Warg

''This article refers to the Rance Series character Warg as she appears in the game Rance X: Showdown. For information relating to the character as she appears in Kichikuou Rance, see Warg (Kichikuou Rance).''

"Warg"

- There's only three kinds of people that get near me. Those who want to take advantage of my powers, those who want to eliminate me and...weirdos.

About
Warg is an independent Dark Lord living in solitude in a remote location of the Monster Realm. A particularly infamous member of the Antagonist Race, Warg is a figure that evokes great fear to all; often compared to the abhorrently violent Medusa and RedEye.

Originally a human girl named Warg Aka (ワーグ・赤, wāgu aka), she was born with an extraordinarily rare magical ability to put those around her to sleep, manipulate their dreams and even peer into their memories. Her body inherently secretes pheromones capable of inducing a forceful sleep on anyone that inhales them, making every living being that gets close to her fall asleep on the spot. At a young age her powers were weak enough to go unnoticeable but by the time she grew into a teenager they quickly became potent enough to threaten everyone that approached her as Warg herself had no control over her ability. Confused and terrified by the young girl's strange powers, the people living in her small village began ostracizing her and her family. Her parents, attempting to avoid responsibility for their daughter's condition, neglected her until she was eventually expelled from the village entirely. Cursing her own existence, Warg delved deep into the Monster Forest hoping to end her own life. As even monsters were powerless to her ability her aimless wandering eventually led her to encounter Demon King Gi, who saved her from the depths of despair she was immersed into and turned her into a Dark Lord. Unfortunately, even with the extraordinary faculties inherent to the Demon King's servants, Warg remained incapable of controlling her own power, which only strengthened following her transformation. Her presence was enough to potentially endanger even other Dark Lords, making her a very troublesome individual who was preferable to avoid entirely. As time went on, even Demon King Gi grew distant from her and she secluded herself in an isolated area of the Monster Realm. Due to her inability to form relationships with others, she spent most of her life as Dark Lord alone; feared and shunned. If anyone tried to approach her it was usually to either exterminate her or to gain her favor to exploit her ability for their own ends. At some point during this time she encountered a very rare creature named “Dream Dolphin”, a bizarre parasitic life form that feeds off the soul of their preys until they die. As a Dark Lord, Warg would be able to feed it indefinitely without dying so she decided to keep it as a pet named Lassie.In the year GI1015, Gi named Kurusu Miki, a human girl from an Alternate Dimension, as his successor as Demon King, kidnapping her from her home to pass on his blood to her. Before Miki was able to fully awaken to the power of the Demon King, however, she was rescued by her boyfriend Ogawa Kentarou, who was able to temporarily stop her transformation through the use of Hirami Lemons. With Gi having allowed himself to be killed by Kentarou, and Miki refusing to accept the position of Demon King, the Monster Realm was left without a leader and thrown into a state of civil war. The war was fought between Hornet, Gi's daughter who desired to follow through with her father’s wishes and embrace Miki as the new leader of monsterkind, and Kayblis, the oldest and most powerful Dark Lord who desired to become the Demon King himself and wage war against humanity. Early on during the War of the Factions Warg was scouted by Satella in order to assist the Hornet Faction in the war but her distaste for war and battle made her very adamant in cooperating, resulting in her involvement in the war to be extremely limited. At some point the Apostles of the strongest Dark Lord Kayblis, Kaybnyan and Kaybwan started to visit Warg's small house to play (albeit usually falling asleep quickly). While Warg was suspicious about their intentions she was ultimately happy to have some company. Eventually, the two managed to convince Warg to side with the Kayblis Faction and help them end the long war. As Warg had no personal stakes in the conflict tying her to either side, it made little difference to her which side she would assist. Once in the Kayblis Faction, she took a more active role in the war. As many of the Monster Generals in Hornet's Monster Army were put to sleep, along with countless monsters, Kayblis' army would be free to mercilessly slaughter their opposition. Continuously losing commanders quickly led the army to fall into disarray and collapse as the Kayblis Faction pushed further and further into their territory, drastically turning the tides of the war that was, up until that point, at a stiff stalemate. After only a few months, Warg's full cooperation allowed the Kayblis Faction to come out victorious of the conflict, cementing itself as the undisputed ruler of the Monster Realm after 7 years of bloodshed. Once the civil war ended, Warg returned to her home but Kaybnyan and Kaybwan stopped visiting Warg entirely, confirming her suspicion that they were only interested