Kraden
 Kraden
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|---|---|
Official Dark Dawn artwork of Kraden | |
| Hometown | Unspecified, subsequently Tolbi |
| Age | 70+ (Golden Sun) 100+ (Dark Dawn) |
| Hair color | Gray |
| Eye color | Blue |
| Japanese name | Sclater (スクレータ Sukurēta) |
| French name | Thelos |
Kraden is a prominent side-character closely affiliated with the exploits of the main parties in all games in the Golden Sun series. Introduced as scholar studying the long-lost secrets of Alchemy, Kraden is partly responsible for spurring the plot of Golden Sun into motion when he convinces Isaac and his friends to help him disturb Sol Sanctum and retrieve the Elemental Stars. This causes him to get taken captive by Saturos and his villainous company for his valuable knowledge about all matters pertaining to Alchemy. However, in Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Kraden willingly accompanies the remainder of Saturos' traveling party, now led by Felix, on their quest across the world of Weyard to fulfill Saturos' original goal to light the Elemental Lighthouses, motivated to rediscover the lost age of man.
Despite his age at the time of the original duology, he makes a return appearance in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, taking place 30 years later, where he continues to travel the world to study the legacies of the past. He fulfills a similar role for the playable party as before, helping Matthew and the other children of the original eight Warriors of Vale he traveled with chart a course into the unknown.
History
Kraden describes himself as having been born in an unnamed poor village, but his outstanding intellect even at the age of four drew the attention of Lord Babi, the ruler of the Angaran city of Tolbi at the northern tip of Gondowan. When Babi took him under his wing, it is uncertain whether some level of coercion was involved because Kraden would later describe himself as having been separated from his parents at such an early stage in his life and having "never known the comforts of a true home." Kraden would come to receive an education as a scholar during his years in Tolbi, and he would gain a reputation as the foremost of Babi's team of scholars working in his palace.
Babi disclosed to Kraden that he had once intruded upon the secluded, mythical society of Lemuria far out in the Eastern Sea, a locale in which the life-extending powers of Alchemy apparently remains unbound. Babi has had need for Lemuria's alchemy ever since he left the lost city with a stockpile of its mystic draughts, but he had consistently failed in his efforts to rediscover the location of the isle over the near-century that has transpired since. Thus, Babi spent decades advancing Kraden's education and molding him into the world's foremost authority on the lost art of Alchemy, and Kraden made his own unsuccessful efforts to find Lemuria over this span of time. Eventually, some years before the beginning of Golden Sun, Babi sent the now-near-70-year-old Kraden on a journey up north to directly study the secrets of Alchemy that are said to lay dormant in Mt. Aleph, hoping that Kraden would discover an alternative solution before his stockpile of life-extending draughts would run out.
Kraden moved into Vale, the village nestled at the foot of Mt. Aleph, and slowly labored to gain the trust of its villagers, who viewed Mt. Aleph as a sacred place that was theirs to protect. Vale's elders tightly regulated any visits to Sol Sanctum, the ancient temple built into the mountain, and Kraden's efforts to be allowed even this privilege as an outsider would only bear fruit after years spent living at Vale. Though he would come to look upon the earlier chambers of Sol Sanctum on several occasions, he would persistently fail to discover any routes leading deeper into the structure. Thus, he never came any closer to reaching the great treasures that legends say lie within the sanctum: the four Elemental Stars, jewels respectively containing the purified essence of each of the four great elements composing all matter. In the meantime, Kraden became close friends with several of the adults in the village, such as Kyle, who lived with his son Isaac, and the parents of young Adepts named Felix and Jenna.
Three years before the start of Golden Sun, Kraden was among the many villagers evacuated when, one night during a violent thunderstorm that suddenly befell Mt. Aleph, a prominent rock locally called the Mt. Aleph Boulder was dislodged and destructively descended through the village. In a tragic outcome, Felix, both his parents, and Kyle all disappeared and were presumed killed, leaving Jenna traumatized by the loss of both her parents and her brother. Isaac and the village mayor's son Garet resolved with Jenna to develop their Psynergy in the years that followed, and the three young Adepts would also come to Kraden's cottage to absorb his lectures on Alchemy and related subjects.
In Golden Sun
Disturbing Sol Sanctum
Three years following the boulder disaster, Kraden no doubt feels pressured to find the Elemental Stars and Sol Sanctum's related secrets before his master Babi's time is up. On a day when he apparently plans to make yet another supervised visit to Sol Sanctum and bring along his three students this time, however, he is approached at his cottage by two imposing strangers coincidentally visiting the village. This duo, named Saturos and Menardi, talk as if they had previously seen the hidden depths of Sol Sanctum and know things about Alchemy and the Elemental Stars that even he, for all his education, is unaware of. They claim that the four Elemental Stars are the "keys" to "setting the elements into motion," and they claim that there is a hidden passage leading deeper into the sanctum to an area with a mark of the sun. The duo attempt to extract information about Sol Sanctum from Kraden, but the scholar relies on what Saturos would later call his impressive cunning to weave his way out of divulging what he knows and send them away by claiming that he has an appointment with three teenagers.
Isaac, Garet, and Jenna soon arrive at Kraden's cottage and discuss the two strangers, and Garet quickly proposes that they tell the high elders that the duo must be thieves planning to plunder the sanctum. However, Kraden recognizes that it would be difficult to make this claim without confirming first that the duo actually went in there, which would require seeing Sol Sanctum firsthand and witnessing this alleged hidden chamber with a sun pattern in it. Kraden surprises Isaac and his friends by proposing that they sneak into Sol Sanctum themselves to determine this, reasoning that they would be justified if they confirm the outsiders were in there planning to rob the sanctum then and now. Kraden's ulterior motive for scheduling this forbidden entry into the sanctum is evident because he rushes back into his cottage to retrieve four specially prepared Mythril Bags before he and the three young Adepts set off. Kraden hopes to retrieve the four Stars and study them to complete his mission for Babi.
Kraden's group successfully sneak past the village elders and intrude into Sol Sanctum, and they soon discover the hidden passage that Saturos previously spoke of. When they also find the previously described sun-marked chamber, they have all the confirmation they need to go back out and warn the village, but Kraden urges his students not to discard this likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and instead help him press on to discover the origins of Alchemy itself. The group soon come across a mechanism blocking the way into the heart of Sol Sanctum, and Kraden successfully prevents the Adepts from accidentally setting off a cataclysmic trap as they unlock the way forward.
Kraden, Isaac, Garet, and Jenna soon step into the Elemental Star Chamber and behold the Elemental Stars resting on their pedestals, much to Kraden's utter delight and excitement. Kraden lectures on how the study of Alchemy is concerned with attaining the power to rearrange the four base elements that make up all matter and achieve such wondrous feats as transmuting crude matter into gold and thwarting death itself — a power the contemporary study of alchemy holds is embodied by a proposed, theoretical "Stone of Sages." Seeking to study the Elemental Stars themselves up close to ascertain the truth of the elemental powers bound within them, Kraden hands Isaac and Garet the four Mythril Bags, and Jenna leaves it to the two boys to hop across to each pedestal's island to begin collecting the jewels.
