Menardi

Menardi is a Mars Adept who along with her partner Saturos is a main antagonist in Golden Sun. She leads along with Saturos the original effort to break the seal on Alchemy and bring it back to the world of Weyard, and is opposed by Isaac's party all throughout the first game. She is the elder sister of Karst, who becomes an antagonist in a similar vein in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

=Biography=

Menardi hails from the northernmost settlement on the world map, the colony of Prox. She and the Proxeans belong to a distinctive humanlike race that is characterized by almost dragonlike scales and spikes on various areas of their flesh, and more importantly their natural proficency to the element of Mars. Thus, she boasts both a natural resiliency unconventional by normal human standards and a natural immunity to the constant cold of her home environment. Among Prox's military, Menardi is recognized as one of the village's strongest warriors, skilled with the scythe, among her contemporaries Saturos, Agatio, and her younger sister Karst. Also, Prox is somehow in possession of a Lemurian Ship, which ended up as specifically registered to Menardi herself.

Alchemy and the Elemental Stars
Three years before the present, the chieftain of Prox, Puelle, found that the abyss at the edge of the world a distance north of Prox has been growing in size, and that in the distant-yet-near future, it will eventually swallow up both the town and the nearby Mars Lighthouse and ruin the people. Puelle and the Elder of Prox deduced that this is caused by the absence of Alchemy, and that to circumvent this the Elemental Lighthouses must each be activated with their respective Elemental Stars, currently hidden within Sol Sanctum down south in Angara. However, when Prox sent envoys to the town of Vale which guarded the sanctum, the envoys were stubbornly turned back by the town's elders and mayor, which eventually forced Prox's authority to make the decision to pilfer the Stars outright. So, Puelle organized the talented and hardened Menardi, Saturos, and several other of Prox's finest soldiers into a raiding party that would travel down to Vale on Menardi's ship and covertly steal the Elemental Stars.

When Menardi arrived along with the raiding party at Vale and infiltrated Mt. Aleph and the Sol Sanctum within during the night, they came upon the sanctum's ancient riddles and traps. One of the switches they triggered, alas, was that sort of trap: In a matter of minutes, all of their raiding party was killed, and Menardi and Saturos barely made it out of Sol Sanctum with their lives while a magically generated thunderstorm emerged around Mt. Aleph and assaulted the town of Vale below, causing a large nearby boulder named the Mt. Aleph Boulder to become dislodged and roll on a course of destruction through the town. As Menardi and Saturos reconvened at an empty area in Vale to gather their thoughts about what has transpired, they suddenly found that they were being eavesdropped on by two young Valeans, Isaac and Garet; Menardi and Saturos immediately knocked them unconscious so that they would lose their memories of the Mars Adepts, who then left Vale to head back home to Prox.

Menardi and Saturos, as they passed by the river flowing away from the town, discovered four more unconscious Valeans floating upon it: Felix, his two parents, and Isaac's father Kyle, all who had been impacted by the Mt. Aleph Boulder. The pair of Mars Adepts may have felt remorse for the disaster they caused for the town, for they saved the Valeans' lives and took them back to Prox. Menardi and Saturos sailed back to Prox and reported to Puelle and the Elder everything that had happened on their ill-fated expedition.

Over the next three years, as Felix and the Valean adults lived in Prox where they were conceptually kept as Prox's hostages, Menardi and Saturos conducted some in-depth research on each of the Elemental Lighthouses, and they discovered that, in order to even enter a Lighthouse, you need an Adept of that Lighthouse's respective element, meaning that Menardi and Saturos need to be accompanied by at least one each of a Mercury Adept, a Venus Adept, and a Jupiter Adept the next time they set out to light the Lighthouses. (The Jupiter Lighthouse, in particular, also needs some sort of artifact named the Shaman's Rod in some way.) So, Saturos and Menardi trained Felix as the Venus Adept who would accompany them on their quest. In addition, during their research ventures, Menardi and Saturos encountered the Mercury Adept Alex, a guardian of the Mercury Lighthouse, and Alex agreed to aid them in their soon-to-be quest by traveling with them as their Mercury Adept who will allow them to enter Mercury Lighthouse.

Invasion of Sol Sanctum
Finally, in the present day and age, the Adepts Menardi, Saturos, Alex, and Felix depart Prox on her Lemurian Ship and set out on their worldwide effort to initiate Alchemy's restoration. The four travelers sail to Idejima on the continent Gondowan and anchor her ship there, and travel far north to Angara to reach Vale and Sol Sanctum. Before they enter Felix's very hometown for the first time in three years, Felix forces the others to promise him not to let any of the people of Vale, particularly Felix's former childhood friends Isaac and Garet and especially his younger sister Jenna, get involved in what they're trying to do. The Mars Adepts and Felix then lodge at Vale's inn without introducing themselves to the Mayor of Vale (since it was him who turned Prox down previously), and Menardi and Saturos then investigate matters around town in preparation.

