Freya Idun

''This article refers to the Rance Series character Freya Idun as she appears from Rance IX onward. For information relating to the character as she appears in Kichikuou Rance, see Freya Idun (Kichikuou Rance).''

"Freya Idun"

- preaching her ethos as an assassin.

About
Freya Idun is the leader of the Helman-based assassination group the Dark Wings. When acting directly as leader of the Dark Wings, she uses the codename Black Swan (ブラックスワン, burakkusuwan).

Much of Freya's background is shrouded in mystery. She is known to have been a member of the Dark Wings from a young age, and proved skilled enough within the organization to serve under its previous leader. Despite their differing personalities, Freya and her superior shared a close bond as mentor and student and worked well together as a duo.

At an unknown point in the past, an operation the Dark Wings were assigned to went wrong, causing the group to draw ire from the Helman Government. To protect the future of the Dark Wings, Freya's superior chose to take full responsibility for the incident and was killed as punishment. As second-in-command, Freya was forced to inherit her predecessor's title as leader, along with all of the responsibilities that came with it. Freya was heavily impacted by her mentor's sacrifice, and learned to prioritize the preservation of her organization above all else, including her own life.

While working as a member of the Dark Wings, Freya encountered a mysterious cat-shaped biometallic lifeform known as Norimaki and took him in as her companion. Norimaki's unique ability to slickly shapeshift his body into a variety of tools made him the perfect accomplice to Freya, acting as a weapon during combat and as an agile scout while spying.

In the year LP0004, the Dark Wings were hired by Prime Minister Stessel Romanov to find and assassinate his political adversary Patton Helman, who was reported to have died during his attempted conquest of the Kingdom of Leazas two years prior. To avoid sparking political unrest, Stessel deliberately kept all information relating to Patton's alleged survival from the general public, making the commanding members of the Dark Wings among the few individuals to know of it. Though a division of the group was able to successfully find and track Patton's location, its attempts at ending his life were repeatedly rebuffed by his guardian Hunty Kalar and Patton himself, who had developed outstanding strength in his time away from Helman, preventing it from accomplishing its mission.

In the year LP0006, a group proclaiming itself to be the Helman Revolutionary Army appeared in the southern Helmanian city of Laborie and announced its intention to overthrow the current government. While modestly sized, the army attracted immediate attention throughout the country due to ostensibly being led by none other than Patton, filling the hearts of many civilians with the hope that he would be able to liberate them from Stessel's oppressive reign. Outraged by this act of defiance, Stessel ordered for the rebellion to be crushed immediately and attempted to reinforce the notion that Patton had been killed to the public. To his great frustration, the seeds of revolution had already been sewed among the general populace, who steadily began to turn more and more of their attention toward its cause.

During the events of Rance IX, the Dark Wings were given the duty of assassinating Patton at Laborie by Kechak Bangor, the supreme commander of the Helman Army, in a desperate attempt to quell Stessel's anger. Before being able to carry out this mission, Freya was called to meet privately with Stessel, who assigned her similar instructions. Stessel reacted with twisted amusement after Freya informed him of Kechak's orders, and stated that he strongly believed the man claiming to be Patton at the Revolutionary Army's base was in fact a decoy. Stessel then alerted Freya to the existence of the Outlaws, a small group of people with astounding combat power that had emerged around the same time as the Revolutionary Army and had already succeeded in killing General Nero Chapet VII of the Helman 4th Army. Refusing to accept this as mere coincidence, Stessel voiced his suspicion that the real Patton was traveling with the Outlaws and told Freya to target them. Rather than have her abandon the attack on the Revolutionary Army's base, however, he also gave her the mission assassinate Patton's alleged body double in Laborie, intending to display the double's severed head outside the city to shatter the public's belief that Patton had come to save them.

Soon after meeting with Stessel, Freya managed to locate the Outlaws' whereabouts along the outskirts of the city of Cossack and sent a small group of assassins into its camp during the night to kill its members while they slept. Though several of Freya's subordinates managed to slip past Kentou Kanami, the Ninja assigned to act as the group's nightwatchmen, they were quickly defeated by the other members of the Outlaws, who each possessed keen fighting instincts that enabled them to be alerted of the presence of intruders in their tents and overwhelm them in single combat. Realizing that conventional tactics were not a viable option, Freya called off any further attacks on the Outlaws and instead turned her attention toward alternate means of getting close to Patton.

