Ivan
 Ivan
| |
|---|---|
| |
| Element | Jupiter |
| Hometown | Contigo |
| Age | 15 |
| Relatives | Hammet (adoptive father) Layana (adoptive mother) Hama (older sister) Karis (daughter) |
| Hair color | Blond |
| Eye color | Purple |
| Battle style | Mage |
| Weapons | Light Blade Staff |
| Body armor | Clothing Robe |
| Arm/Hand armor | Gloves Bracelet |
| Head armor | Hat/Crown/Mask Circlet |
| Japanese name | イワン Ivan |
| Spanish name | Iván |
Ivan is a Jupiter Adept and a playable character in Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age. He joins Isaac's party very early on in the first game and factors into virtually all of the remaining battles. As a mage-style Jupiter Adept, he bears extreme similarities in stat spread and class structure to the mage-style Jupiter Adept of the second game, Sheba.
Ivan is introduced as the young adopted son and servant of the prominent merchant who rules the town of Kalay in southern Angara, Master Hammet. His rare ability to read minds lets him realize the magnitude of the responsibility set upon Isaac and Garet when they first come across him in the town of Vault, and he willingly joins them on their journey when he is unable to save his master from being kept captive by Dodonpa's empire of corrupt thieves. He does not realize at first the significance that a keepsake he bears, the Shaman's Rod, has to both his enemies' plans for the world and the world's fate as a whole.
Over the thirty years following the conclusion of The Lost Age, he becomes the father of the Jupiter Adept Karis, who is a party member in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn despite Ivan himself never making an appearance on-screen.
As a playable character
Ivan is a character who becomes a permanent fixture in Isaac's traveling party shortly after the latter departs the starting village of Vale with Garet to begin Golden Sun's primary quest. He only temporarily joins the duo in the village of Vault and briefly departs when their business there is finished, but he very quickly rejoins at the entrance to Goma Cave and becomes a permanent party member.
He joins as the resident Jupiter Adept of the party, and as a more caster-oriented Adept, his default class series is the Wind Seer class series. When the player first recruits him, he is level 4 (with exactly 194 experience points in tow) and is initially equipped with a Wooden Stick, Travel Vest, Leather Armlet, and Circlet, with a further Herb in his inventory. Ivan starts out with innate access to the Mind Read Psynergy, giving him the ability to read the minds of not only people but also animals. Over the course of the quest, he will gain another power that lets him see hidden things a short distance around himself: Reveal.
In his default, mono-elemental class, Ivan's inability to hit opponents with physical strikes particularly hard is similar to fellow caster-style party member Mia. He sports very low initial HP, which often results in players using the game's four Power Breads on him to permanently increase it, and his preferred options for shirts and boots are those that improve survivability and Unleash rate instead of Agility (since he already has high speed). Ivan doesn't have easy access to healing Psynergy, but the three separate series of three-stage Jupiter-aligned attack Psynergy like Ray and Plasma means he will not go for too many levels without an improvement to his area-based offense. By the endgame in both GBA titles, these attacks are mainly useful for softening up the opposition, but they can be deadly to multiple targets in the earlier stages. Ivan also has access to High Impact and Resist to buff the party with.
Ivan and the other members of his group are absent from Felix's party for much of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Late in the game, the former will join the latter as a set of four additional party members, and the password data transfer function shapes his power and the contents of his inventory by that point. If no data transfer is used at all, Ivan will join at level 28, and he will be equipped with a Master Rapier, Silver Vest, Platinum Circlet, and Silver Armlet. From a gameplay perspective, he is effectively a clone of the Jupiter Adept Sheba, save for his ability to equip light blades contrasting with her ability to equip maces. This is arguably a point in Ivan's favor, for this lets him wield weapons with extremely powerful Unleash multipliers like Tisiphone Edge and Masamune.
Classes and statistics
Ivan seems to be Garet's inverse, in that Ivan has the lowest HP, Attack, and Defense ratings of all the eight GBA Adepts in terms of natural statistical growths but also the highest growths in PP and Agility. Ivan is also one of the only Adepts to start with at least 4 Luck points, the other being Jenna at 4 Luck and fellow Jupiter Adept Sheba at 5 Luck. Sheba, in comparison, is seemingly a slightly toned down variation on Ivan in every way, having quite a bit less of Ivan's natural agility and a little less PP, but having more points in Ivan's sorely lacking HP, Attack, and Defense stats. The following classes are available to Ivan:
- Mono-Elemental:
Wind Seer - Dual-Elemental:
Hermit, 
Pilgrim (Jupiter), 
Seer (Jupiter)
- (Partial) Apprentice, Page
- (Partial)
- Tri-Elemental: Ranger, White Mage, Medium
- (Partial) Ninja
- (Partial)
Appearance and Personality
Ivan is easily the shortest male playable character in both Golden Sun and The Lost Age. Contrasting with his blonde hair are his purple eyes and eyebrows, which seems to be a common theme among Jupiter Adepts in the series and may be a reflection of his heritage. His outfit mainly consists of purple, green, and yellow.