Once Isaac and Garet retrieve three of the four Stars, Saturos and Menardi suddenly invade the chamber and take Kraden and Jenna hostage, and they demand the Elemental Stars in exchange for their release. The duo scoff at Kraden calling them out as thieves and point out that he only made it this far by stealing their information about Sol Sanctum, in a sense. A third, masked villain who steps into the chamber reassures Kraden that he had made his two Mars Adept companions agree not to do in Kraden and Jenna once the Stars are handed over. Kraden still insists to Isaac that he not to comply with their demands and asks that the Mars Adepts give some sort of guarantee of their claim that they will indeed show mercy once they have the Stars. Menardi proposes that their masked accomplice unmask himself, and he hesitantly complies and reveals himself to be none other than Felix, seemingly back from the dead. Felix explains that he was rescued by the duo on that fateful night three years earlier and had been with them ever since, and Saturos explains that Felix would never allow them to harm Kraden or Jenna, his own sister.
Kraden's stunned group is successfully cowed into handing over the three Elemental Stars they collected — the Mercury Star, Venus Star, and Jupiter Star — and Isaac and Garet are coerced into retrieving the distant Mars Star, even as a fourth member of the villainous group named Alex joins his companions in the chamber. When the Mars Star is taken from its resting place, however, the entire chamber and mountain trembles and begins erupting, and Kraden audibly wonders if this represents what the villagers believe about a "terrible retribution" that would take place in response to Mt. Aleph's "purity" being "tainted." Then, when a gigantic, floating boulder-like entity emerges into the chamber, Kraden identifies it as the legendary Wise One long spoken of in the healers' tales. Saturos' group realize they have no choice but to flee the mountain and, in so doing, leave the Mars Star behind with Isaac and Garet.
Saturos' company had evidently decided from the start that they would force Kraden to accompany their travels across the world because his knowledge of all matters pertaining to Alchemy makes him useful for their efforts to break the ancient seal placed on it. However, since their goal explicitly requires them to cast all four of the Elemental Stars into their respective Elemental Lighthouses, Alex proposes that they additionally force Jenna into their group as well; if Isaac and Garet survive and retain the Mars Star, it should be feasible for them to catch up to Saturos and negotiate Jenna's safe release in exchange for it. Kraden begs the villains to let Jenna go and claims he will do whatever they wish, and while Saturos commends Kraden's selflessness, he obviously does honor this request. Kraden and Jenna are made to accompany Saturos, Menardi, Alex, and Felix out of Mt. Aleph on this highly troubled note.
As Saturos' hostage
Kraden obviously feels a great deal of shame over having disturbed Sol Sanctum without considering the consequences, which end up having far-reaching effects across the continent of Angara and beyond. He and Jenna are forced to tag along with their four captors as they head through Vault and then toward Mercury Lighthouse. It is not known exactly how early on Kraden and Jenna come to learn that there is more to Saturos and Felix's efforts to bring back the easily abused power of Alchemy beyond unleashing a disruptive force. The truth of the matter is that Saturos and Menardi, when they originally set off the storm three years ago by their first failed raid of Sol Sanctum, had rescued all three adults who were presumed killed by the boulder as well, and they are now coercing Felix's cooperation with their quest by keeping his and Jenna's parents captive in their home village of Prox far in the frozen northern wastes until the quest is complete.
Saturos' six-person company makes it to the aerie of Mercury Lighthouse and lights the Mercury Beacon with the Mercury Star without any issue, but Isaac and Garet suddenly catch up to them, now accompanied by two other allies — Ivan and Mia. The status quo is set for Saturos' side when Isaac confirms that they are not merely pursuing Saturos' company for the hostages; they are explicitly intent on taking back the Elemental Stars and putting a stop to their plans. Saturos therefore orders Menardi and Felix to head away from Mercury Lighthouse and resume their course toward Venus Lighthouse with the two hostages while he and Alex put down Isaac for good. Kraden implores Isaac and Garet not to die as he leaves the aerie with Menardi. Menardi and Felix lead their hostages clockwise across Angara for some time until Saturos and Alex rejoin them — and the two share the surprising news that Isaac's party actually managed to overpower Saturos with help from the Mercury Beacon.
Saturos' group proceeds across Angara and do whatever they can to slow Isaac's pursuit, and they eventually take a ferry service across the Karagol Sea toward the next Lighthouse in Gondowan. Though this brings them in the immediate vicinity of the city of Tolbi, nobody within Babi's palace or the city itself catch sight of either Kraden or the strange group he travels with. As they pass through the blustery Suhalla Desert in the direction of the Lighthouse, Saturos decides to add another captive to his group's number, a girl named Sheba (whom Babi was keeping as an all-but-captive "guest" at his palace to coerce her hometown in Gondowan, Lalivero, to build a tower that could help him relocate the lost isle of Lemuria at sea).
The unwilling involvement of a seemingly unrelated party causes friction to develop between Felix and Saturos, turning the Mars Adepts increasingly violent as their company forces their way through a checkpoint manned by Tolbi's soldiers. When they reach Venus Lighthouse, the Mars Adepts attack the Tolbian scholars studying the structure even as Kraden fruitlessly begs his captors to stop. After a short time spent exploring the structure's first-floor halls, however, Kraden discerns that they only came across the building's surface-level exit and that the true entrance lies in the Venus Ruins north of Lalivero, which Babi Lighthouse is being built upon. The company thus heads north through the village and conspicuously retains Sheba as their hostage to cow the people of the town into standing down, and the Mars Adepts beat down more of Tolbi's soldiers in the area; the soldiers note at this time that Kraden is making conspicuous efforts to "protect" Sheba.
Saturos' group eventually reaches the true underground entrance into Venus Lighthouse through the Tunnel Ruins that Kraden had previously explained to them about. The Mars Adepts elect to bring Sheba up with them to the aerie and order Felix and Alex to escort Jenna and Kraden back out of the tower and over to the nearby peninsula of Idejima, where Menardi had long ago moored her Psynergy-propelled ship; there, they are to wait for the others to rejoin them. However, Felix rashly decides to follow Saturos to the aerie on his own to check on Sheba. As the remaining three head out the tower, Kraden and Alex discuss the wondrous lost age of man that stands to be revived when the four Lighthouses are lit — an objective both men would pursue in earnest at this point, even if their methods differ.
The three step out of the tower's exit to find large groups of soldiers from Tolbi and workmen from Lalivero barring their way in both directions, seeking to take back Sheba by force. Alex voluntarily handles all the soldiers by himself and leaves it to Jenna to beat off the workmen and bring herself and Kraden safely to Idejima; responding to her compunctions against hurting innocents, Kraden advises her to hold back when fighting. Kraden quickly admits to finding being in the vicinity of a battle "fun" when Jenna also has to slay a wild monster on the way to Idejima. When they finally find Menardi's half-sunken ship, Kraden ascertains that the Black Orb that Saturos was carrying is missing and is likely on his person; Saturos had mentioned at one point that he could propel the ship forward with the orb using Psynergy.
Just as Alex rejoins Kraden and Jenna at the peninsula, however, the Venus Beacon finally becomes lit thanks to Saturos' efforts at the aerie — but it causes the lighthouse to generate a violent earthquake that tears Idejima itself away from the mainland. Unexpectedly to say the least, Idejima becomes a buoyant island that floats out to sea. With neither Felix, Saturos, nor Menardi having returned, Kraden and the other two travelers find themselves unexpectedly stranded on a small mass of land that is isolated from any of the world's main continents.