Some days later, Freya called the close-range combat division of the Dark Wings to assassinate the Prince Patton lookalike in Laborie. To covertly accompany the unit on the mission, she contacted its leader, Dark Crow, under the alias of Dark Cuckoo (闇郭公, yami kakkō) and claimed to be an intelligence specialist assigned to assist it in locating the target. As Dark Crow had only interacted with Freya while she was acting as Black Swan, he believed her lie without issue and accepted her as his subordinate. Freya falsely reported that she had confirmed that the man believed to be Patton was in fact the prince, which incentivized Dark Crow to command his underlings to attack him all at once. Freya did not join in their ambush, and instead remained in the surrounding forest to observe from a distance.

Just as Dark Crow's squad appeared around the decoy Patton, who had momentarily stepped out onto a balcony to ponder the state of the revolution, they were stopped by Hunty, who made quick work of them all through her extraordinary Magic power. Realizing that he was severely outclassed by his opponent, Dark Crow feigned death and covertly fled to the forest for safety, where he reunited with Freya. While Dark Crow attempted to question Freya about her sudden disappearance, she quickly drove a knife into his neck and severed it from his body, informing him that his life would have to be taken for the sake of completing the mission.

Immediately after killing Dark Crow, Freya approached Hunty and declared her surrender, presenting his disembodied head as proof of her own lack of hostility. Maintaining her Dark Cuckoo persona, Freya claimed to be a sympathizer of the Revolutionary Army who had chosen to take part in the assassination attempt solely to have a means of reaching out to its leaders directly, and asked to join its cause. Recognizing the head of Dark Crow as proof of the other woman's loyalty, Hunty agreed to allow Freya into the revolution, and offered to make her a member of the Outlaws in recognition of her considerable combat ability. Feigning ignorance about the Outlaws' ties to the Revolutionary Army, Freya accepted Hunty's proposal, granting her the opportunity to get close to Patton under the guise of being his ally.

Freya arrived at the Outlaws' camp two days later, as they were celebrating their victory over General Lelyukov Berkov of the Helman 1st Army. At the camp, she immediately approached and stated her fabricated background to Patton, who responded without suspicion due to having been contacted about her recruitment by Hunty ahead of time. A few moments later, Hunty herself appeared on the scene and formally introduced the two to each other, in the process seemingly confirming Freya's trustworthiness as a comrade. Soon afterward, however, Freya was confronted by Sanada Tourin, a renowned JAPANese strategist that had been acting as a member of the Outlaws, and questioned about her identity. Tourin accused Freya of being dishonest about her knowledge and intentions, noting that she was able to immediately recognize Patton before he had even given her his name. When Freya attempted to counter this argument by insisting that Hunty had informed her of Patton's appearance ahead of time, Tourin reminded her that Hunty had just introduced them to each other as though she had anticipated that she would not be able to identify him as the prince, exposing her explanation as a lie. Freya was unable to offer a worthy rebuttal to this logic, prompting Tourin to declare her to be an assassin aiming for Patton's life.

With her identity now revealed, Freya was forced to abandon her objective and flee to safety. Before the surrounding Outlaws were able to capture her, she threw a smoke bomb onto the ground, temporarily blinding them and granting her a chance to escape. Just as Freya began to make her exit, she was intercepted and pinned to the ground by Rance, the leader of the Outlaws, who had deliberately hidden himself within some nearby bushes in preparation for making a dramatic entrance in front of the group's new female member and coincidentally overheard the entire exchange. Now unconscious, Freya's body was passed on to Merci Archa, the leader of the Revolutionary Army's supply unit, to be imprisoned and held for questioning.