Saturos and Menardi stop by the cottage of the wizened scholar of Alchemy, Kraden, and they attempt to glean information from him about Sol Sanctum by telling him about how they plan to "set the elements into motion" and that "the Elemental Stars are the key" to doing this, things that not even Kraden and the elders of Vale are aware of. Kraden tells them off by stating that on this day he has a big errand to run with Isaac, Garet, and Jenna. After leaving, Menardi and Saturos convene in secret, noting Kraden's impressive knowledge of Alchemy-related matters; they might be able to use him for their own purposes on their soon-to-begin quest. But then they are encountered by the three teenagers Kraden was waiting for, and while the teenagers are unnerved by Menardi and Saturos's somewhat inhuman appearances they do not remember their past encounter with the pair three years back. After a tense interaction, Menardi agrees with Saturos' decision to let them pass and see Kraden.

When Menardi, Saturos, Felix, and Alex eventually commence their secretive second invasion and exploration of Sol Sanctum, they find that another group is conducting an investigation of their own ahead of them, which are indeed comprised of Kraden and the three teenagers the Mars Adepts saw earlier. Menardi and Saturos are quick to seize the situation and take Jenna and Kraden hostage, demanding that Isaac and Garet retrieve the Elemental Stars for them. When Kraden asks what guarantee he and the others have that Saturos will not harm them if they give the Elemental Stars to him, Menardi comes up with an inventive response: have Felix remove his mask and reveal his identity to everyone, which shocks everyone effectively into submission. Isaac and Garet hand Saturos the three Stars they currently collected and go to retrieve the fourth, the Mars Star, for him.

When Isaac removes the Mars Star from its pedestal, however, the mountain suddenly begins to erupt as a volcano and the star chamber begins to collapse, and everyone watches as the almighty protector of Alchemy's seal, the Wise One, emerges into view. Menardi and the others realize that they cannot get the Mars Star without very likely dying, so they must flee with their own lives as they leave Isaac and Garet and the Mars Star behind. It would obviously be truly terrible if the Mars Star was lost with the two boys, but before they flee Alex proposes to take Jenna and Kraden with them as hostages to accompany their group on their soon-to-begin global trek; if Isaac and Garet survive, they will pursue Saturos' group with the aim to free Jenna and Kraden from their grasp in the near future, at which point they can relieve Isaac of the Mars Star by force. Felix lashes out at Alex for breaking their promise, but Alex states that the circumstances have obviously changed since then and that Jenna would probably die if they didn't take her with them. With this decided, Menardi and her companions reluctantly flee the erupting mountain.

Angara and the Mercury Lighthouse
The effects of Mt. Aleph's eruption have already begun to change the world, with a rain of Psynergy Stones affecting the minds of many lifeforms across the world and giving people new powers as Adepts. Menardi and Saturos's group now numbers six, with two new captive members now accompanying them on their quest, and Saturos's aim to start off with is to enter and light the nearest Lighthouse, Mercury Lighthouse, to the north. In their immediate trek to Mercury Lighthouse, the group first passes through the town of Vault, briefly staying there, and then they travel through Goma Range. Whether or not they then pass through or stay in the town of Bilibin is not mentioned, but the party then travels up north through Bilibin Cave to reach the continent's snow-capped region, where Imil and the Mercury Lighthouse are located. After Alex admits them into Mercury Lighthouse with his Mercury Psynergy and the group climbs through the Lighthouse to arrive at the tower's aerie, Saturos and Alex cast the Mercury Star into the well of the Mercury Lighthouse to light the Mercury Beacon. With one Lighthouse lit, three remain before the seal on Alchemy is broken.

As soon as the lighthouse beacon is activated and Menardi prepares to leave the Lighthouse with Felix, Jenna, and Kraden, fate plays a hand as a group of four traveling Adepts suddenly arrive to confront them, and they are comprised of Alex's clanmate Mia, a young boy named Ivan, and none other than Isaac and Garet, who survived Mt. Aleph's eruption and have indeed come to stop Saturos and Menardi's quest and take back Jenna and Kraden. Saturos instructs Menardi to take the three with her away from the lighthouse via the elevator while he engages the opposing Adepts in Battle; when Jenna mounts objections, Menardi holds back on teaching her a very physical lesson and instead makes Felix make Jenna obey her for Jenna's safety's sake, and they leave the lighthouse together. Saturos, however, as fate would have it, would actually lose his battle with Isaac's party on account of the Mercury influence of the lighthouse interfering with his Mars Powers, and Alex and Saturos flee the Lighthouse together from Isaac using Alex's warping Psynergy. After the events at Mercury Lighthouse, Saturos and Alex rejoin Menardi and the others, and they immediately resume their journey to the next Lighthouse.