In Golden Sun: The Lost Age
In stark contrast to his limited role in the first game that has him held off-screen as a hostage, Kraden actively accompanies Felix's party throughout the entirety of the game's plot. Even though he does not take part in any battles, he takes part in the vast majority of the cutscenes and serves a role akin to an inquirer for his party, and he is often a voice of reason and insight when decisions are being made. Considering that Felix's party crosses entire continents on foot and Kraden is always seen accompanying his party in said cutscenes, it would suggest that Kraden possesses remarkable stamina for his age.
Meeting Piers
Kraden, Jenna, and Alex spend some time idly waiting on Idejima as it floats east out to sea, only to suddenly discover Felix and Sheba having swum onto the island. They relate the astonishing news that Isaac's party caught up to Saturos and Menardi and actually slew them in battle, and that the earthquake set off by the lighting of the Venus Beacon caused both Sheba and Felix to fall off the tower and into the ocean below just as Idejima was being torn away. With the Black Orb now lost with Saturos, the five travelers remain just as incapable of getting off the island using Menardi's inoperable ship... at least until a tidal wave approaching from the east suddenly washes over the island, driving it straight onto the north end of the island continent of Indra. Though the wave knocks out Kraden and most of the others for a short while, Kraden appreciates how lucky they are that they ended up back on solid land.
Kraden, Felix, Jenna, and Sheba realize that Alex left to explore Indra on his own during the chaos to look for a ship that can reach the next Elemental Lighthouse, Jupiter Lighthouse, across the Western Sea. Though Kraden is fully willing to accompany Felix's journey to Jupiter Lighthouse and help Felix eventually win his parents' freedom from Prox, he presumes at first that Sheba ought to be spared the danger of their trip and returned to her village. Sheba retorts that it is her "destiny" to accompany them to Jupiter Lighthouse because, as Kraden finds out for the first time, Saturos recognized that she was actually the Jupiter Adept they needed in their ranks to light that tower to begin with. Though Sheba does not disclose more about her apparent ulterior reasons for wanting to go to Jupiter Lighthouse, Kraden agrees that they must trust Sheba enough to let her in the group and have faith that she will tell more in time.
Felix leads his adventuring group of Adepts, with the elderly scholar Kraden accompanying them despite his inability to engage in combat, across Indra to search for a viable ship, and Kraden is clearly content to use this trip as an opportunity to observe the many mysteries of Weyard his party comes across. They soon find what appears to be a ship just like Menardi's Psynergy-powered ship beached near the village of Madra, and then they see the ship's captain "Piers" jailed up in Madra on the unfounded accusation that he was part of a pirate crew who recently raided the village.
Obviously interested in this ship on some level, the party resolves to pursue the dread pirate captain Briggs to the town of Alhafra at the continent of Osenia and beat out of him his vow that Piers was not one of his men. While running this errand on Madra's behalf, the party achieves significant feats like scaling the immense Air's Rock, and Kraden is especially delighted when they find a reclusive society of werewolves at Garoh and eagerly swaps theories about Psynergy and the nature of the world with their leader, Maha. By the time the party returns to Madra hoping to meet the now-released Piers, though, they find that Piers went west into southern Gondowan to retrieve his ship's Black Orb from the Kibombo tribe that stole it during another raid that befell Madra in their absence.
Felix and Kraden's party manage to sneak past Kibombo's tight patrols and find Piers spying on the ceremonial coronation ritual of the witch doctor Akafubu, who is attempting to offer the Black Orb to the village's giant Gabomba Statue. On Kraden's urging, Felix moves an obstacle out of the way with his Psynergy to show that they mean to help Piers retrieve his orb as fellow Adepts. Piers introduces himself as a native of Lemuria, and Kraden takes a moment to recall that was the locale his master Babi needed to return to. Piers is reluctant at first to let them help him with the expectation that they can return to Lemuria with him on his Lemurian Ship, since Kraden would be doing this for Babi — a figure not well-liked in Lemuria because he had stolen from the isle and fled it with one of its own ships. Kraden, however, makes an impassioned plea and says he personally wishes to see the full power of Alchemy up close, and the party steps up to help Piers infiltrate the statue and retrieve his orb. The party eventually succeeds in a way that does not antagonize or terrorize the Kibombo.
Felix and Kraden's group voluntarily escort Piers all the way back to his ship at Indra's east shore. Kraden steels himself for what he perceives will be Piers' inevitable rejection of his proposal that he take Kraden and the others to Lemuria, going so far as to say he would have to find their own way into Lemuria on some other boat in that case. Kraden thus literally trembles with shock and elation when Piers responds that he will indeed take them; Piers reveals he had come to this decision over their trip back after thinking about how Felix went to great trouble to help a stranger whose troubles did not need to concern them. Kraden grants Piers' request that they detour back to Madra first to put the minds of the mayor's family at ease.
During their brief time back in Madra, however, the party crosses paths with the vengeful Proxian Mars Adept Karst, who came down south with an ally of her own seeking to confirm the well-being of her sister Menardi. When she inevitably learns that she died in battle against Isaac, the whole party attempts to avoid disclosing information about Isaac in a shallow effort to protect him, and Kraden goes a step further to take her focus off Isaac by proposing Felix could have been the one to kill Menardi in theory. Karst does not get baited by Kraden's possible bravado because she understands Felix has neither the power nor the incentive to do anything of the sort, given that the lives of his parents hang in the balance at Prox. Karst forebodingly instructs Felix to find the way to Jupiter Lighthouse on his own (since the tidal wave plugged up the only viable route into the Western Sea) while allowing her to get revenge on Isaac should she cross paths with him, and Kraden nervously affirms they can manage the task just fine without Karst's "assistance." After Karst storms off, Kraden explains to Piers how they can't afford to try to seek out Isaac to save him from Karst because Isaac would fight them to stop their ongoing quest for the Lighthouses.
Voyage to Lemuria
Kraden and Felix's party take to the open seas in Piers' Lemurian ship, but it is quickly found that sailing into Lemuria's hidden domain in the fog-shrouded Sea of Time is nigh-impossible without special knowledge and other preparatory measures. To gain the power to sail into the Sea of Time and eventually open the naval passage into the Western Sea and light the remaining Lighthouses, Felix's group comb the entire Eastern Sea in search of ancient ruins to explore and loot. This eventually entails collecting the three prongs of an ancient trident of the Ankohl culture, which would complete the weapon needed to slay the risen sea king Poseidon (the creature whose emergence within the Sea of Time originally generated the tidal wave).
However, the party is given a reason to feel pressured into carrying out their quest expediently when they are approached by Alex at one point, who reveals that he has since allied with Karst and her partner Agatio. Alex reveals that he would originally have let the duo take the Jupiter Star and light Jupiter Lighthouse themselves, but that his appraisal of Felix's capabilities had since become more positive when his party exercised great finesse in retrieving the Black Orb that Akafubu had stolen. Kraden agrees with this and tells the Mars Adepts that his group didn't, and wouldn't, use their Psynergy to terrorize the people of Kibombo or anywhere else into doing what they wanted. Though Alex establishes to his allies that he means to leave the task of reaching and lighting Jupiter Lighthouse to Felix because of this, he also takes the opportunity to notify Kraden personally that Lord Babi has finally passed away.
