Arabelle Davaux, Investigator and Spy
Arabelle Davaux may not be a name that everybody knows, but the stories of Investigator Vale are perhaps some of the most famous fictional stories in modern history. The tales of a detective who could seemingly solve any murder, any crime in barely a few hours, and would regularly save cities, towns or even the world from dire threats. Truly they feel like stories written purely in fiction, but during Arabelle's life several connections were made between her life and that of Vale's, leading to the theory that the fictional stories were at least based off of real events.
Sadly the exact details of Arabelle's life are still relatively unknown, but tales of a warrior who had no match, a spy whose genius was matched only by her beauty were common during the time she was alive, and there are too many parallels between Vale and Arabelle for anyone to truly believe that she wasn’t the inspiration for the books. Interestingly, it goes further then that, Arabelle was also the writer for the Investigator Vale series (or the assumed writer as she was never fully uncovered), cementing her legend in two separate ways.
Qualified Servant Classes
Note 1: All Heroic Spirits are summoned into a specific ‘class container’ which dictates many of their skills, parameters and even personality. While they’re often most suited for a particular class, there are many heroes that qualify for multiple classes and thus could theoretically be summoned under any of those classes. An easy example is Almalexia. She is well known for both her swordsmanship and magical abilities and would commonly be summonable under the classes of Saber or Caster.
Potential Classes: Saber, Rider, Assassin and Lancer
Arabelle was a rather interesting character to design because I know so little about her, and adding in elements of Investigator Vale shakes things up a little bit. She could arguably qualify as any of the above classes considering her history as a soldier of some sort is barely covered and while a Spy and an Assassin are obviously fairly different, but considering they have a fairly similar skill-base (stealth, disguise, etc.) they tend to cross over a bit. Personally I've decided to go with Saber for this version of the character, it's a bit more 'basic warrior' than the others but I have a few twists that give her a more interesting combat style than just "HIT 'EM TILL THEY DIE!".
Class for this Guide: Saber
Parameters
Note 2: Parameters are defined both by the individual and the class they’re summoned under. For example, all Caster’s have a base Mana of A, but there are individuals who have specific restrictions that may reduce their Mana to B or are incredibly powerful and thus could have a rating of A+. The system is hardly a way to judge a servant fully, just because an individual has higher stats doesn’t mean they’ll automatically defeat someone with lower stats, but it would mean that (for example) a Servant with a Strength of A will be naturally stronger than one with a Strength of B.
Note 3: The ranking is E, D, C, B, A, EX. Ranks E through A can also have a modifier (either + or -) that designates that their skill has certain restrictions or increases in certain situations. Essentially a + or – means that their highest level isn’t stable or permanent, with a B+ being normally weaker than an A but being stronger than an A in certain circumstances. Examples – fighting a specific foe, being blessed or cursed, having a spell cast on you, etc
Note 4: A servant is more powerful than a normal mortal by default (or the average human). E is 10x more powerful than an average human. D is 20x more powerful and so on and so forth. EX is theoretically 100x more powerful, but the scale is ambiguous.
Strength: B
Endurance: B
Agility: C+
Mana: D
Luck: EX
Noble Phantasm: B
Class Skills:
Riding: C+
Riding is a skill that designates the Heroic Spirits ability to ride mounts into combat. Despite the double meaning of it (If you think about it) Arabelle is not an awfully skilled rider, and while she's capable of riding horses and other similarly 'normal' Mounts, she is not capable of doing it to any outstanding degree or riding more unique or magical creatures.
Magic Resistance: B
The combination of being a Saber and Breton has combined to create a rather potent Magic Resistance for Arabelle. With it at such a high level, she can essentially shrug off most damage from spells of all types, allowing her to fight openly to a much higher degree than if she lacked the skill.
Personal Skills:
Charisma: EX
An EX rank in a skill is a unique signifier that the user either has no true upper limit to the skill, or that it's beyond human recognition. Many of the skills that reach this rank are unique skills that might as well be replaced with N/A because the skills are difficult to comprehend at the very least. For Charisma this is not the case, and the most common use of the skill is to boost the morality of any who follow the Charismatic Heroic Spirit. It does not mean that the Heroic Spirit is well liked by everyone, only that they have a certain...presence that draws people to them.
Arabelle is entirely unique in having this at an EX skill, and it essentially allows her to convince individuals that she is capable of anything. She could, theoretically, tell a crowd that she is capable of lifting a mountain, and it's entirely possible that the crowd would believe her without asking for proof or doubting her for a second. It's a skill that makes her incredibly deadly if she's allowed to talk, even to other Servants that don't have a conflicting skill, hatred towards her, madness or high Magic Resistance.
Investigator and Spy: A
A unique skill, Arabelle is able to fully implement tactics of both a Spy and Investigator to a nearly unmatched degree. She is more stealthy than most Saber Class Heroic Spirits, is capable of disguising herself outside of battle (and during it to lesser extents) and discover clues and hints about any task she puts her mind to as easily as others decide what to eat for breakfast (or easier). During combat the skill has almost no use, other than allowing her to disguise some things like her hair colour, eye colour and voice...Which is arguably useful, but not incredibly so.
