Dhaos

Dhaos (ダオス, Daosu), also known as the "Demon Lord", is both a fictional character and primary antagonist from the Tales of Phantasia, and later a supporting character and minor protagonist in its sequel Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon of the Tales of series. Within Aselia, Dhaos started the Valhalla War against the kingdom of Midgards, whose propaganda campaigns caused the world's population to fear him as a demonic figure. Said to be impervious to all but magic, he wreaked havoc on the world before being sealed away.

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 * —Dhaos.

Appearance & Biography

 * Voice Actor: Patrick Seitz (English), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese), Not Known (Italian), Not Known (Spanish), Not Known (German), Not Known (Finnish), Not Known (Korean), Not Known (French), Not Known (Latin American Spanish)

Appearance

 * Hair Color: Blond
 * Skin Color: Not Known
 * Eye Color: Cyan
 * Age: Not Known
 * Height: Not Known
 * Weight: Not Known

Personality
Dhaos can come across as evil and megalomaniacal, but that is the result of his cold ruthlessness. He has his goals and would do anything to achieve them, with the ends justifying the means. At times, though, he can seem almost kind to the Great Tree Yggdrasill and Martel. In the past, before he was taken over by his anger and rage, he was a kind ruler who worried for his people, and he returns to this same personality after his death.

Enemies

 * Cress' Group

Fighting Style
As the game's primary foe, the party battles Dhaos many times over the course of the story. Dhaos possesses a fair amount of strength and wide variety of attacks. For basic strikes, he can punch his foes with great vigor, but his most devastating attacks are his artes, which are an iconic part of his arsenal. His strongest and most well known moves are his Dhaos Laser and Dhaos Blast. He is also heavily associated with Tetra Assault, where he perform four consecutive blows, and Tetra Spell, which performs four elemental spells in consecutive order. He can also cast a variety of high level spells, like Tidal Wave or Explosion. In the Super Famicom version of the game, he can also use Para Triangle (パラトライアングル, Para Toraianguru) to stun all enemies.

During the final battle against Dhaos, after defeating his first form, he will transform into a larger, beast-like form called Phaser Dhaos (フェザーダオス, Fezā Daosu), called Feather Dhaos in the iOS version of the game. A large abomination, he is split into a head target and his left arm, both of which can act independent of each other, and are called Dhaos's Face and Dhaos's Arm. The head will only attack through using artes, but its abilities are potent: it can use Chaos (ケイオス, Keiosu) to fire streams of small orbs, or it can spit out larger, homing ones with Circular (サーキュラー, Saakyurā), or unleash a large scale magic strike with Tried (トライド, Toraido).

The arm, on the other hand, can punch with a very large knockback effect, sometimes clearing the target right across the whole screen. The arm can also launch Circulars and, in the Super Famicom version, use Last Ray (ラストレイ, Rasuto Rei), an upgraded version of the Ray spell. Both parts of this form can also cast dangerous magic such as Meteor Storm, and the arm can also heal with Cure or Revitalize. While both parts are separated in the Super Famicom and Game Boy Advance versions of Tales of Phantasia, all other releases combine the two into one target.

Starting with the PlayStation version, after Phaser Dhaos's defeat, Dhaos will call upon his homeworld one final time and achieve an angelic form. In the Japanese version he is simply called "Dhaos", but in the English version he is called Plume Dhaos. In this form, Dhaos's battle abilities are greatly increased; his wings allow him to fly across the screen, and he can unleash a horde of light balls as a basic attack. When he strikes, energy follows his fists, and he can punch a blast that crosses the screen. With these come also dangerous spells; he can cast the strongest spells of both divine power and magic, able to use Black Hole, Meteor Storm, Big Bang/Extension, and Time Stop.

In the sequel: Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon, Dio can dress himself up in a Dhaos costume by combining both a "Wizard" costume and with a "Hell Master" costume. When fought as a boss, Dhaos uses Dhaos Attack (ダオスアタック, Daosu Atakku) as a basic strike as well as Tetra Assault for damage, which can inflict the "Stone" status ailment. He will also cast Tetra Spell to inflict strong damage to one enemy and use Dhaos Laser and its upgrade Dhaos Beam to attack all enemies.