Ivan is a soft-spoken gentleman who maintains an extreme calmness even in dire situations. He does not like seeing others get hurt and will seek diplomatic solutions, such as when he is willing to give up his master's important keepsake to his side's enemies when they suggest that they will let their hostage go for that. In another, later example of his reasoned approach to volatile situations, he proposes everyone sort out their differences over at Contigo instead of right where a dramatic fallout has just taken place.
When his master ends up captured by Dodonpa for reasons partially connected to him because his keepsake goes missing at Vault early in the game, he is willing to blame himself on both counts. Though he would call out Dodonpa for his particularly abhorrent conduct, he would go so far as to say "thank goodness" when the dust settles and Dodonpa sustains only a slight injury from being caught in the crossfire.
History
Ivan is initially unaware of his own background, which is only revealed late in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.
Background
Ivan and his elder sister, Hama, were born in Contigo on the southwestern continent of Atteka, and they lived with their mother in a prominent manor on a hill in the village. The villagers recognized the family to have inherited the powers of the ancient Anemos civilization that once held sway over this region, for they had the ability to produce the particular Jupiter-aligned Psynergies of environmental cognition and prediction. This, somehow, led to a "terrible misfortune" that resulted in a "life of suffering" being thrust upon them. At this time, the traveling merchant Hammet, desperately seeking a new source of income, ran afoul of life-threatening circumstances somewhere on Atteka, and Contigo's villagers discovered him and brought him back to their village.
Over the generations, the people of Contigo had preserved a vague knowledge of its ancient history of war with the Shaman tribe, based in modern-day Hesperia up north both then and now. The greatest clashes between them were personally waged between each nation's respective champion, Yegelos of Contigo and Hoabna of Shaman. The conflict ceased only when the Anemos suffered a great disaster that was connected to the extermination of the nearby Jupiter Lighthouse's beacon, which took place as part of the efforts to snuff out the lights of all four Elemental Lighthouses and seal away the force of Alchemy.
To signify their newfound truce and friendship, the two champions exchanged national treasures for mutual safekeeping: The Shamans gave what remained of Contigo the Shaman's Rod, whereas Contigo gave the Shaman tribe the Hover Jade, an artifact imbued with a Psynergy power that simulates the Anemos Adepts' ability to fly. The agreement was made that any future descendant of Contigo who would return the Shaman's Rod to the Shamans would be given the Hover Jade in exchange. It would seem that the people of present-day Contigo have since forgotten the detail that their village's Hover Jade was given specifically to the Shaman Tribe in the past, thanks to the passage of time; Contigo is now only aware of the fact the Shaman's Rod is somehow needed to get it.
Contigo's traditions had also passed down prophecies from the Anemos themselves, and one of their predictions hold that a pair of siblings descended from the Anemos would eventually leave their home, return to Contigo at a much later point, and "light Jupiter Lighthouse against darkness." Years before the start of Golden Sun, as a result of the misfortunes being suffered by the baby Ivan and his family, his mother and the people of Contigo agreed with Hammet to carry out the terms of the prophecy. Hammet thus swore an oath to Ivan's mother that he would take Ivan in as his own son. Contigo then gave Hammet some immensely sound business advice so that he could raise Ivan in the former's homeland of Angara. After Hammet was allowed to take the stockpile of gold doubloons stored in the nearby Anemos Sanctum, he departed Contigo with Ivan and the Shaman's Rod. Despite consenting to this, Ivan's mother was wracked with grief and passed away soon afterward. Hama, for her part, would also leave Contigo and settle elsewhere in Angara.
