Menardi

Menardi (メナーディ Maenadi) is a Mars Adept who, along with her partner Saturos, functions as a primary antagonist in the first Golden Sun. The duo lead the original effort to break the seal on Alchemy and restore it to the world of Weyard despite its potential to be abused by its peoples, and their efforts are opposed by Isaac's party throughout all of the game. She is the elder sister of Karst, who features in Golden Sun: The Lost Age as an antagonist in a similar vein.

Biography
Menardi hails from the known world's northernmost settlement, Prox, located far in the harsh Northern Reaches. She and the rest of Prox's people share a visually distinct appearance in that they have reptilian scales on their flesh, facial markings, and pointed ears giving somewhat dragon-like features. This may be related to the Proxians' natural proficiency in the Mars element, which seems to have come about from the village's historical proximity to the fire-aligned Mars Lighthouse. She therefore boasts both an impressive toughness and a natural resistance to the perpetual cold of her environment.

Among Prox's elite warriors, Menardi seems to be regarded as less outwardly "strong" than Saturos and Agatio, but she seems to bear unique responsibilities nonetheless. She is apparently the officially designated owner of a Lemurian Ship that Prox somehow possesses in spite of it being a model of Psynergy-powered ship designed and privately used by Lemuria — a civilization of Adepts that takes great pains to conceal its existence from the rest of the world and is located practically an entire world away. Menardi is the exclusive bearer of her ship's Black Orb, the implement that must be inserted into a Lemurian Ship so that its helmsman may control it with Psynergy.

As of several years before the start of Golden Sun, Prox's people know for certain that Gaia Falls, the abyss that lies north of Mars Lighthouse, is only ever growing in size. Prox's chieftain, Puelle, grasps that it will eventually plunge Mars Lighthouse and Prox itself into the void. Puelle is somehow aware that the root cause is the absence of the power of Alchemy, which had been sealed away ever since the world's ancient past, and that said seal lies in Mt. Aleph to the south. Unfortunately, the envoys Puelle and the Elder of Prox send to Vale, the village at the mountain's base, fail to convince its elders of what the world faces and are forcefully driven out. The trip does, however, reveal that Mt. Aleph's own Sol Sanctum contains the Elemental Stars, four jewels imbued with purified elemental essences that are meant to be dropped down the wells atop each of the four Elemental Lighthouses spread throughout Weyard.

Failure to Acquire the Elemental Stars
Three years before the present, Menardi is made part of a raiding party Prox assembles out of the village's finest warriors, and Saturos is assigned to lead it. They are sent south to Vale to secretly take the Elemental Stars from Mt. Aleph, and they reach and infiltrate Sol Sanctum in the middle of the night. While attempting to handle one of the sanctum's ancient riddles, however, they accidentally set off a trap designed to test the Psynergy capabilities of those who would enter its Elemental Star Chamber. In a matter of minutes, the entire raiding party ends up dead except for Menardi and Saturos, who themselves just barely make it out of Sol Sanctum alive. The same trap enshrouds Mt. Aleph itself in a sudden and violent thunderstorm that wracks Vale below, and a large boulder is dislodged from somewhere on the mountain and crashes straight through the village as a consequence.

As the surviving duo attempt to recompose themselves, they become aware of a pair of local boys, Isaac and Garet, who happen to have overheard them. Regardless of whether the boys were eavesdropping on them like Saturos and Menardi accuse them of, the duo immediately move to render them unconscious and effectively knock the boys' memories of them out of their heads. Just as the Mars Adepts begin their journey back to Prox, however, they find that several other villagers are floating unconscious along a river because of the storm: Felix, his parents, and Kyle, Isaac's father. Possibly motivated by some level of guilt for what they accidentally set off at the village's expense, the duo save all four of the strangers' lives and bring them back to Prox.