In the extended period of time to come, Menardi and her associates travel all across Angara, along the way either directly or indirectly causing problems for the various towns and locations they go through to impede the progress of Isaac's pursuing party. Among the callous acts Menardi causes or allows to happen during this period are when they cross through Bilibin Barricade and push Koliman children already petrified as trees by the curse of Tret into the river for no apparent reason; when their group reaches Fuchin Temple and they force Master Nyunpa to reveal his secrets so that they can then cross through Mogall Forest; and beyond the town of Xian, they cause a landslide at Alpine Crossing to block off an important trade route and prevent Isaac's party from catching up to them, in the process injuring and trapping an uninvolved person named Hsu. Menardi soon travels with the others through the scorching heat of Lamakan Desert without much incident or trouble because, as the oracle Hama theorizes to Isaac's pursuing party at a later point, Saturos and Menardi's Mars-based powers somehow allow them to suppress the heat for them all.

Gondowan and the Venus Lighthouse
Saturos, Menardi, and their band eventually pass by the town of Kalay at southwestern Angara and take a ferry service across the Karagol Sea to the continent of Gondowan, where the next lighthouse, the Venus Lighthouse, is located. While they travel through the Suhalla Desert in the Lighthouse's direction, effortlessly slaying the powerful Tornado Lizards that have taken over the desert, Menardi and Saturos happen upon the young girl Sheba lost in the desert. They see she is in fact a Jupiter Adept, the one they've been looking for, so they take her captive just like they did with Jenna and Kraden; Felix at this point begins to mount objections against Saturos and Menardi' procedures in response to their kidnapping yet another uninvolved party. Soon they arrive at Venus Lighthouse, and Felix, like Alex with Mercury Lighthouse, uses his Venus Psynergy to admit them entry into the tower.

In Venus Lighthouse, as Saturos' band climbs up through the tower, Menardi and Saturos take Sheba with them to the top as they order Felix and Alex to lead Jenna and Kraden outside to Idejima, the place where Menardi moored her ship a long while back. Menardi and Saturos are about to light the Venus Beacon on the Venus Lighthouse's aerie, however, when Felix suddenly arrives back up there by himself. Felix demands to know why they haven't released Sheba to the Laliverans, and Saturos explains how they need her in order to climb and activate Jupiter Lighthouse in the future. On that note, Felix proclaims he will take Sheba away from the tower and down to Idejima for safety's sake, but Menardi and Saturos deny Felix his demand, pointing out out that they cannot trust him anymore. Felix readies himself to attack Menardi and Saturos outright when at that moment, Isaac's party arrives at the aerie to confront Saturos and Felix. A tense standoff occurs where Saturos threatens to harm Sheba unless Ivan gives him the Shaman's Rod in Ivan's possession. Isaac and Ivan agree to his terms, assuming that Saturos means he would free Sheba from their hold once they have the rod, and Saturos has Felix be the one to take the rod from Isaac so as to ensure his continued loyalty to them. But Saturos clarifies to Isaac afterwards that he only said he wouldn't let harm come to her; he never actually said he'd let Sheba go, to Isaac's party's exasperation.

Menardi and Saturos then decide it is time for Isaac's party to die and they launch an all-out offensive against Isaac's group. The master Mars Adepts are indeed immensely powerful opponents together, and unlike when Saturos fought alone at Mercury Lighthouse the pair fight together with fully uncapped Mars powers at their disposal. But the fierce battle eventually ends when Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia prove powerful enough themselves that they actually defeat the pair regardless. But Menardi and Saturos are not out of the picture yet: After Isaac confronts Felix over the latter's involvement in Saturos' quest, Saturos arises and casually tosses the Venus Star into the Venus Lighthouse's well, to everyone's surprise and Isaac's horror. As the Venus Lighthouse activates, the structure's energy recharges the pair, despite their being Mars Adepts; as Saturos explains, Fire and Earth are symbiotic elements, so the Venus-based energy is beneficial to Mars Adepts almost as much as Venus Adepts. Menardi and Saturos then execute their ultimate power as their last stand against Isaac: magically merging together in a burst of energy to form a single, gigantic, terrifying creature resembling a two-headed dragon. The beast attempts to overwhelm and annihilate Isaac and his group with its superlative Mars powers, but through an intense battle Isaac ultimately slays the dragon in his greatest victory yet. The dragon reverts to the defeated forms of Menardi and Saturos, who express their disbelief in their complete defeat at the hands of people who should by all means be inferior to them. Thus, Menardi and Saturos fall backward into the Lighthouse's opening and meet their shared demise, and are never seen again.