Hammet converted his gold doubloons into the wealth necessary to settle a town in southwest Angara named Kalay. Following the business advice that Contigo had imparted on him, Hammet then purchased silk produced in the eastern village of Xian and sold it in the city of Tolbi west of his town. The incredible sales that resulted led to the advent of the continental trade route that would come to be called Silk Road, in which merchant caravans would regularly travel between Xian and Tolbi to facilitate the silk trade. Kalay's geographical position at the halfway point of this route led to its own rapid rise in prosperity, and Hammet himself built a sterling reputation as the greatest merchant in the world's modern history. Ivan ended up living as the adoptive son and servant of Hammet and his wife, Layana, in the extravagant palace that was built to function as the capitol of Kalay.
In Golden Sun
Ivan's backstory connects to several important factors and locations that help shape the main plot, which results in his membership in the main party influencing the decisions of other characters such as the antagonists. He can therefore be argued to be uniquely significant as a member of the playable cast.
Reclaiming the Shaman's Rod
By the present, Ivan has developed into a mild-mannered young man who is only aware that he has lived in Kalay his whole life, and he is unaware of the context behind his strange powers, which let him conjure wind and read the minds of people and animals. Hammet and Layana have spent years frantically seeking clues as to the whereabouts of the Hover Jade because Contigo had given Hammet one more prophecy essentially setting a strict timetable: Three years after a terrible thunderstorm would wrack a mountain named Mt. Aleph northwest of Kalay, Ivan would accompany warriors hailing from the village at the base of the mountain, Vale, on a journey. Almost three years have now passed since this storm had indeed transpired exactly as predicted, but Hammet suddenly unearthed a clue concerning the Hover Jade "just in time," which pointed him to Hesperia. At this time, Hesperia was still conjoined with northwestern Angara, and Hammet apparently planned to travel from Angara to Hesperia via a land-based route on one of his merchant caravans. As such, Hammet brought Ivan and the Shaman's Rod with him as he began his ride north, and they stayed in the village of Vault along the way.
Right at this inopportune moment, Mt. Aleph unleashes a catastrophic eruption nearby, showering Psynergy Stones across the world and tearing a rift that separates Hesperia from Angara, driving the newly created island continent out to sea. A trio of thieves currently skulking about the town capitalize on the chaos overtaking Vault and steal several treasures, and the Shaman's Rod itself ends up becoming one of the lost goods. Hammet is quite displeased that the rod has disappeared under Ivan's watch, and so he forces Ivan to remain in Vault and use his strange powers to aid in his search for the Rod, and then make the trip back to Kalay on his own. Hammet, in the meantime, departs Vault and attempts to return to Kalay, only to find that the critical bridge they took to cross north has been destroyed by the shower of rocks. Deciding that anywhere is better than out in the open, Hammet decides to head back north, past Vault, to try to peddle his wares at the village of Lunpa.
Having not yet found the Rod, Ivan stews about idly in the Mayor's manor until two traveling warriors, Isaac and Garet, approach him; as a matter of habit, Ivan intrusively reads their minds to learn their names, find out that they wield powers like himself, and learn that said powers are called "Psynergy." Catching himself, Ivan promises not to read their minds again and earns their willingness to help him retrieve the missing Rod. Their investigation eventually leads the three to flush out the thieves and take back the stolen treasures by force, though Ivan is greatly troubled when he then learns that Hammet went up toward Lunpa. Hammet has surely now been taken hostage by the ruthless bandit lord Dodonpa ruling the territory, who would logically use Hammet to extort a ransom from Kalay.
Rather than ask for further help, Ivan reads Isaac's mind again to learn why Isaac and Garet are on a journey across Angara, and he learns the astonishing secrets behind how their quest relates to the eruption. Thus, Ivan judges the importance of the mission they are on to be reason enough for him not to impose on them further, and so he heads up north to Lunpa by himself. Ivan quickly finds out that he is unable to enter the sealed-off village whatsoever; with no way back to Kalay either, he decides to catch back up with Isaac and Garet — not to ask them to help him again, but to volunteer his services as an Adept and accompany them on their own quest. Ivan reasons that he cannot sit idly by while Isaac and Garet pursue their opponents, whose current goal of activating the Elemental Lighthouses with the Elemental Stars stolen from Mt. Aleph's Sol Sanctum is causing incidents like the eruption and will threaten to expose Weyard to a terrible power.