After Alex leaves, the party speculates on whether he meant to do Kraden a "favor" with that unbidden news, since it would logically mean that Kraden should no longer feel the need to put himself in danger pursuing his quest for Lemuria on Babi's behalf. Though Kraden is obviously shaken by the news, he reveals to Felix's allies that he has since found another reason to continue taking part in the quest regardless. Kraden vaguely discloses that, over the course of the group's exploration of the world thus far, he has been forming a theory which he has only been discussing with Felix in private, and he expects that the group's visit to Lemuria will confirm it. Piers has a hunch as to what Kraden is thinking and believes it to be correct, which is why Piers means to bring Kraden and the others to Lemuria as soon as possible.
Over the course of their journey across the Eastern Sea, Felix's party visits many ancient locales and modern-day settlements to expand their command of Psynergy, and they leave their mark on several troubled villages, whose people end up remembering Kraden as much as they remember Felix. For example, the party helps the island nation of Izumo by helping a local hero, Susa, slay the Great Serpent and rescue his beloved Kushinada, and they unwittingly allow for Briggs and his toddler son Eoleo to escape back to his starving home village of Champa with a stolen sailing ship filled with food. This directly leads to Briggs' grandmother, Obaba, voluntarily reforging the party's collected trident pieces within her Forge of Ankohl, bestowing the party the weapon they need to finally make the turbulent voyage into the Sea of Time and slay Poseidon.
Felix and his party finally reach the lost city of Lemuria, though they are immediately stopped at the city gates by guards who were ordered by their king, Hydros, not to let in outsiders powerful enough to have put Poseidon under. Kraden gets off on the wrong foot with them at first by speaking lightly of how seriously they take their king and then reacting with incredulity to the notion that both guards are far older than himself, despite their appearances. After he makes more of an effort to show respect, his presence in the party plays a role in leading to their expedient entry into the city because the guards had also been instructed by their king to be kind to the elderly at all times.
Kraden is practically beside himself with wonderment as he looks upon the magnificent architecture of the lost city and has to be told by Piers that the city was nonetheless far grander and more lively in the past, and he is startled when Piers tells him that Hydros believes the city's present decay is related in some way to Alchemy. Kraden learns what a "senate" is for the first time as he listens to Piers's explanation of how Lemuria's policy-making body of elders, headed by Lord Conservato, has been stubbornly stonewalling Hydros' radical plans to head off the city's further ruin.
Kraden and Felix's group are forced to pass the time talking with prominent citizens at Lemuria while waiting for Hydros' palace to open for them, and Piers temporarily breaks off from the party. They meet Lunpa the Righteous Thief, the man who accompanied Babi into Lemuria a hundred years ago and was left behind when Babi stole a Lemurian Ship and made off with the city's stockpile of life-preserving draughts bottled from Lemuria's local spring. Kraden notifies him of how Babi died when his draughts ran out recently and how Lunpa's own infant son, Donpa, is now an even older man than himself.
That aside, Kraden gets Felix's consent to finally explain why he felt the need to reach Lemuria to affirm the theory he has been forming, as well as why he now seeks to relight the four Lighthouse Beacons. Kraden is aware that there were many civilizations in the ancient past that were as advanced and cultivated as Lemuria itself, but that they all started a rapid decline once Alchemy was sealed away. Suspecting a direct cause-and-effect relationship and having observed what remains of civilization today over the course of his travels with Felix, Kraden fears that all of civilization will continually wither if Alchemy is not restored to the world. Lunpa is impressed that Kraden came to his conclusion on his own despite Piers never telling him that he was trying to confirm the same thing on Hydros' behalf, but Kraden is shocked to hear that Hydros believes that Alchemy's absence is leading to a separate, even graver consequence for Weyard itself.
Lunpa brings Kraden and Felix's party into Hydros' throne chamber to hold counsel with the king, who reveals that he had originally sent Piers out of Lemuria to observe and map the outside world to confirm his theory that Weyard itself is on a path to destruction. Hydros shows a map of ancient Weyard and compares it to the world map Lunpa had brought with him when he first came to Lemuria a century ago, and the more recent map shows the various landmasses of Weyard having since broken up and shrunken in size. Piers' own exploration of the Eastern Sea confirmed that the continents have shrunk even further in the years since.
This leads to the stunning conclusion that the seal placed on Alchemy has been spurring Weyard's physical deterioration and will threaten to plunge the flat world into the abyss if much more time passes. Kraden reaches the same conclusion that Hydros had that each of the four Elemental Lighthouses, in their sealed states, have been cutting off the free flow of elemental energy that has historically sustained the world's very being. Lord Conservato staunchly believes all this to be a dangerous fiction and is outraged to hear that Kraden's group have already relit two of the four Elemental Lighthouses, and he believes the world will be destroyed once the remaining two Lighthouses are lit and Alchemy is released. While Hydros cannot discount this fearful possibility, he means to send Felix to light the remaining beacons nonetheless because the current status quo will assuredly lead the world to its doom as is. Felix and Kraden's party depart Lemuria and resume their quest with renewed conviction.
Mediating the Reunion
Kraden's group manages to bore past the obstacle blocking their passage into the Western Sea, and they head to the northwestern continent of Hesperia to see about getting the Hover Jade from Shaman Village, the Jade being the object they need to climb Jupiter Lighthouse at the southern continent of Atteka. They have some difficulty at first convincing the leader Moapa to allow them to take the competitive test to earn it, but Kraden helps convince them to allow the outsiders to take it by stressing that the village's customs dictate that the names of Felix's party will join the ranks of their heroes if they pass. The test is soon passed and the Jade is claimed, and the group rushes down to Jupiter Lighthouse to begin climbing it.
During their climb through Jupiter Lighthouse, the group suddenly become aware that Isaac's party have entered the tower in an effort to stop them, and Kraden will tell Felix off if the latter says "no" when Piers asks if Isaac is a friend of his, saying that they have much in common even if they are at odds right now. Felix's party are then able to watch from a distance as Karst and Agatio lead Isaac's party into a trap and divide them, and Felix at least agrees with Kraden to step in before the Mars Adepts kill Isaac and the others. Felix and Kraden's party step forward to force Karst and Agatio not to finish off their weakened opponents; since Karst and Agatio are badly injured from their fight with Isaac, Kraden stresses that the duo are in no shape to fight all four Adepts among Felix's party, which successfully convinces Karst to capitulate.
The Mars Adepts beckon Felix to head up to the Lighthouse aerie to light Jupiter Lighthouse for them, and Kraden promises to tend to Isaac's other party members with Jenna and Sheba — but also has the presence of mind to recommend that Piers accompany Felix to the aerie, since Karst and Agatio cannot be trusted. This advice is critical for ensuring that Felix does not get taken by Karst's predictable attempt to kill him out of revenge for his defiance, since Jenna and then Sheba soon head toward the aerie to reinforce Felix and Piers' numbers. Kraden eventually helps Isaac's party fully recuperate, and they head up to the aerie as well, only to find that Alex had just helped Karst and Agatio flee the lighthouse after the battle concluded. In front of the lit Jupiter Beacon, Kraden pools his efforts with Ivan to downplay the simmering tensions between the two rival parties of Adepts, which leads to a reasoned agreement to talk with each other in a less volatile environment at the nearby village of Contigo.
