Gisela Helmold
- "Your ship will not sink. It's true because I say it's true. "
- — Gisela to Guid
Gisela Helmold is a character in Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland. She is the mother to the game's main protagonist Totooria Helmold.
Gisela is a world famous Adventurer hailing from the small village of Alanya. She began adventuring before having an adventurer's license was common in Arland, and she is now somewhat of a legend. Compared to her calm and passive husband Guid, Gisela is a strong headed woman with a bold attitude and abrasive tongue. Although her personality has caused countless troubles, her determination has achieved greatness as well. Her antics have caused mixed feelings towards her character, but most people who have met Gisela think highly of her.
Gisela is also portrayed as a loving woman towards her husband and daughters, although most people never saw that side of her. She often returned home from adventurers to visit her family, and would shower her daughters Ceci and Totori with love and affection. During the events of Atelier Totori, Gisela has mysteriously disappeared. Her disappearance is the driving force behind Totori's adventures. While most people believe that Gisela has perished, Totori holds on to hope of her mother's survival.
Role
Atelier Totori is the story of Totori's quest to discover her mother's fate. Everyone else has long given her up for dead, but Totori doesn't believe that this is the case. As she journeys, she discovers that her mother was a free-wheeling and free-spirited individual, whose sometimes reckless actions infuriated many, yet they nevertheless thought highly of her.
Totori eventually learns that Gisela journeyed out on an adventure at sea, despite the warnings of attacks by a dangerous creature known as the Flauschtraut. Most had assumed her lost at sea due to an attack by this creature, but Totori believes otherwise. She learns that her father, Guid was, in fact, a shipwright who gave up the craft following his wife's disappearance. Over the protests of her sister, Ceci, she begs him to build her a ship and he agrees to do so once she has brought the necessary materials.
With the ship constructed, Totori and her chosen companions set off on their journey. After a long voyage, they reach the Frontier Village, a village of women that has long been under the specter of possible attacks by the dangerous Evil Face. Here, Totori learns that these villagers were to be sacrifices for this creature's monstrous appetite, but Gisela was shocked by their passivity and decided to take on the creature herself. In a fierce battle, she was able to seal it away, but only temporarily, and she was grievously wounded in the fight. As the villagers did not possess the skills to heal her wounds, she asked them to bury her at sea, as her life faded away. They consented to her request and left an empty grave in the village as a tribute to her.
Totori is saddened by the news of her mother's death, but resolute. She decides to confront the Evil Face along with her companions. Though a human sacrifice is required to enter Liechtein Soehnle, Totori and her companions get around this by borrowing the services of Pamela Ibis, who is a ghost, but has been using a doll body. They successfully defeat the Evil Face and Gisela is avenged. With this objective achieved, Totori is left to consider her future as an Alchemist and an Adventurer.
If the player achieves the requirements for all other endings of the game in one playthrough, then following the closing credits, they will receive the game's True Ending. In the ending, Gisela is shown wandering back into the village of Alanya, cursing a "glasses lady" (later verified in Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland to be Astrid Zexis) who told her that it would take her fifty years to recover, when in fact it only took her eight. She notes, however, that she would have been as good as dead had she not been fished out of the sea. She journeys through the town, stunning her fellow villagers, and then reaches her own home and knocks, only to decide that as it is her own home, she need not knock. She flings open the door, greets her stunned family, and says that she's home, apologizing for being late.
In the "Overtime" story of Atelier Rorona Plus: The Alchemist of Arland, Cordelia von Feuerbach talks about a "woman from the south" who came to Arland and started killing monsters left and right, and also attacked people who get in her way. Rorona came up with an idea to control that woman with the laws of Arland thus lead to the foundation of the Adventurer Guild in Arland leaded by Cordelia. That woman from the south appears to be Gisela, the first adventurer.
In Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland, Jeltje Jeremies has collected her autograph. She was later revealed to be the one who destroyed Nicodemus' ship.
Events/Endings
Ending - True (Atelier Totori)
Gallery
Concept Art for Atelier Totori
