Oz Tortoise

"Oz Tortoise"

- on Mi Lordring.

About
Oz Tortoise was a bishop of the AL Church active throughout much of the LP Era and a major antagonist in Rance Quest.

A charismatic and adaptable man, Tortoise rose through the ranks of the AL Church by forging connections with influential people and exploiting them for personal favors. Always making sure to treat others with geniality, he maintained an excellent reputation with both the Church and general public that enabled him to earn the respect and admiration of ALists everywhere. His work eventually led him to be appointed as one of the four bishops that served directly under the pope, where his cunning nature and affable demeanor gained him even greater goodwill. He became recognized as the unofficial second-in-command of the organization, and was entrusted with overseeing the activities of even his fellow bishops in the pope's absence.

While acting as a leading member of the Church, Tortoise became acquainted with Crook Mofus, the daughter of Pope Duran Teyuran. Believing her good looks and pious demeanor to be the ideal qualities for a wife, Tortoise made multiple attempts at proposing to her, but was bluntly rejected each time. He took no offense to this spurning, believing it to be further demonstration of Crook’s purity, and continued vainly trying to pursue her.

In the year LP0006, Pope Teyuran passed away, leaving the AL Church without a leader. In sacred tradition, the four bishops that had served directly beneath him were pitted against each other in a competition known as the Mula Test to determine who among them would be chosen as his successor. The test required the bishops to carry out various holy tasks, such as performing miracles, excising spirits, and collecting Balance Breakers, people or things that threatened the stability of the world, to gain points, with additional points being given from votes submitted by the public. The bishop who scored the most points after several months would be recognized as the new pope and instantly be given all of the privilege and authority that came with the position. Due to his influential position among the bishops even prior to Pope Teyuran's death, Tortoise was viewed as the obvious front-runner in the competition by much of The Continent.

Soon after the Mula test began, Tortoise made a concerted effort to gain the full support of the Kingdom of Leazas, the most economically prosperous nation on the Continent, by personally requesting its queen, Lia Parapara Leazas, to advocate for his candidacy. While Lia disliked Tortoise, finding his preening demeanor to be irritating, she recognized him as the most likely among the bishops to be appointed the next pope and agreed to endorse his campaign for the sake of consolidating relations between her nation and the AL Church. With Lia's approval, Tortoise ordered hundreds of Temple Knights, the Church's personal army, to move through Leazas performing as many tasks as possible to raise his score, taking full credit for their actions as their leader. To ensure that he would receive the complete backing of all of Leazas, he used money he obtained from businesses he had promised to grant special privileges after becoming pope to bribe the priests in charge of overseeing all of the country's 1,077 to manipulate votes in his favor. With all of Leazas in his pocket, Tortoise solidified an early lead for himself.

During the events of Rance Quest, Tortoise entered Leazas Castle with a large group of Temple Knights during the night to perform exorcisms on any and all evil spirits that may have inhabited its halls. As the expedition was underway, he broke up a fight between the Temple Knight captain BS and the warrior Rance, who had coincidentally been moving through the castle to have a late night rendezvous with Lia. Ignoring BS’ suspicions, Tortoise allowed Rance and his allies to continue their business within the castle under the condition that they immediately report any evil spirits they came across to him and calmly went on his way.

Tortoise and his followers eventually encountered the Ghost of a maid that had been tortured to death by Lia years prior during their search. Despite her being far from the point of becoming an evil spirit and thus worth much fewer points, Tortoise resolved to exorcise the unfortunate Maid regardless and began performing an exorcism ritual. The process was interrupted at the last moment by Rance throwing a rock in Tortoise’s direction, allowing the ghost to escape. Not allowing his anger to show, Tortoise attempted to justify his actions to Rance by stating that the ghost would eventually become an evil spirit and that it was his duty as a servant of God to expel her. As he spoke, he noticed for the first time that Crook, now a bishop and his competitor in the Mula test, was accompanying Rance. After briefly trying and failing to get her to explain her association with the other man, Tortoise chose to give up on collecting points for the day and exit from the castle. Before taking his leave, he granted the Temple Knights under his command permission to attack Rance’s party in retaliation for interfering with a sacred ritual, insisting only that they take care not to harm Crook.