Once the two parties convene at Contigo, Kraden leads the conversation at points to convey to Isaac that, when Saturos and his raiding party failed to solve the mystery of Sol Sanctum and triggered the storm that devastated Vale, none of the boulder disaster's presumed victims — Felix, Isaac's father, and Felix and Jenna's parents — actually died. Kraden explains to Isaac how Felix has been laboring to light the Lighthouse to win his parents' freedom at Prox, and he also reveals to Isaac what was discussed in Lemuria — that Weyard itself will eventually be destroyed if the four Lighthouse Beacons are not all lit in time. While Kraden concedes that the release of elemental energy and Alchemy might bring about an end to the world in its own right, he speaks approvingly of the value of at least stepping up to fight on Weyard's behalf. When Isaac asks why Felix didn't come to him about any of this until now, Kraden staggers him by stating outright that he would not have so willfully violated the sacred teachings of Vale before now.
Isaac is thus convinced to lend his party's support to the remainder of Felix's quest while disregarding his own objective, and an oracle named Hama reveals that Weyard's global temperatures are suddenly plummeting on account of the fire-aligned element of Mars being the only Lighthouse that has yet to be lit. (In a later conversation, Kraden would speculate that this is partly owed to how both water and wind are innately "cold" elements that compound their qualities.) Before Weyard is lost to a sudden and all-consuming deep freeze, the now-twice-as-large party of eight Adepts set out to reach Prox and Mars Lighthouse with all haste. Shortly after they set off, Sheba expresses her disappointment over having never found out information about her parentage like she had hoped coming to Atteka would allow her to, and Kraden consoles her by relating how his own life story under Babi's wing left him without even so much as an adoptive family growing up.
The Golden Sun Event
Felix and Isaac's combined, final traveling party, accompanied by Kraden as always, sail north to Prox and get a clear picture that its people were driven to desperation by the seal placed on Alchemy. Located near the northern edge of the world, Gaia Falls, the rift up north has been growing in size because the world itself is eroding away, and this existential threat to Prox itself was why it had dispatched its strongest warriors to raid Sol Sanctum for the Elemental Stars and light the Beacons with them.
When Isaac is outed as the person who killed Saturos and Menardi, Kraden tells Isaac off for momentarily assuming a battle-ready posture and explains to the villagers how Isaac ultimately was fighting to regain what Saturos stole from his village. The villagers ultimately cannot blame Isaac for his antagonism with Saturos and are content to wish Isaac and Felix the best in their efforts to light the Mars Beacon as per Saturos' original goal. However, while the Proxian chieftain Puelle had ordered that the three parents they kept captive in the village be released upon Felix's return, it is found that all three adults mysteriously disappeared from the village shortly prior.
Kraden and the eight Adepts make the climb through Mars Lighthouse and soon reach its aerie, only to find the Wise One sternly awaiting them. Kraden is surprised to hear the Wise One call out Isaac and Garet by name, and Isaac only now explains to his recent allies how it was the Wise One who warped the two boys out of the erupting Mt. Aleph and tasked them with retrieving the stolen Elemental Stars. The Adepts try to explain to the Wise One what they had since found out about the fate that will befall Weyard if Mars Lighthouse is not lit in time, and Kraden directly calls on the godlike being to fulfill his duty to protect Weyard. The Wise One responds by disclosing that Alex is currently seeking to gain the power of the Golden Sun for himself when it briefly manifests above Mt. Aleph as part of the process that will restore Alchemy to the world, which would seem to counter Kraden's insistence that he and his allies can properly police the world to ensure Alchemy will not be used for evil.
Though everyone is stunned by this development, they agree they will have to do what Alex wants and light the beacon for the rest of the world's sake, but the Wise One forces the party to battle and slay a horrifically powerful dragon for the apparent privilege to do so. Kraden, recalling that Isaac previously slew a two-headed dragon transformed and fused using two human bodies, makes a harrowing realization about this three-headed beast and desperately calls on Felix's party not to kill it. Kraden can only watch as the eight Adepts wage their final battle, and he is grimly unsurprised when the dragon transforms back into the dying forms of three adults. He notifies the Adepts that the Wise One played a cruel trick on everyone, and he fruitlessly tells Jenna not to look, but she starts quivering when she discovers that they are the bodies of the very parents she had hoped to reunite with. It is all Kraden can do to rationalize for Jenna that being transformed into a dragon to begin with would have resulted in her parents' deaths regardless of whether they had won the battle or not.
After Isaac claims to his companions that he went into the battle knowing full well what he was giving up to see the party's quest through, Kraden gives as much emotional support as is needed to convince Felix to light the Mars Beacon. The party then receive telepathic messages from Hama and others notifying how the Wise One has been warning people away from the Lighthouses and Mt. Aleph in advance of the imminent Golden Sun event that will make all five locations quite dangerous, and Kraden urges the Adepts to take heed of this and disregard what the Wise One did to everyone earlier. However, neither Kraden nor anyone else can avoid getting caught up in the eruption of Psynergy that bathes the aerie as this world-spanning process takes place, which miraculously staves off the three parents' deaths and allows everyone to bring them and themselves back to Prox.
Some time later, Puelle and the Elder of Prox personally thank Felix, Isaac, and Kraden for helping to stop Gaia Falls, and Kraden only regrets not having been able to witness the light of the Mars Beacon from afar. He also muses that he might not be alive by the time the party next has a chance to visit Prox again in presumably the distant future. That aside, Kraden tries to assuage everyone's concerns that the Golden Sun event above Mt. Aleph may have destroyed Vale and everyone in it by bringing up how they were told by Hama that the Wise One was warning away people from Mt. Aleph and the Lighthouses, so the villagers ought to have been saved.
Isaac asks Kraden why the Wise One turned the parents into a dragon and tried to make the Adepts kill them, and Kraden speculates that the Wise One must have known in advance that the Mars Beacon would revive the parents. Citing that they cannot hope to fathom the motives of such a being, Kraden can only guess that the Wise One wanted to test the fibre of the individuals who would bring back the easily abused force of Alchemy. Whether Alchemy is used at large for great feats instead of warmongering is a question that Kraden figures Isaac and Felix's group could only have proven themselves equipped to answer by demonstrating a willingness to sacrifice all that was dear to their hearts.
Kraden, the eight Adepts whom he largely guided, and the three parents they sought to rescue make the journey back to Mt. Aleph, but they sorrowfully find that Vale had indeed been destroyed by the explosive Golden Sun event. But like Kraden had guessed earlier, the villagers are revealed to have evacuated in time thanks to the Wise One's message, and he beams as everyone else celebrates.
