Sheba
 Sheba
| |
|---|---|
| |
| Element | Jupiter |
| Hometown | Lalivero* |
| Age | 14 |
| Relatives | Faran (adoptive father) |
| Hair color | Blonde |
| Eye color | Green* |
| Battle style | Mage |
| Weapons | Mace Staff |
| Body armor | Clothing Robe |
| Arm/Hand armor | Gloves Bracelet |
| Head armor | Hat/Crown/Mask Circlet |
| Japanese name | Sheba (シバ Shiba) |
| French name | Cylia |
| German name | Cosma |
| Spanish name | Sole |
| Italian name | Sara |
Sheba is a Jupiter Adept and a playable character in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. She is introduced as an NPC late in the first Golden Sun, where she is kept as an unwilling guest in Tolbi by the tyrannical Lord Babi to coerce the people of her home village in northeastern Gondowan, Lalivero, into building a tower for him. However, when the antagonistic Adepts led by Saturos happen upon her on their travels to the nearby Venus Lighthouse, they take her as one of their hostages because they realize her Jupiter-aligned Psynergy will allow them to enter Jupiter Lighthouse in the future.
At the start of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, Felix leads what remains of Saturos' traveling company to finish the latter's objective to light the Jupiter and Mars Lighthouses, and Sheba is very willing to accompany them on their difficult quest as their party's resident Jupiter Adept. She hopes that she can discover the truth about her mysterious origins and parentage while on this quest. She does not appear on-screen or take part in the plot of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn whatsoever, which takes place 30 years later, and she is not known to have had any children.
In The Lost Age, Sheba plays as a virtual carbon coby of the Jupiter Adept Ivan from the first game, featuring the exact same "mage-style" inclination, virtually the same innate stat spread, and all of the same available class series. Sheba even further parallels Ivan by starting out with the Mind Read Psynergy and learning the Reveal Psynergy some time later. Her only noticeable difference to Ivan is that she can equip maces, but not light blades.
As a playable character
Sheba only becomes a party member near the beginning of Golden Sun: The Lost Age, when she adds herself to Felix and Jenna's group to serve as the party's respective Jupiter Adept for the game. Sheba starts out at level 5 (with exactly 319 experience), and she is equipped with a Wooden Stick, Travel Vest, Circlet, and Leather Armlet. She starts off with both one Herb in her inventory and inherent knowledge of the Mind Read Psynergy, and she will gain the extremely important Reveal Psynergy as early as 20% into the game.
Much like the Jupiter Adept Ivan from the first game, Sheba is a Jupiter Adept whose bearing as a "caster" Adept results in the the Wind Seer class series being her default class series. This results in her having both a consistently developing progression of area-of-effect Jupiter Psynergy and useful party-boosting effects like High Impact and Resist, and the class' high Agility modifier makes her capable of performing any of these actions before her allies and most enemies in a given turn. The Wind Seer's low HP modifier and her own low natural HP make her a viable recipient for any Power Breads the player may find throughout the game, and the defensive Guardian Ring found early on is also typically equipped to her to bring her survivability up to the level of her allies.
Her inability to equip Light Blade-class weapons like Ivan, but her ability to equip Mace-class weapons otherwise, largely does not impact her performance throughout most of the game. However, it can be argued that this will become a strike against her in the late game because Light Blades include weapons with unleashes that have massive potential damage multipliers, like Masamune and Tisiphone Edge, wheras endgame Maces have Unleashes with largely standard additive damage bonuses. Furthermore, if the player is interested in raising her Jupiter Power rating as high as possible, Sheba is disadvantaged compared to Ivan because she cannot equip the Swift Sword sold in Contigo late in the game, which is the only weapon in the game that gives a Jupiter Power boost.
Like Ivan, Sheba can fairly easily be made into the Hermit class series by Setting Mercury Djinn onto her. It offers superior statistics all around, retains the Plasma Psynergy series and Impact Psynergy series of the Wind Seer class, and grants the extremely useful Wish Psynergy series for group healing, and she will have the immensely high Agility rating needed to perform all of these moves reliably.
