Adel



Sorceress Adel is a minor antagonist in Final Fantasy VIII. She is a Sorceress and was once the ruler of Esthar for an unknown period of time.

Rise and Fall
Sorceress Adel rose to power in the country of Esthar sometime after the destruction of the Centra Empire, which occurred eighty years before Final Fantasy VIII, due to a Lunar Cry, but before the advent of the Sorceress War, which she began eighteen years before Final Fantasy VIII. Precisely how she became ruler of Esthar is unknown, but it presumably had something to do with her Sorceress Power, which may have been stronger than any Sorceress known previously.

Few details are known about her rule because it is rarely mentioned in Final Fantasy VIII. This is unsurprising considering that in the end, Adel's own people rebelled against her, and to this day refuse to speak of her in more than hushed voices. Although Estharians have never elaborated on the enormity of the cruelties Adel performed, it may be inferred that her atrocities here truly horrendous.

Eighteen years before Final Fantasy VIII, Adel began what was to be known as the Sorceress War when she pitted the forces of Esthar against the country of Galbadia. Her reasons for doing this were never specified, but taking over Galbadia was presumably the first step towards a plan for total world domination. Galbadia, however, created a snag in her plans; rather than allow her to take control, Galbadia fought back fiercely. Instead of being conquered, Galbadia expanded it's own power and became a dominate nation in its own right.

Adel's anger at Galbadia's resistance must have been terrible to behold. However, two last-minute advances still gave her hope that Esthar would eventually achieve victory. First, one of Esthar's scientists, a brilliant but unbalenced man named Dr. Odine, stumbled upon the secret of Junctioning powerful creatures called Guardian Forces to human minds. Junctioning allowed the attached human to tap into the powers of the Guardian Force, allowing him or her to cast a form of magic called "para-magic." Although a far cry from the powers available to a Sorceress, para-magic was still far beyond the ken of normal beings. Had Adel managed to Junction every Esthar soldier to a Guardian Force before the end of the Sorceress War, it is doubtful whether Galbadia could have endured her onslaught.

Secondly, Adel herself discovered the Crystal Pillar, a device which controls the periodic Lunar Cry. In fact, it was this device which had prompted the Cry that destroyed the Centra Empire sixty-two years previously. Realizing the destructive power she could harness by using the Lunar Cry as a weapon, Adel ordered that a special compound known as the Lunatic Pandora be built around the Crystal Pillar. The Lunatic Pandora served two purposes: it made the Crystal Pillar mobile, allowing Adel to choose the precise location of each Lunar Cry, and it amplified the Pillar's frequency emenations, causing the Cries prompted by the Pillar from inside the Pandora to be even more destructive. It is possible that Adel planned to use the Lunatic Pandora as a Trojan Horse, giving it to Galbadia as a peace offering just in time for the Lunar Cry to cause the country's utter annihilation.

At the same time, however, Adel was beginning to feel her age, and knew that her time was nearing its end. Since a Sorceress must pass on her power to another upon death before he or she can rest, Adel realized that she must find herself a successor, and soon. To facilitate this, Adel ordered the mass kidnapping of hundreds of very young girls, planning to choose one with the most potential and raise her to become the next tyrant of Esthar. It is likely that Adel's plan to create a Sorceress dynasty casued despair amongst the people of Esthar, who had hoped Adel's death would be the end of the oppressive Sorceress regime.

Fortunately for everyone, it was in her search for an heir that Adel made her fatal mistake. The girl she chose was Ellone Loire, the adopted daughter of Laguna Loire and Raine Leonhart. Ellone, with her unique ability to send her consciousness back in time, appealed to a Sorceress looking for gifted girls. However, when Laguna, a former Galbadian soldier with a big heart, discovered Ellone had been kidnapped, he stopped at nothing to rescue her. Had Adel chosen another girl, Esthar might still be ruled by her today. However, Adel, being used to getting precisely what she wanted, refused to give Ellone up. Although Laguna may have been able to successfully steal Ellone back, he realized Adel would follow them indefinately until she captured Ellone once more. Because of this, Laguna realized that the only way to save Ellone was to get rid of Adel entirely, and he joined the resistance faction against her. Because of her magical might, a physical assault was out of the question; no human then alive could have possibly fought her and won. Therefore, the Estharian resistance came up with an alternative solution: If Adel could not be killed, perhaps she could be contained.

