Tolstoy Bato

"Tolstoy Bato"

- on his luck.

About
Tolstoy Bato is a knight of the Helman Republic who was appointed lieutenant-general of the Helman 2nd Army following the end of the Helmanian Revolution. He is a quiet and level-headed man whose sullen disposition masks a deep love for his country.

Little is known of Tolstoy's background prior to the end of the Helmanian Revolution other than that he was a loyal soldier of the Helman Army and a close friend of Bodu, a captain of the 1st Army who served as the de facto second-in-command of the Helman Revolutionary Army Second Flag unit.

Following the success of the revolution, the Helman Army underwent major restructuring in response to losing much of its leadership during the conflict. While Tolstoy was considered for one of the four vacant general positions, he declined the promotion under the belief that he lacked the charisma necessary to be a leader and suggested Bodu as an alternative. Bodu was eventually selected to serve as general of the Helman 2nd Army, with Tolstoy becoming his lieutenant. Despite being entrusted with the dangerous and highly involved responsibility of protecting Fort Banra, the country's primary line of defense at its border with the Monster Realm, the two made an excellent team, with Bodu's bright personality and rapport with his subordinates pairing well with Tolstoy's talent for organizing armies and sensible decision-making skills.

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. As Helman's 4th Army, the country's southern border guard, was poorly-equipped to handle an invasion of such a great size, Cream Ganoblade, the Helman Army's chief of staff, ordered the 2nd Army to send reinforcements to aid in defending against the attack. This proved to be a critical mistake, as a second large army of monsters approached from the Monster Realm soon afterward and was able to quickly overwhelm the soldiers that had remained stationed there. Bodu was killed during the attack, leaving Tolstoy to take full command of the 2nd Army's surviving forces.

Suddenly the sole person in charge of overseeing the defense of one of the Human Realm's most dangerous warzones, Tolstoy took on a much more active role in leading his soldiers than he had previously, adopting many of the techniques and behaviors he had observed Bodu using to assist himself in doing so. Though he was flooded with stress and a variety of negative emotions, he buried these feelings beneath a cool and collected front for the sake of maintaining the 2nd Army's morale. Using the knowledge that a single lapse in judgment could jeopardize all of Helman as motivation, he steeled himself to the duty of fighting day and night to defend the country's western border for as long as possible.

The following weeks were the longest of Tolstoy's life. In addition to having to constantly contend with the Monster Army’s forces, several of his soldiers became infected with a terrifying disease known as chupacabra by the Dark Lord Kesselring, who had been tasked with leading the monsters' invasion of Helman. Those that contracted chupacabra were deprived of their free will and made into Kesselring’s mindless servants, driving their allies to take up arms against them to prevent further spread of the disease. Unable to rest or retreat and with ever-dwindling supplies and numbers, the soldiers of the 2nd Army grew progressively more restless and agitated, with many begging Tolstoy to call for a suicide attack to let death release them from their suffering. While Tolstoy felt much of the same way internally, he understood that throwing his life away and allowing the monsters to take Fort Banra would likely lead to the collapse of Helman and the deaths of his beloved family, and used the same line of thinking to inspire his subordinates to continue holding a defensive position.

During the events of Rance X, the forces of the Human Realm were, through various circumstances, formally united under the warrior 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 leading 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.

Under Rance's leadership, the Dark Lord Extermination Squad succeeded in defeating both Babolat and Kesselring, the two Dark Lords that had been participating in the occupation of Helman, along with many of the Monster Generals serving beneath them. This loss of leadership dealt a severe blow to the Monster Army's offensive efforts and enabled Tolstoy and his soldiers more freedom to leave Fort Banra and assist in fighting elsewhere.

At some point during the war, Tolstoy was chosen to become a member of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad at the discretion of the Helman Army's supreme commander Hubert Lipton and was called to meet with Rance at the United Human Army's headquarters of Rance Castle to confirm his recruitment. Rance immediately rejected Tolstoy upon learning that he was a man, but was eventually persuaded into accepting him on a trial basis after Hubert vouched for his competence and Tolstoy assured him that he would hardly need to acknowledge his presence. To Rance's frustration, Tolstoy immediately proved himself as an asset to his forces through his exceptional managerial abilities, forcing him to recognize him as a member of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad full time.

