If fans have played “Fire Emblem: Three Houses” for long enough, there is no doubt going to be a bunch of questions that will arise and continue to go unanswered no matter the difficulty you would try to complete it. One of these questions for those of the Golden Deer persuasion no doubt circle around a certain pink haired lady’s big brother. “What does Holst look like?” or “Why do we never hear Holst speak?” are questions that seem reasonable to ask especially in a game where a man with no first name like Count Galatea gets a vocal appearance in a letter during his daughter Ingrid’s supports with Byleth (the player character) but Holst Goneril, the man notorious for frequent letter writing to his little sister Hilda Valentine Goneril? Nothing. As for his looks, well if fan art from websites such as Tumblr qualifies as a viable source, the most consistent thing we can say about how Holst looks is he’s a big, pink haired, cisgendered man. Impressively consistent by fandom standards, but not a perfect description for a notable character design. Between him and fellow non-player character Judith von Daphnel, plenty of players of the Golden Deer’s story path, Verdant Wind, have yearned for their own path exclusive character a la Gilbert Pronislav of Blue Lions' Azure Moon and Jeritza von Hyrm of Black Eagles' Crimson Flower. Judith at least makes appearances in game as an ally unit, meaning we at least know how dexterous the Hero of Daphnel is...but what about Holst? What are Holst’s stats? If a bold modder were to take on the unimaginably lofty task of adding the mighty Duke Goneril to the game as a physical presence, how would he be built? Well, let’s get some scope around this mighty figure. SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 22 OF VERDANT WIND In the lead up to the showdown with the revived Nemesis and his dark 10 Elites, we are told that Holst faced off against the King of Liberation in a battle he knew he could not win, supposedly to hold the big man back to allow others such as Duke Gloucester to retreat, albeit with serious injuries on the miraculously surviving Duke Goneril. So, Holst cannot be stronger than Nemesis, great, we got a roof. And what kind of stats is Serios’ pin cushion sporting, supposing we go for the middle most difficulty setting of Hard? Oh! Oh. Those numbers are big. Well...I guess it makes sense that if Holst was supposedly a figure that dwarfed Hilda’s competence by comparison, he would have some rather inflated stats. But what about a stat floor? Has Holst ever fought a tough opponent and won? Well, yes obviously, but whose the toughest that we have stats for that we know he has beaten? The best I can find would have to be Nader the Undefeated, a presumably legendary Almyran warrior who only saw defeat at Holst’s hands. To try to keep a single line of continuity going, we will only be using the stats of Nader as he appeared in Verdant Wind chapter 18, hard difficulty. Now, presuming Nader has kitted himself up in similar equipment and abilities as he did the day he became the Once Defeated at the hands of Holst, we are dealing with quite a range of stats. Before we touch on other things, I feel I should address a potential question concerning the Nemesis stats. “Nemesis' actual stats are actually much lower when you discount the bonus from the Dark 10 Elites. Would it not make more sense to remove said bonuses to be a more accurate summation of Holst’s stat ceiling?” To that well meaning inquiry, I answer “No”. The bonuses persist so long as the Ten Elites live and given that we never see Nemesis’ army revive lost Elites should you kill any, I feel it is fair to suspect that Holst fought Nemesis at the King’s strongest state as opposed to his weakest. Add on top of that the poisonous swamp that Lamine, one of the aforementioned 10 Elites, is creating and I feel we can deduce that though an impressive combatant, Holst took the questionable strategy of charging at the King himself. Well, we have a scale to work with, now let’s move onto more simple stats for Holst like his Crest. The Fire Emblem fandom wiki seems to suggest that Hilda mentions that Freikugel, the Hero’s Relic of house Goneril was Holst’s blood right inheritance from his father suggesting that the presumably pink haired guardsman of Fodlan’s Locket was a Major Crest of Goneril and I...can’t agree. While the game does make it clear that nobles value the Crests greatly when it comes to demonstrating their familial power, it is not by any means the only factor that determines inheritance and given that Holst was presumably an active soldier when his and Hilda’s father became too old to use Freikugel, it only seems to make sense that the older brother whose going to make active use of it from the word “go!” inherits the family axe versus the younger sister whose about to go to a school far from any known active military campaigns. In fact, I cannot even cite where Hilda makes the statement that it was Holst’s inheritance, as the only time the Freikugel and mentions of Holst’s inheritance seems to list the two exclusively is at the