Classes and statistics
Sheba is essentially a slightly less lopsided collection of extremes than Ivan, featuring the game's second lowest natural HP, Attack, and Defense statistics but second highest PP and Agility ratings as well. However, Sheba also excels in Luck, starting out with 5 points and tying with Mia in this regard. Sheba has the following classes available to her:
- Mono-Elemental:
Wind Seer - Dual-Elemental:
Hermit, 
Pilgrim (Jupiter), 
Seer (Jupiter)
- (Partial) Apprentice, Page
- (Partial)
- Tri-Elemental: Ranger, White Mage, Medium
- (Partial) Ninja
- (Partial)
Appearance and Personality
Sheba is dressed in a white outfit with brown accents and extensions, as well as brown boots and wrist bracers. A purple cloak is wrapped around her shoulders and is draped both in front of her chest and behind her back. The blonde color of her fish-bowl-shaped hairstyle does not match her purple eyebrows barely visible on her official art, but both her hair and eyebrows match the color of Ivan's hair and eyebrows, which may allude to a connection to Ivan's ancient heritage. Unlike him, Sheba has a slightly darker skin tone possibly resulting from the desert-like environment she was raised in, and official art consistently depicts her eye color as green. However, her green eye color in this art is inconsistent with the purple eye color seen both on Sheba's in-game portrait and her battle sprites; this may have come about from GBA color palette limitations. Sheba's chibi portraits in the Sun Saga feature in Dark Dawn confirm that her eye color is intended to be green.
Given the spectacular and fantastic circumstances of her arrival on Weyard, Sheba was raised by a populace who venerated her as a "child of the gods" and treated her as their pride and joy. This backdrop is reflected in her somewhat snobbish and elitist attitude, as well as her occasional lack of tact, but her heart and sense of justice remain in the right place. She is rather observant and intelligent for her age, and yet she is given to speaking her mind when she disapproves of others' behavior or finds something to complain about. On the inside, this attitude masks insecurities about her origin, and she is willing to join Felix's dangerous quest to hopefully find out more concrete details about the circumstances of her birth.
History
Background
The people of Lalivero, a village located in northeastern Gondowan near the coast facing the Eastern Sea, describe an astonishing incident that took place over a dozen years prior to the events of Golden Sun. One night, a baby literally fell out of the sky and landed in the Venus Ruins north of the village as though she were a meteorite, and she left a suitably large depression in the ruins with her impact. And yet, the baby herself suffered not even so much as a bruise. The Laliverans, suffice to say, viewed her as a literal "child of the gods" and raised her with a level of veneration that could reasonably be described as unhealthy, ready to despair on behalf of Lalivero if something ever were to happen to her. She was adopted and raised personally by the leader of Lalivero, Faran, and his family, and she was given the name Sheba.
The borderline worship sent Sheba's way by virtually every resident of the village gets consistently validated in their minds because of her supernatural powers at a time in world history when Adepts were unknown to the world at large. Neither they nor Sheba herself understood that she owed many of her powers to being a Jupiter Adept, allowing her to produce wind-aligned powers, read minds, and have visions. On top of this, Sheba appears to be the beneficiary of a mysterious, supernatural influence that causes her to survive dangerous circumstances thanks to "coincidences" that play out in her favor.
At some point prior to the events of Golden Sun, the feared ruler of the powerful city of Tolbi northwest of Lalivero, Lord Babi, all but takes over Lalivero and coerces its workmen into laboring on a project for him by escorting the teenaged Sheba to his palace, where she is forced to stay as her "guest." The workmen are tasked with building a tower upon the foundation of the Venus Ruins, informally called "Babi Lighthouse" by everyone, largely because the nearby Venus Lighthouse cannot be entered. Otherwise, Babi would be able to make use of the Lighthouse's high vantage point for his secret goal of finding and entering Lemuria in the center of the Eastern Sea. Sheba repeatedly pleads for her freedom, but despite the tears she sheds, she is never permitted to leave her guest room. Sheba gauges that she could feasibly force her way out of Babi Palace and Tolbi with her powers, but though she would have a mind to do just that, she recognizes that she cannot make it through the deadly Suhalla Desert that lies between the two settlements by herself.