in gaining access to her power, leading her to cut ties with the Kayblis Faction entirely. Shortly after, Kayblis ordered a large-scale invasion to conquer the human realm and find Little Princess, sparking the start of the 2nd Dark Lord War. Kayblis ordered all the Dark Lords available to take part in the invasion, Warg included, but as she had no desire to work for Kayblis again or to take part in a war she decided to wholly ignore the order and secluded herself in her humble house in the Monster Realm. Throughout the course of the war Kayblis attempted to persuade her countless times through letters but she mostly ignored these and continued with her usual life. At the start of the year LP8, over 5 months after the start of the war, at least one of the major armies invading the human countries have suffered a tremendous blow after having lost both of the Dark Lords assigned to it to the Dark Lord Extermination Squad led by Rance, as well as a substantial portion of the monsters making up its force. Growing impatient with Warg's defiant stance, Kayblis decides that enough is enough and goes out of his way to face Warg in person. Infuriated for ignoring his call to action, he immediately shreds her home, much to Warg's distress. In spite of her initial shock at his unexpected appearance, her ability turns out to be entirely useless on Kayblis as he reveals that he modified his body thousands of years ago so that it wouldn't require sleep in the off-chance that he would get killed while doing so, thus, rendering him immune to her power. He then strikes her with his tail, sending her flying and slamming against a tree with a tremendous force. Although he was very careful to hit her as lightly as possible, knowing that her physical constitution is weak, the titanic difference in strength between the two is enough to inflict serious damage on Warg. Faced against someone that the power she believed to be invincible was ineffective against filled Warg with terror for the first time in a long time. Kayblis insists her to either cooperate with him in the war or die by his hand, leaving her no choice but to comply on the spot. Following Kayblis' intimidation, Warg joins the war effort in the Monster Army sortied in the country that lacks any Dark Lords and is in a disadvantageous position in the battle with humanity. During this time she adopted a similar strategy to the one from the War of the Factions; approaching the enemy's forces at night and making them all fall asleep, prioritizing forts that would be hard to subdue and enabling the monster army to enter through the front gate and exterminate all the soldiers with no resistance. The range of her ability is large enough that human soldiers would be affected before even noticing her presence, not giving them an opportunity to escape or prepare any countermeasures. A Monster General in charge would generally give Warg instructions through letters on an arrow on where to move while maintaining their distance from her. Occasionally even some of the monsters would fall asleep if they were not careful enough to avoid entering within the range of her ability. As forts rapidly fell one after the other, the news spread like wildfire about the mysterious power until it eventually reached the ears of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad. A Dark Lord allied with the squad, Satella, about the possibility of Warg being the one responsible for the incidents, prompting the Fuhrer, owner of the Dark Lord-slaying sword Chaos, to take matters into his own hands. During her usual mission she eventually comes across the Dark Lord Extermination Squad while passing through a small village, with most of its members already asleep as the effect of her ability activated long before they managed to reach her. Warg gets her pet Lassie to fight for her while her power takes effect; the drowsiness greatly impacting their combat performance. The fight turns into a race of whether the squad would be able to defeat Lassie before they fall asleep. To turn the tide in her favor, Warg starts progressively removing some of her clothing to strengthen her ability, since more of her body being exposed releases a larger number of sleep powder. As the members of the elite squad continue to fall it is only their leader Rance who manages to remain strong, motivated by thinking of the fight as a cute girl giving him a free striptease. In time, Warg ends up completely in the nude as Rance remains the only still standing when he finally manages to defeat Lassie. Falling in defeat, Warg is reminded of her encounter with Kayblis and trembles in fear in face of an opponent that her ability was unable to bring down. Thinking that her life is about to end she’s briefly thrown into despair as Rance approaches her. On his last legs himself, the leader of humanity only has energy to hold her tightly on his arms before declaring his victory. Warg is confused and asks if he’s going to kill her but Rance says that it would be a waste to kill cute girls and was never aiming for her life, merely wanting to capture her. As Rance is on his limit, he offers her to join him and humanity before falling asleep at long last. Warg, bewildered over whether she should trust him but pushed by her desire for connections, is unable to decide on her own, telling Lassie to decide for her instead.