The three-year period that follows is not thoroughly explained in-game. Saturos is largely responsible for Felix and the three adults from Vale being effectively forced to live in Prox as their captives despite Puelle's disagreement with the notion of coercing people for the sake of their cause. Saturos and Menardi also begin efforts to individually research each of the four Elemental Lighthouses they will need to ignite with the corresponding Stars once they have them. They eventually find that a given Lighthouse can only be entered with the help of an Adept of the corresponding element, which is why they seek to assemble willing Adepts of elements other than Mars before they set off on their quest.

The Mars Adepts coerce Felix into becoming their companion by leveraging the freedom of his captive parents because he happens to be a Venus Adept capable of letting the party enter Venus Lighthouse in the future. They apparently do not disclose to him that this is why they need him, or that their quest to bring back Alchemy will save the rest of the world from a dire fate in the long term, but he becomes very willing to see their quest through to the end regardless. Even so, the rebellious attitude Felix harbors toward them is what leaves them disinclined to let him fight and gain combat experience over the course of their upcoming quest. Come the present day, the Mars Adepts set off on their quest with both Felix and another willing ally they recruited during their research venture, the Mercury Adept Alex; the matter of finding both a Jupiter Adept and a particular staff called the Shaman's Rod for the sake of achieving Jupiter Lighthouse are left as issues that will have to be resolved along the way.

A Mostly Successful Second Attempt
Menardi sails with her three companions south to a peninsula called Idejima on the continent called Gondowan, and she switches her Lemurian Ship into a dormant state by extracting and withholding its Black Orb. The four travel all the way north into Angara and eventually reach Mt. Aleph once again, and the Mars Adepts lodge into Vale's inn with Felix, who wears a mask to conceal his identity from the people of his hometown. Felix had made his fellow travelers promise him not to let any of Vale's villagers get caught up in their raid of the sanctum.

The Mars Adepts sneak around town trying to find out information useful for their imminent raid of Sol Sanctum, though they find that the elders of Vale venerate the sanctum to such an extent that they do not permit anyone in the village to investigate it thoroughly. An elderly scholar named Kraden, however, is discovered to be an authority on the subject of Alchemy who seeks to broaden his knowledge by illegally studying its interior up close, which he was planning to do just today. Saturos and Menardi reveal that they had previously reached Sol Sanctum's inner depths and voluntarily disclose information that would allow Kraden to reach farther than he would have otherwise, and they also cryptically proclaim that they are planning to "set the four elements into motion" using the four Elemental Stars. Kraden manages to send the strangers away through what Menardi would consider his impressive stubbornness.

Menardi privately proposes to Saturos that they can use Kraden for his wealth of knowledge and insight, and she suggests that they take him by force if he does not come willingly. Just then, the duo are encountered by three teenagers on their way to Kraden's cottage: Isaac, Garet, and Jenna, none of whom recognize the strangers from three years earlier. To Menardi's surprise, Saturos lets them pass without incident and reasons to her that they have no particular reason to delay these children.

Kraden and his pupils end up sneaking into Sol Sanctum additionally seeking to confirm whether the strangers were telling the truth about having seen the sanctum personally, which would allow them to warn the elders that the stranger's party are thieves planning to rob the sanctum. Driven by his own curiosity, however, Kraden instead makes use of the Mars Adepts' information to delve further into Sol Sanctum. The four conspirators secretly follow the group as the young Adepts successfully open their way into the heart of the sanctum and disarm the lethal trap from three years earlier with their Psynergy. Eventually, Kraden's group enters the cavernous Elemental Star Chamber, and Kraden and Jenna have Isaac and Garet hop across its various "islands" to collect the Elemental Stars off their statue-shaped pedestals.

Right after Isaac and Garet have collected three of the four Stars, Saturos and Menardi make their move and take Jenna and Kraden hostage, and the still-masked Felix steps in behind them to reassure them that he made the duo promise that they will not be hurt. The Mars Adepts warn that Isaac and Garet will need to hand the Elemental Stars over to them first. When Kraden demands a guarantee that they will honor their word once they do have the Stars, Menardi proposes that Felix remove his mask; Saturos immediately sees the value in her idea and commands Felix by name to do so. Felix is thus forced to reveal himself to his stunned childhood friends and sister and claim that he has willingly chosen to repay the Mars Adepts for saving his life by helping them with their goals regarding the Stars.