In Golden Sun
Sheba is still a prisoner in Babi Palace in all but name even as this year's Colosso tournament of warriors is held. However, when Isaac's party of traveling Adepts stop by Tolbi in pursuit of Saturos' company in hopes of preventing them from lighting Venus Lighthouse's Beacon with the Venus Star, Babi recruits the young warriors to seek out Lemuria for him. Deeming Sheba and Babi Lighthouse no longer necessary, Babi sends soldiers to notify Sheba that she will be escorted back to her hometown once the Colosso tournament ends, making her exceedingly happy.
An entourage of soldiers soon escort Sheba out of Tolbi and through Suhalla Desert — but because of recent changes wrought across the entire world's ecosystem by the eruption of Mt. Aleph and the lighting of Mercury Lighthouse, the desert has become far deadlier than before. Because it is now swarming with powerful monsters cloaked in sandstorms, most of the soldiers perish, and two of them are sent flying back out the desert and toward the nearby village of Suhalla. Sheba finds herself stranded in the desert, but she is picked up by Saturos' company as they head through the desert themselves. Saturos secretly recognizes her as just the Jupiter Adept he needs to ensure that he can successfully light Jupiter Lighthouse in the future, but he presents her to the other members of the group simply as someone they will only need for the time being. Since this region of Gondowan is the territory of both Tolbi and Lalivero, both of which care about Sheba's well-being a great deal, she will be needed to force any of Tolbi's soldiers and Lalivero's villagers they encounter on their way to Venus Lighthouse to stand back. Felix, one of Saturos' "companions" and his captive in his own right, swears Saturos to a promise to release Sheba once they have made use of her in this manner.
Sheba has thus become a hostage once again, ironically right as she was being released so that she could enjoy freedom back at her home village, and her presence among the group's numbers spurs increasing friction between Felix and Saturos. When Saturos' company enter the Lighthouse but find they have only reached its prominent "one-way-exit out," they make the trip north from the tower and head toward the Venus Ruins underneath Babi Lighthouse. Saturos purposefully presents Sheba as their hostage while passing through Lalivero, cowing the Laliverans into standing down, and they also violently put down any Tolbian soldier unlucky enough to stand in their way. The company soon discover the entrance within the Venus Ruins into the underground pathway that leads into the true entrance of Venus Lighthouse from behind. Despite the group having now breached the Lighthouse with her help, Saturos does not release Sheba as he had promised.
Saturos and his partner Menardi eventually instruct Felix and their other conspirator, Alex, to bring their other hostages, Jenna and Kraden, back out of Venus Lighthouse's front exit and bring them to Idejima, a peninsula where Menardi had beached her Psynergy-powered ship. In the meantime, Saturos and Menardi bring Sheba up to the aerie with them. Seeking to hold Saturos to his promise from earlier, Felix leaves the other three to proceed to Idejima by themselves as he climbs back up to the aerie to press his masters on Sheba's continued involvement in their quest. Felix unknowingly leaves Jenna and Alex to have to fight through large groups of soldiers and workmen who have surrounded the tower's exit hoping to force Sheba's release. At the aerie, Saturos conveys to Felix that Sheba is a Jupiter Adept whom they need to bring along to Jupiter Lighthouse so that they can actually enter the tower with her help. Even though Felix accepts their premise, he demands they at least let him take her to the safety of the ship, but the Mars Adepts deny him this and tell him that they can no longer trust him and his rebellious attitude.
Just as Felix is about to come to blows with his former masters over Sheba, Isaac's party reach the aerie and make their own demand for Sheba's safety and freedom. Observing that Isaac's side is also worried about Sheba, Saturos immediately capitalizes on an opportunity to twist the circumstances in his favor and makes them an offer not to "hurt" Sheba. He first has Sheba attempt to Mind Read Ivan to confirm that the particular rod he bears is the "Rod of Hesperia," which Sheba was apparently told would be needed for Jupiter Lighthouse during her short time in Saturos' captivity. Isaac's side agree to hand over the rod, presuming Saturos means to let her go — but when Sheba starts walking to Isaac, Saturos stops her and clarifies he only said he wouldn't "harm" her. He and Menardi also reason that letting Sheba free at this particular moment would put her in danger because she can't make it back to Lalivero alone... and Isaac's side fully grasp the implication that they will not be alive to help her back down.