Following the battle, Warg wakes up the whole squad and deserts the Monster Army. The administration of the United Army of Humanity prepares a house settled near their headquarters in Rance Castle where Warg can live in for the time being. It is located in a mountain area far enough that her ability won’t affect anyone in the area, but close enough to keep her in touch, where she remained until the end of the 2nd Dark Lord War. During this time she remained in contact with some of members of the Human Army like Biscuitta Burns and Sill Plain through letters. Every now and then, Rance would also come to visit to play around whenever he had the time although his visits would generally last around 30 minutes before her ability would put him to sleep. During one of these visits while Rance was casually talking with Warg about Kurusu Miki she inadvertently informed him of being in possession of hypnotic abilities. Finding an opportunity to finally bed Miki, Rance convinced Warg to help him through hypnotising a sleeping Miki into loving him instead of Kentarou. Tricked into thinking that Kentarou was a perverse man that was abusing Miki, Warg agreed to go through with Rance’s plan. Despite being the Demon King, Warg's hypnotism effectively managed to replace of her memories of Kentarou with Rance, deceiving her into thinking her beloved boyfriend is someone else. As a result, Miki and Rance begin dating and she completely abandons Kentarou as he's now a complete stranger to her, mistaking him for a paperboy. Believing her to be afflicted with a strange case of amnesia, Kentarou goes through with Miki's interpretation and turns into a paperboy, hoping to get closer to her. It doesn't take too long for Miki to start feeling that there's something off about their relationship while she and Kentarou begin bonding again. As Warg lives a secluded life she's largely oblivious to how Miki's course of events following her involvement.

At the conclusion of the 2nd Dark Lord War, Warg, alongside the other remaining Dark Lords, pledged servitude to Rance after he assumed the position of Demon King. At some point during the RA Era, Rance managed to effectively seal the pheromones coming out of her body in a way that allowed her to turn off and on her ability whenever she desired, allowing her to live alongside Rance and the other members of his inner circle. She remained loyal to Rance even as other prominent members of the Monster Realm chose to rise up against him.

During the events of Rance X: Part 2, Warg occasionally assisted Rance by putting the members of the El Party to sleep so that he could assault Masou Shizuka without a direct confrontation. As Rance secluded himself even further due to the increasing influence of the Demon King’s blood within him, she along with the other Dark Lords remained confined in Amazing Castle and Rising Dragon Mountain.

Later when the El Party climbed Rising Dragon Mountain a second time, Warg witnessed their fight with Rizna. As Rance’s children had become much stronger since their previous encounter they acquired a strong resistance to Rizna’s own pheromones, an ability somewhat similar to Warg’s own. Seeing that her power would have no effect, she opted for going into hiding and letting them go through with no resistance.

During the fight against Quelplan, Warg, along with her other Dark Lord allies, had her Demonic Blood Soul forcibly ripped from her body and absorbed by the trans-dimensional abomination, removing her invincibility field and effectively reverting her to her original human form. Following Quelplan’s defeat, the destruction of the Demonic Blood Pool and the termination of the entire Demon King system with it, the former Dark Lords were freed from their eternity of servitude and allowed to live their lives however they desired to.

Personality and Appearance
Warg is a young-looking girl with a petite stature, pale skin and long wavy white hair. Her attire consists of a red blouse with white fur on the sleeves along with a matching skirt over a brown waist cincher. Below it, she also sports lace-trimmed stockings and elbow gloves. She also wears a yellow scarf that she keeps on at all times, even when she undresses to make use of her ability.