After regaining consciousness in a prison cell, Freya was visited by Rance, who declared that he would get her to reveal her secrets to him through sex. Freya put forth no resistance, intending to take advantage of the intimacy of the situation to end Rance's life while he was distracted by pleasure. This plan was quickly compromised as the intercourse commenced, however, as Freya was unable to read Rance's erratic behavior well enough to pinpoint an opening to assassinate him, eventually resulting in the exchange ending without issue. To her surprise, Rance chose to release her afterwards and allowed her to remain a part of the Outlaws, arbitrarily assigning her the position of Kanami's subordinate after observing that Kanami was nervous about having a ninja more talented than her in the group. Rance's decision was greatly contested by his allies, who feared that Freya would make further attempts at sabotaging them, but ultimately ran unopposed due to his authority as leader giving him the final say in the matter.

Now officially recognized as a member of the Outlaws and under the sole supervision of the easily intimidated and much less skilled Kanami, Freya was left free to resume her deceitful activities. In spite of this, she remained hesitant to make any further attempts at taking action due to misreading Rance's spontaneous decision to recruit her as a devious plot to monitor her movements, and chose to diligently act as an ally to the group until she was able to better assess her circumstances. To ensure that she would not come into conflict with the rest of her organization, she gave her second-in-command Dark Heron the order to temporarily suspend all of the Dark Wings' activities until further notice, preventing the Helman government from utilizing any of its members while she was cooperating with the revolution.

As the Outlaws continued to score more victories against the Helman Army, Freya began to evaluate the possibility that the Revolutionary Army would succeed in toppling the government and gain control over the country. Furthermore, she gradually became endeared to Kanami, whose earnest and hardworking personality reminded Freya of her late mentor, leading her to enjoy her time among the Outlaws much more. Despite her own shifting feelings, she resolved to continue having the Dark Wings remain idle, believing that maintaining neutrality would enable the group to retain its power regardless of the revolution's outcome. Freya caught Rance eavesdropping after she reported this decision to Dark Heron in the middle of the night, and was confronted once again about where her loyalties lied. While Freya asserted that she cared about her own organization first and foremost, she assured Rance that she would not betray the Outlaws so long as they continued to win. Rance replied with absolute confidence, declaring that he would show her a new dawn break out over Helman. This response intrigued Freya, who told Rance that she was eager to see him prove his claim.

Eventually, the Outlaws succeeded in reaching Lang Bau, the capital city of Helman, and launched a final assault on it to reclaim the country in the name of the revolution. During the siege, Freya was placed into a squad led by the JAPANese warrior princess Tokugawa Sen, which acted as a decoy to distract enemy soldiers at the front entrance of the imperial palace and give the true invasion squad led by Rance an opportunity to sneak in during the ensuing confusion. Freya's squad fought off several waves of soldiers before reconvening with the rest of the Outlaws in the imperial throne room to assist in the final battles against Minerva Margaret, the general of the Helman 3rd Army who had claimed the title of Empress of Helman for herself after slaughtering Stessel and his associates, and Toushin MM, the tremendously-powerful super weapon with which Stessel had intended to conquer The Continent.

Following the destruction of Toushin MM, Freya assisted in leading Kanami to the roof of the imperial palace to raise the flag of the Revolutionary Army and officially declare its victory. Freya did not help with holding the flag itself, instead leaving the work to Kanami and Norimaki while she stared transfixed at the horizon. To her surprise, the overcast clouds cleared away to reveal a bright blue sky, causing her to remark to herself with satisfaction that Rance had fulfilled his promise. Soon afterward, Patton was declared the 47th Emperor of Helman and enacted his first and only proclamation by abolishing the nation’s imperial system entirely in favor of a democracy, symbolically finalizing the action by shattering the imperial crown in his hand. Freya was largely unperturbed by the sudden decision, content to serve under any government so long as her organization remained alive and well.

In the months following the end of the Helmanian Revolution, Freya and the Dark Wings remained in service to the new government led by President Sheila Helman, Patton's younger sister and the nation's former empress. As part of Sheila's desire to transform Lang Bau into a more open and welcoming place to the general public, the Dark Wings developed a more visible presence within the capital, though they remained generally covert in carrying out their operations. Freya's role in the new Helman became closer to that of a spymaster, keeping watch over the large country through her information networks and reporting her findings back to the government.