Felix and Sheba watch in amazement from a distance as Isaac's side clash with Saturos and Menardi and somehow manage to leave the master fire Adepts lying defeated on the ground. But when Isaac's party prepare to escort Sheba out, Felix steps in front of her and states that the Elemental Lighthouses must still be lit, fully establishing his intent to take Sheba with him and finish Saturos' quest regardless of whether Saturos is still involved in it. But Saturos suddenly activates the Venus Beacon in front of everyone's faces, and he and Menardi prepare to make use of the energy of the forming beacon to mount a final stand against Isaac. To Felix's utter surprise, the Mars Adepts suddenly order him to take Sheba to the ship like he had originally asked, claiming they may not be able to "protect" Sheba after this. Felix and Sheba step back again as the Mars Adepts transform and merge into a terrifying two-headed dragon and attempt to annihilate Isaac and his friends, but the party best their opponent in an incredible victory and send Saturos and Menardi plummeting to their deaths.
A stunned Felix admits that he cannot hope to match Isaac and prepares to leave the Lighthouse Beacons, and Isaac's party vow to take Sheba back from him by force. But at that moment, Venus Lighthouse spontaneously lets loose a powerful earthquake as it finishes forming its Beacon, which causes Sheba to fall off the edge of the aerie, and Felix desperately holds onto her with what strength he can manage. Sheba exclaims at first that she is slipping, but she very quickly adopts a more resigned tone, personally thanking Felix and bidding him good-bye before falling to what she fully expects to be her death. In a bout of emotion, Felix jumps after her while swearing he won't let her die, leaving Isaac's party unable to comprehend what they just witnessed.
And yet, in what could be attributed to the same unknown factor associated with her that has protected her from deadly situations before, both she and Felix survive because of various coincidences playing out in their favor. The earthquake tears a rift in the nearby mountain range that causes Idejima, where Jenna, Alex, and Kraden are still waiting at, to float out to sea, and it also causes the land at the base of the tower itself to break away and get flooded with sea water. The wave of sea water that rushes into this gap rises enough that it catches both falling Adepts safely. While Sheba is knocked unconscious, Felix keeps his wits and swims with all his might to reach Idejima while carrying her through the ocean. Both of them wash up on the buoyant chunk of land's shoreline, unconscious but miraculously alive.
In Golden Sun: The Lost Age
Sheba, along with Felix, becomes a permanent member of the party right after a very short prologue sequence in which the player only controls Jenna. Despite her stated motive for accompanying Felix on his quest, she does not ever direct the plot away from the course Felix takes and instead mainly provides commentary on the many incidents and events their party comes across. Since she is no longer considered a captive of those she is traveling with, Sheba allows her more outspoken personality to show while she bounces off Jenna and Piers and essentially fills in for Felix, who is depicted as a silent protagonist.
Accompanying Felix
When Sheba and Felix awaken on Idejima, they recount for the stunned Jenna, Kraden, and Alex how Isaac's party managed to slay Saturos and Menardi atop Venus Lighthouse and how Sheba and Felix barely survived falling off it when the tower quaked. Everyone briefly contemplates whether they can even get off the buoyant island at this rate — but suddenly, a tidal wave set off from within the center of the Eastern Sea washes over the island from the northeast and drives it into the continent of Indra south of it. When everyone regains consciousness, they find that Alex has left them, presumably to find a ship they can use to reach the Western Sea and the remaining two Elemental Lighthouses.