On a prophesied quest
Ivan proceeds to accompany Isaac and Garet on their continent-spanning quest to prevent the villains who raided Sol Sanctum for the Elemental Stars, headed by the Mars Adepts Saturos and Menardi, from using the Stars to permanently light the beacons of the four ancient Elemental Lighthouses. Ivan adopts the mindset shared by his new companions that the world stands to lose a great deal if the ancient seal placed on the power of Alchemy is broken; this narrative was conveyed to Isaac by the godlike guardian of Alchemy's seal, the Wise One. They therefore head to the nearest Lighthouse, Mercury Lighthouse, but they are unsuccessful at preventing Saturos from lighting it in the end. Mia, a Mercury Adept who was sworn to protect the Lighthouse, voluntarily adds herself to Isaac's ranks to try to prevent Saturos from lighting any of the remaining Lighthouses. With the party now consisting of one Adept for each of the four elements, Isaac's party proceeds to chase Saturos' company across Angara.
As Isaac and Ivan's party pursue Saturos clockwise across the continent, they incidentally begin traveling west along Silk Road, which takes them from Xian through the scorching Lamakan Desert. Before they step into the desert, they stop by the nearby Lama Temple and happen upon its famed resident oracle, Master Hama. Ivan fails to recognize her even when she cryptically reveals she had foreseen their arrival and is fully aware of who they are and what their mission is. As she dispenses information about the desert that will help the party maintain their pursuit of Saturos, she informs that Ivan that, being a Jupiter Adept already capable of reading minds, he also bears the same latent powers of prediction as she does.
Hama then uses her powers to "unlock" Ivan's "even greater" ability to cast the Reveal Psynergy, which will allow him to perceive hidden truths within the party's surroundings; Hama claims that she had been waiting at the temple a long time specifically to pass the power of true sight on to him. She purposefully withholds further information about her apparent relation to Ivan despite the latter's confession that she somehow does not feel like a stranger, and Ivan decides to leave the matter be, having conceded that she would not tell them even if he pressed her further. Ivan means to keep the faith that Hama will tell all once the party has completed their mission.
Once the party fully clears Lamakan Desert, they continue west along Silk Road and reach Kalay, and Ivan presents himself to the palace guards as Lord Hammet's servant so that he and his friends can be granted an audience with Lady Layana. The guards hardly recognize Ivan because of both his experiences as part of Isaac's grueling quest and the palace's mistaken presumption that he had also been taken captive alongside Hammet. Inside the throne room, Ivan tells Layana of how he had retrieved the Shaman's Rod but was unable to enter Lunpa to rescue Hammet, and it is quickly concluded that Dodonpa does not plan on releasing Hammet despite Kalay having already sent him his demanded ransom money.
Despite such harrowing circumstances for Kalay's leadership, Layana stresses that Ivan should continue his current journey with Isaac and lets slips that Hammet wouldn't want to distract Ivan from his mission either. Layana divulges to Ivan for the first time that he was born in a village near the world's southwest edge and that Hammet swore an oath to a Jupiter Adept to raise him. She reveals that Ivan is expected to play a role by a prophecy that holds that he would go on a journey with Isaac and eventually use the Shaman's Rod to retrieve a particular object that will be significant for Isaac's mission. Understanding now why Hammet left the Shaman's Rod in his care, Ivan blames himself for carelessly allowing it to be stolen, which played a role in Hammet's captivity in Lunpa. Layana promises to handle the matter of Hammet on her own while sending Ivan to resume his journey with Isaac.
Ivan continues to pull his weight as one of Isaac's boon adventuring companions as the party's travels bring them to the city that makes up the west end of Silk Road, Tolbi, on the north end of Gondowan. The party ends up roped into making another promise, that being to run another errand on behalf of Tolbi's ruling lord, Babi, while they are attending to their own business at the next Lighthouse they must protect, Venus Lighthouse. However, a "cloaking" Psynergy that Babi lends them gives the party a narrow window of opportunity to make a lengthy detour back to Angara and infiltrate Dodonpa's fortress at Lunpa. Should Isaac elect to do this on Ivan's behalf, the four Adepts will soon reach Hammet's holding cell. Hammet lightly chastises Ivan for risking himself but notes from Ivan's company that his prophesied journey appears to have begun.
Just then, Dodonpa himself steps in and gloats that Ivan will not be taking away Hammet, his "little money tree" whom he plans to continue using to extort further money from Kalay. Dodonpa flips a wall switch and sics "Toadonpa," a monster he personally keeps in his fortress, upon the party to kill them, but Ivan and the others fell the beast even despite Dodonpa's own attempts to undermine the party with dirty tricks. As emphatically as Ivan calls Dodonpa out for his behavior, he is impressively willing to not hold a grudge over it even as Dodonpa's own captive father, Donpa, offers to keep Dodonpa locked up and facilitate Hammet and the Adepts' safe flight from the fortress.