In September of LP0007, less than a year after the end of the revolution, Helman was invaded from its southern border by an enormous army of Monsters in what would come to be known as the opening movements of the 2nd Dark Lord War. The country was unequipped to defend against an attack of such a size from the south, causing it to send a portion of the Helman 2nd Army, its primary monster subjugation unit, to assist in the effort. This proved to be a critical mistake, as a second large army of monsters approached the nation from its border with the Monster Realm soon afterward and was able to quickly overwhelm the reduced numbers of the 2nd Army stationed there. In an instant, Helman was occupied from two sides by the Monster Army and pushed to the brink of collapse. As the safety of Helman directly correlated with the safeguarding of the Dark Wings, Freya wasted no time in lending her forces to assist in defending the country. Lacking the raw power necessary to challenge the Monster Generals that commanded the main divisions of the enemy army, the Dark Wings instead devoted their attention toward subduing the Monster Captains that presided over smaller squads, as well as aiding in the evacuation of civilians in targeted cities.

During the events of Rance X, the forces of the Human Realm were, through various circumstances, formally united under Rance to create the United Human Army. Due to possessing the Dark Sword Chaos, one of the only weapons capable of penetrating the Invincibility Field that protected the Dark Lords that led the legions of the Monster Army from all forms of damage, Rance was able to form a specialized squad made up of humanity’s finest warriors designed to fight against and defeat each of the Dark Lords invading human territories. Titled the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, this group allowed humanity to begin to mount a more effective resistance against the Monster Army, providing hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.

While coordinating a civilian evacuation along the westernmost edge of Helman, Freya reunited with Kanami, who had been acting as a member of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad and had been sent out ahead of the rest of the group to scout a path that would enable it to approach Babolat, one of the Dark Lords charged with invading Helman, with as few skirmishes as possible. As a practical joke, Freya concealed her presence and ambushed Kanami, tying her hands behind her back and forcing her to direct her to her allies' location. After returning to the rest of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, Freya released Kanami and commended her for improving her abilities since they last met; a compliment which Kanami could only take as an insult. After briefly summarizing the Dark Wings' involvement with the war effort, Freya pointed Rance and his allies toward the safest path to Babolat before bidding them farewell to resume her own duties. The path Freya had chosen happened to be in the exact opposite direction of the one that Kanami had intended to report as the safest option, embarrassing her even further.

After several setbacks, the Dark Lord Extermination Squad succeeded in subduing Babolat and ridding Helman of one of its most immediate threats. Even greater troubles emerged for the northern nation soon after this victory was scored, as the Dark Lord Kesselring, who had remained relatively inactive in the invasion up to that point, began taking direct action against the Helman Army. Kesselring infected several key pockets of Helman's forces with a contagious virus known as chupacabra, turning all who were afflicted with it into mindless slaves that could think only of further spreading the disease.

The impact of the spread of chupacabra reached its apex when Rolex Gadras, general of the Helman 5th Army and the country's strongest warrior, became affected by it, preventing the 5th Army from mobilizing any further. In preparation for the Dark Lord Extermination Squad's effort to face him, Freya was assigned to track down the location that Kesselring had been using as a base. She was eventually able to trace him back to Bram Castle, an abandoned structure located deep within the Transylvania forest along Helman's border with the Monster Realm, enabling the Dark Lord Extermination Squad to begin operations to defeat him as soon as it arrived in the country.

The Dark Lord Extermination Squad made multiple attempts at fighting against Kesselring, only to face defeat each time in the face of the Dark Lord's stupendous strength. Just as he teetered along the edge of giving up, Rance devised a plan to exploit Kesselring's desire to protect unfortunate women by having a female spy from the Helman Army infiltrate his castle and grant their allies entry while he slept in his coffin and was at his most vulnerable. Freya plays an active role in the plan regardless of whether Rance chooses to send one or several women into Kesselring's territory; locating thousands of troubled women across Helman and inserting undercover female members of the Dark Wings among their numbers if he chooses to send multiple and periodically infiltrating Bram Castle to secretly relay orders to Peruelé Kalette, the chosen spy, if he chooses to send only one. Regardless of Rance's decision, the scheme eventually proves to be highly effective, allowing the Dark Lord Extermination Squad to defeat Kesselring at his weakest and the Helman Army to begin a more active offense against the invading monsters.