Isaac and Garet therefore willingly hand over their three Stars and hop over to the pedestal containing the Mars Star to retrieve it as per Saturos' demands. Once Isaac removes the Star, however, the entire mountain suddenly trembles in direct response, and the seemingly all-powerful guardian of the Elemental Stars, the Wise One, makes its appearance and observes everyone. It is immediately apparent to the conspirators that they will have to flee the chamber while leaving the Mars Star with the seemingly doomed Isaac and Garet, but Menardi stresses that the group needs the Mars Star and observes that the two boys could still survive.

The group agrees with Alex's proposal that they take both Jenna and Kraden with them because the boys would seek Jenna's freedom and would bring them the Mars Star in exchange. This leads Felix to lash out and accuse the others of breaking their promise to him, but Menardi helps bring Felix to reason by observing that Jenna will surely die if she is left behind. As the four intruders evacuate the chamber and flee the erupting mountain with their two new captives, Menardi rather roughly pushes Jenna to the exit, and Felix angrily rebukes her. Menardi just as angrily retorts that she and Saturos saved his life, clearly implying that she expects better loyalty from him, and Saturos has to call her out by name to get her to stand down.

From Mercury Lighthouse to Gondowan
With the world itself already changing on account of Mt. Aleph's eruption, the four travelers and their two companions immediately head toward the closest lighthouse, Mercury Lighthouse, passing through multiple settlements and cave networks along the way. Once they arrive at the tower itself, Alex unseals the entrance for them and blocks it off behind them as they climb through the lighthouse. Once they reach the aerie, they cast the Mercury Star down its well, which establishes the Mercury Beacon without any difficulty.

Just as Menardi brings Felix, Jenna, and Kraden onto the elevator leading back down to the ground, a party of four other Adepts suddenly reach the Aerie from the other side, and Menardi finds it amusing that they are being led by the two boys who seemed all but certain to die in Mt. Aleph. While Saturos and Alex hide behind the beacon, Menardi addresses Isaac and Garet's party from afar and asks if they have come to save Jenna and Kraden, and their answer makes clear that they are also intent on putting an end to Saturos' plan to make use of the Elemental Stars. With it now established that there will be no appetite for mutually beneficial exchanges between the two sides, Saturos steps out and proclaims his intent to kill the four Adepts.

Menardi shares her apprehensions about letting Saturos fight all four of his opponents by himself in front of a beacon that would directly inhibit his Mars Psynergy, but he firmly orders her to stay with the hostages and head to the next lighthouse with them and Felix. Menardi defers to his command and threateningly invites Jenna to come over with her, but the girl attempts to defy her at first. Muttering that she should teach Jenna a lesson, Menardi advises Felix to get his sister to obey her before harm comes Jenna's way, and both Felix and Kraden help convince Jenna to allow herself to submit to Menardi's authority.

Menardi leaves Mercury Lighthouse with Felix and leads their detachment of the traveling company for a time, rushing back south through Angara. They begin a long, clockwise trek across the brunt of the continent necessitated by how a critical bridge leading directly south from Mt. Aleph's general area had been broken by the eruption of Mt. Aleph. Saturos and Alex do not rejoin them until some time after they pass through the town of Bilibin, and the other four are presumably stunned to learn that Saturos had actually lost his battle and had to be brought away to safety by Alex. Isaac's party, which Alex has confirmed retains the Mars Star, is now willing to pursue the travelers across the continent.

Menardi accompanies Saturos' company of travelers throughout the remainder of their journey across Angara as they cause disturbances meant specifically to slow the pursuit of Isaac's increasingly powerful party. As they pass through Lamakan Desert, the group's capacity to weather the extreme heat apparently comes down to Menardi and Saturos' fire-aligned powers as Mars Adepts, for a certain oracle near the desert speculates that they might be helping to suppress the heat. The company eventually reaches the southwest portion of Angara and takes a ferry service west across the Karagol Sea, and they finally reach the city of Tolbi in Gondowan.

