Iris Mysteria - Story highlights. Yuu's true nature and the celestial beings
As promised in my previous post on this series, today we will talk about Iris Mysteria again, this time diving deeper into the story of the first chapter. This is partly to discuss my experience with it and partly to leave a record of what happened before the game eventually goes offline.
If you remember, I mentioned that the game follows Hades, a former Celestial Being who is now considered a heretic by his kind. But who are the Celestial Beings? They are a race like any other in the world, except they possess increased power and technology that allows them to dominate others. In exchange for this power, they are severely limited in number, with only thirteen in total, including Hades.
They are proud creatures who all served a higher, primordial existence known as Iris, the creator goddess who built the world, the Celestial Beings, and all the systems in place. The original intent of Iris was to create administrators to help manage her world, but she eventually went silent, leaving the Celestial Beings on their own.
This parallel between the rebellious Hades and the other angels is very reminiscent of Tears to Tiara, where the Demon King Arawn is actually an angel exiled for siding with other races. Or, if you prefer a more mythological comparison, you can liken him to Prometheus gifting fire to humanity despite attracting the ire of the gods.
This does not mean that all Celestial Beings are the same, however. As the story unfolds and more of their situation is unveiled, we encounter various types of Celestial Beings. For example, there is Fricka, the Celestial Being with authority over time and a childhood friend of Hades. She is more supportive of other races while still trying to build a bridge between Hades and the other angels.
Then we have Zero-nos, who is the major antagonist of the story. He has a completely different point of view and considers the other races a risk to the goddess's grand plan. He is ready to press the "reset" button and kill everyone should they fall outside of certain parameters. He is responsible for the events that led to Fricka being frozen during the heavenly conflict that caused most of the destruction.
So, where do Yuu, the self-proclaimed "spirit of the World Tree," and the mysterious young child named Lily, who appears shortly after, fit into this complicated situation? When the goddess created the world, she established the Celestial Beings as administrators and the World Tree as the source of power.
Both Yuu and Lily are two aspects of the now-incinerated World Tree, and both strive to resurrect it. Yuu is an avatar and an interface used by the original World Tree in its journey to recover the seeds, while Lily is the personality of the new World Tree that is about to be born.
In the story, you will eventually face Yuu in battle as she loses control over her body while the World Tree awakens to reset the world. She changes her style completely, wearing darker clothes and adopting a more mature look; she is the very first "big bad" boss of the game. This encounter concludes the first arc of the story altogether, but worry not she comes back to the party after the battle with her usual cuter form.
By the way, Fricka is also playable after a small fragment of her escapes from being frozen and takes form before Hades. She no longer has her original, incredible powers, but she is an Iris, so she can keep fighting for Hades. Furthermore, she provides the kind of emotional support that no other girl can give him because of their strong connection as childhood friends.
This concludes the first deep dive, but I plan to do another post next week, so stay tuned. That one will focus less on the god-like entities of this world and more on the new characters added after the game's release as additional playable Iris units.