If Rance does not assist in liberating Helman from the Monster Army, LeMay, the Great Monster General in charge of the invasion, divides the main forces of his army into several small squads and orders them to attack several innocent cities along the outskirts of the country, intending to distract the Helman Army with protecting them for long enough to launch a decisive strike on Lang Bau with his remaining soldiers. The plan is seen through by Tourin, who proposes a counter-strategy of having the Helman Army focus all of its attention toward sieging the Monster Army's central base in Laborie while he personally led a directed evacuation of the targeted cities. After some debate, Hubert Lipton, the Helman Army's leader, permits the plan, giving its forces the chance to defeat LeMay and land a final victory against the monsters. Freya and the Dark Wings are called upon to assist Tourin in evacuating endangered cities throughout the ordeal, where their speed and efficiency enables them to minimize civilian casualties.

At some point during the war, Freya was recruited to serve as a member of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, where she resumed her position as Kanami's subordinate from their time in the Outlaws. While Kanami was made anxious by having to work together with Freya yet again, Freya remained impressed by Kanami's growth as a ninja and began evaluating the possibility of naming her as her successor as leader of the Dark Wings amid her usual teasing. Freya was called upon by Rance many times during this period to assist in interrogating captured monster soldiers for information. Though she accomplished this mission with excellent results, she did so by subjecting the imprisoned monsters to excruciating torture, a process which disturbed Rance.

Some time later, Freya was captured and imprisoned beneath Lang Bau by the Holy Gal Monster Housesnurse, who had fallen in love with Norimaki and desired to convert the depths of the Helmanian capital into their own personal lovers retreat. Freya was greatly amused by the situation, and made no effort to escape to continue observing Norimaki's uncomfortable reactions to Housesnurse's affections. Eventually, Norimaki was pushed into rejecting Housesnurseand the duo were rescued by Rance and his allies, who had stormed the dungeon in search of them, granting them freedom at the cost of breaking Housesnurse's heart yet again.

During the operation to defeat the Dark Lord Lei in the Free Cities Alliance, Freya and the Dark Wings were called upon to covertly monitor the meeting between Rance, various commanders of the Monster Army, and Katyusha Bosch, president of the criminal organization the DX Association, in the city of Goa to negotiate the surrender of the United Human Army. After Rance exploited the situation to deliver a surprise attack against Lei, the Dark Wings surrounded the city and prevented the enemy forces from escaping. While Lei was able to flee from the scene through sheer tenacity, the Dark Wings managed to capture and imprison Katyusha, preventing her from acting against humanity for her own self interests any further.

Freya made several attempts at torturing Katyusha for information regarding her involvement with the Monster Army after her imprisonment, but was unable to break through the other woman's steely resolve and eventually forced to turn her over to Rance for questioning. Katusha eventually admitted to the presence of an additional traitor among the commanding members of the Free Cities' ranks, who was outed and threatened into compliance before being able to sabotage the war situation further. The exposure of the traitor enabled the Free Cities to triumph over the monsters during the Battle of Sekigahara, ridding the enemy army of several of its commanders and critically damaging Lei. While Lei managed to narrowly escape from the conflict with his life, he was diligently followed by the Dark Wings, who surrounded him within Goa until he was trapped him inside the city, giving Rance and his allies the opportunity to deliver a final attack against him.

While Freya does not appear or get mentioned at any point during the events of Rance X: Part 2, it is shown during the epilogue that Kanami inherited her title as leader of the Dark Wings as well as ownership of Norimaki by the fifth year of the Blank Era. As no reference is made to Freya in this brief scene, both her status following the conclusion of the 2nd Dark Lord War and the circumstances surrounding Kanami obtaining her position are unknown.