Tragedy of Derris-Kharlan
Hailing from the planet Derris-Kharlan, Dhaos is the prince and leader of one of its largest countries. Accompanied by his consort Karion and his council of sorcerers, Dhaos led his people with a vision of peace and prosperity, always valuing diplomacy and dialogue as a means of resolving conflict. However, his country served as a deterrent force against any of the other countries which would be inclined to conduct open warfare against each other, due to the country's power and influence.

In spite of this, two small countries, Palace Gudora and Palace Sedamyu, clashed arms and started a major conflict against each other. Dhaos observed that the war was spreading as bloodshed and casualties damaged both sides, but as the forces of Palace Gudora became weaker and weaker, he knew that its loss was imminent. He was relieved that his own country would not have to intervene in this war, and that it would be resolved soon enough without requiring more violence. He started to organize relief efforts to aid those who were caught in the crossfire of the war. However, the scientists of Palace Gudora had been developing a powerful superweapon which would change the tides of war in their favor, the magitechnology-infused Mana Cannon. The weapon was fired upon Palace Sedamyu, and its capital region was incinerated with a powerful blast of energy.

Horrified by the atrocity, Dhaos was greatly disheartened, but a more pressing matter came to light when it was discovered that the discharged blast consumed so much of the planet's mana that the World Trees of Derris-Kharlan began to wither and die. Since all life on the planet requires mana to survive, everything within the world was trying to survive on what little mana remained, since the dying tree could no longer produce the necessary mana. This led to widespread famine and death of whole populations, a disaster which could not be averted, and Derris-Kharlan would be reduced to a lifeless rock if nothing was done.

Eager to take any chance to restore the planet's mana and save everyone's lives, Karion proposed the idea that Dhaos travels to a recently discovered planet which also has its own World Tree, the planet of Aselia. There, he could obtain a Mana Seed from the tree and then return to Derris-Kharlan to plant the seed, spawning a new tree which would restore the mana flow. However, Dhaos was against this idea, as he wished to die with and among his people in repentance for his lack of action, which he believed was the cause of the disaster. But Karion insisted, and Dhaos eventually agreed.

Karion and his council placed him in a capsule and began a ritual to transport him to Aselia. Knowing that there is not enough mana in the environment to perform such magic, they supplement it with their own internal mana, sacrificing themselves in front of Dhaos to generate the needed energy to provide two charges to enable travel across space-time, a finite but unspecified number of times, intended to give him more than one chance. Deliberately kept unaware of this and unable to do anything, Dhaos is forced to watch his beloved take her own life for the sake of their world, and this is the last image he sees before being transported to Aselia.

Tales of Phantasia: Katararezaru Rekishi
After spending several decades traveling, Dhaos arrives on Aselia completely disoriented and incapable of coherent thought. A young woman, Winona Pickford, discovers him in a nearly catatonic state, lying on the ground in the woods close to her home. Due to mana deprivation, Dhaos was severely ill, and Winona took him home and nursed him back to health. As he recovers, he is plagued with images of his dying wife and his other followers, and he comes to realize that he has no choice but to obtain the mana seed, so that their sacrifice would not be in vain.

Eventually, he regains enough stamina to make regular visits to the World Tree of Aselia, Yggdrasill. In order to germinate a mana seed, the tree requires a large amount of energy to be stored, and Dhaos realizes that this process was inhibited by an industrial revolution that was taking place throughout the world, especially within the city of Midgards, with the development of magitechnology. As the technology drains mana faster than Yggdrasill can produce it, not only is Dhaos's plan threatened but also Yggdrasill's life and the very existence of magic.

Determined to halt this development of magitechnology, Dhaos travels to the kingdom of Midgards, acting as an emissary of peace in order to establish open-minded dialogue. He attempts to approach and warn the king and his court about the dangers of magitechnology, which he had already experienced firsthand, in an attempt to appeal to their concern for the environment. However, one of the king's closest advisers, Reisen, intercepts him, and interprets Dhaos's mission to end magitechnology as a means of weakening the kingdom's defenses as a precursor to invasion. As the head scientist of magitechnology research for military application, Reisen knew that he needed a target, a scapegoat, for the people to focus their attention and hatred in order to gather more support for his research, which in turn would increase his funding so that he can enhance the scale of his projects. In addition, he genuinely believed Dhaos to be a demon: he attacks Dhaos and Winona, brands him a "Demon King", and persuades the king to believe that Dhaos was a subversive figure who would seek to take over the kingdom.

