Isis

"Isis' final thoughts before his destruction."

- (CAESAR... PROTECT MISS SATELLA... I AM... COUNTING ON YOU...)

About
G2 ICS, more commonly referred to as Isis, was the second high-performance Guardian constructed by the Dark Lord Satella and an antagonist in Rance 03.

Isis was created at some point during Satella's adolescence. Satella put considerably less effort into his design compared to that of her previous guardian Caesar, which resulted in him having a substantially smaller body and no mouth whatsoever. While this somewhat haphazard design approach caused Isis to be significantly weaker than Caesar and completely incapable of verbal communication, his more lightweight and aerodynamic body nonetheless made him very agile and effective as a fighter.

As Satella's guardian, Isis was unflinchingly loyal to his master and diligently followed any orders given to him by her. Over time, his prolonged existence allowed him to develop an ego, granting him the self-awareness needed to think and make decisions for himself. Unlike Caesar, whose ability to speak enabled him to communicate with their master directly, Isis' lack of a mouth prevented him from doing the same, leading Satella to largely overlook his growth and development relative to his counterpart. He harbored no ill-will toward his master despite this negligence, however, and continued to obediently service her alongside Caesar.

In the year GI1015, the Demon King Gi unexpectedly named Kurusu Miki, a Human girl from an Alternate Dimension, as his successor as Demon King, kidnapping her from her home in order to pass on his blood to her. Before Miki was able to fully awaken to the power of the Demon King, 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 the Supreme Dark Lord Hornet, Gi's daughter who desired to follow through with his wishes and embrace Miki as the new leader of Monsterkind, and the Elite Dark Lord Kayblis, who desired to become the Demon King himself and wage war against humanity. As Hornet's best friend, Satella chose to side with her without hesitation, with both Caesar and Isis naturally accompanying her.

In the year LP0002, the Dark Lord Noce, who had chosen to ally himself with Hornet, requested her permission to temporarily exit from the war to search the Human Realm for Miki, arguing that securing her location was more vital to achieving their goal than defeating the forces of the Kayblis Faction. Hornet agreed with this reasoning, and assigned Satella, the Dark Lord Ithere, and their respective Apostles to accompany him. Soon after the group had left the Monster Realm, however, Noce informed his companions that he had located an ancient weapon of tremendous power known as Chaos within the depths of the castle of the Kingdom of Leazas, one of the most powerful human nations in the world. Claiming that this weapon would greatly assist them in winning the War of the Factions, Noce revealed that he had already made an arrangement with Patton Helman, the prince of the Helman Republic, a rival nation, to invade Leazas with the intention of taking advantage of the ensuing confusion to search the depths of Leazas Castle to acquire it. Both Ithere and Satella disliked the idea of acting outside of Hornet's knowledge but were eventually forced to relent due to the authority Noce, a former Elite Dark Lord, held over them.