Ivan's party promptly escorts Hammet back to Kalay's palace. Though Layana is grateful, she sternly berates Ivan for putting his important mission on hold over a personal matter she had already promised to handle on her own, and Ivan apologizes and urges his companions to resume their pursuit of Saturos with all haste. After Hammet clarifies that Hesperia is where Ivan should take the Shaman's Rod, the party rushes back to Gondowan as hastily as possible.
At the end of a lengthy pursuit of Saturos' company, Isaac's party follow them into Venus Lighthouse, and they manage to arrive at the aerie of the tower before Saturos and Menardi have a chance to throw the Venus Star into its well. This brief opportunity to put a stop to Saturos' plan comes about as a result of a falling-out between him and his traveling companion Felix over the forced involvement of a local girl named Sheba, who is confirmed to actually be a Jupiter Adept herself. However, Saturos regains control over the situation by having Sheba confirm through reading Ivan's mind that Ivan carries the Shaman's Rod, which Saturos confirms he is seeking because he knows it is required for Jupiter Lighthouse in some way. Saturos deftly gains the upper hand by offering to promise not to "hurt" Sheba if Ivan hands the Rod over, wording it in a way that superficially comes across as an offer to let Sheba free.
Despite Hammet having previously handed down the Shaman's Rod to Ivan for safekeeping and how often it was stressed to him that retaining it is vital for his role in a prophecy handed down by his distant home village, Ivan does not hesitate a moment to accept Saturos' offer. Even if Isaac would say "no" to this offer at first, Ivan proclaims he will give the Rod up in exchange for Sheba's safety. It is only after Saturos has Felix take the rod from Ivan that he clarifies that he never technically said they would let her go, which exasperates the party. The duo of Mars Adepts then make a sincere effort to kill all of Isaac's party and remove them as obstacles permanently, but Ivan and his companions manage to come out on top after the fierce battle — but Saturos manages to activate Venus Lighthouse in front of everyone anyway. Even after the villains resort to harnessing the flowing energy of the lighthouse and assuming a monstrous transformation to try to annihilate Isaac's party, the four Adepts miraculously survive and render the Mars Adepts falling to their deaths.
Ivan's side unsuccessfully try to reason with Felix, who proclaims his full intent to continue Saturos' quest to light the remaining Lighthouses and take Sheba and the Shaman's Rod with him for that purpose. Before the party can take Sheba back by force, Venus Lighthouse generates a strong earthquake that causes both Sheba and Felix to plummet to their seeming deaths, leaving the shaken party to work out what to do next. Some time after Isaac's party leave the Lighthouse, they learn that Felix and Sheba had survived by falling into the ocean and have since rejoined with the other surviving members of Saturos' company — their co-conspirator Alex and their other hostages, Jenna and Kraden. Isaac's party thus expands their search for Felix and Alex's group across the vast Eastern Sea, and Ivan joins Isaac on board a Lemurian Ship that Lord Babi had previously lent them.
In Golden Sun: The Lost Age
The four members of Isaac's traveling party collectively function as one off-screen entity in the story throughout most of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Therefore, there is no mention of Ivan doing anything distinct from the rest of his companions until he makes his first on-screen appearance in the game.
At Jupiter Lighthouse
Despite the efforts by Ivan and Isaac's party to track down Felix and protect Jupiter Lighthouse from his group, neither party crosses paths with each other throughout the lengthy episode of the game over which both parties remain unable to cross into the Western Sea to reach Jupiter Lighthouse. However, some of the terms of the prophecy originally described as Ivan's role to fulfill end up becoming fulfilled by Sheba; when Felix's party eventually breaks into the Western Sea with their developing Psynergy, they travel to Hesperia and find Shaman Village, and Sheba's own abilities as a Jupiter Adept play a critical role in Felix's ability to acquire the Hover Jade previously alluded to as the item that Hammet was bidden to search for. By using the flight-like Psynergy bestowed by the object, Felix's party successfully unlocks and climbs through Jupiter Lighthouse on Atteka ahead of Isaac's party.
Isaac's party touches down on Atteka and passes through Contigo along their way toward Jupiter Lighthouse; during this time, Ivan and the rest of his friends learn from the locals that Contigo was where he was born, that he has a sister, and that said sister's identity is none other than Hama, whom everyone had last seen at Lama Temple. Ivan is forced to put aside his questions about these revelations for the time being as Isaac leads the group into the now-unsealed Jupiter Lighthouse.