Felix and Jenna are prepared to travel across the world for their quest because Prox, the village of Saturos and Menardi, is currently keeping their parents captive and will only release them once the Elemental Lighthouses are lit and Alchemy's seal is breached. Sheba, on the other hand, portrays her unexpected willingness to join them on their difficult venture as nothing more than it being her "destiny" to do so. Sheba does not disclose at first that she actually hopes to find clues about her mysterious origins by accompanying them to Jupiter Lighthouse, and she convinces the others to trust her by stressing that they won't be able to get into Jupiter Lighthouse without her Wind Adept powers. With the party formed, the three young Adepts, accompanied by Kraden, begin searching for a ship by traveling across Indra and the continents it is now wedged between, Osenia and southern Gondowan.
The party's travels, which are also motivated by their need to develop their own Psynergy powers in case Isaac's party discovers them, bring them to exotic locales such as the enormous Air's Rock plateau, which grants Sheba the Psynergy power of Reveal. A settlement near Air's Rock named Garoh is discovered to be a reclusive society of werewolves who do not realize that they have manifested their Psynergy powers because of their proximity to the mountain — a revelation Sheba takes great pride in lecturing them on. The party soon band with a wayward Mercury Adept named Piers, who was unintentionally driven out of Lemuria in the center of the Sea of Time by the tidal wave and seeks to sail back into it with his own Lemurian Ship. The party agrees to help him so that they can use the ship to reach Jupiter Lighthouse.
Before they set out for the Eastern Sea, however, they cross paths with the Mars Adept Karst, who is searching for her elder sister, Menardi. Sheba displays what some could accuse as an alarming lack of tact when she states right up front that Menardi and Saturos were killed by Isaac, without dressing up her choice of words in the least. Karst concludes from the other evidence that Sheba isn't lying and swears to exact vengeance upon Isaac, and she makes Felix's side agree not to get in her way and to continue seeking the remaining Lighthouses. After she leaves, Sheba proposes that they find Isaac first and try to warn him about Karst, but Kraden and Jenna turn this proposal down by explaining that Isaac's side will go so far as fight to put a stop to Felix's quest if necessary. At one instance, Sheba asks if Jenna and Isaac couldn't work something out on the basis of the two of them being an "item," which renders Jenna beet red and clumsily denying the notion.
By the time Felix's party take to the Eastern Sea with Piers, they are aware that the only naval route into the Western Sea had been blocked off by the tidal wave's destructive effects. Their quest essentially becomes a training venture spanning half the world's surface, exploring whatever locale they can that promises advancement of their powers and abilities. Sheba advises Felix to stay away from Lalivero because the villagers are still doubtlessly worried sick about her, and she is pointedly disinterested in being made by the villagers to stay with Faran and his family, at least for the time being. At one point, Alex reappears and reveals he has banded with Karst and her partner Agatio to pressure the party into keeping their journey focused on Jupiter Lighthouse. He also notifies Kraden that Lord Babi — whom Kraden had been pursuing this quest partly on the behalf of — has passed away; Sheba does not seem to react strongly to this news in either direction.
The party eventually succeeds in their efforts to breach the Sea of Time and return to Piers' kingdom, and Piers is allowed to deliver his report to the Lemurian king, Hydros. The conclusion they reach is that the world itself is physically dying because the unlit Lighthouses have been cutting Weyard off from the free flow of elemental energy. Only by lighting the remaining two Lighthouses will Weyard be saved from collapsing into the void, even if doing so entails subjecting the world's people to the return of the potentially abusable and destructive force of Alchemy. With the party's Psynergy now sufficient to open their way into the Western Sea, Felix's party makes haste for Jupiter Lighthouse with awareness that even more rests upon the successful completion of their quest than they had imagined.
Origins unanswered
As soon as the party arrives at the Western Sea, they first head toward the island continent of Hesperia, which Saturos had previously alluded is where the Shaman's Rod must be brought so that Jupiter Lighthouse can be "reached." They discover Shaman Village and present the Rod to their leader, the warrior Moapa, who confirms that they are charged with granting the Hover Jade in exchange. However, this exchange is predicated on the presumption that only someone hailing from the village of Contigo near Jupiter Lighthouse down at Atteka could rightfully bear the Rod, so Felix's party are suspected of having stolen the Shaman's Rod at first.