During the events of Rance 03, the three Dark Lords put Noce's plan into action by covertly placing a transportation circle within the basement of Leazas Castle and sending themselves, along with the soldiers of the Helman 3rd Army, through it during the night; beginning a conflict that would come to be known as the 7th Leazas-Helman War. The Leazas Army was ill-prepared for an attack launched so suddenly from within the walls of its own castle, allowing the Helman Army to easily capture it. Soon after Leazas Castle had fallen, Noce informed his associates that the room Chaos was located in was magically sealed, and required someone of the Leazas royal bloodline and the three pieces of the Leazas Holy Armor to gain access to. Satella and Ithere tried to read the imprisoned Princess Lia Parapara Leazas' mind to uncover the location of the equipment, but found that a Magical charm had been placed on her memories that prevented them from accessing them. They then attempted to interrogate her for the whereabouts of the armor, only for her to refuse to divulge anything other than that she had entrusted it to Rance, an adventurer from the Free City of Ice who she described with the vague adjectives of “strong and cool”. With their options exhausted, Noce ordered Satella to search the Free Cities for Rance while he remained near Patton’s side to keep their true motives beneath suspicion. Eager to resume the search for Miki as quickly as possible, the frustrated Satella set out with her guardians in the direction of Ice. Upon arriving at Ice, Satella entered the Keith Guild, the only visible adventuring institution in the city, and questioned its master Keith Gold about Rance's whereabouts. Sensing Satella's great power, Keith made no attempt at trying to deceive her and tensely informed her that Rance had traveled to the nearby Lis Cave to complete a job request. After acquiring this information, Satella and her guardians moved toward Lis Cave and encountered the adventuring duo of Lark Pikespeak and Noah Sailing, who had accepted the same assignment as Rance. Satella mistook Lark for Rance due to his good looks and confident demeanor and demanded that he give her the Leazas Holy Armor, only for him to voice his ignorance as to what she was talking about. Assuming him to be playing dumb, Satella ordered her guardians to attack Lark and Noah and obtain the equipment by force. The two adventurers were defeated with ease, enabling Satella to rifle through their belongings in search of the armor. When she was unable to find it, she commanded Isis to assault Noah as a means of pressuring Lark into disclosing its location to her. Lark continued to desperately insist that he wasn't the person Satella was looking for, compelling her to order Isis to defile Noah more and more viciously.

The violent investigation was brought to an end by the appearance of the real Rance, who burst onto the scene after overhearing Satella insultingly speak his name while taunting Lark. Rance proudly declared himself to be the real Rance and Lark to be a fraud, but was met with skepticism from Satella, who believed him to be too uncool to match Lia's description and dismissively told him to go elsewhere. Outraged, Rance attempted to strike Satella with his sword, only for the Invincibility Field that surrounded her body to repel his attack and send him plummeting backwards. Rather than linger further, Satella dismissed her investigation as a failure and summoned a transportation circle to return to Leazas Castle with her guardians to probe Lia for additional information.

At Leazas Castle, Satella continued to fruitlessly oversee Lia's torture in the hope that she would divulge new information about the location of the armor. Her efforts were eventually stopped by the arrival of Ithere, who had been assigned to accompany the Helman Army in its campaign to capture the Free Cities by Noce. Ithere reported that an organization known as the Leazas Liberation Army had emerged within the Free Cities and reclaimed the city of Red from the Helman Army's forces, and that he had personally encountered Rance, who was acting as the leader of the Liberation Army, during the attack. After receiving confirmation from Ithere that Rance was indeed as strong and cool as Lia had claimed, Satella set out with her guardians in search of Rance once more, this time moving toward Red.

Satella and her guardians eventually tracked down Rance and his allies as they trekked through the Forest of the Lost, a monster-infested woods that bordered Red, in search of the fabled Unicorn Gal Monster. Frustrated to see that Rance was in fact the man who had claimed to be him at Lis Cave, Satella demanded that he surrender the holy armor to her. Rance responded by charging toward her with his sword drawn, creating a distraction long enough to enable his companion Shizuka Masou to cast the spell fire blast in Satella's direction. Satella was unharmed by either attack, but had her vision momentarily blurred by the smoke created by Shizuka's spell, causing her to lose sight of Rance's party as it ran deeper into the forest.

After a hectic pursuit, Satella cornered Rance's party in Rapu Village, a small settlement hidden within the forest that housed the surviving population of the rapu race. Effortlessly slaughtering every rapu that tried to stand against them, Satella and her guardians approached Rance and demanded once more that he hand them the holy armor. Thinking quickly, Rance accused Satella of being too cowardly to face him one-on-one in a ploy to improve his odds of defeating her. The taunt proved successful enough to compel Satella to order Isis to face Rance in single combat, only for the warrior to immediately go against his own challenge and call all of his allies to assist him in defeating the guardian. While the group was able to defeat Isis, he was instantly called back to his feet by Satella, who ordered Caesar to begin torturing them for information about the holy armor. The attack was intercepted by the village’s rapu citizens, who sacrificed themselves to buy the party time to escape.