Isaac's incredible victory over Felix's masters intimidate Felix into declaring that he is no match for Isaac now, and thus he declares that he must now flee to complete Saturos and Menardi' quest objective while he still can. But that is when the Venus Lighthouse suddenly experiences a violent earthquake as the Venus Beacon lights itself on the tower's top; when Sheba loses her footing, falling off the side of the lighthouse, Felix jumps clean off the tower after her, to the disbelief of Isaac and his companions. After the Lighthouse reforms and the chaos subsides with the Venus Beacon now brightly alight, Isaac and his friends assume Felix and Sheba have been killed, and that now that Menardi and Saturos are gone their priority is searching for Jenna and Kraden. Both Felix and Sheba survived, however: as a result of a series of fateful coincidences and incidents, Sheba and Felix land safely in the water while the nearby Idejima, which has been severed off from the mainland in the quake, floats east out to sea, and the two swim to the island to rejoin Alex, Jenna, and Kraden, reporting everything that has transpired, including the deaths of Menardi and Saturos. Now that they're gone along with the Black Orb they used to commandeer Menardi's ship, the ship that's at the island with them is now useless.

In Golden Sun: The Lost Age
Menardi and Saturos, of course, are never seen in person in The Lost Age, but they are by no means no longer important to the story; the entire course of the game's story revolves around the pair's legacy. Felix leads the party of Jenna, Sheba, and Kraden across much of Weyard in his quest to eventually reach and properly climb Jupiter Lighthouse, while Alex operates on the sidelines and threatens Felix to hasten the latter's progress in achieving Saturos and Menardi's original objective. In one scene, Felix and his group discover a Lemurian Ship which they assume is Menardi's ship that has drifted away from Idejima following a tidal wave, but they still can't use it at that point, but it later turns out that this ship belongs to a Mercury Adept named Piers, and Felix and Piers set sail on this ship together to explore much of Weyard's Great Seas to continue their pursuit of the goal to break Alchemy's seal. In another scene, Alex expresses how he thinks Menardi and Saturos were pretty much simple brutes lacking in intelligence, since while they were climbing Venus Lighthouse the Mars Adepts were having some serious trouble solving the structure's riddles. Felix and Jenna's drive in continuing Menardi and Saturos' quest stems from their desire to earn the freedom of their parents at Prox and to save the town itself from eventual destruction. At the same time, two other warriors from Prox, Karst and Agatio, set out to search for Isaac and gain vengeance upon him for his killing of Menardi and Saturos, Menardi being Karst's beloved elder sister.

Much later on in their epic expedition across Weyard, Felix's group discovers and enters the lost society of Lemuria, and from there he learns that the world of Weyard has effectively been dying and shrinking in size because of Alchemy's absence; in order to save the entire world from collapsing in the distant-yet-near future, Alchemy must be returned, so the completion of Menardi and Saturos' goals proves more important for the sake of the world's welfare than anyone realized.

Eventually at Jupiter Lighthouse (which is eventually lit by Felix), Karst and Agatio make their move against Isaac's party to avenge the murders of Menardi and Saturos, but Felix's party steps in to battle them off, and the dramatic personal conflicts are eventually resolved when Karst takes the Mars Star and Alex advises them to flee the tower while they can so that the Mars Adepts can finish Saturos and Menardi' goal by activating Mars Lighthouse to the north by Prox. While Felix and Isaac's respective parties engage in a discussion and resolve their misunderstandings about each other and the overall circumstances, Agatio and Karst return north to their hometown of Prox on their way to light Mars. The pair report to the Proxeans before leaving for Mars Lighthouse that Menardi and Saturos were slain in battle by Isaac during their original journey; while the villagers of Prox are understandably shocked, they do not become overly vengeful themselves. Puelle, in the meantime, gives the order that when Felix comes to Prox later, his parents shall be set free from their quarantine, though it turns out that the parents have suddenly disappeared on their own. When Isaac and Felix's combined party eventually travels to Prox in the Lighthouse's direction, they explain to the Proxeans why and how things happened at Venus Lighthouse, and Isaac receives the Proxeans' forgiveness.