In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
The Golden Sun event decisively removes the threat of Weyard's collapse into the abyss, but the free flow of elemental energy within the world's being leads to decades of calamitous natural disasters. The world's peoples become aware of the eight individuals responsible, now collectively referred to as the "Warriors of Vale", and many among them blame the Warriors for ushering in a new era of tumult and militarization even while many others acknowledge that they did what they had to. Though Kraden was not functionally among the eight warriors, he receives his share of notoriety for having traveled with them the whole way and is sometimes included in the definition of the term "Warriors of Vale." He at the very least becomes considered one of Weyard's foremost authorities on Alchemy, Psynergy, and ancient cultures.
Surprisingly, all of the Warriors who were engulfed in the energy atop Mars Lighthouse had vastly slowed their rates of aging, and Kraden — despite not being an Adept like the rest of them — received the same benefit. Thus, even as of 30 years after the Golden Sun event, Kraden is still capable of traveling the world of Weyard like he had at the age of 70, though he is somewhat more forgetful. Kraden and the rest of the Warriors would largely work separately to watch over the changing world, primarily motivated by the emergence of bizarre and threatening new phenomena such as the Psynergy Vortexes. Kraden theorizes that the vortexes are pure anti-Psynergy created by exceptionally dense concentrations of Psynergy, which became an outcome of the elemental influences of the Lighthouses. He is pouring his own efforts into finding some sort of explanation for the horrific Mourning Moon vortex that has been appearing every ten years.
At some point within the 30-year span of time between The Lost Age and Dark Dawn, he would accompany some of the other Warriors on a journey into the northeastern region of Angara, which a new race of hybrid beastmen claimed as their geopolitical domain of Morgal, and meet the beastman king in the capital city of Belinsk. With the king's help, the Warriors would pluck a special feather from a mammoth bird nesting in the nearby mountains, the Mountain Roc, which Ivan needed to start building a winged harness called a Soarwing. Isaac, who has been studying the blasted remains of Mt. Aleph from his Lookout Cabin with Garet, intends to use it to cross the impassable terrain around Sol Sanctum and hopefully find answers within it concerning the Psynergy Vortex phenomenon.
Separated from Matthew's party
By the time Dark Dawn begins, Kraden has been exploring the ancient ruins of the world with two apprentices he had since taken in: Rief and Nowell, the children of Mia. For a time, the three had been exploring the southern Ei-Jei region of Angara and learning about the ancient Alchemy Machines that lie dormant in areas like the village of Passaj, in the Khiren Mountains; during their time there, Kraden met with the village elder Bogho and realized that this machine, the Alchemy Forge, could create a "cloud passage" across the mountain. However, he and his pupils did not possess the right elements of Psynergy to make it work. It would supposedly take them past Craggy Peak, which Kraden lectured was a home of the ancient ancestors of the Adepts, the Jenei. More specifically, he believed that the Jenei of this region, who were called the Neox, worked in collaboration with Passaj's ancient ancestors, the master craftsmen known as the Exathi, to create this machine.
Kraden soon receives a message from Isaac, sent by the carrier pigeon Kraden had sent to him recently, asking Kraden to meet up with his son Matthew and his childhood friends Tyrell and Karis and guide them into the Morgal region to pick up a replacement Roc Feather. Kraden is asked to wait at Carver's Camp, which has based itself around a critical bridge leading to modern-day Bilibin. When a Psynergy Vortex appears and destroys the bridge, however, a child is left hanging securely but incapable of moving on the far end of the bridge, and Kraden expresses sorrow that he cannot do anything to help the child and leaves a message behind for Matthew.
Kraden heads south into Konpa Ruins to investigate the alternative underground route it offers to the Bilibin area. His pupils Rief and Nowell use their ice Psynergy to find a way directly into the underground cavern network, wherein they discover a large Psynergy Vortex that appears to be controlled somehow by an advanced machine. After waiting a while, Kraden watches as Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis enter the cavern and suddenly fight off odd soldiers that drop in to take them out for seeing the machine.
Suddenly, shadowy figures address the group, revealing themselves to be the swordsman Blados and the theatrically dressed "Arcanus", who speaks to Kraden as though he knows the scholar has hardly changed over the past 30 years. Having taken Rief captive, they explain they will leave Rief tied up at one of the cave's two exits — either north near Bilibin or south near the settlement of Harapa in Ei-Jei. Kraden and Nowell are thus forced to split apart from Matthew's group and take the north exit to Bilibin. Kraden briefly wonders if he knows Arcanus' voice, but he is unsure because he and the Warriors had spent the past three decades presuming that Alex was killed in the Golden Sun event. Kraden instructs Matthew to travel north from Ei-Jei across the Khiren Mountains so that they can reunite in Morgal and resume their quest for the Roc feather there.
Failing to prevent calamity
Kraden and Nowell attempt to head into Morgal through Bilibin but unexpectedly find themselves stranded on the Bilibin side because the two nations have been on less-than-friendly terms ever since recent political and military tumult. While they remain idle, Matthew's party down south, who gets joined by Rief and later prince Amiti of Ayuthay, manage to fully activate the Alchemy Forge and take the Clouds of Passaj over the Khiren Mountains. Touching down at Morgal, Matthew does not find Kraden at either Belinsk or the closed-off Border Town between Belinsk and Bilibin. Resuming their quest for the Roc feather on their own, Matthew's party overlaps with the efforts of the now-elderly pirate Briggs to get his son Eoleo freed from Belinsk Castle, as well as the Sanan prince Ryu Kou's efforts to free his captive sister Hou Ju from the same place.
Matthew finds himself embroiled in the scheme of Arcanus, Blados, and Chalis, all acting as agents of the dark nation of Tuaparang that had emerged somewhere on Weyard over the timeskip, which forces him to retrieve a power source from inside the Mountain Roc at the same time he gets his long-sought feather. Matthew and Ryu Kou are then manipulated into delivering the power source into Belinsk Ruins underneath Belinsk, which causes the ominous "Luna Tower" to rise. By this point, Kraden and Nowell have been ferried away from Bilibin's territory by Captain Piers, and Kraden has touched back down onto Morgal while Nowell had elected to stay on board with Piers. Also by this point, Kraden seems to be aware of what the raised Lighthouse-like tower will mean for the world, and he also tries to keep faith that Nowell will be safe with Piers — though he also seems to be aware that Piers is apparently planning on sailing somewhere else that is perilous in its own right.
Kraden reaches Belinsk and enters its now-open castle in time to catch the beastman king at present, Volechek, unlocking Hou Ju's cell for Matthew's party and Ryu Kou, and Kraden makes a grand entrance by commenting on the Sanan siblings' touching reunion while reminding them that Eoleo also needs releasing. While exchanging pleasantries with Volechek, Kraden warns that Volechek's Tuaparang associates have been deceiving him about the tower that was originally named Eclipse Tower, but Volechek does not take to the suggestion that manipulating Matthew's party into activating it was a "tragic error" and ends the audience.
Kraden informs Matthew's party, now accompanied by Volechek's sister Sveta, that Eclipse Tower is not the war weapon Volechek was misled into believing could be used to subjugate Sana and Bilibin, and he instructs Ryu Kou and Hou Ju to sail away from Belinsk with all haste. Kraden suspects the masked man from earlier has been manipulating Matthew's party for some time and learns that he apparently calls himself "Arcanus," which he finds to be a droll name to pick for someone seeking to associate with the Tuaparang. Rather than explain his thoughts, Kraden rushes the party to Eoleo's cell to free him. Right after Kraden sternly breaks up some bickering between the pirate and Amiti, Eoleo remarkably manages to remember Kraden from the time he was a toddler.