end of Hilda and Cyril’s joint paralogue, “Dividing the World”. Admittedly how Hilda words the matter is vague and I can easily imagine the original Japanese audio made this more clear but for this English speaker, it’s a toss up whether Hilda says Freikugel was part of Holst’s inheritance or a compromised reward on Holst’s part after Hilda refused to accept his entire inheritance. So, does Holst have a crest? I can honestly see it going either way but I settled with saying yes, he has a minor crest of Goneril. The main reason being that it makes greater sense for him to have been elected as a replacement sovereign duke by the Leicester Alliance if he also happened to have a crest, something we are lead to believe is a strong determining factor for whether power is given to someone or not. Thus, for the most powerful position in the Leicester Alliance, it would make sense that the criteria of a crest would be seen as a necessity before someone even as decorated as Holst could be elected to lead as the Alliance’s next sovereign duke. But, the reason I only say minor instead of major is that it otherwise I imagine a majority of the Dukes would not acknowledge Claude von Reigan, a minor crest bearer of Reigan, as a legitimate heir if there was someone with both a stronger history and stronger crest than the recently discovered in Leicester Claude, as opposed to only being vocal opposition of the Reigan family as it was in canon. So what kind of skills would Holst have strengths and weaknesses in? Well let’s get the easiest one out of the way and just say he has no weaknesses. Yeah, it’s a cheat but not an entirely out of canon one given the general’s history of combative achievements even in his early years as a student of Garreg Mach. So I can easily see him rocking 4 skill strengths and no weaknesses. Which skill strengths precisely? The most obvious one is an Axe, the Goneril Hero’s Relic Freikugel is an axe, and at no point in Three Houses can Byleth recruit a unit with a weakness in their original crest’s matching Hero’s Relic weapon type (Lysithea von Ordelia is an exception with her initial weakness in Swords clashing with the Charon Hero’s Relic, Thunderbrand, but given her in narrative reason for this novelty and her budding talent in swords which on cultivation turns into a strength in swords, even that exception can be made to prove the rule). Another weapon skill I feel should be added would be swords in reference to a support conversation between Balthus, Holst's childhood friend and Hilda, his younger sister. The pair reminisce a time when the teenaged Balthus and Holst took down a black beast in a forest when walking with Hilda, after Holst tried to hold the creature off by himself using only a wooden sword. At no other point during this story is another weapon mentioned, nor does the story imply that Holst was working with a handicap due to the weapon being one his isn't strong with (surprising, given it’s made of wood) which suggests to me Holst has to have some justified confidence for using this weapon to protect his precious baby sister. For the last 2 strengths, I would go rather unexpected and say Bows and then Authority. The latter perhaps seems rather reasonable to most, Holst is a known general at Fodlan’s Locket, but why bows? Wyverns. Holst’s duty at his station of Fodlan’s Locket is holding back the waves of Almyran invaders, Almyra has a tradition in rearing and riding Wyverns into battle and being flying steeds, Wyverns produce a natural vulnerability to arrow fire thus, Holst would, if not prior to his enlistment, definitely develop himself as a fairly confident archer to harry down initial swarms to the odd fledgling that draws close to his axe swing. To make the answer to the question of “what would his skills spread look like?” a bit easier, let’s visualize what his class line would be. Obviously, his starting class would be a Noble being the eldest son of House Goneril and as his crest ties him to an axe Hero’s Relic, it would only make sense for him to qualify into a Fighter. The Fighter class gives bonuses to skill experience in axes, bows and brawling, leading us to have many options for his intermediate class. Since we can imagine Holst as being someone with rather formidable strength given Balthus and he downed a black beast without any battalions on hand as teenagers, it seems to make the most sense to give him Brigand, however there’s one weapon that hasn’t been covered yet when it comes to skill experience bonus: swords. So, given that we may not have multiple classes in a single class tier for a recruitable unit, we will need a sword bonus class that compliments Holst’s past established strengths. Interestingly, that would be Archer, as he could qualify for the class with his background in bows from Fighter and get sword bonus to feed into his innate strength in sword skill. The final class I elected to choose would be Hero, as it gives the Verdant Wind cast a unit that is unique from the faculty of Garreg Mach (i.e. doesn’t step on Alois’ toes as your Warrior) while also complimenting his