When Sheba passes a test that requires her to simply cast the Whirlwind Psynergy, Moapa comes to the seemingly misinformed conclusion that Sheba must have come from Contigo. However, he flinches when he acknowledges that she is but a mere girl who has come to claim the Jade, since those who have challenged them at the contest they hold at the grounds of Trial Road have historically always been men. Sheba and her party are only allowed the privilege to compete against them after she pipes up that being a girl doesn't preclude her from being "every bit as heroic as some guy." Despite his expectations, the party manages to best Moapa and his two strongest men in the particularly grueling contest, and he has the four Adepts' names recorded among the ranks of the village's venerated heroes.
The Hover Jade is laced with a Hovering Psynergy that emulates the purported flight capabilities of the ancient Anemos tribe that was once situated near Jupiter Lighthouse, and it is critical to the party's efforts to unseal the tower and solve its ancient riddles. Felix's party land at Atteka, pass through Contigo along the way, and begin their climb through Jupiter Lighthouse.
Suddenly, Felix's side witness Isaac's party rushing up through the lighthouse as well, only to get caught up in an ambush set by Karst and Agatio and get defeated by them. Felix's party steps in to force Karst to agree to spare Isaac's life in exchange for lighting Jupiter Lighthouse, and the Mars Adepts bring Felix and Piers up with them to the aerie. Sheba personally tends to Ivan's wounds as she, Jenna, and Kraden stay behind to help Isaac's group recover. After the Jupiter Beacon is lit, Jenna and Sheba become concerned and go check up on the aerie, and they arrive just in time to join Felix and Piers' battle against the Mars Adepts, who are attempting to kill Felix for betraying them. Whether they successfully beat the Mars Adepts off or they lose and Alex convinces the duo not to waste time finishing off their defeated opponents, Karst and Agatio flee the lighthouse just as Isaac's party arrive. After a tense and momentary verbal confrontation between the two parties, an agreement to hold a calmer discussion back at Contigo is soon reached.
Back at Contigo, Felix's side successfully convinces Isaac's side that the quest the latter was pursuing was ironically against both his interests and those of the world itself. Learning that both Jenna's parents and Isaac's father are alive and being kept by Prox until the Elemental Lighthouses are lit, and that lighting the Lighthouses is ultimately needed to stave off the world's inevitable fate, Isaac voluntarily joins forces with Felix to support the remainder of the latter's quest. While this is an excellent development in many regards, Sheba later emotionally confesses to everyone that she ultimately never found any answers regarding her true origins at Jupiter Lighthouse like she had hoped. Sheba had only wanted to learn where exactly she was born and why she was abandoned by her real parents. The others manage to cheer her back up by emphasizing that she was raised by Faran in a loving household nonetheless, a luxury that some people are never afforded.
Despite there technically being nothing mandating her continued participation in Felix's quest, Sheba journeys as part of Felix and Isaac's combined numbers for the remainder of The Lost Age. They pass through Prox far in the Northern Reaches on their way to Mars Lighthouse, where they all see that the Proxians were desperate to release Alchemy to prevent the edge of the world from encroaching upon their village. Troublingly, the parents whom Felix and Isaac hoped to reunite with departed Prox for Mars Lighthouse before their arrival.
The finale of the Adepts' quest takes place at the aerie of Mars Lighthouse itself, where the Wise One bars their way to the well; as the entity who originally tasked Isaac with putting a stop to Saturos' quest for the Lighthouses, the Wise One coldly portrays Prox as deserving to pay the price for their deeds, and Sheba loudly objects that Prox doesn't deserve to be abandoned to die. She and everyone proceed to explain everything they had learned about how the rest of the world depends on Alchemy's seal being broken, which leads the Wise One to remark that everyone has "learned far too much."
Even after the Wise One reveals that Alex had been making use of all their efforts so that he could gain ultimate power for himself when the Adepts initiate the remote Golden Sun event above Mt. Aleph by lighting the last Beacon, the Adepts maintain their willingness to see their mission through. The Wise One thus summons a three-headed dragon for them to fight through, and Sheba joins the Adepts for their final battle. Once they put the beast down, they make the belated discovery that they were deceived into killing a transformed version of the parents they hoped to reunite with. The sheer emotional devastation Jenna suffers from this leads Sheba to bellow into the empty skies and label the Wise One an evil entity that does not deserve to be called a "god" or "protector."