Downfall at Venus Lighthouse
Saturos and Menardi's group eventually departs Tolbi in the direction of Venus Lighthouse, which lies in territory controlled and restricted by Tolbi's monarch. Along the way, they come across a lost girl named Sheba, whom Tolbi's soldiers were attempting to escort back to her hometown at Lalivero near Venus Lighthouse. The Mars Adepts realize that she is the Jupiter Adept they have been seeking to find since they started the quest, and so they take her captive. Felix, not yet having worked out what they know, does not take kindly to the duo forcing another "unrelated" person into their group, and so the Mars Adepts claim that they need her as leverage to get into Venus Lighthouse. They make a false promise to Felix that they will let her free once they get inside.

The tensions that rise among the group over this development apparently lead to the Mars Adepts' frustrations increasingly boiling over, for they resort to violence to force their way past Tolbi guards stationed at gates near the lighthouse and even kill some of the men around the lighthouse itself. When the group of seven works out that the Venus Ruins north of Venus Lighthouse houses the tower's true entrance, they have no choice but to pass through Lalivero along the way, and the Mars Adepts threateningly show off Sheba as their hostage to compel the townsfolk to let them pass unopposed. The Mars Adepts then violently turn their fire Psynergy against the workmen who are currently using the Venus Ruins as a foundation for a construction project. Once everyone finally reaches the lighthouse, the leading duo demonstrate how... mentally lacking they are at solving the riddles of the lighthouse, forcing everyone else to pick up the pace.

As the party approaches the aerie, Menardi introduces to the other two hostages the existence of her special ship at Idejima, and she orders Felix to lead them back outside while she and Saturos proceed to the aerie with Sheba. Just when the Mars Adepts are about to cast the Venus Star into the lighthouse's well, Felix suddenly returns and demands to know why they have not released her. Menardi is uncharacteristically apologetic as she confirms that Sheba is a Jupiter Adept whom they absolutely need to get into Jupiter Lighthouse.

Though Felix can accept the basic premise of this, he suddenly exclaims that leaving Sheba here with them would still needlessly endanger her, since no one knows what kind of chaos will be unleashed once the Venus Star falls into the Lighthouse. The defiant tone he takes as he states he is taking Sheba to the ship, however, makes both Mars Adepts consider him no longer worthy of their trust and refuse to let her go with him. Felix attempts to portray himself as willing to fight them for Sheba's sake, but the Mars Adepts observe that he would have no chance because he never developed his combat skills thanks to them, and they also stress that he of all people would have reason to fear their powers. Just as Saturos and Menardi seem about to put Felix down for good, Isaac's party suddenly catches up to the scene, leading Menardi to rebuke Felix for delaying them with his defiance.

Menardi is briefly confused when Saturos suddenly claims that they won't "hurt" Sheba if his conditions are met, but she quickly catches on as Saturos has Sheba affirm with her telepathic powers that Isaac's party possesses the Shaman's Rod that they need to reach Jupiter Lighthouse. Saturos uses precisely worded language to deceive Isaac into handing over the staff in exchange for the promise of Sheba's safety, and they have Felix take it to prove his continued "loyalty" to them. When Saturos then clarifies that he never said he would let Sheba go, Menardi gloats that the fault lies with the party for misinterpreting Saturos' terms. Both Mars Adepts have already decided by this point that it is time for Isaac's party to die, and so they make an earnest effort to kill the four Adepts.

Astonishingly, Isaac's battle-hardened party manages to survive the attack without any casualties and leave Saturos and Menardi twitching on the ground — but the party is staggered when Felix confirms his intention to light the remaining lighthouses despite seemingly having been "freed" from the duo's "control." Being weakened does not, however, stop Saturos from suddenly and casually tossing the Venus Star into the nearby well, immediately accomplishing the second of their four objectives. Menardi then reveals that the earth-aligned energy now flowing out of the lighthouse will restore their vitality and Psynergy because of a symbiotic relationship shared between earth and fire, and she also name-drops the Fire Clan of the north when metaphorically describing the horrifying powers the duo are about to subject the party to.