strengths and works with giving Hilda more justification to distance comparisons between her and her brother (“I am not reliable like my big brother, I mean I can’t possibly be! He’s a Hero, and I am just a dainty flower!”). This would mean, at minimum his skills would look like this: Now, if we were to use the suggested level of the final mission for Verdant Wind as Holst’s starting level, we would have ourselves a level 42 unit. That’s a big boy, one who should very comfortably qualify for a Master Class right? Perhaps, the only problem being that as we have set up Holst right now, the closest Master Class he could qualify for would be War Master, which would demand an A rank in Axes and Brawling. I will concede that, at first, I was tempted to just throw Holst’s master class option away as it didn’t seem feasible that he would be practicing punching to such an incredible degree, but then two things happened. 1. I researched Gilbert and Jeritza’s skills Since these two were basically who I was planning to emulate with Holst, it only made sense to me that these two would make good templates, and with them I found seemingly random skill levels without any strength modifier to back it up, and even in some cases such as Jeritza’s authority, a surprisingly high skill rank with a weakness modifier. This meant that in the game’s design, an in character inclination to such strength can justify almost any skill rank. 2. I had tea with Balthus One of Balthus’ tea time conversations covers an occasion where the bragging King of Grappling recounts a time in a Leicester Alliance held fighting tournament that he almost beat Holst. Of course, the nature of the tournament was not specified, whether it was an unarmed tournament or a joust or whatever the Leicester Alliance would qualify as a “fighting tourney” in the words of Balthus, however given that one of Balthus’ interests is specifically “Brawling” I would not be shocked if Holst would prepare to grapple with his close friend for any reason such as, say, Balthus tried to use his preferred combat method to get close to Holst and throw in down in the tournament. With that concession, we now have a minimum skill ranks of this: But how many ranks would Holst have? We need to get an idea of how many character levels a faculty unit (that being, not a student character) needs to increase before they see an increase in a single skill stat. For this, I used Shamir Nevrand as an example unit. According to the Fire Emblem fansite, Serene's Forest, Shamir starts level 1 with a D+ in lances and B in bows, increasing to C+ lances and A bows when she is recruited as a level 11 Sniper. This means upon levelling up 10 times, Shamir gained an increase in her skill ranks 4 times. This levelling progress does match her partner Catherine who similarly gains 4 skill ranks after 10 level ups. While Gilbert gives a similar-ish quota to those two by gaining 12 skill ranks after 25 level ups, it becomes clear that there is more to this supposed formula when Jeritza boasts 17 skill ranks in only 26 level ups and Manuela demonstrates a rather lowly 5 skill ranks in 14 level ups. Even trying to get a consistent pattern from the Ashen Wolves, a quad of recruit-able students from the Cindered Shadows side story, does not appear to be sufficient. While all four of them are recruit-able at level 3, by that time Yuri and Hapi both gained 2 skill ranks following 2 character levels, Balthus only gained 1 and Constance decided to gain 3! It’s from the Ashen Wolves and their desire to go for a mean value of 1 skill rank per level I decided to cap the total number of skill rank increases for Holst to 41, this being Holst’s character level – 1. Yes, I am aware I will be working from the technically inaccurate template of Holst starting with all his skills at E rank but honestly if I were to attempt to apply numeric analysis to every discrepancy in Three Houses, I fear I would become older than Gilbert before this got done. So, with the 41 limit, we have this: I may have been excessive with capping his Axe skill rank (A+ -> S -> S+ for reference) in all honesty but, this guy is meant to be a revered commander in the Leicester Alliance. On the subject of abilities, since we know what his ranks are and there’s no rush to establish him having budding talents, we can now chart out his abilities and combat arts, so let’s go with the general stuff. Abilities
