The only point is at the end of my sword, fool!
― Albel to Fayt Leingod
Albel Nox (アルベル・ノックス, Aruberu Nokkusu?) is a main character from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time and an Elicoorian swordsman from the Kingdom of Airyglyph. Also known by his title of Albel the Wicked (歪のアルベル, Hizumi no Aruberu?) for his ruthlessness in battle, he is the leader of the Black Brigade, one of three branches of the Glyphian military forces.
Entries[]
- Dictionary
- Till the End of Time: Albel Nox, Albel Nox (Part 2), Albel the Wicked
- Profile
- Birthplace: The Kingdom of Airyglyph, Elicoor II
- Birthday: December 31st, 748 S.D.
- Captain of the "Black Brigade"—one of the three military factions in the Kingdom of Airyglyph. He was involved in the war against the neighboring Kingdom of Aquaria in the 700s (S.D.)
- Albel is a firm believer that strength is justice, and his relentless pursuit of power has earned him the name "Albel the Wicked."
- While he initially saw Fayt and his companions simply as worthy opponents, he has come to acknowledge their remarkable skill and is even known to take their opinions into consideration.
TBA
TBA
Story[]
Background[]
In S.D. 748, Albel was born in Kirlsa to an unnamed woman and Glou Nox. Albel's father was the captain of the Dragon Brigade, the wielder of the Sword of the Crimson Scourge, and a close supporter of King Airyglyph XIII's reformation.
Circa S.D. 739, at age 15, following in his father's footsteps, Albel wanted to become a knight and join the Dragon Brigade. However, during the Accession of the Flame ceremony, he was unable to release his own individual feelings and commune with the spirit of the Air Dragon that tested him. The dragons breathed their fury upon him. Albel would have died for his hubris, but his father shielded him with his own body and bore the brunt of the flames. Glou died, while Albel survived but lost his left arm.
As Glou was good friends with Count Woltar, the count came to look after the young Albel. Due to his talents in swordsmanship and one-on-one combat, Albel began to be compared with Duke Vox and to be rated rather highly by the king himself. Despite his young age, Albel was named the leader of the Black Brigade, and the commanding officer of Shelby and others.
War with Aquaria[]
The group meeting Albel.
Albel first encounters Fayt Leingod, Nel Zelpher, and Cliff Fittir at Airyglyph's Kirlsa Training Facility. However, he only mocks the group before deciding to leave without a fight and report the defeat of his political rival in the Airyglyph military.
Albel is next seen in the Bequerel Mountain Path, where he does in fact attack Fayt, Nel, and Cliff. After he is defeated, Fayt decides to spare his life with the same excuse used by Albel at the training facility ("Easy wins have never been my style"). Unfortunately for Albel, after letting the valuable engineer Fayt escape twice, Duke Vox claims that his repeated failure was because Albel was actually a traitor, rather than an incompetent. The ploy works, and Albel is imprisoned by the King of Airyglyph.
After the Vendeeni attack, Albel is pardoned and sent with Fayt, Cliff, Nel, and Maria Traydor's group as a representative of Airyglyph in the taming of The Marquis, the King of Dragons. If Fayt is sufficiently "nice" to Albel in a certain event, which is when you spend the night in Peterny before going to Urssa Lava Caves watch the event and when Albel asks if you hate him, you say no. Albel is one of the three characters from Elicoor II who may accompany Fayt on his initial journey to Moonbase and beyond, saying that he needed to find excitement somewhere else since the war is over and Vox is dead. If Albel is not acquired then, he may be recruited upon the return to Elicoor II considerably later in the game if Peppita Rossetti did not join Fayt's band. But in this case, Fayt must fight Albel one on one in order to recruit him. Woltar will say that Albel is in the caves where the group fought Crossel.
Either way that Albel is recruited, he rather "forces" himself into the group. If he is defeated at the Urssa Lava Caves, he seems to try and force himself into the group, automatically saying "All right fools. Let's go." before the others decide whether they want Albel or not. He can be accepted or rejected this time, but if Fayt defeats Albel a second time after rejecting him the first time, he truly forces himself into joining Fayt's group and becomes permanent, whether the player wants him or not.
After Vox's death at the hands of the Vendeeni, one Dragon Brigade knight strongly backs Albel as Captain of the Dragon Brigade. However, the practicality of this is unclear, since Albel failed his Accession of the Flame ceremony and therefore does not have a pact with a dragon.
