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Helga the Karaya
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iscalio




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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 8:30 am    Post subject: Helga the Karaya Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

http://suikosource.com/images/chars/h/helga01.jpg


In Helga's character artwork one can see that she is wearing bracelets very typical for the Karaya. Hugo, Jimba, Lulu, Luce, Beecham and others are wearing similar rings as bracelets and sometimes even anklets. The ornaments on her forearms are also very reminiscent of Karayan garb.
Maybe Helga is a Grasslander?

While many Karaya in Suikoden III are brown-haired, Helga's teint is admittedly too fair for being a Karaya. So despite her Karayan bracelets, she doesn't seem to belong to that Clan.

Helga's clothes (mainly her shoes and her skirt, but also her headband) bear a resemblance to the clothes of Gijimu, a resemblance even intensified by her choice of weaponry. Maybe she is supposed to hail from the southeastern Grasslands that much later in history became Tinto; a character from that culture now extinct, a culture with close ties to the Karaya in the north, and also a culture that influenced the mountain folk that would much later settle in the region (the Lampdragon Bandits).

Her clothing and behavior would fit the "barbaric" background of a Grasslander.


All these speculations have their foundation in the fact that Kawano tried to hide hints and links within her character designs.
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shikator

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 8:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

maybe she just loves wearing those kind of things.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Also remember that Lucretia is supposed to be Karayan, yet she has blond hair, which is as "fair" as hair can get. Add in that Lucretia doesn't look Karayan at all aside from a decent tan (which she could have gotten anywhere, really) and I think Helga is a possibility.

Too bad there is little to no background information on Suikoden 4's cast. I mean nothing. Suikoden 1 and 2 had a lot of extra background information revealed out-of-game, Suikoden 3 and 5 had a lot of info in-game, but Suikoden 4 has nothing either way. The characters in Suikoden 4 will never have backgrounds or explanations given for them (Kika's Falcon Rune, Oskar's secret, etc.). We just have to deal with that.
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iscalio




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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Admiral Ackbar wrote:
Also remember that Lucretia is supposed to be Karayan, yet she has blond hair, which is as "fair" as hair can get.

Fair hair is actually very common among the Karaya, so Lucretia's hair does conform to Suikoden III. The fact that among humans from Earth blond hair is restricted to 'white' people does obviously not apply to our cousins from the Suikoden world.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 10:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Helga definately has the clothes, but not the skin or eye colour. Lucretia can easily be identified as Karayan, mainly because of her tanned skin and blonde hair, admittedly she doesn't wear clothes anything like one, but that is because she left the Grassland when she was young.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Honestly, I never noticed this. At face value, based on Suikoden IV's complete departure from what made Suikoden III special (to me, at least), Kawano seems to have wanted to minimise linking to that game in hers.

Admiral Ackbar wrote:
Too bad there is little to no background information on Suikoden 4's cast. I mean nothing. Suikoden 1 and 2 had a lot of extra background information revealed out-of-game, Suikoden 3 and 5 had a lot of info in-game, but Suikoden 4 has nothing either way. The characters in Suikoden 4 will never have backgrounds or explanations given for them (Kika's Falcon Rune, Oskar's secret, etc.). We just have to deal with that.

To a certain extent, I agree. The fact-filled side publications seem to die down after Suikoden IV. The last Genso Shinsho issue was dedicated to Suikoden IV and it died. The last Card Stories booster set was dedicated to Suikoden IV too, and it died too. Well, we did get an entire game (the first localised spin-off game, no less) to complement Suikoden IV, and it didn't do a good job at expanding those characters' stories either. Suikoden IV has no fancy artbook and/or factbook, besides the preorder and any game guides thereafter.

Ouch.
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Wolf Stew

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 2:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

There's no hint about Helga in her Comment Box letters, or in her Confessional comments either. All we know about her is that she's strong, and she likes to fight.

Is it specifically stated anywhere that Lucretia is from Karaya? I know one of Oboro's investigations says that she has a necklace that looks like it comes from a Grasslands clan, but that doesn't mean she's a Karayan. Lucretia seems totally un-Karayanlike to me. She has a last name for one, which no one else in Karaya seems to have (including Lucia, the chief of the village). And of course, she doesn't *look* Karayan. It seems more likely that she comes from Zexen. She could have gotten that Grasslands necklace in any number of ways.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Lucretia is stated to be born in Karayan.
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Wolf Stew

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 12:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Do you know the source where it's stated that Lucretia is from Karaya?
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 1:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Wolf Stew wrote:
Do you know the source where it's stated that Lucretia is from Karaya?

Staff of Konami America told us on Theirstar. I don't know if there is another, more tangible source.

However, Lucretia is only a Karaya by blood. Her culture is Harmonian/Falenan, as she never grew up in Amur. She was adopted as a very young orphan by Harmonians. I'm not sure if she got her last name from the Harmonians or from the Falenans (I think it's the latter), but it definitely is not a Karayan name.
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Helga does seem to look like a grasslander, but to me, aside from the bracelets, she doesn't exactly look Karayan. But, that doesn't mean she's not a Grasslander. Another possibility is that she is from another Karaya village, aside from the one we've seen in Suikoden III. Perhaps not all Karayan villages dress the exact same? Shiba's clothes and looks are slightly different from the other lizards, and he's from "the south".

I'd rather think of Nikea as a Karayan than Helga, personally, though.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

There are a lot of different clans in Grassland, perhaps she's from another clan or even from Zexen but was raised over in the Karayan towns/culture. Perhaps even she only had limited contact with the Karayans but liked their bracelets and hence bought and wore them.

If we look at Jimba (the precedent for adoption of outsiders into Karayan villages) he did manage to have his skin darken like those native to the area, so one could theoretically assume that in being removed from that environment he (and/or Helga) would lose the tan. To be honest I would have expected someone to maintain their tan if they went to the Island Nations, still there were a lot of characters in 4 that had little in the way of a tan so perhaps its not as hot down there as we assume.

Helga could be from anywhere, and in fact after someone mentioned Gijmu I would be more inclined to say she's more likely a splinter off from the Lampdragon Bandits that maybe travelled through grassland at some stage, or even just bought said items of clothing in markets down around the Island Nations. A person doesn't need to belong to a particular race/town just because they wear similar clothes.

I have asked before whether Bob is Karayan, though we know that he is the last werewolf from a different village in Grasslands that Windy destroyed. His appearance is similar to the Karayan but I am told that he was just made to look a bit like Bob Marley (Jamacian colours).
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 9:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Her clothes are similar to what Vikings usually wear in fiction.
And Helga is an Old Norse name.
So if there is a place somewhere in the Suikoden World inspired by Viking Culture, that’s probably where Helga is from.
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 1:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Lucretia said when she was young, she witnessed "a True Rune" (True Fire) going out of control. she's definitely from the Grasslands, and i'm pretty sure it's said she's Karayan somewhere within SV.

I like iscalio's proposal for Helga's origins... likely from the area where Grasslands meets mountains...
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 6:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote Add User to Ignore List

Hey, you right! I'd never noticed her bracelets before.... it looks like karayans.
Maybe she was there before the Karaya clan being formed..
How old are the grassland clan??
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