Konngara
Image from Gensou Ningyou Enbu (video game, 2014) (commonly called “Touhou Puppet Dance Performance” by English speakers)
Astral Knight
Cutter/Phantom Type
Original Media: Touhou Reiiden ~ The Highly Responsive to Prayers (video game, 1997)
Story
A mysterious ethereal being who used to live in the “First Hell” of Gensokyo, and stayed behind when Gensokyo’s system of a “Hell” moved elsewhere. After a few decades building up resentment for being abandoned, Konngara staged a plan of vengeance…though not very well; she targeted Yoshi and his home of Dinosaur Land, trying to egg him on even when he had important things to do off the land, she was unaware of how “forgotten” entities actually thrived in the Chaos Zone, and to top it all off, Yoshi and Dinosaur Land didn’t even have anything to do with the abandonment of First Hell.
Konngara was humbled quite a bit by this, and eventually began wandering the world to find something to do with her power. Along the way, she met the robot maid Li’l Miss Marshmallow, and the two formed a loose connection, though Konngara saw the two of them more as co-workers to ending the greater cause of potential world domination/destruction.
After a period of peace, Konngara became a bit impatient waiting for the next great danger to destroy. Almost as if she knew this was going on, Li’l Miss Marshmallow invited Konngara to spend a day with her, letting the Astral Knight see how the maid lived her life keeping the world a better place on a smaller scale. Konngara took this to heart, and she now lives more quietly when the world of Chaos Zone isn’t in danger.
A little note about Konngara’s size: While her proportions may look like she has the height of an average human, she used to be about the size of a small building, and even now she’s probably at least 7 feet (about 2.1 meters) tall, not counting the ethereal trail where a human’s legs would be.
Abilities
Astral Ray
Konngara raises her sword and fires a spread of lasers.
Space/Laser Type
Acolyte’s Blade
Konngara swings her sword down and to her side, slicing opponents close enough and releasing a barrage of small energy bullets.
Cutter/Space Type
Untamed Visage
A faint beam emerges from the tip of Konngara’s sword, pointing at any surrounding surface to summon a spray of hundreds of energy bullets from each.
Phantom/Dimension Type
Scorched Desire
Konngara unleashes a circle of ethereal, infernal flames that destroy most projectiles.
Shadow/Flame Type
Soul Flayer
Konngara swings her sword straight down, creating a wave of ghastly energy that doesn’t knock the opponent back, but rapidly drains their health.
Phantom/Cutter Type
Star Siphon
Konngara absorbs countless amounts of astral energy to provide a temporary boost to her attack power and defensive power, and completely restore her health.
Space/Shadow Type
Voice
General Description
Adult; quite deep, and somewhat grandiose
Behind the Scenes
While Konngara wasn’t a special favorite of mine among the Touhou cast, I felt the unique situation she (and by extension, everyone from the “Hell” portrayed in Highly Responsive to Prayers) was in regarding the series’ lore gave an opportunity to re-imagine her as a mysterious, forgotten antagonist in the setting, not unlike her real-world status as a relic of the Touhou series’ early years.
My initial plans were pretty straightforward and almost one-dimensional, mostly existing as an excuse to give the character Yoshi something to do on his own. Things took a significant turn when, during the writing of the story, one of Yoshi’s close friends, Rumia, was seriously injured in a separate storyline that took place at the same time; I felt it was more in Yoshi’s character for him to check in on Rumia and be there for her as she was recovering than for him to continue dealing with Konngara’s vague threats to a land that Yoshi barely visited; instead of cutting the storyline there, however, I decided to have Konngara force Yoshi to “stick to the script”, so to speak, lining out a route for him to go through to fight her. By the time Yoshi got to Konngara, I realized that although her motives of being from the abandoned “First Hell” could be understood, her thirst for vengeance was deemed unnecessary because of how many Chaos Zone characters were as obscure as her, if not more (on top of Yoshi still being concerned for the injured Rumia).
While I feel like her debut plotline had some hiccups (namely the fact that she had no way of knowing how many other obscure characters populated the Chaos Zone), it still introduced her, and I continued to try and find a place where Konngara could fit in. One such idea was pushing her into a team of 4 called the “Clockwork Alliance”, as a sort of secondary team to my main cast of heroes at the time, the “Brash Crew”.
I mostly abandoned the idea of the “Clockwork Alliance” after nothing really came of it, but a few years later inspiration struck and I decided to rekindle her old acquaintance with Li’l Miss Marshmallow; I had my ideas of how to develop Marshmallow’s character, and I felt many of those ideas would work well alongside a character as addicted to fighting as Konngara; while much of the plotline was effectively Konngara trying to understand why Marshmallow lived life the way she did, I still felt the lesson Marshmallow was quietly teaching Konngara about brute force not being the only way to keep the world healthy was a good one, and something to give Konngara the depth that she’d been lacking before.
Images
Brash Buster 