Der Langrisser

(also known as “All About the Transcendent Function”)

There are two english translations of this game in existence, Der Langrisser and Langrisser II. Der Langrisser is a remake of Langrisser II, with a branching story path. Both translations are unofficial.

Langrisser II was translated by someone with a very poor grasp of english… you get the impression their education extended slightly farther than fifth grade. (either that, or they had no confidence in their ability to translate Japanese to English. Either way, it shows.) You get the impression is only half thinking most of the time, as though they are rambling along almost incoherently without any time to really consider what the hell they are saying. Thus you end up with such gems as “There’s nothing better than killing, and there’s still lots more to do!” and “If there is a great strength, then you can bring people together!” Although the presentation is a little off… you can still make some sense of it. Imagine if all of a sudden people chose to be completely dominated by their basest political instincts and determined to start gearing up to kill each other– oh wait, that’s war in general, ain’t it?

The story revolves around two metaphors for the transcendent function: swords of light and darkness. The sword of light, Langrisser, was created centuries before to combat the emergence of the sword of darkness, Al-hazard. (pronouned “all hazard”) This backstory is itself an intuitive allusion to the role of the transcendent function as a counter to the influence of psychopaths. Al-hazard has been acquired by an Emperor, Bernheart. (meaning, as you might suspect, “burning heart” or “burning soul”) Bernheart, an ENFj, desires power by which to bring the world together under his rule, and he sees Al-hazard as the means by which to claim it.

Bernheart is portrayed very unsympathetically in the game’s early segments. Only later do you begin to understand that this is not your typical RPG villian: the man has values and his only wrong is his attempt to impress his own values over those of others’ whose values are equally valid. In this sense he is an extremist, but I digress….

Bernheart’s ambition is to unite the continent of El Sallia under him and to reign over it as the Rayguard Empire. (no clear symbolism in the name “Rayguard”, although it would seem to suggest insulation against a private actor, who could be considered a “ray”. This may be a commentary on the — from one vantagepoint — disruptive potential of the individiual who removes themselves from the group.) At present, El Sallia is divided amongst many independent lords, as is typical in medieval settings. Bernheart’s desire to unite these seperate governments betrays his innate identity as empiricist traditionalist who desires order and regulation at any price. His chief stalwarts are other empricists and many, many libertarians, the most signficant of thse being the mage, Eggbert, and the knight, Leon.

Eggbert is an ISTj and a master calculator of intention. He is the brains behind Eggbert’s push and, as his dual, Eggbert’s most useful adviser. Eggbert lends his support to Bernheart, who was in his origin a soldier (presumably a captain) to create a force that can repell the rise of a sociopath king called Bozel. (the "lord of darkness”) Bozel serves (who else) the god Chaos and has revived along with the rise in energies drifting towards conflict. (for the record, Bozel’s an ENTp “self-aggrandizer” personality who desires that disharmony (+Si) bathe the continent for eternity. He’s also obsessed with bringing about the “legendary darkness”/rule of sociopaths over El Sallia.)



Egbert’s chief motivation is to dissuade what he sees, as an ISTj, as the -Ne threat posed by the returning Bozel. Because his experience with -Ne as an ISTj is so troublesome for him, his egocentricity obliges him to project his troubles with -Ne on the world around him as a whole: “upstart insurgents”, he thinks, are everywhere, and they all have only the most ignoble of intentions. (+Fi) When considering Egbert’s character it is important to factor both his type and his political trait of libertarianism, because traits color type.

The knight Leon’s personality actually differs between the games. In Langrisser II, he’s ESFp; in Der Langrisser, he’s ENTj. However Leon’s type is not as vital to his overall character as is his libertarian loyalty to Bernheart. Bernheart’s ideas are to Leon an important part of his onw character, and he would rather die than see them fail. He is also a descendent of the kingdom Baldea, which guarded Langrisser for centuries, and is the chief rival of the game’s protagonist, Elwin/Erwin. (he’s also a damn tough knight who can pretty well run just about anybody down.)

Also in the imperial entourage are Imelda, the amazon; Vargas “the Valiant”; and several other minor flunkies besides. I won’t get into the flunkies just yet, but Vargas and Imelda are clearly worth examining.