For the Battalion ability, I decided to go for Battalion Vantage, as I felt it was under-represented in the Golden Deer students, giving a Verdant Wind player more variety. As for the arts themselves, I chose: Wild Abandon (gained at C+ Axes) Allow me to ask a question, would a typical military general decide to eat a possibly poisonous mushroom like Holst did in "Dividing the World"? Would a wise man foist his entire inheritance upon his younger sibling if they showed even a bit of aid like Holst again in the same paralogue? What about giving said younger sibling their most powerful weapon just like, yes, Holst in "Dividing the World"? If the word “no” crossed your lips to more than 1 of those questions, then you could see how I concluded that Holst is perhaps a bit reckless. As such, I can easily see him adopting the strategy of throwing his entire body weight into a single swing to down an opponent early in his axe training. Armoured Strike (gained at A Axes) This combat art was more chosen as a means to tie himself to his buddy Balthus and his duty of being the defensive line against the invading Almyrans. He needs to stand against some major pushback if he wants to stop guys from charging Foldan’s Throat, naturally he will have adapted a maneuver that uses his bulk against a worthy enemy. Bane of Monsters (gained at C+ Swords) Since the story of Holst fighting a monster with a wooden sword was the basis for his strength in the weapon, it seems only right to integrate that story point into Holst's gameplay further. Given he was using a wooden sword, a weapon I suspect is not high in might, I can imagine he either during or in hindsight, adopted a tactic that would most effectively take such monsters down in future, in his case, this combat art. Windsweep (gained at A Swords) Since we know Holst won’t reach A rank swords by himself, it would mean that he had to have, at least once, came into contact with Professor Byleth Eisner. This means we can assume that this combat art was even in small part a product of the professor’s guidance, and what better way to demonstrate Byleth’s competence as a teacher than to teach Holst a combat art that would allow him to better defeat the one opponent he could not otherwise, Nemesis? Well in the absence of a sword combat art that guarantees two attacks to counter Nemesis’ auto-miss 1 attack per turn personal ability, there is his counter attack ability to contend with (which allows Nemesis to retaliate against an enemy at any range), which Windsweep neutralizes. Point Blank Volley (gained at C+ Bows) Same reason as Windsweep above (demonstrate that Byleth is a great professor even for the already impressive Holst) but this time teaching him a combat art to directly counter the King of Liberation’s personal ability by assuring Holst of two attacks in one. So we have the classes, the abilities, the crest and even the combat arts. So all that’s needed now is his stats and we are finished right? Not quite, there’s still the matter of Holst’s Personal Ability and his battalion. For the latter, I feel that its only fitting that he joins Byleth and Claude with a battalion like the Goneril Valkyries. Of course, it would undermine the benefit of the “Dividing the World” paralogue if one (potentially 2 with respect to the Freikugel) of its rewards on completion was irrelevant so I decided to make a modified variant: And for Holst’s Personal Skill...of the skills in the game itself that are not being used by other player characters, Paragon makes sense. However it has an unfortunate issue of either being too powerful (a level 42 unit that gains experience twice as fast as most of your army seems excessive) or too trivial (how much growing is Holst going to get in 1 in-game month?). Since I have crafted a unique battalion for Holst already, I suppose it just seems logical to make a unique personal skill too: This unique ability gives Holst a greater degree by which he can attack twice in a given turn compared to the in game standard of requiring an attack speed that is greater by 4 or more, hinting to Holst’s remarkable prowess in battle as a man that can strike at openings so quickly one may not even know they were open before his attack. So, what about Holst’s base stats and growth percentage? Well in terms of total growths, Holst’s contemporaries of Gilbert and Jeritza each sport 300% and 350% total growth respectfully. At the expense of being accused of copping out, I have chosen to go with the median of the two values at 325%, while he’s not a weapons savant like Jeritza, he is not quite at Gilbert’s level of over the hill veteran quite yet. With some delegation of growths to favour his background of strength, defence and dexterity, the growths break down thusly: As for Holst base stats, we will first have to figure out how much he grows from level 1 to level 42. As Holst is not a student who joins at level 1, his growth is calculated in game by treating him as a level 1 of his joining class, War Master, and then roll his gains to the level he will join. To simulate this, we will tally up his percentages in each stat and, when they surpass 100, we subtract the 100 from the total and treat it as a +1 growth in that stat from leveling. Before we conclude how Holst grows however, one should note that the War Master class has class growths, meaning that the above percentages will be increased by 40% in HP, 15% in Str (Strength), 10% in Spd (Speed) and 5% in Cha (Charm). Meaning Holst has his stats being:
HP = [base] +22 Str. = [base] +26 Mag. = [base] +6 Dex. = [base] +20 Spd. = [base] +14 Lck. = [base] +4 Def. = [base] +20 Res. = [base] +12 Cha. = [base] +22 [TO BE CONTINUED]
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October 2020
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