Furious about these claims and the injustice against Winona, Dhaos departs from the kingdom, aware that peaceful methods are not always capable of achieving what is necessary. He knew that his inaction caused the disaster on Derris-Kharlan, and so he decided to force Midgards to submit to his demands no matter what the cost might be, because his entire planet is at stake. He decided to fulfill the role that Reisen declared he already was, so that the cruel lie would become an actual truth. In order to raise an army, Dhaos made a contract with the demons of Daemonium who were already trying to reenter Aselia through the miasma present in Sylph's caverns. He organized an intimidating horde of monsters, striking fear into the hearts of the people throughout Aselia. At the same time, Dhaos organized preemptive strikes against people who were associated with magitechnology, including the village of Hamel where the parents of Rhea Scarlet were researching the subject on behalf of Midgards. His forces slaughtered countless innocent lives, but Dhaos deemed these losses to be necessary, as rage consumed his heart and madness ruled his mind.

Finally, Dhaos declares open warfare against Midgards, initiating the Valhalla War with the intent to destroy Midgards completely in order to attain his goal. Unfortunately, the kingdom had been improving their magitechnology-based weapons, which proved to be an anathema against the demons, and at the onset of the Battle on the Valhalla Plains, Reisen unveils Aselia's own Mana Cannon, shooting it at Dhaos's army twice before the device malfunctions and explodes. Identical to what had happened on Derris-Kharlan, the blasts consumed massive amounts of mana, causing Yggdrasill and the Summon Spirits of Aselia to die, while also eliminating magic from the world. However, the world's flora and fauna continue to survive normally, as if they are unaffected directly by the loss of mana, due to a change made to the world thousands of years prior so that all living things could survive without mana.

Severely weakened by the loss of mana, Dhaos's mind breaks, as his only purpose for being on Aselia is now lost due to the death of Yggdrasill. Dhaos has nothing left to fight for, other than the vain hope that something might arise in the future which would allow him to return to Derris-Kharlan successfully. In order to reach that possibility, Dhaos realizes he must survive and destroy mankind for what it has done. While Dhaos's forces have been reduced significantly due to the two blasts from Reisen's Mana Cannon, the edge that Midgards had due to magitechnology was lost since mana could no longer be used to empower their devices. As a result, the demons of Dhaos's ranks were able to thrive, and the conflict became a war of attrition. Neither side could overpower the other, casualties continued to rise, and the war continues for nearly seven years. During this time, Dhaos grew increasingly maddened by his failures.

To put an end to the war once and for all, Edward D. Morrison organizes a team including the wandering swordsman Alan Albane, the practitioner of clerical artes Carol Adenade, and even Dhaos's first friend on Aselia, Winona, now matured and distressed by Dhaos's insanity. The group storms his castle and manages to defeat him, forcing Dhaos to flee through time and space to protect his life using the last temporal charge which had been bestowed upon him by his beloved's sacrifice. He arrives at the Catacombs of Euclid nearly a century into the future, only to be immediately sealed by Trinicus D. Morrison, Miguel Albane, Maria Albane, and Meryl Adenade, with two pendants held by Miguel and Meryl containing the key to his seal. Dhaos is incarcerated within a coffin, remaining fully alive but powerless, merely aware of his situation and his failures as he sees an unending cycle of images of Karion's sacrifice, which he knows is now in vain, further driving him beyond any perception of rational thought.

Notes & Trivia

 * In Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon, the information on the "Dhaos" costume refers to him as "the tragic prince from a far off world". In addition, his sprite in the game is a retool of the Sekundes sprite from Tales of Eternia, giving Dhaos the same fighting animations.
 * In Tales of Xillia 2, Dhaos is mentioned in the job, "Earth Cape, Please!", where he rewards the player with the "Sealed Phantasia" weapon, in exchange for an "Earth Cape".
 * Dhaos bears a slight resemblance to the character Marller from the Ah! My Goddess series, a work by Kousuke Fujishima himself.