Post-game[]
During Albel's solo ending, Albel sends a six-man investigative team to scope out catacombs discovered underneath the dungeons of Airygylph Castle. When the investigative team goes missing, Albel enters the catacombs to recover their bodies. There, he meets a demon named Romero, King of the Dead serving under Folstar, God of the Underworld. Romero admits to have turned the investigative team into mute servants and threatens the same fate to Albel. The two battle.
Albel's fate is unknown, but in an interview in the Star Ocean: Till the End of Time -Eternal Materials- book, the developers merely remark that "Albel is not as strong as Luther." Additionally, if Albel is never recruited as a party member, Albel and Romero are available as a paired boss fight in the post-game dungeon Urssa Lava Temple, suggesting perhaps that Albel loses the fight (at least if he was not allowed to travel the stars with Fayt and company.)
Profile[]
Albel wears a clawed gauntlet over his left arm, which functions like a prosthetic after his arm was severely burned as a result of a failed attempt at a partnership with an air dragon. He prefers to take no prisoners and leave no survivors in battle, a lack of mercy that perhaps explains his nickname "the Wicked." However, he also has a policy of not bullying the weak, such that he let Fayt, Cliff, and Nel go without a fight when he first met them.
His father's death caused Albel to have survivor's guilt, as he thinks that he did not deserve to be saved as he had failed. It has been hypothesized that because of a fear that someone will sacrifice themselves to save him again, he keeps others at arm's length, so that he (and they) won't get hurt again. Regardless, Albel speaks little, and that which he says is often derogatory or threatening, and he often refers to others as "maggots," "worms," and "fools." Given Albel's propensity for verbal meanness, the men that serve under him vastly prefer his second-in-command, Shelby.
If Albel is recruited first, he can later obtain obtain the Sword of the Crimson Scourge, which his father previously wielded. The Crimson Scourge chooses him as its master after Albel successfully answers the question "What is it that you hate?" Albel answers that he hates himself, specifically, his inexperience, selfishness, arrogance, suspiciousness, rebelliousness, jealousy, and impotence - demonstrating that Albel has insight into and detests his own personality flaws.
Gameplay[]
Albel in-battle.
In Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, Albel is fought as a boss at the Bequerel Mountain Path. He later joins the party before the journey to the Urssa Lava Caves or during the return to Elicoor II after the events at the Moonbase. He uses katanas in battle and has decent attacking power, but his defense is relatively lacking since he can only equip chain mail armor.
In Star Ocean: Anamnesis, he is also a playable character and has four variants: "Albel", "Dark Albel", "Were-Albel" and "Demon Albel". All variants are Attackers, and they use blade & sheaths, great swords (his Dark and Demon versions), and axes.
Quotes[]
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Albel Nox is named after the character "Alberto Knox" in the 1991 science fiction novel by Jostein Gaarder, Sophie's World, which also served as inspiration for SO3's plot (and famous plot twist).
- It’s not clear whether Albel’s left arm is intact, or whether part of it was burned off/amputated. His arm is depicted either as intact (but charred) or amputated at the bicep in some official art.
- Albel has two themes associated with him. The track that plays when the party first meets Albel and during his boss encounters is called "Malicious Fingers". In the first meeting with Albel in Kirlsa Training Facility, after Shelby's defeat, the track played is "The Divine Spirit of Language", which also plays during the endgame boss battle at the Urssa Cave Temple.
- Throughout the main series, Albel is the only antagonist to join the player's party.
- In his fourth outfit, Albel has a tattoo of two dragons on his chest that may be based off Gyoro/Creepy and Ururun/Weepy, Ashton Anchors's dragons, from Star Ocean: The Second Story.
- On two separate occasions, Kirlsa residents openly gossip about whether Albel is part-Aquarian. Maybe relatedly, Albel's runological casting speed is the fastest in game. In any case, on his father's side Albel comes from a long line of Glyphian nobles, all who served as previous captains of the Dragon Brigade. So if the gossip is true, then any relation to Aquarians would have to be from his mother's side.
- Albel is called a “pudding with tentacles” due to his hair resembling flan (and his rattails) by a Gemity battle presenter, which has come to represent him in fandom and in official art.
External links[]