While serving as a member of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, Tolstoy contemplated giving Cream a letter that had been written to her by Bodu, who had been her lover prior to his death. Though he had several reservations about making Cream confront painful memories of her lost love, he eventually decided that it was better to pass on the letter, which had been the final message Bodu had written before his death, than to allow its words to be lost to time and chose to present it to her in private. Cream broke down in tears as she read the contents of the letter and apologized to Tolstoy for losing face in his presence. Hiding his discomfort, Tolstoy encouraged Cream to mourn her loss for as long as she needed until she could finally move beyond it.

Sometime later, Tolstoy ran into Rance by chance while walking through Rance Castle's courtyard. Irritated by the other man's bleak temperament, Rance made a spurious attempt at firing Tolstoy from the Dark Lord Extermination Squad by claiming that he had been making advances toward his women. After momentarily being taken aback by this accusation, Tolstoy calmly denied that this was the case by asserting that he was married with a child. When his slave Sill Plain explained to him that most people in romantic partnerships would not try to sleep with other people, Rance instead tried to make Tolstoy give him permission to sleep with his wife on the grounds that his subordinates' women belonged to him by proxy. Tolstoy replied by stating that his wife's looks would likely not meet Rance's standards and had his suspicions confirmed by showing him a picture of her. No longer under threat of having her stolen from her, Tolstoy attempted to explain to Rance that he valued his wife more for her support and companionship than he did her beauty but failed to gain his understanding, with Rance instead concluding that he was sexually attracted to ugly people before walking away.

If Kesselring is not defeated within four months of the United Human Army's formation, the 2nd Army's numbers will be reduced to a point where it can no longer sustainably fight against the Monster Army. Through careful rationing of supplies, Tolstoy successfully manages to maintain a defense against the enemy forces for another five days until all further operations are rendered impossible. His options exhausted, he eagerly prepares to order his remaining troops to launch a final suicide attack on the monsters before being interrupted by a report informing him that Fort Banra's command center had been completely surrounded by soldiers infected with the chupacabra virus. Now unable to afford even the luxury of dying in a blaze of glory, Tolstoy makes the difficult decision to kill himself and his subordinates to prevent them from being infected with chupacabra themselves, offering a final few words of reassurance and praise to his despairing men before beheading them.

As he prepares to take his own life, Tolstoy at first laments his apparent misfortune and curses Bodu for leaving him with the burden of enduring through such a nightmarish event by himself. After further reflection, however, he affirms that he had simply been acting as he believed Bodu would have had in his place and that all he had done was in the name of honoring the legacy of his fallen friend. Calmed by this understanding, he quietly severs his head, leaving Fort Banra to at last be captured by the monsters. Tolstoy’s presence in Rance Castle as a member of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad in the short story “I'm a Mediocre Osaka Prefectural Police Officer in Another World" confirms that this sequence of events canonically did not occur.

Personality and Appearance
Tolstoy is a young man with a somewhat dark complexion, light brown eyes, and hair that has been shaved down to an induction cut. As is the case with most Helmanian men, he possesses a large and sturdy physique and stands at a strapping 193cm. He is described as being "gloomy-looking" by Rance and professes that he considers himself to be so unmemorable that he expects others to forget about his existence soon after meeting him. Tolstoy's clothing consists of a standard set of the heavy black armor worn by knights of the Helman Army with a red stripe along the left side of its chest plate to denote his position as an officer and a plain white bandage placed across his right cheek.

A pessimist by nature, Tolstoy is an introverted individual whose poor self image has left him blind to his many strengths. He describes himself as a person fated to always "draw the short straw" and be made to suffer through unpleasant situations with little in the way of reward or recognition for his efforts. This belief has left him with exceptionally low self-esteem, to the point where he is unable to be left alone with his thoughts without relentlessly berating himself in the process. While he makes a concerted effort to hide these feelings from others by maintaining an outward image of quiet neutrality, his withdrawn and put-upon demeanor makes his negativity obvious even to those meeting him for the first time. He is often criticized for this behavior by his friends and acquaintances, who point out that the uncomfortable circumstances he often finds himself in are more often or not a direct result of his own choices.

While Tolstoy's intense self-deprecation greatly affects him on a personal level, he never allows it to compromise his abilities as a soldier. What he dismisses as his own misfortune is in fact an unwavering drive to shoulder the burdens of his fellow countrymen, with nearly all of the pain and hardship he persists through being done in the name of preventing others from having to experience it in his place. His refusal to ever vocalize his cynicism causes him to approach problems with astonishing calmness and clarity and go about resolving them in a proactive and reasonable manner that is completely at odds with his defeatist mentality. Similarly, his evaluation of himself as someone more suited for tedious "behind-the-scenes" work than leading others from the front has made him exceedingly skilled at overseeing military logistics, to the point where his assistance in such matters was sought after by important figures from the Human Realm's other armies during the 2nd Dark Lord War. Tolstoy's talents are no less respected within his home country, where he is seen as the most likely candidate to become the nation's chief vassal.