Karst and Agatio are confronted by a mysterious entity in Mars Lighthouse and are turned into dragons, which Isaac and Felix unwittingly kill when they engage the beasts in battle later during their exploration of the tower. Karst and Agatio, near death, put aside their past antagonism with Isaac and entrust the Mars Star to the Adepts so that the Adepts may be the ones to finally fulfill Saturos and Menardi' goal and save the world. This is as it happens: After the Adepts experience a series of incredibly dramatic events and revelations of their own atop Mars Lighthouse Aerie, the Mars Lighthouse is finally lit, and all four Lighthouses operate to break the seal on Alchemy within Mt. Aleph and restore the great force to the world at last.

=As a boss= Menardi is the only major boss opponent in the Golden Sun games to be fought in two separate, scripted instances, one anonymously (though Saturos beats Menardi out in being the only major boss opponent to be fought in three separate instances, two of them shared with Menardi). This signifies her role as being part of the chief antagonistic force towards the player's party.

In the prologue sequence
The first battle with Menardi takes place in the game's prologue in Vale, labeled at that point in the game as "Mystery Woman", and she fights you along with Saturos (appropriately named "Mystery Man"). This scripted battle, near the end of the prologue sequence, is the only one in the game that the player's party is expected to lose within a turn, since the two playable characters at that point, young Isaac and Garet, are extremely weak while their opponents are about as durable as when they are fought at the end of the game. When the party loses, the following cutscene plays, where it's Isaac and Garet laying on the ground and Menardi and Saturos leaving the screen off the left.

Menardi as Mystery Woman has 2600 HP, 300PP, 50 Attack, 20 Defense, 13 Agility, and 40 Luck. She has extremely high Mars resistance and decreasing resistance values to Venus, Jupiter, and then Mercury in that order. Her battle commands are to physically Attack, cast the Flare Wall, Mad Blast, and Nova Psynergies which all would end up instantly defeating Isaac and Garet, and her trademark monster skill Death Size for either strong damage or the very like effect that the Adept will be instantly downed. Since she cannot be defeated normally, she does not yield any EXP or coins when slain.

If one hacks the game so that young Isaac and Garet are strong enough to defeat Mystery Woman and Mystery Man, what happens afterwards is exactly the same as if it was the opponents that won: The cutscene where Isaac and Garet are knocked out on the ground, the pair of Mars Adepts leaving off to the left.

On Venus Lighthouse
At the end of Golden Sun, the final two-part sequence of boss battles will trigger in much the same way as on Mercury Lighthouse, with the party walking up to the center of the lighthouse's top. After a relatively lengthy cutscene, the first of what will be two boss battles will occur, which is Menardi is paired up with Saturos to fight you. What makes things especially difficult is that after winning this first battle, the second battle against an even stronger enemy will automatically trigger with no chance of rest for the player. This second, "official" version Menardi features 2600 HP, 300PP, 389 Attack, 134 Defense, 220 Agility (the highest agility rating an opponent can have in Golden Sun, incidentally), and 50 Luck. Her arsenal of moves is now far more powerful: In addition to her phyical attack and her returning Death Size skill that scores a strong blow that may instantly kill a target Adept, she now casts the Flare Storm, Fiery Blast, and Supernova Psynergies for strong Mars damage to multiple Adepts (each one of these is the upgraded version of the Psynergy she used in her Mystery Woman appearance). She can also cast Wish to heal herself and Saturos for about 80 HP each, cast Impact to sharply increase the physical attack statistic of one of the two Mars Adepts for several turns, and cast Resist to increase all four Resistances of each Mars Adept by 20. When she is defeated, the party is rewarded with 3000 Exp and 4200 coins, which adds up with Saturos' share to make a total of 6000 EXP and 7800 coins.

While in this fight Saturos is the more physically damaging of the two opponents with his Psynergy abilities and statistics, many players would consider Menardi to be the more dangerous one because her monster skill Death Size is an attack that has a chance to instantly kill an Adept, and she has a markedly higher Agility rating than Saturos, so she is often focused on defeating first. Regardless of which Mars Adept is focus on first for the fight, the remainder of the battle will become much easier once one of the two antagonists are taken out.

=Trivia=
 * In a beta screen of the original Golden Sun originating from that game's development, Menardi originally had a rather different, more humanlike appearance which lacked pointy ears (pictured). Her hair was a much bolder orange before her final blonde appearance.

=Quotes= (Coming soon)

=In fan circles= Menardi as a character is somewhat popular for being a main character and essentially the main "villain" of the first Golden Sun, though she is often overshadowed by the more charismatic Saturos. But because she and Saturos are always depicted functioning as a designated pair, fanfiction authors often depict them together in a shipping genre called Proxshipping.