Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana has some wonderful side characters in its supporting cast. Many of the secondary and even tertiary characters go through their own character arcs over the course of the game’s story. These characters and their arcs make up much of the game’s emotional heart. Let’s take a look at Lacrimosa of Dana’s best side characters. This article will contain spoilers for the story of Lacrimosa of Dana.
Rastell
Rastell is one of Dana‘s closest friends in Lacrimosa of Dana. He’s the son of the Eternian Chief Guard, Dran. While Dana is coming into her own as the Eternians’ Maiden of the Great Tree, Rastell is rising in the ranks of the guards, with the goal of one day being able to personally protect Dana. His interactions with Dana and his father imply that this motivation stems in part from wanting to be as good of a guard as his father, and in part from having romantic feelings for Dana.
During one of Dana’s later playable sections, she’s accused of being the reason tragedy has befallen Eternia, despite the blame actually belonging to the Great Tree of Origins itself. A group of angry and grieving citizens confronts her, with Rastell among them. His father was killed by a falling meteor, leaving him distraught. Dana assures Rastell and the group that she still intends to help her people. While the rest of the group dismisses her assurances, Rastell chooses this moment to defend her from the people who want to lash out at her.
In Dana’s final section, Rastell is Dana’s personal bodyguard. He’s shown wearing an eyepatch, implied to be from the injuries he sustained while defending Dana from the angry citizens. The surviving Eternians are dwindling in numbers, whether from starvation, freezing, or overexertion. Dana wants to journey south of the kingdom’s capital in search of safety from the constant snow and dying crops, and Rastell will accompany her. When Dana returns to the Eternian capital city a year later at the end of this section, she is alone, meaning that he died at some point during Dana’s journey to find somewhere not affected by the perpetual blizzard.
Captain Barbaros
Barbaros is the captain of the Lombardia in Ys 8. He is introduced in the prologue, telling Adol about the Isle of Seiren before the Lombardia sank. The captain takes note of how Adol’s excitement about the legends around the island, which directly leads to him steering the Lombardia closer to the island so Adol can get a closer look at it. Unfortunately, this leads to the Lombardia being destroyed by a monster that lurks in the waters outside of Seiren. On the island, Captain Barbaros quickly becomes a pillar of the Castaway Village community.
As the captain of the sunken Lombardia, he takes responsibility for making sure everyone stranded on the island is able to survive and escape. He tasks Adol with finding the other castaways and with mapping out the island. During the beast raids, his support skill temporarily sets the Battle Gauge status to Great, which boosts the party’s HP and SP regeneration. When a serial killer is discovered to be on the island, Captain Barbaros is one of their first targets. At first, they only wound him, causing the village to panic as the leader they had rallied around recovers. Then, after attacking another villager, the serial killer is revealed.
Barbaros sends Adol to pursue them when they flee the village. However, when he catches up to the party, the serial killer has laid a trap that Barbaros walks into. The serial killer gloats that Barbaros has no chance of survival. After Adol returns from battling the serial killer, Barbaros’ dying wish is for Adol to get all of the castaways to safety. As a gut-wrenching detail of ludonarrative harmony, the other castaways losing morale due to Barbaros’ death is also shown in their lower performance in the beast raids that immediately follow his death.
Olga
Olga is another close friend of Dana’s in Ys 8. She was another candidate to become the Maiden of the Great Tree, becoming the high priestess when Dana was chosen to become the next Maiden. Though Olga often feigns annoyance with Dana’s tendency to wander off, she knows it’s because Dana cares deeply about everyone and everything that lives in Eternia. It’s why she’s willing to cover for Dana when the Maiden leaves the temple to help Adol by changing something in the past.
When the Lacrimosa begins to target the Eternians, Olga remains a staunch ally of Dana to the end. She helps Dana hide from the angry civilians who have begun lashing out at her, and she stays behind while Dana looks for answers so that the people of the city aren’t without someone to turn to in their time of need. Even when the two go their separate ways – with Dana venturing south to look for a safer place for the survivors, and Olga staying in the city to lead the ones who refuse to leave – it isn’t because of a loss of faith in the other or a falling out.
In Castaway Village, Dana realizes she was never able to be there for Olga’s last moments, as the two had been too busy trying to help as many people as they could. The last words Olga said to Dana were about an Eternian myth, which eventually leads to the party finding a necklace containing Olga’s heartfelt final goodbye to Dana and the last of her Essence. As an additional impressive detail, the necklace can be seen the very first time the party enters the Eternian ruins, before the quest to find it becomes available.