On the outside, Warg presents herself as an aloof and seemingly apathetic girl; with a clear lack of detectable emotion on her face. An ageless body and an independent lifestyle detached from everything and anything in the continent has made her emotionally stunted, rarely conveying emotions on her face. While she may seem cool and distant, in reality she's an extremely lonely girl who’s desperate for making friends, something she’s been deprived of her whole life. This desperate need for friends causes her to be relatively naive and gullible. She's often very suspicious of anyone that approaches her, as she believes that they are usually either trying to use her or kill her, but a faint hope within her that they would be someone she can befriend leads her to eventually put her guard down and trust them. While she has lived for longer than any human being, she has spent the vast majority of it in complete solitude; preventing her from developing any social skills and coming off as quite awkward and distant. When in the rare situations where she's able to meet someone in person she generally struggles to express herself and while her cool demeanor gives the impression of a confident and independent girl, she's in fact very shy and is mostly incapable of interacting with others the way she desires.

Her isolation has made her uninterested in the conflicts of the world as she has no personal investment with any group or faction in particular. This is part of the reason why she chose to stay independent during the War of the Factions, indifferent over who would reign as the next Demon King. Among Dark Lords she’s not a particularly well-regarded one since, even if they have a stronger resistance to her power, she’s still held as a highly dangerous existence. Dark Lord Satella in particular holds a grudge against her for choosing to ally with Kayblis over Hornet after she had rejected her offer, on top of being a big contributing factor to the defeat of the Hornet Faction. She’s generally distrustful of Warg due to her infamy, spread wide even within the Monster Realm. Warg pretends to not care about Satella’s opinion of her but she’s secretly hoping to reconcile with her.

While her ability has made her an infamous figure, Warg is a pacifist who would prefer not to hurt anyone. In the hands of someone more motivated and ambitious her power would be able to easily conquer nations. Warg despises her power, as it is the very reason she was outcast, and has a great deal of self-deprecation as a result. Her self-hatred has even led her to attempt suicide in the past but her ability has prevented her from even achieving that. She wears layers of clothing covering every inch of her skin as a way to attempt to minimize the pheromones that her body emits, weakening the overall effect of her power as a result, but it hardly makes a difference. Conversely, Warg has an absolute faith in her ability, believing it to be invincible. She knows better than anyone how powerful it is precisely because of how effective it has been in preventing her from interacting with others and is generally led to believe that no one could stand against it. Ironically, in spite of her strong desire for connections, she's driven to extreme fear when her ability fails to take effect in someone that she wishes to subdue. Such was the case with Kayblis, who had mutated his body to not require sleep millenia ago and was thus, immune to her power. As much as she dislikes her own ability, she strongly relies on it and is quick to crumble emotionally when it doesn’t work the way she expects.