Just before the Mars Adepts engage Isaac's side in a second and more decisive battle, Menardi suddenly commands Felix, much to his great surprise, to take Sheba safely to the ship like he had originally demanded. Saturos reasons that they might not have the strength to protect Sheba afterward. When Felix suddenly claims he cannot leave the duo to fight them alone, the Mars Adepts suggest he is only making that offer because he might not be able to resist trying to save Isaac from death, despite his claims to the contrary. In saying this, they get Felix to reaffirm his dedication to his and the Mars Adepts' ultimate mission and agree to take Sheba for them.

Saturos and Menardi suddenly overflow with Psynergy and voluntarily carry out an unexplained process that spectacularly merges and transforms their bodies into a two-headed dragon, which attempts to annihilate Isaac's party with its terrifying power. The Mars Adepts end up in as much of a state of disbelief as anybody else when Isaac and his seasoned party actually manage to defeat them even this form; as they revert back to their separate forms, Menardi weakly comments that the two of them were "superior in every way," and they plummet to their deaths by falling backward into the Lighthouse's well.

Venus Lighthouse suddenly generates an intensely violent earthquake at its base that leads to both Sheba and Felix falling off the tower, though they both survive thanks to Idejima breaking off from Gondowan at that same moment; this allows them to fall safely into ocean water that has just taken Idejima's place at the base of the lighthouse. The two survivors swim onto the now-buoyant island as it floats off to sea, where they reunite with Jenna, Kraden, and Alex. Though Menardi's ship ends up carried along with them, all five of them realize they are stranded on the island regardless because the Black Orb that could have been used to commandeer the vessel was lost with Menardi as she perished.

Postmortem
Menardi's legacy is largely shared with Saturos' and critically shapes the entirety of the story in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. However, despite him being the effective alpha of their efforts, Menardi has a larger posthumous presence over the game's story because the Mars Adepts who insert themselves into the proceedings seek vengeance against Isaac for Menardi's death in particular. Karst is the younger sister of Menardi, and she seeks to decisively handle Isaac on Felix's "behalf" while he continues carrying out Saturos' quest to light the remaining Elemental Lighthouses. Alex soon associates with her and Agatio to pressure Felix's party into lighting Jupiter faster, though he very bluntly clarifies for Karst and Agatio that they would be about as "lacking" at solving the mysteries of the lighthouses as Saturos and Menardi were; therefore, Alex would leave the lighting of Jupiter Lighthouse to Felix's party.

The conflict between Felix and Isaac's side in The Lost Age comes to a dramatic head at Jupiter Lighthouse when Felix effectively stops Karst from killing Isaac and invites her and Agatio's wrath upon himself. Alex prevents any deaths from occurring among any of the sides involved and ensures that Karst and Agatio make off with Isaac's Mars Star to try to light Mars Lighthouse by themselves. Felix and Isaac's parties soon reconcile their differences and make a combined effort to light Mars Lighthouse when it is evident that Karst and Agatio's efforts failed.

As the eight Adepts led by Felix and Isaac proceed north through Prox, the villagers are willing to forgive Isaac for causing Menardi and Saturos' deaths in their efforts to regain what was stolen from Vale, and they tell Isaac that he should be proud of having been stronger than the duo in the end. The parents whom Saturos originally had Prox keep captive are allowed to go free. Eventually, the combined party of Adepts discover the Mars Star in the lighthouse and successfully manage to light the Mars Beacon using it, enacting the Golden Sun event in the process. Prox and the rest of the world are both saved from their eventual collapse into the abyss even though, at the same time, all the world's populations are thrust into a new era of upheaval and chaos because of the release of the dangerous new power.