To this end, Laguna enlisted the help of his friends Kiros and Ward, as well as the scientific knowledge of Dr. Odine. Although initially loyal to the Sorceress, Odine's ultimate desire was simply to be left to his research. When he saw the turn of the tide coming, he joined the resistance to build a special cryo-containment device which would effectively bind the Sorceresses powers and place her in suspended animation. The resistance placed the device inside a building they hastily erected just outside of the capitol of Esthar which would later become known as the Sorceress Memorial. Taking control of the Lunatic Pandora, resistance fighters moved it to the Sorceress Memorial. When Adel came to investigate, reistance members told her they believed Ellone was inside, ripe for Adel's taking. Much to the resistance's delight, the Sorceress took the bait.

Although it is possible that Adel realized the story was a trap even before she walked into the Memorial, Adel trusted that her incredible power was enough to protect her from anything which might be waiting. When Adel entered the building, she found a facsimile of Ellone resting within the container. Before Adel could turn around, the container snapped shut, binding her in thin golden cords, freezing her almost instantanously, and releasing a gelatinous cooling and buffering agent which would protect the frozen Adel from outside penetration, hopefully preventing any stimulus from ever awakening the evil Sorceress again. The container--appropriately dubbed Adel's Tomb--was then launched into space and brought to rest in orbit around the moon.

In order to prevent other nations (all of which were, unlike Esthar, without space travel technology) from detecting Adel's Tomb from Earth, an antitransmission system was activated which caused worldwide radio static and prevented the transmission of anything - audio, visual, or otherwise - on Earth from that point onwards.

Rebirth
Although peace and tranquility returned to Esthar, the battle for freedom was not over. The terrible Sorceress Ultimecia managed to possess Rinoa Heartilly and reach the Lunar Base, thus gaining access to Adel's Tomb. Rinoa entered outer space and managed to deactivate the trap, freeing Adel from her prison.

At the time, the diabolical Sorceress still could not move; however, this was a point which soon became moot, as Seifer Almasy started a Lunar Cry from the Lunatic Pandora, far below on Earth. As monsters traveled down from the moon, Adel's Tomb was caught up in their boiling morass and brought down with them. She entered the Lunatic Pandora and slowly began to regain consciousness.

As she did so, it seems that Ultimecia left Rinoa's body and instead possessed Adel's, which was, after all, her reason for forcing Rinoa to unleash the powerful Sorceress to begin with. Thus combined, Adel/ Ultimecia then Junctioned Rinoa to herself. Junctioning between two physical bodies as opposed to two minds is a highly unusual occurrence, one that seems to be a technique known only by Ultimecia, as she is the only one to perform it (and she does so twice: once between Adel and Rinoa, once between herself and Griever) throughout all of Final Fantasy VIII. It is possible that the technique was only realized in the far future Ultimecia comes from; it is also possible that only Ultimecia possesses the power to perform it.

At any rate, the point remains that Adel/ Ultimecia/ Rinoa was now one being; three Sorceresses joined into a single entity, with Ultimecia as the mind, Adel as the body, and Rinoa as the channel for the magical powers of all three. This twisted parody of the Triple Goddess (perhaps a nod to Asura, from Final Fantasy IV) waited for Squall Leonhart and his allies to reach her, and entered vicious combat with them. Despite the power of the three conjoined Sorceresses, Adel ultimately lost the fight, and was forever destroyed. Upon her death, Ultimecia left her mind and Rinoa her body, and with no other options, Adel (probably unwillingly) transferred her powers to Rinoa.

Personality
Adel's personality is mostly ignored throughout Final Fantasy VIII. She speaks very little, only three lines throughout the entire game, and none of them are very informative: "What is going on?" "Where?" and "You thought I would fall for that trick?" don't exactly give much hint of personality. She is actually quite the rarity in that even when she is finally resurrected and fights against you while Junctioned to Rinoa, she says nothing to you. When you would be expecting a speech about her new freedom, you receive nothing. It makes one wonder if the container she was on ice in for the last seventeen years damaged her vocal cords in some way.

