Valmar

"O foolish. piteous humans. accept your fate. Accept the mercy of a perfect God!"

- Final manifestation of Valmar

Valmar is the Bigger Bad of the game Grandia II and a central background character of the world itself as the God of Evil. The Pieces of Valmar are smaller incarnations of Valmar, sealed away across the land in either forbidden or long forgotten tombs and dungeons. Each encounter with a Piece of Valmar threatens to bring about Valmar's return to the mortal world.

The Battle of Good and Evil
The Church of Granas teaches of The Battle of Good and Evil. When Granas - god of good and lighth, fought Valmar, god of evil and darkness. The two fought in an epic battle that split the land, forming seas, canyons and split mountains still seen til the modern day. Granas beat Valmar, but foul pieces of the dark god still exist as remnants of his power that will taint any living being who would touch them and eventually possess them as emissaries of the dark god himself.

Pieces of Valmar
The Pieces of Valmar are encountered across the game, starting with the Wings of Valmar. The wings are attempted to be sealed away within the Granas songstress Elena. Elena's priest hires protagonist Ryudo on behalf of the Church of Granas to see Elena off to a exorcism ritual. However when the ritual results in the Wings release instead of resealing, Ryudo's assignment instead become to escort Elena to St. Helm - Seat of the Church of Granus, to Pope Zera Inocentius once it has become apparent the wings tainted Elena and are possessing her in her sleep as the demon-like Millenia. Along the way to St. Helm Ryudo and Elena encounter other sealed pieces of Valmar that are breaking out, The Tongue of Valmar, possessing transport manager - Gadan, The Eye of Valmar, possessing a blind little girl named Aira and The Claws of Valmar, making due with possession of an automation named Tio. As the plot goes on High-Priestess Selene of the Church of Granas attempts many times to kill the hosts of Valmar to spare the locals being subject to the evil gods return, but eventually it is revealed that Selene herself is host to the Heart of Valmar - though still mostly in-control of herself - her fanaticism genuine and not induced via the possession.

Years prior to the events of the game, Ryudo's foster brother Melfice had uncovered a sword and gone on a homicidal rampage, seemingly have gone mad with it's power, but it is revealed the sword was the Horns of Valmar, and Melfice was just one of the earliest people to be possessed by Valmar. Killing Melfice only prompts the Horns to possess Ryudo instead - due to an inner-battle, Ryudo is able to resist possession, but he is unsure of how long he will retain his free-will. Millena, long since deciding she likes Ryudo and most of his friends, absorbed each piece of Valmar to prevent it from possessing someone else upon defeat, but in doing so stole the soul of the current hosts, and as such had refused to absorb the Horns of Valmar for Ryudo and could not when fighting Melfice as Elena was awake at the time.

Millena's absorption of the Pieces of Valmar was not out of shear mercy, but also part of her Valmar imposed instinct for the pieces of Valmar try to absorb each-other, with which-ever piece that did the absorbing being an amalgamation of Valmar as a whole. Millena wishes to be the avatar of Valmar upon collecting all the Pieces. Pope cunningly told Elena he would not exorcise Millenia from her until she had absorbed all the pieces so when Millenia was exorcised all traces of Valmar would be gone from the world. Elena keeps Zera's plan a secret to let Millenia unwittingly help cleanse Valmar from the world, for if all were absorbed, Valmar would return to destroy the world.

Truth
In truth Valmar was a scientist/alchemist along with Granas - both were once mortals who ascended to Godhood at the height of their research, Granas pursuing incarnation of Light, and Valmar incarnation of Dark. As light requires energy to maintain, Granas needed to grow his divinity with a massie psychic pay-load and in exchange for creating a utopian-like society had the people all pray to him to keep expanding his power. As Valmar had incarnated the power of darkness - which does not need to be maintained and is primordial, Valmar's power grew with just further research. Both lead by examples to other researchers and the followers of Granas became Dogmaticly religious and the followers of Valmar became obsessively focused researchers. Eventually the followers of Valmar rejected Granas and even tried to stop people from praying to him - likely to replace reliance on prayer to more scientific methods with Dark energy. The Automation Elmo, stresses "The Battle of Good and Evil" was about nothing to do with such concepts but about a religious sect trying to maintain power through prayer versus a scientific sect trying to supplement prayer with a clean-burning dark-energy. Valmar did not hate good, nor did Granas hate evil, rather Valmar was trying to impose alternate energy solutions that would free people from their constant pledging of self to their God, Granas, as said God, obviously opposed the prospect of obsolesce.

Granus and Valmar still fought in space, but their weapons and armies regularly spilling over onto the planet splitting mountains and such, a fabled Granas Sabre - the sword of Granas himself, turning out to be a vaguely sword-shaped battle-ship that crashed onto the planet in the battle. However Granas was destroyed in the battle - the Church of Granas covering up their God's defeat in order to keep hope alive in their people, who after the battle, did not know how to function with science and religion instead supplanting the land. No member of the Church knows about the truth of The Battle of Good and Evil, except the Pope, each old-Pope telling or leaving records for the successors, but each one maintaining the lie either for to maintain their clout, the concept of hope, or both.

The latest Pope, Zera has actually suffered from a deep-seeded crisis of faith and sends Elena and by extension Millenia out to absorb the Pieces of Valmar, not simply to exorcise them all at once from Elena's body, but to absorb them into his. Zera intends to be the new Valmar, his entire sense of morality destroyed upon finding not only is his God dead, but that the epic battle of Good and Evil was little more than a dispute between reliance of psychic-powered or cold-fusion technology of two very powerful scientists and their followers.

Temperament
As the Pieces of Valmar were created for war, activating them natually imposes an antagonistic mind-set in each of their hosts. Melfice and Elena's "possessions" retrospectively just ether's id's unleashed, hence why the previously good warrior Melifce becomes a psychotic killer, and the sheltered, Elena's Milleina alter-ego being a vampish hedonist, neither able to process eviler ways to act within their own psyche's. Gadan is just lost to his own greed, and Aira wanting to keep her whole town in a slumber where they had to play with her forever. However as Zera absorbs all the pieces of Valmar from Millenia and he had been raised and taught in hard fast concepts of good and evil, when he become Valmar, his Granas mindset make him an embodiment of evil as a concept. As Zera is defeated at the end of the game, he is seen to just be acting out to come to grips with the horrifying notion that God does not exist.

The original Valmar seemingly just objected to pledging one's entire being to either himself or Granas as "gods" and just wanted man-kind to rely on their own cumulative knowledge instead. By all accounts he still started a war but ultimately with the goal of ridding the world of a problematic movement like religion, not specifically to cause harm.