The night after the attack on Rapu Village, Satella and her guardians approached the Leazas Liberation Army’s headquarters in Red to resume their confrontation with Rance. Unknown to them, Rance was at the time in a nearby inn attempting to seduce the priestess Sel Catchgolf and was not present to meet their challenge. Thinking that he was deliberately hiding himself, Satella commanded Caesar and Isis to attack the other members of the Liberation Army to draw him out. Isis engaged in a brief clash with Rick Addison, the Leazas Army’s strongest warrior, but managed to incapacitate him using his superior strength and speed. Satella quickly grew frustrated waiting for Rance to appear and elected to instead abduct his slave Sill Plain to pressure him into showing himself. Before leaving with Sill, Satella gave the battered forces of the Liberation Army a message to relay to Rance stating that she would be waiting at the Hyper Building, the largest structure on the Continent, to return his slave to him in exchange for the holy armor.

At the Hyper Building, Satella positioned herself on the 200th floor and placed Sill into a large tube that gradually filled with water as time passed, intending to drown her if Rance delayed in upholding the trade. She stationed Caesar at the entrance of the building to collect the equipment on her behalf, leaving Isis by her side to transport the items between them. To her surprise, Rance appeared directly in front of her sometime later, having managed to move past Caesar by pinning his body to a wall using the Tulip, a high-powered armored tank. Though astonished by Caesar's apparent loss, Satella continued trying to intimidate Rance into surrendering the holy armor by reminding him that she still had Sill imprisoned. Rance mockingly claimed in response that he didn't care whether Sill lived or died and calling Satella too weak to be a threat to him. This taunting infuriated Satella enough to attempt to attack him, only for Rance to immediately turn around and run out of the room, forcing her to chase after him with Isis following close behind.

Rance eventually stopped running after leading Satella into the center of a chamber. He quickly gave a signal to Sel, prompting her to trigger an evil sealing barrier they had set up in the room to entrap Satella. As one of the few methods capable of overcoming the invincibility field, the barrier's electrical waves instantly began to drain Satella of her energy, throwing her into a panic as she realized that her life could be stopped indefinitely. Before the process could finish, however, Isis pushed Satella out of the way and took her place as the target of the barrier's magic, causing his body to get rapidly torn apart by the force of the lightning. Unable to express his feelings through words, Isis gave a final solemn plea in his thoughts for Caesar to protect their master before being destroyed completely. His words somehow managed to reach Caesar, filling him with the determination needed to break free from his confinement and carry Satella to safety just as Rance prepared to assault her in her weakened state.

Isis' death deeply affected Satella, who was made to realize at last that he had developed an ego of his own through his sudden self-sacrifice. Too weak to avenge him by killing Rance, she instead took her rage out by brutally torturing the captured Lia. She was interrupted by Noce, who reminded her that the blood of the Leazas royal family was needed to access Chaos. When Satella tried to justify her actions as retribution for her fallen guardian, Noce chided her for allowing personal grudges to cloud her sense of reason and ordered her not to touch Lia further. Satella was pushed over the edge by these words and angrily told Noce that had no reason to do as he told her. Noce responded to her insubordination with violence, resolving to kill her as she was no longer necessary to his plan. Before he could do so, Caesar burst onto the scene, collected his master's injured body, and fled from Leazas Castle, ending the pair's involvement in the plot.

Isis was briefly mentioned by Satella during the events of Rance Quest, where she declared her intent to take revenge for him after reuniting with Rance inside of the Hyper Building. Rance showed confusion as to who Isis was, causing her to angrily remind him of his destruction. Isis was mentioned for a second time by Caesar after Satella started prowling around the area surrounding Rance's residence of Rance Castle in response to becoming infatuated with him, where he asked if she was planning to finally avenge his death. Satella dismissed the question and insisted that they were there to perform reconnaissance, but internally pondered her actual reasons for doing so.