As Isaac's party climb through Jupiter Lighthouse, they suddenly run afoul of a trap that was set up by other parties who had followed Felix into the tower. Introducing themselves as the Mars Adepts Karst and Agatio, from Prox far to the north, they describe themselves as intent on putting Isaac's party to death to avenge their fallen comrades, Saturos and Menardi. Since the trap successfully separated Garet and Mia from the other two, Isaac and Ivan are left to fend for themselves and engage their opponents in a two-on-two fight, but their opponents defeat them despite how well-traveled and powerful Isaac and his party have become by this point.
But just then, Felix himself steps in with his full party — consisting of Jenna, Sheba, Kraden, and the Mercury Adept Piers — to prevent Karst from executing the helpless Isaac and Ivan. Even though Felix had previously crossed paths with Karst and was made to agree to her demand that she would be allowed to take revenge on Isaac, Felix flexes the strength of his own numbers to coerce Karst into agreeing to spare Isaac's side in exchange for lighting the Jupiter Beacon. Felix and Piers join Karst and Agatio at the top while the other three nurse Ivan and his friends back to health. Eventually, Jupiter Lighthouse is lit, but Jenna and Sheba become suspicious and leave to check up on Felix and Piers.
Seemingly as a result of the power of prediction that Hama had previously described Ivan as bearing but having not yet realized at the time, Ivan gets a bad feeling about what is happening at the aerie. In the scenario where the player has lost the battle with Karst and Agatio at the aerie as Felix, Ivan will admit to having felt this once his recuperated party heads up to the aerie and finds that Felix's party was left defeated and barely clinging to life by the escaped Mars Adepts. Regardless of whether Felix's side successfully fought off the Mars Adepts or needs Isaac's side to revive them with Psynergy, Ivan is quick to diffuse the simmering tensions between the two sides by diplomatically suggesting that they talk in a less charged environment back at Contigo. The two parties agree and separately depart Jupiter Lighthouse for the village.
A shift in priorities
Isaac's party waits inside a certain manor on a hill in Contigo until Felix's party arrives with Kraden, and the two sides begin their talk. Felix's side proceeds to explain that they had found out that the seal placed on Alchemy is currently forcing all of Weyard itself on an inexorable path towards calamity; Isaac's side is stunned to hear that the world will collapse into the abyss of Gaia Falls if the last Lighthouse, Mars Lighthouse, is not lit in time. Isaac's party is even further staggered when they then learn that Saturos had originally coerced Felix's cooperation in his quest by having Prox keep his and Isaac's parents captive. Even putting aside the revelation that said parents had never died three years earlier like Isaac had once presumed, Isaac accepts that the world will be destroyed if the quest his party had been pursuing on behalf of the Wise One were allowed to finish and successfully prevent the last Lighthouse's activation.
Just then, Hama steps into the house to urge everyone to get going with the remainder of Felix's quest. It is briefly mentioned that Hama is both Ivan's elder sister and a descendant of the Anemos tribe that once held sway over this world, but Hama has far more pressing tidings to relate: With the activation of three of the four Elemental Lighthouses, their elemental influences spreading across Weyard are now suppressing that of the last element yet to be lit, the fire-aligned Mars element. The entire world is becoming colder by the hour, and the world will surely freeze over if the Mars Beacon is not lit in time. Hama also informs the Adepts that "a powerful force that does not want to see Mars rekindled" will prevent Karst and Agatio from lighting Mars Lighthouse on their own, and Felix and Isaac's sides will similarly fail unless they pool their strengths together and fight as one. Isaac's party willingly joins forces with Felix's on this urgent note.
Hama brings what is now officially considered Felix's expanded party of Adepts to where Felix had last moored Piers' own Lemurian Ship, Atteka Inlet, where the Adepts find that the people of Contigo have since attached a pair of Psynergy-powered wing-like extensions, the "Wings of Anemos," to it. Building and attaching these wings to help the Adepts finish their duty to the world was an outcome of the residents of Contigo following yet another prophecy handed down by their village's ancient culture. Funneling Psynergy into the Wings of Anemos to make the ship fly is achieved by using the very flight-based Psynergy power that Sheba had previously acquired in exchange for the Shaman's Rod. (Incidentally, in a game file where the password system was used to transfer data from a Golden Sun file in which Hammet was rescued from Lunpa, Hama will also help deliver a gift from Hammet, whom she spoke with briefly on her way to Atteka. She will comment that Hammet was quite upset that Ivan and Isaac's party had yet to visit him again so he could thank them properly.)