Sometime later, Tortoise reconvened with the other bishops in the sacred chamber in the basement of the Holy City of Kaiz to discuss the actions of the Church in the place of the pope. While discussing mission work, Bishop Roule Enron revealed that less than five percent of the eastern nation of JAPAN had converted to ALism, with the vast majority of the country's people choosing to instead follow the local religion of Tenshiism. To overcome this obstacle, Tortoise proposed to covertly spread the black death, a virulent plague with a high mortality rate, throughout JAPAN and have AList missionaries offer relief aid to those willing to convert. Though Enron eagerly supported this idea, both Crook and Bishop Mi Lordring objected to it under the belief that killing non-believers was not something that the Goddess ALICE would approve of, preventing it from coming to fruition. While frustrated by their obstruction, Tortoise maintained a cool veneer and attempted to change the subject to various other hanging issues, only to continuously fail to reach any kind of agreement with his colleagues. After numerous unsuccessful discussions, the bishops separated to resume the Mula test.

Shortly after the meeting, a new mandate was issued to all members of the Church calling for the destruction of an organization known as the Shepherds, which had begun rapidly polluting the Souls of various people using mysterious devices known as Black Bracelets to prevent them from entering the reincarnation cycle. Using information gathered by his subordinates, Tortoise located the hideout of the Despair Group, a congregation of over 1,000 individuals with high soul pollution that had received a large supply of black bracelets from the Shepherds, and began an operation to exterminate them.

Tortoise crossed paths once more with Crook and Rance, who had managed to survive their previous encounter, at the entrance to the Despair Group’s cave hideout. While he showed concern for Crook’s continued association with the other man, making a point to confirm that she was still wearing the Enchanted ring that protected her from advances by the opposite sex, Tortoise displayed no animosity toward her as a rival and offered to split the credit for destroying the organization with her. His congeniality immediately disappeared once inside of the hideout, however, where he ordered his temple knight subordinates to slaughter every member of the Despair Group they encountered regardless of their level of soul pollution. After killing the group’s leader and all who tried to oppose them, Tortoise commanded his soldiers to plaster the walls of the cave with gasoline and ignite it to produce a large fire that eradicated the remaining members, including women, children, and elderly, and their supply of black bracelets.

Tortoise later learned that Rance had gained possession of the Dark Sword Chaos, a high-level balance breaker worth a large amount of points in the Mula test, after reclaiming it from one of the Shepherds' hideouts. Approaching Biscuitta Burns, the head maid of Rance’s new residence of Rance Castle, he offered to purchase the weapon for the enormous sum of 200,000,000 GOLD but was immediately turned away, with Biscuitta reasoning that Rance would never agree to parting with it. Though vexed by Rance's repeated interferences in the competition, Tortoise chose to continue ignoring him in favor of focusing on claiming any other remaining balance breakers in the world ahead of him.

After many more months of work, the Mula test concluded and the four bishops gathered beneath Kaiz once more to hear the results. In preparation for the announcement of the final verdict, the four each received a parchment that projected their chances of victory based on the number of points they had scored. Tortoise was initially pleased by his predicted odds of 53 percent, which surpassed those of both Lordring and Enron, but was quickly shocked to discover that Crook had received an even higher score of 55 percent. Desperate to secure a win for himself, he hastily requested Crook to drop out of the competition by arguing that she was able to attain her current station through his assistance, and that his age and experience made him a better fit for handling the responsibilities of being pope. As additional incentive, he proposed marriage to her yet again, asserting that she was more suited to serve as the pope’s wife. His offer was flatly rejected by Crook, who reminded him that he had no right to attempt to go against God’s judgement. The exchange spurned Enron to also speak out against Crook’s candidacy, using the previous female pope Am Isuel’s abrupt abandonment of her position as proof that women were unworthy of leading the Church. Enron accused Crook of having corrupted her body by surrendering her virginity to a man, which she defended by stating that there was no mention of maintaining one’s chastity within the holy scriptures. Crook’s response further disturbed Tortoise, who grabbed her in anger and urged her to speak honestly about her chastity. The force of his motion shook the hair out of her face, exposing a blinded eye that she generally concealed from others; a physical flaw that shattered his image of her as a pure and perfect woman.

In a final effort to ease his distress, Tortoise demanded that Crook show her genitals to the other three priests to confirm the presence of her hymen. Recognizing that both he and Enron were beyond the point of reason, she obediently complied and exposed herself to them. To complete the impromptu “chastity test”, Tortoise spread Crook’s vaginal lips between his fingers and discovered that her claims of no longer being a virgin were indeed true. Horrified that the woman he had idealized had given herself to another man, Tortoise agreed with Enron's declaration that Crook had copulated with a Devil and insisted that she undergo a purification ritual before she could be recognized as pope.