While the eight young Adepts who would later be called the Warriors of Vale would attract the most controversy and attention for their efforts to save the world, there is little to suggest that Menardi and the other Proxian Mars Adepts are widely known or appreciated for their roles in leading up to the Golden Sun event. The Sun Saga, a series of collectible books in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn that presumably represent an in-universe perspective on the journeys leading up to the Golden Sun, do not even mention the Proxians by name and largely portray the events as the ambitions of Felix and Alex. If the Psynergy Training Grounds at Patcher's Place are also interpreted as representative of how the world views the original journeys, the world does not see the Mars Adepts as much more than villainous brutes.

As a boss in Golden Sun
Menardi is one of few named characters in the Golden Sun series to be fought a total of three times, even if she does not retain her name in all of them. Nonetheless, she takes part in one less battle against the party than her counterpart, Saturos.

In the prologue sequence
The first battle with Menardi as a character takes place at the end of the game's dark and stormy prologue sequence in Vale, and she is accompanied by Saturos in a scenario where both of their names are yet to be disclosed to the player. Menardi, as "Mystery Woman," takes part in a scripted encounter that the player's starting two characters, younger versions of Isaac and Garet, clearly are not meant to win. Losing against the two characters initiates the cutscene leading to the rest of the game rather than a game over, though using external hacking methods to give Isaac and Garet the capacity to win against them technically leads to the exact same cutscene that presumes the boys lost.

Menardi as "Mystery Woman," who is Level 10, is especially likely to be affected by Defense-lowering effects. Her statistics are as follows:

Menardi as Mystery Woman uses the following battle commands with :

On Venus Lighthouse
A fittingly strong version of Menardi is fought alongside an equally strong version of Saturos in a boss battle that ends up being the first of two boss battles that constitute the final storyline challenge at the end of Golden Sun. The party is forced into the battle the moment they slide down a lone slide into the gaping pit of a stand-alone room high up in Venus Lighthouse, with the follow-up battle taking place as soon as the current battle is one; there is no opportunity for the party to heal in between.

While in this fight, Saturos generally does more consistent damage and is likely to cast Break to clear away buffs the party attempts to apply to themselves, Menardi is generally focused down first because her abilities include an enemy skill that can potentially down an Adept regardless of health. Regardless of who is defeated first, the other will be much easier to deal with once the first is no longer fighting at the same time as them, so the party should use the relative lack of threat from fighting only one of the opponents to restore their health and PP before taking that opponent out.

Menardi, who is level 38, is especially likely to be affected by Defense-lowering effects. Her statistics are as follows:

Menardi uses the following battle commands with :

Trivia

 * An image surviving from the original Golden Sun ' s beta (pictured) depicts a noticeably altered design for Menardi that makes her look less outlandish, with no spiky ears and an orange hair color that contrasts with her final blonde design.
 * Menardi, like Saturos, is featured as one of the paper targets in the second course of the Psynergy Training Grounds "dungeon" early in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn that has to be burned down with the Fireball Psynergy.
 * Saturos and Menardi's names seem to reference two types of creatures in Greek mythology: the satyrs and the maenads. This seems to be the first instance of a series tradition in which each game's primary antagonistic male-and-female duo receive names that correspond with each other, with the second game using geology-themed naming conventions for Karst and Agatio and the third game using tarot-themed conventions for Blados and Chalis.

In fan circles
While Saturos and Menardi naturally get extra attention from the player base as the headlining antagonistic duo of the first game, she is largely overshadowed by him for having less charisma in comparison and taking part in one less boss encounter against the party. Her more domineering nature in comparison is played up in fan fiction portrayals, and she is typically regarded as the more threatening in-game opponent to actually face in the first game, as she is the one who has a skill that can cause instant death. Another difference from Saturos that fan fiction writers capitalize on is that she is the character who has a family tie that a future antagonist, Karst, is motivated by.

Menardi and Saturos are only ever depicted in the games as fellow soldiers without any romantic undertones between them. That said, the fan community hardly ever writes fan fiction shipping them with anyone other than each other; the category for this is called "Proxshipping."