Personality and Appearance
Freya is a dark-skinned woman of above-average height with a slim, well-toned physique and silver hair that falls slightly above her shoulders. Her most striking features are her piercing cold blue-colored eyes, which are often compared to those of a snake. While Freya is described as having a mature and sensual allure about her, she is also said to exude a constant aura of danger that causes others to feel ill at ease when around her. Freya's clothing consists of a black leotard with reinforced white plating around the chest denoting her as a high-ranking member of the Dark Wings, black and gold patterned belts worn across her waist and shoulders, white thigh-high boots with matching white wristbands, a gold hairband, and a long dark pink scarf. When acting as Black Swan, Freya wears a black mask in the shape of a red-eyed swan that conceals all of her face above her mouth.

A dedicated assassin, Freya is a detached and merciless individual who is capable of performing horrendous acts of brutality, such as murder, torture, and kidnapping, without any kind of hesitation or remorse. Her sole interest in life is to ensure the continued existence of the Dark Wings, and she has fully devoted herself toward accomplishing this goal through any means necessary. While primarily under the employ of the Helman government, she holds no true loyalty to anything outside of her own organization, and is content to act in direct opposition of the government's desires if she believes that doing so will most readily benefit the Dark Wings. Freya's ruthless pragmatism extends even to her own subordinates, who she is willing to psychologically manipulate and even kill for the sake of their group as a whole. She is not hypocritical in these judgements, however, and has no qualms with taking her own life if it is for the Dark Wings' future.

Despite her cold-blooded and fatalistic outlook of the world, Freya is not entirely without compassion. She refers to her feelings as Black Swan, leader of the Dark Wings, to be entirely unrelated to her feelings as Freya Idun, implying that she has been conditioned to disassociate her conscience from the atrocities she is required to perform as the leader of a group of assassins. This duality is perhaps best exemplified in the instances where she is required to harm her own subordinates to accomplish her goals, where she utters a short yet sincere apology to them in recognition of their sacrifice. Her use of a face-concealing mask when acting as Black Swan, while outwardly done simply to hide her identity, is also intended to be a symbolic representation of this perspective, obscuring her human features in preparation for performing inhuman tasks.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Freya possesses a lighthearted and playful side beneath her stoic exterior, and enjoys teasing others in her free time. Though many perceive this to be discordant with the rest of her character, Freya herself views it as a natural consequence of her profession; claiming that, as assassins are always prepared for death, they seek out pleasure and enjoyment whenever they can find it. Her preferred targets to poke fun at are earnest and hardworking people who lack self-esteem, such as Kentou Kanami and Hubert Lipton, as she finds their exasperated reactions to her antics to be especially amusing. Freya is not at all malicious in this bullying, however, and in fact holds great affection in her heart for these very same people, who remind her of her late mentor through their steadfast resolve. While Freya shows interest in pursuing romantic relationships with those that she teases, her tendency to express these feelings solely through further harassment causes them to be mostly unreceptive to her advances.

Abilities
As an assassin, Freya is a very strong fighter with an incredibly high agility. Since she wears light armour, she's one to go down quickly if gets hit, but her high evasion and reflexes easily makes up for this. She fights mostly with short swords or knives.

Her high skill as an assassin makes her a deadly opponent that, while her physical strength is not too high, her incredible accuracy and knowledge to land on the enemy's vital spots allow her to instantaneously kill her enemies in one clean strike when given the opening. She's quick and decisive, with little hesitation or fear in the battlefield.

She also has a special skill called Paralyse Powder, a technique that damages several opponents and sticks their bodies to the ground for a short period of time, immobilizing them and leaving them vulnerable.

She possesses a Ninja Lv1 skill and with her current level is 48, she is a very skilled ninja and assassin.

Trivia

 * In the Rance IX popularity poll, she was ranked 19th in the Other Girls category. Strangely, her partner Norimaki ranked higher in the Other Males category.
 * She was the only member of dark wing to have her true name revealed.
 * She was one of the few people to keep her position after the Revolution.
 * In her appearance in Kichikuou Rance she displayed an attraction towards Hubert Lipton, aiding him in battle. If she helps him enough times, she will make him "return the favor" by having him sleep with her.