By this point, the predicted end results of the prophecies handed down to Contigo by the ancient Anemos culture have come to pass, even if certain stages ended up carried out by parties other than Ivan along the way. If the eight Adepts return to Contigo at any point during the remainder of their quest, they will find that Hama has since taken the manor on the hill as her residence. Inside, Ivan picks up on a familiar feeling from the building, as if he had once lived there, and he asks why Hama did not reveal her relation to him and his true upbringing when they first met at Lama Temple. Hama sternly tells Ivan that he is too sentimental; the role he had been fated to play in service to the world's well-being would have been gravely undermined had he learned these things about himself so early. She states that Ivan would have stopped participating in Isaac's important quest and ended up coming back to Contigo too soon. Even now, Hama feels the need to convince her younger brother that he must remain focused on saving the world with Isaac before allowing himself to see her as his "sister." Though Ivan admits to getting too worked up over seeing his only living family, Hama at least expresses she is happy he cares so much.
The remainder of Golden Sun: The Lost Age plays out with Felix and Isaac's combined party acting as one concerted group as they head far to the north, past Prox and into Mars Lighthouse. Just when they are on the verge of reaching the well of the Lighthouse at its aerie, they are confronted by the Wise One, the very entity who originally tasked Isaac and Garet with preventing the Elemental Lighthouses from being lit aflame. After a back-and-forth between the two sides over the worldwide implications of either lighting the Beacon or leaving it dormant, the Wise One makes the Adepts battle a horrifically powerful three-headed dragon. Ivan willfully dedicates his participation in the battle to the well-being of Prox and the future of Weyard as everyone enters their final battle, and the beast is eventually put down.
Even after it is revealed that the Wise One cruelly deceived the Adepts into slaying an amalgam of Felix and Isaac's parents, Isaac manages to get everyone to agree that this was a price worth paying to save the world, even if it was in defiance of a godlike being. As the Mars Beacon forms, Ivan solemnly points out the irony that preventing this outcome was exactly why he had joined Isaac on the latter's quest originally, way back near Vault. Suddenly, Hama converses with the Adepts through long-distance telepathy to inform them of what the Wise One, of all beings, had warned her and others about: that all four Elemental Lighthouses are about to erupt in energy and send beams of their light into the airspace above Mt. Aleph, forming the "Golden Sun" phenomenon that will bring the free use of Alchemy back to the world. The Adepts have far too little time to avoid the impending wave of energy let loose by Mars Lighthouse — but this miraculously rekindles the dying parents' hold on life, and everyone flees to safety with the parents in tow.
Kraden would later speculate that the Wise One's seeming cruelty to the Adepts was actually a test of their fiber and resolve regarding their newfound roles in a world now faced with the emergence of an abusable but necessary power. Since the Wise One would have known in advance that the parents would be revived by the Mars Beacon, he evidently would not have intended for the adults to die in the event the eight Adepts rose up to his challenge. With their quest now complete, Ivan prepares for a new and uncertain future.
In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
As a result of the three tumultuous decades in store for Weyard that immediately follow the Golden Sun event, Ivan shares in his former traveling companions' newfound reputation worldwide, grouped together with them as the eight "Warriors of Vale" despite not being from Vale himself. The geographical upheaval and natural disasters wrought by Alchemy's release, as well as the new era of militarized geopolitics that follow, paint the eight Adepts with an extremely controversial brush. The peoples of the world are split between praising the Warriors for steering the world away from inevitable annihilation and blaming them for ushering in a new era of nationalism and strife in so doing.
Like with all Warriors of Vale, Ivan's exposure to the energy that erupted at Mars Lighthouse has infused him with slowed aging, which results in him apparently looking only somewhat older even as a middle-aged man thirty years after the events of The Lost Age. In the meantime, Ivan would settle in Kalay and have a daughter with an unknown woman around twelve years after the Golden Sun event. A Jupiter Adept herself, Karis would be described as having inherited Ivan's "indomitable spirit and powers of observation," though she would fail to inherit his particular ability to read minds. However, Karis herself would seem to be just fine with this, for Ivan would apparently resent his mind-reading ability over time.
Ivan is particularly famed as a Warrior of Vale for his intelligence, as evidenced by how a villain who plays into the events of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn thirty years after the Golden Sun event, Blados, remarks to Karis that her being as "smart" as her father "might" make her a worthy adversary someday. Shortly prior to the game, Ivan invents a Psynergy-powered, winged harness made from the feathers of the Mountain Roc said to nest in northeastern Angara. He has Karis deliver it to Isaac and Garet at their "Lookout Cabin" near Mt. Aleph because Isaac feels he needs it to reach the remains of Mt. Aleph's Sol Sanctum for clues that could guide their efforts to help their increasingly war-torn world.