Isaac gets everyone to fixate back on their objective by claiming that he knew exactly what he was doing and went through with it anyway because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of their small group, and Sheba agrees that they can save countless others across Weyard. As Mars Lighthouse is finally lit, Sheba remarks that she began this quest as a prisoner taken against her will. The Adepts suddenly find themselves bathed in a massive outpouring of energy from the Mars Beacon as it fires its beam of energy toward Mt. Aleph, which miraculously prevents all three parents from dying, and everyone brings themselves back to Prox to nurse the parents back to health.
It is soon realized that the Wise One had only pretended to put them through an incredibly difficult situation to test their resolve and morality as the individuals who would bring back the abusable yet necessary power of Alchemy to Weyard's peoples. Sheba shares in the good spirits of everyone else when they also find that everyone who had been residing at Vale, Isaac's home village at Mt. Aleph, were evacuated by the Wise One before the Golden Sun event destroyed the village and the mountain itself.
In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
Sheba gains her fair share of mixed fame and infamy as one of the eight adventurers popularly understood to have pursued the return of Alchemy to Weyard, being retroactively categorized as one of the eight "Warriors of Vale" despite being one of the four not technically from that village. Since it wrought years of horrifying natural disasters and ushered in a new era of militarization for all the revitalized nations of Weyard, Sheba is treated by the world's peoples both as one of the individuals who did what had to be done to save the world and as one of the eight who "ruined" it.
Since Sheba is never even so much as mentioned by anyone in the plot of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn 30 years after the Golden Sun event, there is less information about her whereabouts and circumstances than any of the other Warriors by far. It is not even known for sure whether she still resides in Lalivero, and neither is it known whether Sheba bore any children like many of the other Warriors did. All that can be inferred is that she would have received the same age-slowing effect from the energy let off by Mars Lighthouse as the rest of the Warriors did.
The Sun Saga book series, which portrays a simplified account of the Warriors' quest for the Golden Sun for the world's population in-universe, simply mentions her to be the "priestess of Lalivero" who was one of Felix's "captives" by the time the Venus Lighthouse incident took place.
Trivia
- Until the Sun Saga feature in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn confirmed Sheba's canon eye color to be green, fans were split on whether her eye color was officially green, like in all promotional artwork featuring her, or purple, like her in-game facial portrait and animated battle sprites depict.
- On the subject of the Sun Saga, reading its third or fourth books is the only way the player can receive her entry in the Encyclopedia feature. She is otherwise not mentioned by any other character or NPC throughout Dark Dawn whatsoever.
- Sheba is one of three playable characters in the series to have an adoptive parent, with one such character introduced per game. Sheba, playable in The Lost Age was adopted by Faran; the first game's Ivan was adopted by Master Hammet; and Amiti was adopted by Paithos. Sheba is the only female among these three.
- Sheba and Mia are the only female mace-wielding characters in any of the three games in the series.
- In the Japanese version, Sheba does not attach honorifics to Babi's name when she refers to him, nor does she reference him by his title; this is understood to convey contempt. Despite Sheba's role in the first game's scenario making such an attitude understandable and easy to convey in any language, the English localization omits this just the same, having Sheba refer to him as "Lord Babi" like everyone else.
Origin speculation
Sheba is introduced in the first Golden Sun as having a far more overtly supernatural set of circumstances surrounding her birth than any other character, literally falling from the sky when she was a baby and not sustaining any injury from the fall. Given that the baby's arrival on Weyard created a "massive depression" in the center of the Venus Ruins north of Lalivero like a literal meteorite, it would suggest to some fans that only deliberate and intelligent engineering on the part of whatever agency resulted in her fall could have produced such a phenomenon. Though Sheba in the modern-day GBA games is quite eager to accompany Felix's quest to Jupiter Lighthouse to potentially find out more about her origin, she is seemingly no closer to any sort of answer by the end of the game. The GBA duology thus leaves the mystery of her origin completely unresolved.