Warg’s sole company in her remote home in the Monster Realm is the Dream Dolphin Lassie, who serves as both a pet and a companion to the lonely Dark Lord. Lassie’s upbeat and energetic personality sharply contrasts with Warg’s taciturn demeanor, who she often scolds for being excessively loose-lipped. While to anyone observing the two Lassie would look like someone Warg could call a friend, the truth of their relationship is considerably more bleak. Although Lassie may appear to be full of personality, Dream Dolphins are insentient creatures; lacking souls and, thus, conscious thought. Instead, they have the power to read and mimic the thoughts of those they’re attached to and in reality all the words expressed by Lassie are none other than Warg’s own. She is, of course, perfectly aware of this but she spends her daily life with Lassie regardless as a way to make up for her loneliness, even if in essence it’s not much different from talking to herself. In turn, Lassie serves as a reflection of Warg’s real self. Beneath her reserved and cold exterior, Warg is a surprisingly bubbly and cheery girl whose thoughts are far girlier than you would expect. Rance first takes note of this when she's exposed to her underwear during their battle and reveals a heart-patterned bra, which surprises him for being an unexpectedly girly choice for one so serious-looking. Another unexpected side of her is her fondness for playing with dolls. She keeps dozens of different dolls, gives them names and crafts stories with them; a hobby that was described by Rance as simply “cute” when he found out. As bright and breezy as she may be on the inside, Warg’s life of solitude has made her shut out and is immensely embarrassed of showing this side of herself to anyone, as she’s never had anyone she was able to truly open herself fully to; so much so that it’s the only thing that breaks her otherwise poker-faced expression. In spite of these flaws, Warg is still trying to change herself in hopes of being able to make genuine friendships. When Rance found out about her passtime of playing with dolls she exploded in embarrassment and put him to sleep instantly, even considering using her ability to erase his memories on the matter, but opted not to in order to be able to form a more meaningful relationship with him. Following her meeting with Rance and allying herself with the Unite Human Army, she was able to form some distant relationships for the first time. In particular, she keeps in touch with Urza Pranaice and Biscuitta Burns, who provide her with anything she might need in her new home. She was also able to form an indirect friendship with Sill Plain, who she is unable to meet due to her falling asleep whenever she enters her proximity, but is able to talk with regularly through letters. Additionally, she was surprisingly able to become friends with Cessna Benville, who had been induced to a state of extreme insomnia after having received a lifetime’s worth of sleep over the course of many years due to a curse. Warg accidentally released her from the insomnia with her ability when Cessna had been scouted by the Dark Lord Extermination Squad to take part in the mission to subdue Warg. As Cessna has a tendency to abruptly fall asleep and wake up on her own she’s ironically capable of finding a loophole in Warg’s ability, thus allowing her to keep Warg company and become friends even. Her most notable relationship is with the leader of the United Army himself, Rance. As the man who was able to reach out to her and give her a place to belong, Warg holds Rance in high-regard, although she's not a fan of his perverted nature. Because Rance is one of humanity's strongest warriors, he's also able to visit her and stay awake for about 30 minutes. Warg is extremely happy whenever she's able to spend time with anyone so she treasures these moments. Although her shy nature would not allow her to admit it, she has developed a strong crush for Rance for everything he's done for her.

Abilities
Out of all the Dark Lords, Warg has the lowest fighting strength, comparable to that of a regular teenage girl as she stands at the lowest level possible for a living being in the continent at level 1. She’s largely incapable of engaging in any form of combat, lacking the physical constitution, the inherent talent to stand out with any weapon or technique or even the personality to fend herself in battle. In spite of all these traits, she possesses the inherent powers that come with holding a Demonic Blood Soul within her, like an ageless body and the invincibility field that grants her immunity from all conventional attacks. Furthermore, her body is naturally more resilient than that of regular humans even at level 1, being able to survive a strike from Kayblis even if he held back as much as possible. She’s also capable of living with a parasitic creature known as a Dream Dolphin, noted for being able to suck dry their victims of energy, without experiencing any fatigue or inconveniences to her lifestyle.

What makes Warg stand out as a Dark Lord comes entirely from her unique skill to put all other lifeforms to sleep; an ability so tremendously powerful that on its own makes her one of the most catastrophic beings in the world. She was born with an exceptionally rare Dream Manipulation Lv2 skill, making her a prodigy in this distinguishably unusual form of magic. This skill allows her body to emanate pheromones with properties resembling sleeping powder, spreading far and wide and putting all living beings that inhale it to sleep. The pheromones’ odor is described as being sweet and soothing, producing a very calming effect that is able to quickly lower the guard of her victims even when they’re aware of it. The most terrifying part of this ability is that those that are afflicted with it will never wake up on their own again. Warg herself is able to wake up those that fall as a consequence of her power, but if she doesn’t take action directly her victims will remain asleep and wither down until they die. In that sense, it is more accurate to say that she’s able to put others in a vegetative state rather than mere sleep. Furthermore, once the powder leaves her body it can spread several kilometers and still take effect, giving her power an exceptional range. It is also capable of inducing sleep in any and all lifeforms it makes contact with. Producing these pheromones is a process that happens naturally in her body so it doesn’t even demand any effort or require her to spend energy to make use of it. All of these allow Warg to easily put entire armies to sleep with minimal effort and without even granting them the chance to fight and it is how Warg became an infamous existence as a Dark Lord despite possessing no combat ability to speak of. It is worth noting that while Warg was born with this power, it was strengthened considerably after becoming a Dark Lord. It makes no distinction of races as this power everything from insects and humans to monsters and even other Dark Lords.