But then, the tower remotely influences Sol into rising up to assume a stationary position behind Luna, casting a dark shadow across much of Angara and northern Weyard and causing a giant dome of dark energy to spew forth from the tower itself. As shadowy monsters suddenly appear and start massacring the locals, Kraden urges the party to rush to Belinsk's seemingly safe pier, and he formulates an on-the-fly theory that the evil energies of this darkness match the darkest places on Weyard where monsters are most likely to dwell. The sorts of monsters that find light outright painful and draining are now out of their usual haunts and bolstered by this darkness, as Kraden reasons, and he somberly proclaims that everywhere within the eclipse is now sharing Belinsk's grim fate. He tells Tyrell off for calling this the "end of the world" and giving up so easily, though.
Kraden and the others are surprised to find Briggs' ship waiting for everyone, but Briggs himself is killed by shadow monsters on board. Sharing in Eoleo's sorrow that this is how Briggs ultimately departs everyone's lives, Kraden helps Eoleo perform a viking funeral, and Eoleo helps pilot the sailing ship away from Belinsk and the field of the eclipse — but not before Volechek makes one last appearance and apologizes to Sveta for not realizing the Tuaparang were using him. Volechek gives Sveta's party a Blue Orb he stole from Blados and hopes it can be used against the Tuaparang's interests somehow.
Guiding Matthew's party
Kraden, for once, cannot infer anything about this mysterious and obviously ancient item Volechek entrusted them. However, citing that Matthew and Rief's party had managed to restart the Alchemy Machines and traverse Craggy Peak without him, Kraden speaks highly of the party's determination and skill. Since he merely specializes in studying the past, he judges the party's tenacity to be what they should rely on in their efforts to address the present and future, and so they should make a proactive effort to find out more about the Orb and how to stop the eclipse. Kraden appraises Matthew as worthy of continuing his leadership role, and everyone else agrees. Kraden suggests they start their efforts to break away from their enemies' schemes by finding a settlement that can observe the fully formed dome of the eclipse from the outside.
The first such village they moor at in the ocean, Harun Village, fits Kraden's guideline quite well. A local storyteller named Ikan shares a prophecy that holds that the ancient "Watchtower" on the island, Warrior's Hill, contains a "sleeping treasure" that will guide modern-day Adepts who labor to shut off Eclipse Tower. Eclipse Tower itself was a product of the ancient Jenei's efforts to manipulate the fundaments of darkness and light in their drives to attain even further godhood over the realm. Ikan's inability to tell more about the Watchtower leads to a brief bout of faux annoyance between himself and Kraden that gives way to guffaws between the two men. Ikan does, however, give them an ancient key that will let them find the treasure for themselves. What the party finds, ultimately, is a patterned rock that does not provide any immediate answers, but Kraden advises they have faith in the ancients, and so they take it and resume their voyage across the seas.
The next location Matthew's party visits is Yamata City, the settlement the people of Izumo founded when the original village was destroyed by a tsunami. King Susa is stunned to find Kraden has hardly aged over the past 30 years. Kraden reveals that, despite what he had said on the ship about the need to look for information blindly, he had somehow suspected clues can be unearthed in Yamata City in particular. Susa is troubled by a deep sleep that has taken his daughter, Princess Himi, since the eclipse began — but startlingly, the patterned rock from Warrior's Hill embeds its essence into Himi's head and wakes her up. Her "Third Eye" implants her memories with ancient information about Eclipse Tower, which she relates to Matthew's party.
Identifying the phenomenon as a "Grave Eclipse", Himi states that the machine in Luna Tower threatens to release all the light it has absorbed in a cataclysmic burst unless its systems can be overloaded with light by a device high up in Angara's mountains called the Apollo Lens. The Alchemy Machines on the continent have already provided the Lens power, but unlocking it will require shadowy clothes called the Umbra Gear. Himi volunteers her participation in Matthew and Kraden's quest and guides the party to the Sanan capital, Tonfon, so that they can look for the Umbra Map that indicates the resting places of the Umbra Gear pieces.
Kraden and what is now Matthew's complete party of eight traveling Adepts have an audience with Emperor Unan at Tonfon; the two older men have heard of each other and mutually consider meeting each other to be an honor. Unan is troubled by the missing status of his nephew Ryu Kou, and while he gives the party his predecessor's war treasures, he notes that the Umbra Map would be with the Sanan prince at this point. Before the party departs for their search, it finally occurs to Rief to ask Kraden why Nowell did not accompany him to Belinsk, and Kraden recounts how Nowell fell in love with Piers and stayed on his ship — but drops a cryptic hint that the two are sailing somewhere else that is dangerous. The party eventually finds Ryu Kou and Hou Ju safely hiding out in an Iceberg Outpost far to the north and brings them back to Tonfon.
After the second touching reunion Kraden has seen involving the royals, Unan reveals that he was recently visited by Arcanus, who gave him the Red Orb and instructed him to give it to the "warriors seeking an end to the Grave Eclipse." Arcanus had explained that the three colored orbs are needed to raise the Apollo Lens out of the ground, and that the Red and Blue Orbs would open the way to the third Orb they would need. Kraden wonders out loud if the man calling himself Arcanus is either their enemy or helping them in his own way, but he still refrains from potentially misleading Matthew's party with his story about the presumably deceased man named Alex from 30 years ago because whether Arcanus is actually him in the flesh is yet to be confirmed. Kraden's allies expect him to tell them about it after they stop the Grave Eclipse.
Climb to Apollo Sanctum
Kraden and the eight Adepts led by Matthew travel the Eastern Sea and collect the pieces of the Umbra Gear marked by the Umbra Map, and the directions imparted by Himi's Third Eye point to Yamata Ruins as the resting place of the Yellow Orb, which they successfully retrieve. After further excursions such as reuniting with a somehow-still-alive Obaba in Champa, the party assembles everything they need to make the long hike to Apollo Sanctum, the mountain peak where the Apollo Lens lies. An overwhelming prevalence of light energy requires Sveta to don the Umbra Gear to allow them to raise the cannon-like Lens while cloaked in protective shadow. That this ancient equipment was tailored for a beastman to wear causes Kraden to lecture that the Apollo Lens is the product of cooperation between the Jenei and laboring beastmen who coincidentally lived in the Morgal region long ago.
As soon as the Apollo Lens is set up, Arcanus makes an appearance to confirm their progress and all but reveal that this was what was intended of the party. Kraden suddenly steps forth and greets him with the name "Alex," reasoning he hasn't forgotten the time they traveled together. Kraden admits he couldn't settle on this obvious conclusion for a while because Alex's assumed "Arcanus" name made him sound like someone even higher-ranking in Tuaparang's command structure than the native-born commanders Blados and Chalis, which would logically imply "Arcanus" would have been a Tuaparang national himself and thus someone different from the man Kraden knew 30 years ago. (In his travels, Kraden had come across a deck of fortune-telling cards that involve suits like swords and cups, similar to the names "Blados" and "Chalis", and "Arcanus" is the term for the most important cards in the deck.) Alex, however, had previously indicated to Matthew's party at Belinsk Ruins that he was only cooperating with the Tuaparang, and it appears the Tuaparang nation's High Empyror allowed him to pick such an important-sounding name for himself despite being and remaining an outsider.