Vargas appears to be an ESFj. I say this because of his determination to be of assistance to others and the shadow of his fate in the main campaign. Vargas death, which he resists violently but is unable to prevent, is one of the game’s most emotional scenes. It is especially tragic because at the time he is dying, birth is being given to his child, whom he wanted very badly to know and to love as a family man. He is denied this fate because he senses that there is nothing he can do to interface with +Ni, chiefly due to his priority of his relationships over observation of objective -Ti conditions on the ground, which suggest he is sure to lose. He cannot distinguish thus paths which will allow him to triumph over his opposition from those which will not, determined as he is to keep his friendships “in context” despite his larger obligations to his own family: suggestions of a greater or higher relationship are de-emphasized in favor of commitment to the role called upon him by his traditionalist instincts. His is a passive immanent mentality. It is the way of passive immanence to leave its mark on the subconscious, however, and in this sense he is indeed survived by his own son and moreover, Leon’s determination to avenge him. Nevertheless, his demise is also the first sign to Rayguard that it may be fighting a losing battle against psychically superior forces. (particularly Erwin.)

Imelda is an uncharacteristically cruel and narcissistic INTj. This is probably due primarily to her +Se: she is a general in charge of an army and is unconfident in her capacity to keep it in character, so she uses force which is disproportionate to the situation to try to keep her soldiers in line. In this sense she has the same problem as Vargas in that she believes herself incapable of supplanting her vulnerable function effectively, and in practice has so little skill with it that she cannot count on her determinative function (+Ni) to give her a helping hand. (as is revealed when she fails to escape from a shipping port before her ship is loaded for departure.) Her critical flaw is that she cares nothing for how she is perceived and is thus unmoved to passion. Although this is typical of INTjs in their youth, she takes it to the extreme. Even in the Emprire winning scenarios offered in Der Langrisser, she is like as not to be killed by her own subordinates because she fails to appraise the hatreds she is engendering. If anything, she feels that these hatreds must be repressed without questioning the motives behind them. This leaves her fatally naive to others’ feelings and ignorant of their psychology, a state of unstable relative coexistance that someone as cold as an INTj cannot hope to sustain indefinitely.

Having discussed the antagonists (we will not use the word “bad guys” for reasons that should be evident in light of the above), let us consider the protagonists. The lead protagonist is a consensus leader named Erwin (Elwin in Langrisser II) who a direct descendent of the protagonist of Langrisser and the heir to the Kingdom of Baldea. In Der Langrisser he is presented as the chosen avatar for the will of the reigning goddess, Lushiris: in this sense he is a prototypical divinely-inspired leader. What of this relationship can we find relevant to the socion? The consensus leader has an uncanny knack for observing common political ground between opposing parties: when he defeats his opponent, they and all their followers will accept his victory as final. They also face a variety of pressures to “set the example” by being basically as pure and noble as possible. (observe, for example, attitudes toward Barack Obama by his opponents in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.) There is a definite sense in Der Langrisser/Langrisser II that Erwin does not have control over his own destiny: he is expected to be all things to all people, and is perceived of as the last best hope of El Sallia by both his allies and his enemies. It is a fierce standard to live up to that only a consensus leader could pull off consistently.

However, Erwin’s portrayal differs between paths. In the Light path he is clearly a consensus leader who even Bernhart learns to admire for his courage if not his ideals. In the other paths, Erwin is variously a creative leader in the Imperial and , and a charismatic sociopath in the Chaos path. The non-Light paths ultimately put Erwin on a collision course with the Goddess Lushiris, whose chosen incarnation is adaptist, and her prophet, the consensarian Jessica, the scale of whch imminently transcendent conflict leaves El Sallia with a mixed outcome.

Yes, Lushiris has picked a side. The INFp Lushiris is an incarnation of duality and thus, is simply desiring the victory of life in whatever form that might best take. However the restraint of a physical — and thus specialized — mind requires that she pick a side in this classic squabble of tradition vs change. It is questionable, however, whether Lushiris really understands the pursuit of quality over quantity at all as an ultimate end. The Independent path is one of just such ends, with Erwin observing the situation before him by means of the 1st transcendent function (which begins to awaken in him when he takes Langrisser at Baldea) and playing the various forces of the world against each other as opportunity presents itself. It is difficult to judge which side, if any, of the consciousness axis Erwin takes because the consensus technology of govenment in El Sallia is clearly monarchy, therefore it is impossible to observe a clear divide between old and new paradigms in El Sallia. We observe only that Erwin is (on this path) gravely concerned about the effect the conflict between Lushiris and Chaos is having on the people as a whole. He cealrly believes the conflict to be a source of destruction and, possibly, civil decay. Erwin endevors to reconcile El Sallia’s mainland with the estranged Demon Tribe, the kind of ethnic-divide bridgework admired by liberals and conservatives alike. It is clear that he values his commitment to the people above his own individuality, because he accepts his defeat of the only person he ever truly loved.