To perform the purification ritual, Tortoise directed Crook to a second chamber beneath Kaiz and called for the Calpis Choir, a group of several young men who he had from birth forbidden from exiting the holy city. Believing their lack of contact with the outside world bestowed them with potent holy power, Tortoise commanded the Calpis Choir to begin repeatedly assaulting Crook's body for the ostensible reason of purifying it. In reality, Tortoise intended to have the Calpis Choir break Crook's body and mind ahead of the final verdict of the Mula test, removing her from the running and guaranteeing his place as winner.

Before Tortoise's plan could come to fruition, the ritual chamber was broken into by Rance, who had traveled to Kaiz out of concern for Crook. Enraged by the sight of the Calpis Choir defiling Crook, Rance immediately killed each of its members, with Tortoise panickedly screaming for someone to apprehend the intruder so the same could not be done to him. The confrontation was suddenly stopped when the four bishops were called back to the sacred chamber to hear the final results of the Mula test. Tortoise remained in the chamber for several hours as a verdict was decided, outlasting both Enron and Lordring, but was ultimately eliminated in favor of Crook. The loss made Tortoise completely lose his composure and he exit the chamber in blubbering tears. Fearing the consequences of his actions now that Crook was his superior, he fled from Kaiz alongside the similarly frightened Bishop Enron in search of a place to hide.

Tortoise and Enron were eventually taken in by the Shepherds, who offered them shelter inside of the Tower of Babel, an enormous building they had constructed to use as a beacon to transmit negative emotions across the world. Tortoise's feelings of fear, shame, and rage were amplified while under the protection of the Shepherds, which led his soul's pollution level to rapidly increase. After only a few days within the Tower of Babel, Tortoise was overcome by his despair and hanged himself for relief. Sometime after his death, Rance, Crook, and their allies stormed the Tower of Babel and defeated Enron and the Shepherds, bringing the organization's activities to an end. Shortly afterward, two high-ranking members of the Church, Rob and Manikao, were elected to fill the vacant bishop slots left by Tortoise and Enron, in the process excising it of any lingering traces of their influence.

If Rance fails to rescue Crook in time after she is taken by the Calpis Choir, she will die from exhaustion before the Mula test can finish, allowing Tortoise to become appointed pope. Tortoise declares Rance to be the enemy of all mankind immediately after being instated as pope and orders all of the world's ALists to hunt for and kill him. After learning that the leaders of the nations of Leazas, Zeth, and JAPAN have close ties with him, Tortoise brands them heretics and throws the world into a state of political disarray. One year later, the Human Realm is ravaged by an attack from the Monster Realm, bringing an end to the current era of humanity. As this sequence of events results in a game over and directly contradicts with later games in the Rance Series, it is regarded as being entirely non-canon.

Personality and Appearance
Tortoise was a middle-aged man with a short, stocky build, broad features, and sandy blonde hair parted neatly to the side. He was noted to almost always wear a contented smile on his face, giving him a placid yet haughty presence at all times. Tortoise's clothing consisted of a white cassock adorned with a golden cross on its collar, a gold-lined dark blue mantle, and a gold-lined white cape bearing the symbol of the AL Church.

Pragmatic and ambitious, Tortoise approached all situations with the measured calm of a politician. He would make a conscious effort to maintain a pleasant and accommodating disposition when interacting with others, in the process making them more amenable to performing favors for him. This tactfulness naturally allowed him to be very popular with followers of ALism, who perceived him to be open-minded and willing to show kindness to all who approached him. Tortoise manipulated his glowing reputation over the course of his life to gain influence for himself within the Church until he had become its second most powerful member. By the time of the Mula test, he was seen by many as the obvious choice to become the next pope, with several, including himself, acting as though he had already received the position before the competition had ended.

Beneath his warmhearted and even-tempered exterior, Tortoise was ruthless in his pursuit of power and perfectly willing to condemn others to unimaginably cruel fates for his own benefit. He showed no interest in attempting peaceful negotiation with those that opposed the ways of the Church, such as Tenshiists, and openly advocated for the use of disease to orchestrate their destruction. While participating in the Mula test, he organized the massacre of 1,000 people with high levels of soul pollution, including women, children, and those who were still in treatable condition, to amass a large amount of points for himself. Similarly, he expressed a complete willingness to excise the ghost of an innocent woman rather than seek out a means of allowing her spirit to pass on under the flimsy justification that it would become tainted by evil if allowed to continue existing for one hundred more years. Tortoise also showed himself to be shamelessly craven when placed in unfavorable conditions, going so far as to swear allegiance to the Shepherds, an organization that stood in direct opposition to his supposed beliefs as an AList, to avoid having to face consequences for his villainy. These heinous personality traits ironically made him an ideal fit to fulfill the true purpose of the pope of the AL Church, a role designed to ensure that the Continent is in a constant state of chaos for the sake of entertaining the Creator God Ludo-Rathowm. Due to this, he was able to very nearly win the Mula test, only losing as a result of the points Crook Mofus gained from her indirect involvement in the massacre of the Kalar village of Pencilcow.