What transpires next is a complex procession of revelations both between the two sides and amongst the Tuaparang itself. Blados and Chalis drop by for the ostensible purpose of claiming the Apollo Lens for the High Empyror, but Alex implies that the dark duo are wielders of Dark Psynergy and members of the lost Umbra Clan who seek to betray their Empyror and fire the Lens at the Empyror's domain instead. Whether or not Alex suddenly telling Matthew's party to fire the Lens at Eclipse Tower either is an as-of-yet-unexplained facet of the Empyror's long-term plans or amounts to Alex betraying the High Empyror in his own right is unclear, but the party willingly complies. Blados and Chalis soon deploy the mutated Chaos Hound against the party, and they eventually resort to merging together with the beast, but the miraculous victory Matthew's party achieves over this chimeric entity inspires Kraden tell his young friends, "You've done your parents one better."
It is soon revealed that the Chaos Hound is what remains of Volechek after the Dark Adepts experimented on him to punish him for his defiance, which prompts Kraden to angrily accuse them of taking away Volechek's mind and forcing him to fight his own sister. Kraden starts to suggest that the party maybe could think of a way to undo Volechek's transformation and return to him the ability to live in the world of light if they had the time, but Sveta cuts him off and says it is Volechek's responsibility as king to see the Eclipse dispelled here and now. Kraden thus asks Matthew to shoot the Lens at the tower, but the deadly light energy permeating the console momentarily convinces Kraden that this an impossible situation. Ultimately, Volechek regains his senses just enough to willfully sacrifice himself to finish the deed on everyone's behalf.
Some time after the Eclipse is dispelled and Belinsk is restored, Matthew's party members go their separate ways, and Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis make the long journey home together to deliver the Roc feather to Isaac. Kraden and Rief will resume their travels together across the world, but Kraden tells his student that it will be Rief who leads their search for new mysteries from now on.
Trivia
- Kraden's Japanese name, "Sclater", may be a reference to the English zoologist Philip Sclater, who proposed in 1864 the existence of an ancient continent that might have sunk beneath the Indian Ocean. He had dubbed this theoretical continent "Lemuria" and proposed that its existence would have allowed for certain mammalian fauna to occur across multiple modern continents; the lemurs of modern-day Madagascar are named after this term. The concept was deprecated by the discovery of plate tectonics and the acceptance of the continental drift theory, though some of his observations would end up explained by the existence of the ancient continent Gondwana — which is the namesake for Golden Sun's in-universe Gondowan continent.
- Once the party in The Lost Age has Moved an earth pillar for Piers in Kibombo for the first time, the game rather arbitrarily locks off Gondowan Cliffs by automatically playing a cutscene whenever Felix attempts to enter it without Piers in his party. Kraden asks where Felix is going and states that they should help Piers find his Black Orb, and Sheba and Jenna concur. Kraden will unilaterally decide that the "majority wins", and Felix will automatically step back out into the overworld.
- In the second Debug Room in The Lost Age, "Psynergy Test", an NPC using Kraden's sprite set stands two tiles right of a flame. If the Blaze Psynergy is cast onto on the flame so that fire gets projected onto Kraden, he will generate a "!" bubble, hop twice, yell "GAH!", move two spaces both up and left, manifest a "cross-popping veins" bubble, hop twice again, and say, "What are you doing???" Reapplying the fire upon him from underneath will make him exclaim "YARG!" instead, but he will move back to his original coordinates and exclaim "What are you doing???" again. Among features in the Debug Rooms that test out the field effects of utility Psynergy, this is notable for the amount of coding and accurately localized text that was created for its sake. It is also noteworthy for the humorous and over-the-top scenario the development team indulged in while creating an environment to test the Blaze Psynergy in, as little doubt as there is that this function carries appeal to enthusiasts of tossing flames at the elderly.
- Kraden, through virtue of absorbing the energy emitted by Mars Lighthouse late in The Lost Age, is shown in Dark Dawn to have gained the same extended life span as everyone else present at the aerie following the game's final boss battle. However, the fact Kraden was able to receive the same life-bolstering benefit from this energy wave when he seems to be the only non-Adept out of everyone at the aerie seems to conflict with what the Elder of Prox says in the epilogue scene shortly afterward, where he states that the wave would have passed the bodies of the other adults by had they "not been Adepts." This is either a minor plot hole committed in the Dark Dawn development process, an instance of characters in-universe landing on incorrect speculation about mysterious phenomena, or a subtle revelation that Kraden has the powers of an Adept himself.
Secret "outburst" scene in The Lost Age
In a rather well-hidden Easter egg, Kraden has some spectacularly incensed lines of dialogue that can only be seen in Golden Sun: The Lost Age by picking specific dialogue choices throughout much of the game. Typically, when the party reaches the guarded entrance into Lemuria and the guards ask if they have Felix's word that the party will not cause a disturbance inside the city, the Yes/No choice will have Kraden react either with giddy anticipation over entering the city or disapproval at Felix's response, respectively. However, if throughout the entire game prior to this point the player makes sure to say "No" every time a question is asked in which Kraden and the overall progression of the plot would logically expect Felix to agree and say "Yes," a different pair of dialogue branches will take the place of the normal Yes/No choice by the time the party gets to Lemuria:
- [Yes] (While Piers manifests a sweat drop icon, Kraden speaks)
- "But thank you for speaking honestly. Sometimes, you can say the weirdest things..."
- "I was actually a little bit worried, to tell you truly."
- [No] (Kraden manifests cross-popping veins and hops twice)
- "What!? Are you INSANE!? Or maybe you think you're funny? Because you're not!"
- "Maybe this whole quest is just a game to you, but it's not to me! Are you bored!?"
- "Do you want to go home!? FINE! That's it! Then let's go home!"
Quotes
| In Golden Sun |
 Kraden in the Sun Saga.
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| In Golden Sun: The Lost Age |
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| In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn |
In Harun Village:
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Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's encyclopedia entry for Kraden:
This old scholar is one of Weyard's foremost authorities on Alchemy, Psynergy, and ancient cultures.
He traveled with the Warriors of Vale, and now conducts his research with two young apprentices.
In fan circles
Kraden is popular in the fan community for having both more relevance to a given game's story than some actual playable characters and an endearing personality that blends grandfather-like warmth with occasional snark. It is suggested he warrants being viewed as one of the series' main characters despite technically never appearing in battle as a playable character. Given both his naturally old age of 70 in the first two games and his unnaturally old age of 100 in the third, there is hardly any appetite for shipping him with any of the other characters, especially teenaged ones.
The community message board, The Temple of Kraden, adopts him as a mascot and plays up their reverence of him to purposefully excessive degrees for comedy's sake. A board member named RyuKenshin created a mock FAQ that purported to explain how Kraden could become playable in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.
| 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
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| Dark Dawn | Arcanus Baghi  Blados Bogho Chalis High Empyror Hou Zan King Wo Laurel Nowell Paithos Ryu Kou Unan Vande Volechek
|