Isis was mentioned by Satella once more during the events of Rance X as she prepared to convert Rance into her Apostle to accept his assistance in rescuing Hornet from Kayblis, where she proclaimed that doing so would finally make up for his death. Later, Caesar mournfully utters Isis' name as the forces of the Dark Lord Extermination Squad look over video data of Rance's first encounter with Satella in the Hyper Building during the operation to defeat the Dark Lord Pi-R.

During the "From the Sea" ending route, Satella is unexpectedly reunited with Noah after she is rescued from a shipwreck and recruited by Rance to serve as the captain of their sea expedition to the Monster Realm. One night during the voyage, Noah calls Satella to her quarters to speak with her privately. Though Satella anticipates a confrontation regarding her cruel previous actions, Noah instead asks to borrow Isis and reveals that no man she had slept with since being raped by him had been able to satisfy her sexually. Satella is taken aback by this unexpected turn of events but states that Isis had been destroyed and that she has no intention of building him a second time. Overhearing the conversation, Rance breaks into the room and appoints himself as Isis' replacement in satisfying Noah, immediately initiating sex with her. While Noah enjoys being pleasured by Rance, she remarks to his great consternation afterward that she wished his penis were slightly bigger.

Isis' role is largely identical in the original Rance III to what it is in its remake, though he faces Rance's party in combat on the way to its confrontation with Satella in the Hyper Building rather than in the Forest of the Lost. The events surrounding his death are also notably different, with Satella calling for him to help her as she is weakened by the sealing barrier and his final thoughts not being heard as his body is destroyed, overall making his actions during the scene much less of a display of his own free will.

Personality and Appearance
Isis was an artificial lifeform with a body composed of a rock-like substance. He possessed a tall, lean build resembling that of a masculine humanoid and sharp extensions emerging from his upper back, head and forearms that evoked armor. While his face was almost completely devoid of features, a single eye was carved into its left side that emitted a light blue glow to indicate that he was sentient. Despite his appearance, Isis was not entirely inorganic and in fact had a skeletal and muscular structure comparable to a human, along with several long strands of dark blue hair that grew down from the sides of his head. As a strange side effect of being of being made at a time when Satella was first awakening to her sexuality, Isis was also outfitted with a retractable synthetic penis. Due to her lack of experience with or knowledge of the opposite sex, Satella had only her own imagination to use as a reference when crafting Isis' genitalia, causing it to be exaggeratedly large and crudely-shaped relative to its intricate functionality.

While Isis' appearance was largely the same in the original release of Rance III, he lacked either hair or a visible eye and had the roman numeral "II" etched into the left side of his forehead to demarcate him as Satella's second guardian. The sculpt of his body was also subtly different: lacking the bladed extensions along his back and forearms and instead possessing a disproportionately large left shoulder.

As a guardian, Isis was constructed for the sole purpose of serving his master, the Dark Lord Satella, without question. Though he lacked any fluid intelligence of his own when he was first created, his sophisticated design enabled him to gradually develop an ego over time, allowing him to think and feel for himself. Unlike his counterpart Caesar, however, Isis was not given the capacity to speak and could not vocalize his emotions, which, in conjunction with his near-expressionless face, caused him to appear completely without them. For this reason, Satella was oblivious to the fact that he had developed true sentience and acted considerably less warmly when speaking to him than with Caesar, even showing slight irritation at being left alone with him. Despite Satella's disinterest, Isis was ultimately able to express both his free will and boundless desire to protect her during his final moments, where he gave his life to rescue her without being commanded to. It was only after this sacrifice that Satella was truly able to understand his growth, leading her to react to his death with a combination of grief and guilt that pushed her to go against Noce's orders for the sake of trying to avenge him. Satella maintained an interest in honoring Isis' legacy even after her desire for vengeance against Rance was replaced by feelings of love, as she declared that making the latter into her Apostle would be a sufficient means of compensating for the loss of the former.