Tortoise suffered from severe mysophobia, a fear of all forms of filth and contamination. This phobia acted as the root cause of his radical behavior as a priest, as it led him to feel profound revulsion toward all that went against his own way of life as being "filthy". When performing work that involved directly engaging with such things, including exorcising spirits and sealing beings with high levels of soul pollution, he would make a point of laboriously wiping his hands with a cloth handkerchief, believing that simply being around them made him unclean. Tortoise's obsession with contamination also perversely impacted his sexuality, making him fixate on women preserving their "purity" by remaining virgins and react with overblown grief and rage upon learning that the object of his affections no longer possessed a hymen. To satiate these twisted feelings, he raised a group of boys in secret within the Holy City of Kaiz for the sole purpose of having them gang rape any women he believed to be too filthy to be worthy of his attention, and would watch with glee as their assault gradually brought said women to an agonizing death.

Throughout his later days as a bishop, Tortoise took a particular interest in Crook Mofus, the daughter of the pope he served under. Admiring both her diligent dedication to the teachings of ALism and her prestigious status as the daughter of the pope, Tortoise idealized Crook as the perfect wife for a man such as himself, and made multiple unsuccessful attempts at convincing her to marry him. This continued even after the two were placed in direct competition against each other in the Mula test, where he showed no particular concern for Crook as a rival and took careful effort not to have his subordinates harm her. Tortoise's feelings for Crook abruptly changed at the conclusion of the Mula test, where a combination of his fear of losing to her and disgust at learning that she was no longer a virgin and blind in one eye caused him to attempt to have her killed, revealing that his attraction was entirely superficial. Though Crook was open about her dislike of Tortoise, routinely replying to his proposals with blunt rejection, her muted demeanor caused her to generally respond to him with passive indifference and show no real interest in making him suffer for his actions against her.

Abilities
A talented public speaker and negotiator, Tortoise was highly adept at persuasion and diplomacy. Believing in the power of coercion above all else, he steadily built a vast web of connections with wealthy and distinguished figures throughout the Continent who he could call upon for financial assistance and personal favors when needed. Tortoise utilized these resources to secure a high standing for himself within the AL Church, granting him a level of authority over a significant portion of the global population that transcended nationality. During the Mula test, Tortoise used his sway both inside and out of the Church to great effect, commandeering hundreds of Temple Knights, including Knight Captain BS, to exponentially expand his outreach and manipulating his most important contacts to gain the full support of the Kingdom of Leazas, the largest economic superpower in the Human Realm.

Outside of his diplomatic skills, Tortoise's capabilities as an individual are largely unknown. While he appeared to be quite exceptional at Divine Magic, enough to perform 15 successful exorcisms within a single day, neither his Level Cap or Skill Levels have been given, leaving the full extent of his potential a mystery. Compared to his fellow bishops, who each displayed some amount of fighting ability, Tortoise was never shown personally engaging in combat, relying instead on the abundant number of Temple Knights he surrounded himself with to protect him during battle.

Trivia

 * While confirming whether or not Crook is a virgin, Tortoise mentions that he plans on having three children.
 * The characters of the three AList bishops apart from Crook underwent multiple major design overhauls during the development of Rance Quest's story, and were at one point intended to consist of a pleasant-looking overweight man, a large muscular man, and a serious-looking bespectacled young man. While these character concepts were eventually removed from the setting entirely, Orion, the lead artist of the Rance Series, noted that he had some fondness for both the muscular and bespectacled bishops.
 * Tortoise's first name, "Oz", is likely a reference to the Organization of the Zodiac, the primary antagonists of the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. Commonly abbreviated as OZ, the Organization of the Zodiac is a military group that takes advantage of its growing power to secede from its government and declare war on the Earth, similar to Tortoise's actions during the ending sequence where he becomes pope of the AL Church. His last name, "Tortoise", is derived from the Tortoise heavy assault tank that was produced but largely unused by the British military during the Second World War.
 * Tortoise's appearance and personality as a charismatic and performatively kind religious leader who exploits his station to engage in corrupt activities are derived from the depiction of Pope Mulalaloux in the non-canonical Kichikuou Rance.
 * Tortoise is the only one of Crook's three rival bishops that appears in the base version of Rance Quest, with both Enron and Lordring debuting in the Magnum expansion.