As invincible as her ability may seem there are ways to counter it. Firstly, while Warg’s pheromones induce forceful sleep any lifeform that lacks the basic biological function is essentially immune to it, like the Dream Dolphin Lassie that always accompanies Warg. The same principle to any such creature that has developed some form of insomnia, like the Dark Lord Kayblis, although in this cases it only generates a stronger resistance to its effects as even Kayblis took note of the fact that he was feeling mildly drowsy despite possessing a mutated body that has not slept for thousands of years. Speaking in a broader sense beyond these special cases, stronger beings are inherently more resistant to its effects. Because the range of her pheromones is so wide however, if they try to approach her, even powerful warriors would eventually fall asleep before they get to see her in person. In the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, conformed by some of the strongest people humanity has to offer, only its strongest members were able to reach Warg. For greater beings however, like the Demon King or high class Gods, their might is so astronomical that they might as well be immune though. Outside of sheer strength, simple force of will is also a viable countermeasure if they’re able to simply fight off the drowsiness, although this can only work for so long. Making direct contact, Rance is only able to stay awake for about 30 minutes.

Since the pheromones are expelled directly from Warg’s skin, she’s able to limit the strength of her power by simply covering most of her visible skin. Conversely, this means that by default she employs her ability at its weakest and is able to strengthen it by simply removing pieces of clothing to increase the amount of sleeping powder she emanates. If she’s forced into a situation where she has to fight, her go-to tactic is to have Lassie cover her and earn time until her opponent falls asleep. It is a surprisingly formidable method since even if her opponents don’t fall immediately, the drowsiness that her pheromones induce on them is so intense that they are largely incapable of fighting at their best.

Outside of the aforementioned pheromones, she also has several abilities that she can make use of on targets that are already asleep. In particular, she’s able to control their dreams and nightmares and use that to peek into their mental state, even looking into their memories. Most importantly, her control over dreams allows her to hypnotise her victims into blending such dreams with their memories, effectively brainwashing them into giving them any memory she desires and even inducing them into believing whatever she wants. There’s seemingly no limit or way to resist this; as long as the target is asleep, she can intrude in the victim’s mind. Additionally, following the 2nd Dark Lord War, Warg also bizarrely gained the ability to control those that have fallen asleep like dolls. She can either control their movements directly or set them to “auto-pilot”, where they will move and behave in the same way they normally would but while still being asleep and they would not remember anything afterwards. Warg herself was confused when she realised she acquired this ability and it is unclear if her power became even stronger or if she’s never been fully aware of the full extent of what she’s capable of.

Trivia

 * Warg came in 12th place in the "Females" category of the Rance X:Popularity Poll.
 * Warg's character design was inspired by the design of Cyborg 003 from the anime series Cyborg 009.
 * According to Orion, the Rance Series' lead character designer, Warg was made to appear older than she had been in Kichikuou Rance per request of the series' creator TADA, who believed that Rance would be unmotivated to fight her if he did not find her attractive.
 * During early development of Rance X's story, Warg was initially planned to command an army of unconscious human civilians that she had manipulated the dreams of. These humans would have had their faces covered by strange masks of Warg's own design and been incapable of experience pain when damaged, making them surprisingly dangerous opponents. According to Orion, this idea was ultimately scrapped when Warg's character was changed, implying that she was initially intended to be closer in personality to her portrayal in Kichikuou Rance.
 * In the release version of Rance X, Warg was erroneously stated to be 142cm tall, as she was in Kichikuou Rance. This was fixed in version 1.02, as she was intended to have the appearance of a teenager.
 * Warg's human last named "Aka" (赤) simply means "red", possibly referencing her distinctively reddish attire.
 * Warg is given the nickname "Center of Silence" (静寂の中央) in the opening sequence of Rance X. This is likely in reference to the fact that areas where Warg stands are noted for being eerily quiet due to her presence making all living beings fall asleep; with her standing at the center of that silence.
 * Warg has the lowest current Level of any known Dark Lord.