Tolstoy possessed a strong bond of friendship with his former superior Bodu that continues even after the latter's death. He is shown to have held Bodu in very high regard while he was alive, viewing him as someone with the charisma and drive needed to be a leader, and turned down a potential promotion to general in the name of advocating for Bodu to take the position in his place. While Bodu's sudden death at the start of the 2nd Dark Lord War bred some resentment of him within Tolstoy, as he felt that it caused him to be thrown out of his depth in an already stressful situation, he nonetheless managed to muster the resolve needed to pull through as leader of the 2nd Army by acting as he believed Bodu would have in his place, demonstrating that he still viewed him as a source of inspiration. Tolstoy further proved his devotion to Bodu while serving in the Dark Lord Extermination Squad, where he put his own unease aside in the name of delivering the final message he had ever written to his lover.

Outside of his career as a soldier, Tolstoy is a dedicated family man with a loving wife and daughter. Though his wife is never seen, she is suggested to be rather homely and unattractive, with Rance calling her ugly after carefully studying her picture and Tolstoy admitting beforehand that he did not believe she would meet Rance's high standards of beauty. She is also ostensibly bad at domestic work, as Tolstoy claims that she is unable to prepare even soup correctly. In spite of these unappealing qualities, Tolstoy loves his wife dearly and values her for the emotional support and friendship she offers him- uncharacteristically proclaiming that he is lucky to have her as a part of his life when asked about their relationship. While fighting in the 2nd Dark Lord War Tolstoy felt a constant desire to abandon his post, embrace his family, and forget about the conflict entirely, but staved off acting on it by reminding himself that their lives would be jeopardized if he allowed his vigilance to falter.

Abilities
Tolstoy is a capable knight with outstanding abilities as a leader. Possessing the Leadership Lv1 Skill Level, he excels at all forms of military administration and is said to surpass his former superior Bodu in such respects. He has a particular affinity for logistical work such as organizing armies and distributing supplies due to his personality compelling him to support other, more outgoing, individuals from the sidelines rather than take charge himself. Despite this, he is equally capable of commanding soldiers from the front when he is required to, and is noted to never lose his composure in high-stress environments. These traits serve Tolstoy well in his position as lieutenant-general of the Helman 2nd Army, where he is required to constantly monitor a force of 100,000 soldiers while simultaneously rationing the Helman Army's limited resources, and has earned him a considerable reputation relative to his youth. Tolstoy's talents particularly shone through during the 2nd Dark Lord War, where he succeeded in holding a defensive line against the Monster Army at one of its main invasion points for over five months with almost no outside assistance.

In addition to his skills as a leader, Tolstoy is a formidable warrior of decent, but not particularly noteworthy ability. He is stated to have reached the above-average Level of 33 during the 2nd Dark Lord War, which is assumed, but not confirmed, to be his Level Cap; giving him a substantial amount of potential as an individual that is further supplemented by his robust physique. In battle, Tolstoy utilizes the fighting style used by most knights of the Helman Army consisting of wielding a large, wide-edged sword in one hand and a small buckler in the other. Though he does not possess any combat-related skill levels, his status as a knight of Helman suggests that he is proficient enough as a fighter to have passed the test required to attain the position.

Trivia

 * Tolstoy is a casual fan of Don Doessky's Zanageth Saga book series. However, he encourages new readers to skip over volumes 10 through 224 due to believing that they offer little in the way of entertainment value for anyone other than Helmanian history buffs.
 * Tolstoy's name and character are directly inspired by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. The historical Tolstoy's writing was heavily influenced by his time serving as a soldier in the Crimean War and often incorporated existentialist themes. In particular, the Tolstoy of the Rance Series' primary personality traits seem to be derived from the historical Tolstoy's essay A Confession, in which he concludes that his existence has meaning despite the inevitability of death through his decision to persist through life's difficulties for no other reason than his own unwillingness or inability to do anything else.
 * Tolstoy is the only unique unit commander featured in Rance X's war reports that does not have a profile on the game's website.