Isis possessed a deep bond with his fellow guardian Caesar. While virtually incapable of interacting with each other directly, the two shared an unspoken brotherly intimacy that came about as a natural consequence of being built by the same person to serve the same purpose. Isis demonstrated the great trust that he placed in Caesar in his final thoughts before dying, where he earnestly asked him to defend their master in his place. Caesar was somehow able to hear and understand these words in spite of Isis not actually speaking them, suggesting that their connection to each other allowed them some form of mental communication. This closeness can still be felt years after Isis' death, with Caesar doing such things as referring to Rance as Isis' killer and acting wistful when seeing Isis' likeness on video that make it clear he continues to mourn his fallen friend.

Abilities
A product of Satella's skilled craftsmanship, Isis was an exceptional specimen with a high degree of fighting ability. As a guardian, he lacked either Levels or a Level Cap, allowing him to maintain a consistent level of power indefinitely at the cost of being unable to increase it beyond its base limits, and possessed a sturdy, rock-like body that was incapable of experiencing fatigue. While Satella cut several corners when designing Isis compared to his predecessor Caesar, causing him to be significantly weaker and less durable overall, he compensated for this difference through his astounding speed, which enabled him to outmaneuver even trained Ninja such as Kentou Kanami.

In combat, Isis utilized the bladed extensions on his forearms to slash at his opponents. The combination of his speed and power made him a deadly foe that could swiftly outmaneuver his opponents to deliver a decisive blow to them. He displayed the full extent of his abilities as a warrior during Satella's assault on the Leazas Liberation Army's headquarters, where he was able to quickly overwhelm Rick Addison, a swordsman widely regarded as one of humanity's strongest warriors, in single combat using his superior strength and agility.

Outside of combat, Isis was notable for being equipped with a retractable penis capable of performing a simulated ejaculation using a mix of human and monster semen stored within his body. As his body was not capable of experiencing sexual arousal, this ejaculation was instead a pre-programmed response to the contractions of his partner's body as he penetrated them, and would trigger automatically as they experienced an orgasm. To assist in performing this task, Isis' penis was coated in a potent aphrodisiac that could quickly stimulate genitalia upon contact, forcing his partners into a state of sexual ecstasy regardless of their willingness. The only known victim of this process is Noah Hakobune, who endured severe physical and mental trauma that required her to be hospitalized in response. Noah remains warped by the experience even years after recovering from it, and is unable to find complete sexual satisfaction with anything even slightly smaller than Isis' penis, including Rance's prized Hyper Weapon.

Trivia

 * Isis came in 6th place in the "Favorite Monster" category of the Rance III Popularity Poll and in 19th place in the "Males" category of the Rance 03 Popularity Poll.
 * Isis' name is derived from the HMS Isis, a destroyer warship used by the British Royal Navy during the Second World War. Isis being smaller and swifter than his counterpart Caesar is in reference to Caesar's namesake being a battleship, which are larger and less maneuverable than destroyers.
 * Isis' appearance is based on that of the titular mecha from the anime series Ninja Senshi Tobikage.
 * Isis is voiced by Bullfrog Kitarou (牛蛙キタロウ) in Rance 03, who also provides the voices for the characters Burning B!, Eroyac ALV, and GOD.
 * Satella's profile in the now-defunct Rance World Notes section of the Alicesoft website mentions that she had constructed a third guardian known as "Isis II" in the time since the first Isis' destruction. This guardian was planned to appear alongside Satella and Caesar in early drafts of Rance X's story, and was to resemble a combination of Isis and Rance and be given the name "Brutus" (ブルータス, burūtasu) as a joint reference to Marcus Junius Brutus, the Roman senator most well-known for assassinating Emperor Julius Caesar, and the word "brute", an adjective commonly used to describe Rance. Brutus was intended to serve as a "guest" in the player's party during the early stages of the game, but was eventually cut entirely after the combat system was radically overhauled during development. Satella explicitly mentions that she has no plans of building a replacement for Isis during her appearance in Rance X, implying that the idea of her having a third guardian at all is no longer considered to be canon. As a nod to the unused character, Satella thinks to herself in the same conversation that any future attempts at building a second Isis would be unavoidably affected by her sexual experiences with Rance.