What we do know about Adel comes entirely from other people. We know she is cruel, brutal, avaricious, power-hungry, and utterly ruthless. She has no morals and no sympathies; she is the epitome of a tyrant. She dominated all Esthar to the point where people feared to speak her name, and more or less singlehandedly (as far as we know) tainted the name of Sorceress forever after she was finally disposed of. One theory about Ultimecia states that she was shunned and ridiculed throughout her life, because people in the future had come to hate Sorceresses so much due to the actions of Adel; to judge from what little we know about Adel, this seems entirely possible.

However, why is Adel the way she is? The game gives us few clues. We certainly never see any direct evidence that Adel was ever anything other than a murderous dictator. But people do not just become murderous dictators on a whim. Perhaps it was just her personality, that Adel hungered for power and decided to take any path to obtain it, but is there more to the story? After all, if she was looking for a successor seventeen years before Final Fantasy VIII ever begins, she must have been around for a LONG time before that--fifty or sixty years is not unlikely. And for how many of those years did she rule Esthar? What did she do before that? Did some trauma or tragedy in Adel's distant past cause her to lose sight of her better nature? Was it perhaps the Sorceress Power she received that caused her personality to warp so? There is a theory that the nature of a Sorceress influences her Power, and causes a change in the next Sorceress who receives it (for example, Edea first became a Sorceress at the age of five, and turned into a wonderful person. However, after she obtained Ultimecia's powers four years after Adel's sealing, Edea began to demonstrate occasional and increasing turns of darkness. One can assume based on the theory, therefore, that the Sorceress Edea first received Power from was a good person; Ultimecia, on the other hand, certainly wasn't). Did Adel receive a hideous power from an evil Sorceress before her? If this IS the case, then since Rinoa received Adel's power, is Rinoa going to become as evil and warped as Adel? (For further reflection on this idea, see the Rinoa/Ultimecia Theory.)

There is also a correlation made in-game that Sorceresses with Knights (Edea, Rinoa) usually stay good, while Sorceresses without Knights (Adel, presumably Ultimecia) usually go bad. Why didn't Adel have a Knight? Did nobody love her enough to stand between her and her powers? If so, is that why she became such a twisted individual? Or was there someone who would have once been her Knight, and did that Knight perish, thus causing the trauma/ tragedy that was considered earlier?

All of this is pure speculation, of course. However, for a character whose existence is so important to the story of Final Fantasy VIII, Adel's story is unusually blank. It is quite a curiosity as to what might fill the pages.

Battle
In this battle, Adel has Rinoa chained to her. Rinoa also has HP, but not much of it, so if she dies, it's Game Over. Cast Regen on her at the start of the battle, followed by Shell, and be sure to Regen and Shell all of your characters as well (Quistis' Mighty Guard works wonders). Adel will frequently drain HP from Rinoa, so make sure one of the fighters has the Recover command to top her up occasionally.

Adel uses a host of powerful spells, but as she's been cryogenically frozen for the last seventeen years, she's a bit rusty at actually casting them. She will drain HP from Rinoa, then blast you with a Flare, Holy, or something similar. Her Energy Bomber skill is a physical attack against your whole party, but does little damage, so don't worry about it overmuch. When you see "Magical powers are concentrated on Adel!" be prepared; her next spell will be Ultima. This spell can do up to 3000 damage, but if you have high Spirit and Shell status, you should survive it with ease.

All multiple-target attacks are out. Ignore Ultima, any GFs (except Cerberus,) and most Limit Breaks. Have Squall, Irvine, and/ or Selphie serve as the healers of this battle, topping up Rinoa's health and protection. Put Aura on Zell and/ or Quistis: for Zell's Limit Break, do not activate any of the finishing moves; for Quistis', use Homing Laser, Gatling Gun, Laser Eye, or Acid.

You should find Adel to be relatively easy if Rinoa remains safe through the battle.