acted kindly towards him, he would frequently manipulate him into assisting him in testing any women who caught his eye. While Daniel was troubled by his father's dangerous behavior towards women, he continued to love and respect him throughout his life, to the point of taking up medicine in order to discover a way to allow him to age normally. It was a direct result of Abert's actions that Daniel lost his closest friends and was left to care for the traumatized Urza, ironically making Abert the cause of almost all of the hardships in his life. Despite this, Abert could think only of the time he had spent traveling the world with Daniel during his final moments before turning into a demonic blood soul, showing that, underneath his psychoses, he truly loved his son. Abert became fascinated with Rance soon after meeting him, noting both his incredible strength and limitless willpower almost immediately. This admiration continued to grow as Abert observed Rance's actions throughout the fall of Zeth, where he showed unshakeable courage and determination in the face of countless brutal challenges. Because of this, Abert chose to recognize Rance as a person who met his ideals and gained an immense amount of respect for him in the process, resulting in him loyally assisting Rance whenever he was in need, up to the point of choosing to side with him over Camilla, his own master, during their final confrontation. Despite this, as Rance is a man and Abert is insistent that his master must be a woman, he refuses to abandon his pursuit of the ideal woman even for him. Likely because of the multiple women he supplied him with along with his repeated assistance during difficult situations, Rance held Abert in a surprisingly high regard initially, describing him as "okay" and showing no signs of his usual anger and jealousy towards attractive men. Following his discovery of Abert's true nature, however, Rance developed a burning hatred for him due to the countless women whose lives he had destroyed, losing any and all respect he had for him in the process.

As he overrode the demonic blood soul of the Dark Lord Sieg, he is the master of the Apostle Aurora through inheritance. During his brief time as a Dark Lord, Abert seemed completely indifferent to Aurora, meaning he did not acknowledge her as a potential woman who he could serve. Likewise, as Aurora deeply admired Sieg, she carries something of a grudge against Abert, and has futilely searched for a way to bring Sieg back instead of him following his defeat.

Abilities
Abert is an adept swordsman of considerable ability. While little is known about Abert's identity prior to becoming an Apostle, as he served as a knight captain while he was still a human, he is suggested to have been quite strong. When acting as a "human" as a member of Ice Flame, he had an above-average Level Cap of 28, though as he was still an Apostle during this time it is unclear whether or not this was his actual level cap as a human. After reawakening as an Apostle, Abert's power skyrocketed, allowing him to successfully fight on par with Rance without any problem, forcing the brutal warrior to retreat rather than exhaust himself. His power increased even further after becoming a Dark Lord, reaching levels far higher than any normal person could achieve and allowing him to fight formidably against an entire party of strong individuals for a very long time with the addition of gaining the race's signature Invincibility Field. In combat, Abert wields a unique blade known as the Moemoe Sword that is a keepsake from his time as a human. It is a mysterious weapon with the eyeball insignia of the Moemoe Kingdom on its handle. The sword is somewhat similar to Shiranui in that it appears to grow in strength along with its wielder, though unlike Shiranui its power seems to be based on the raw power of its wielder rather than their fighting spirit. The weapon changes its shape as it grows in power, starting as a short sword while Abert believed himself to be a human, becoming a long sword after he awakened as an Apostle, and finally transforming into a broadsword after he became a Dark Lord.

Beyond his swordsmanship, Abert possesses a considerable amount of talent in the Magic Arts, as he was able to work as a teacher at the most prestigious magic school in all of Zeth while Rizna Lanfbitt and Ragnarokarc Super Gandhi were attending it. Compared to his swordsmanship, however, Abert displays his magical ability much less frequently.

Outside of combat, Abert is incredibly talented at information gathering. His ability to deftly gain intelligence on his surroundings is so great that Kaoru Quincy Kagura, a skilled practitioner of the Ninja arts, claimed that her own talent for scouting was nowhere near close to being on the same level as his. Abert frequently utilizes this skill when assessing women who interest him, as he is able to gain a strong enough understanding of their characters to determine their greatest fears and weaknesses after spending only a short amount of time with them. On a more mundane level, Abert is adept at playing the flute, and frequently plays music on one during his free time.

In-Game
For more in depth gameplay information for each of this character's appearances, refer to:
 * Rance VI

Trivia

 * Despite not being introduced until the next game in the series, Abert could be seen as one of the main antagonists of Rance 5D, as he is responsible for trapping Rizna in Genbu Castle and driving her to insanity.
 * Abert is one of the few men that Rance has genuinely respected, though this was before his true character was revealed to him.
 * Abert is currently the only known Apostle to have become a Dark Lord.
 * Abert is currently the only Apostle to have been made playable in a game in the Rance Series.
 * Abert is currently one of two Dark Lords to have been created during the LP era, the other being Ogawa Kentarou.
 * Abert is one of only two people known to have become a Dark Lord not by being chosen by the Demon King, but by deliberately absorbing a demonic blood soul; the other being Pi-R.
 * When Abert attacks with his sword as a "human" and as an Apostle, he slashes an "A" shape.