That said, it has often been noted by fans that Sheba has the same blonde hair color and purple eyebrows as Ivan, who is described as an Anemos tribe descendant and resident of the modern-day settlement of Contigo near Jupiter Lighthouse. Meanwhile, the party's time in Shaman Village, whose people the ancient peoples of Contigo interacted with, has the village's locals figure that Sheba must be "from Contigo" because she passes an obstacle that requires the Whirlwind Psynergy. The reliability of this as a test of Anemos heritage is up for debate, since it seems that any Jupiter Adept with that Psynergy could have passed that test. However, the Encyclopedia feature of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn states that "all modern Wind Adepts are thought to be descended from the Anemos," so it is likely the player is expected to presume the same holds true for Sheba as it does for Ivan.
Fans interpret the previously mentioned account of Sheba's "arrival" onto Weyard as lining up well with background information that is described by certain residents of Contigo, which the third game's Encyclopedia entry on the Anemos summarizes as follows: "This tribe of Wind Adepts is said to have raised its ancient city into the sky, where its underside is still visible as the moon." This "City of the Anemos" is described by some of the residents of Contigo as having once been situated at the area where a gigantic chasm in the ground now lies nearby. This leads to the suggestion that a literal city exists on the other side of the moon in the setting of Golden Sun, a city that cannot normally be seen by those living on the lands below, and this notion seems further reinforced by an unused Encyclopedia image hidden in the game files of Dark Dawn.
A basic fan hypothesis that arises from all these points is that a Jupiter-affiliated city floating in the sky to function as the world's moon would be a logical place for the Jupiter Adept Sheba to fall down from. Whether anything will come of this will remain unanswered so long as Golden Sun: Dark Dawn remains the last-released game in the series.
Quotes
| In Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age |
|
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn's Encyclopedia entry for Sheba:
- This Warrior of Vale helped Felix and his compatriots trigger the Golden Sun. She is a brave ally and a skilled Wind Adept.
- While her actual origins are still unknown, some say she is a child of the gods, since she literally fell out of the sky as a baby.
In fan circles
Sheba elicits a lot of attention from the fanbase because of her unexplained origins, which clearly point to the existence of a strange backstory in its own right. She is purposefully positioned in the games to spur on player speculation, which leads her to be seen as sharing Ivan's Anemos-tribe heritage. Given how their incredibly similar hair color and powers play into this speculation, Sheba is quite often paired in shipping fan fiction with Ivan. Her particular focus on treating Ivan when her party steps in to save Isaac's wounded party at Jupiter Lighthouse is cited as another support for this shipping genre, "Windshipping."
And yet, her other primary shipping genre may be even more popular because the defining scene between the two characters involved leave quite an impression when it happens in the first Golden Sun: Sheba falling off Venus Lighthouse to her seeming death despite Felix trying his hardest to save her, and Felix taking the apparent demise of the one he spent so much effort protecting from Saturos so hard that he leaps off the tower after her in a fit of emotion. Felix clearly would not have had any reason to anticipate at that moment that it would end up "safe" for him to do so. This genre is called "Lighthouseshipping," though some take issue with depicting a romantic relationship between the two because Sheba is fourteen when this happens, whereas Felix is eighteen.
| Main characters in the Golden Sun series | |
|---|---|
| Playable Characters | |
| Golden Sun | Isaac Garet Ivan Mia
|
| The Lost Age | Felix Jenna Sheba Piers
|
| Dark Dawn | Matthew Karis Tyrell Rief Amiti Sveta Eoleo Himi
|
| Non-Player Characters | |
| Golden Sun & The Lost Age |
Agatio Alex  Babi Briggs Dodonpa Dora Feizhi Hama Hammet Hydros Karst Kraden Kyle Menardi Moapa Puelle Saturos Susa The Wise One Tret
|
| Dark Dawn | Arcanus Baghi  Blados Bogho Chalis High Empyror Hou Zan King Wo Laurel Nowell Paithos Ryu Kou Unan Vande Volechek
|