Honorable Mentions
Sir Carlan
Sir Carlan is introduced alongside a doctor, complaining about an injury and wanting to be carried, but only by a fellow noble. He’s a pompous snob, who refuses to so much as lift a finger to help the other castaways of the village and often acts in ways that are detrimental to the village. When beasts attack the village, his “support” skill buffs the enemies, and when Adol calls for the villagers to help with repairing something around the island, Sir Carlan refuses to help. As a result, he quickly becomes a nuisance to the rest of the people of the village.
When the serial killer that Euron is tracking down strikes, Sir Carlan is one of their targets. His leg is wounded, sending him into a panic that makes him desperate to leave the island despite the monster that sank the Lombardia still prowling the waters surrounding the island. He steals the raft that the villagers built, attempting to use it to escape. However, the monster attacks and sinks the raft, and Sir Carlan is presumed dead.
Far later into the game, it’s possible to find the wreckage of the raft and repair it to sail to Solitude Island, in the Isle of Seiren’s southern bay. At the back of the island, starved and believing himself to be on the brink of death, is Sir Carlan. The party brings him back to Castaway Village, only to remember just how annoying he’d been. However, when Captain Barbaros’ death at the hands of the serial killer is mentioned to Sir Carlan, he falls quiet. He’s later found by Barbaros’ grave, quietly admitting that Barbaros didn’t deserve to die. Going forward, Sir Carlan helps with the beast raids and with the various repair jobs.
Mia
Mia is another Eternian that can be interacted with in Dana’s playable sections in Ys 8, as well as her twin sister Sia. Where Mia is energetic and outgoing, Sia is reserved and more interested in reading. The twins both look up to Dana, with Mia often asking Dana to play with her. In one of Dana’s sections, Sia asks Dana to help her find Mia after a game of hide and seek goes awry. Once Dana finds Mia, she tells her not to make Sia worry so much and to be nicer to her.
When the Lacrimosa comes for the Eternian capital, Mia sacrifices her life to save Sia from a collapsing building. Sia is still injured by the building’s debris, but if it weren’t for Mia’s sacrifice she wouldn’t have survived. The twins’ mother is among the angry and grieving citizens who blame Dana for their loved ones’ deaths, though Sia tells Dana that she believes her mother doesn’t really think Dana is at fault.
Yuka
Yuka is a minor character in Ys 8, but she’s also a great example of characters’ arcs changing as the story progresses. In Dana’s earlier sections, Yuka is dismissive of her father Lakey, who can be found in the market getting drunk. She begins making her own Essence equipment without him knowing, believing him to have abandoned his days of being an expert Essence equipment maker. When Lakey finds out, he’s inspired to make Essence equipment again out of a desire to be remembered, while Yuka wants to make equipment better than her father’s.
When the Lacrimosa strikes, Yuka and her family are one of many families fleeing the capital city. However, Yuka wanders off, making Lakey worry. Dana can find her standing by some medicinal herbs, which Yuka went to find to help with her mother’s chronic pain. Yuka expresses jealousy over her father being able to make great equipment without seeming to put in much effort. After Dana reunites the family, Yuka demands her father to train her in Essence equipment making, which he promises to do night and day. This is the last time Yuka and her family can be seen.
Final Thoughts
One of Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana’s greatest strengths is its character writing, and that’s best shown in the sections following Dana in Eternia. These sections invite players to care about the characters Dana meets, while in turn encouraging a sense of dread over why their beautiful city is rubble and ruins by the time Adol finds it. The Eternians themselves show a wide variety of reactions to their impending apocalypse, ranging from despair to defiance, anguish to anger. They’ve gone from cheering Dana on as she wanders the kingdom’s capital to watching helplessly as their numbers dwindle and neither their Maiden nor their high priestess are able to stop it.
Characters succumbing to despair or defying it ties in with one of Ys 8’s core themes: determination against all odds. Where some of the Eternians do fall to despair at the knowledge that the apocalypse is upon them, others decide to do everything they can to help those who are still alive. Even with the knowledge that the tree they worshipped brought their destruction, the devotees of the Temple of the Great Tree decide to spend their remaining time being there for the citizens of the capital. Dana, confronted with the knowledge that she is too late to save the Eternians, chooses to help Adol defy the Lacrimosa. Adol himself also refuses to succumb to hopelessness.
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