Since Ivan is described as living in Kalay, a town never visited throughout Dark Dawn because it lies south past the disjointed and raised slab of Weyard the game takes place on, he is never seen on-screen in the game. His role in the Warriors of Vale's exploits is depicted in the in-universe Sun Saga books, which recount their Golden Sun quest in a digestible format, as nothing more involved than a fellow hero who voluntarily banded with Isaac and Garet.
Trivia
- Ivan is the only Jupiter Adept who is male. He is also the only male playable character in the GBA games who cannot equip maces, though Amiti would share this distinction in Dark Dawn.
- Ivan's eyebrows are purple, despite his blond hair color. Perhaps coincidentally, Sheba's official art shares this trait, and this may lead to speculation that Sheba has a connection to the ancient Anemos culture that Ivan and his sister Hama are directly stated to be descendants of. It is unknown whether the similar poses their battle sprites assume in the GBA games, including their casting animations, carry significance relating to this.
- Ivan is the only playable character from the GBA duology to have a daughter who is herself a playable character.
- Ivan is one of three playable characters throughout the series who was adopted, in his case by Hammet. The others are Sheba, who was adopted by Faran, the master of Lalivero in Golden Sun, and Amiti, who was adopted by his uncle Paithos, the ruler of Ayuthay, in Dark Dawn.
- In Golden Sun, Ivan's belief that he does not have any powers of prediction are dismissed by Hama, who claims that he does indeed have the power but has merely not realized it yet. By The Lost Age, if the player loses the fight atop Jupiter Lighthouse, the alternate scenario depicting the arrival of Isaac's party will show Ivan confessing to having had a "bad feeling," and Mia will muse that his power of prediction must be even stronger than he had thought. This can be seen to imply that Ivan had been slowly developing his ability of foresight between the end of the first game and this late stage in the second game. Logic would suggest that Ivan does not lose this talent between The Lost Age and Dark Dawn taking place thirty years later.
Quotes
| In Golden Sun |
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| In Golden Sun: The Lost Age |
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's Encyclopedia entry for Ivan:
- This Warrior of Vale traveled with Isaac during their quest 30 years ago. He now lives in the nearby land of Kalay.
- He and his daughter, Karis, are wind Adepts, descendants of the Anemos, an old civilization thought long gone.
In fan circles
Ivan has received his fair share of attention from fanfiction authors because of his sentimentality and his more detailed backstory in comparison to other party members, which gives him relatively deep connections to the plot of the GBA Golden Sun titles. On the other hand, he offers less opportunity for plausible shipping scenarios because of his lack of interaction with female characters. The most popular ship would be with Sheba because of how similarly they are designed as Jupiter Adepts who have apparently different connections to the ancient civilization of the Anemos tribe, though there is scarcely any dialogue between them. Shipping fics in this genre are called "Windshipping".
Other terms for pairings with other characters in the fandom include both "Hotplasmashipping" and "Burnshipping" for Ivan and Jenna; "Puretortureshipping" for Ivan and fellow party member Mia, named after the first such story to be posted on fanfiction.net; and "Purpleshipping" for Ivan and Feizhi, an incidental female character who happens to have the Jupiter-aligned power of prediction and a purple color scheme. Among slash pairing genres, "Sandstormshipping" is the term for one between Ivan and Isaac.
Dark Dawn, of course, had not helped matters when it introduced a daughter for Ivan named Karis without identifying the woman in question. Fanfic writers enjoy depicting Ivan as an over-protective father.
| Main characters in the Golden Sun series | |
|---|---|
| Playable Characters | |
| Golden Sun | Isaac Garet Ivan Mia
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| The Lost Age | Felix Jenna Sheba Piers
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| Dark Dawn | Matthew Karis Tyrell Rief Amiti Sveta Eoleo Himi
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| Non-Player Characters | |
| Golden Sun & The Lost Age |
Agatio Alex  Babi Briggs Dodonpa Dora Feizhi Hama Hammet Hydros Karst Kraden Kyle Menardi Moapa Puelle Saturos Susa The Wise One Tret
|
| Dark Dawn | Arcanus Baghi  Blados Bogho Chalis High Empyror Hou Zan King Wo Laurel Nowell Paithos Ryu Kou Unan Vande Volechek
|