Noble Phantasms:
Note 7: Noble Phantasms are unique to each Servant completely and is a notable part of their legend. For some heroes, these may be unique weapons or a set of armour that they wielded in their life, for others it may be a concept that is closely related to the Servant’s legend. For example, Morihaus is likely to be summoned with The Lord’s Mail as a set of armour while Tiber Septim may have a Noble Phantasm connected to his role of Emperor or Dragonborn.
The Greatest Detective: B
She may not be the hero that Gotham deserves...Wait shit, that's Batman. A completely passive, non battle-oriented Noble Phantasm that allows Arabelle to pick apart stories, facts or conversations that she's had, analyse them and make the correct 'assumption' based on the minor amount of information presented to her. It's a skill that truly emobides the nature of a detective, but has no use outside of that.
A Spy of Many Colours: A
A Spy of Many Colours is strange Noble Phantasm that is a battle-oriented Noble Phantasm that allows Arabelle the unique ability of forming 'Shades' to represent various forms she's taken in life. Most notable are those of Arabelle Davaux and Investigator Vale, but any persona she's taken at any point, any disguise she's put on, is something that can be summoned to support her in combat. These Shades are far weaker than the Heroic Spirits, arguably clocking in at E ranked, but are incredibly useful to overwhelm and distract opponents, especially considering the wider range of weapons she has access to and can use.
Translation to Skyrim
So, I have to be honest. Arabelle has easily been one of my favourite characters to write so far for this entire sub-series (the last few Heroic Spirits with no link whatsoever...even if she's kind of ended up as another Heroic Spirit starting with 'A'). There's something about her Skills, Class and Noble Phantasms that all just clicked for me even if I originally had some issues with making sure they all felt different even though the shared a few similarities. I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that she has a simple but fascinatingly different style to her than other Sabers, she's a bit more tactical, a bit more stealthy and generally fights more like a mix between a Saber and Assassin. Then there was the idea of her skills all arguably being far more useful outside of combat than during it. The combination of Charisma, The Greatest Detective and Investigator or Spy really creates a nice focus for the character.
Anyway, most of the build is going to be explained below, but it's a really awesome character as far as I'm concerned.
Skills and Stats:
Primary Skills: Sneak, One-Handed, Light Armour and Speech
Secondary Skills: Enchanting, Alchemy and Block
Stats: 1 Magicka, 4 Health and 5 Stamina per 10 levels.
Required Perks and Equipment:
One-Handed: Armsman 3/5
Speech: Haggling 2/5 and Allure
Sneak: Stealth 2/5
Equipment: Any
Roleplaying and Other Information:
Right, so lets start out with the questlines. To be honest she could easily fit in with just about anything you want to do, other than the Main Quest (though she might be able to convince the Aedra that she's Dragonborn :P). I think either side of the Dark Brotherhood would actually work with this character, you might make the argument that she isn't exactly an Assassin, but it's entirely up to you. The only questline that I think is completely compulsory is the Thieves Guild because it actually does kind of involve a lot of the skills that Arabelle is gifted with.
So it might be dissapointing, but I don't know if there's much to talk about regarding the skills. Charisma honestly just comes in as a high ranking Speech skill and Roleplaying, because...well that's all it really entails for the most part. You could go further by the fact that you can literally beat people half to death as a way to encourage them to...fight with you (Brawls are weird in that context.) Investigator and Spy is kind of funny because it's a combination of Roleplaying and, well the way that Quests work. You can actually use the Quest Log as a gameplay element for this character, because that sort of just fits together. The Greatest Detective is, again, a Roleplaying skill that has no direct use in gameplay, at least in regards to abilities, powers or anything.
A Spy of Many Colours is honestly a little more difficult and worth delving into. I'm personally of the belief that it's rather difficult to implement in Vanilla Skyrim, to be honest I still haven't figured out an easy way to do it that doesn't involve mods. I suppose my first steps would be focusing on some of the more boring companions and using them (or at least the ones that talk less), or perhaps using Illusion as an additional skill, but it's something that I think is going to require a bit more work. Which sucks, but sometimes I'm going to hit little snags with Noble Phantasms, and I'm surprised this is the first time it's happened.
Closing Notes:
Awww, yeah. It feels really good to have finished this character, because I honestly just love what I've done here to an extent that I think exceeds all of the others. Maybe Abnur Tharn comes in as a close second, but honestly I just love the character and think I captured her fairly well. I dunno, let me know what you think and about her (and the series as a whole).
Anyway, this is basically one of the more random Guides I'll be doing. If you didn't know the first 6 had a clear theme (started with A) but from now on, until my next 'set' I'll just be doing random Heroic Spirits with no guiding theme behind them. The next 'set' is going to be incredibly interesting and focus on some really fun characters but there's a hell of a lot of work that's going to go into them so I won't spoil them because it could take weeks to get the first one done. Thanks, as always, for reading and if you want to read more then check out the 'Heroic Spirit Guides' tag above.
Image Source 1
Image Source 2
Image Source 3
Teaser Image Source
More Information on Saber Class
Investigator Vale/Arabelle Sources and Information (sorta, not much to it, but yeah).
Fate - Parameter Rules | Fate - Servant Definition | Fate - Noble Phantasms | Fate - Full List of Skills
As a final note, I just wanted to thank Trekster for inspiring these guides. Obviously we've got really different takes and inspirations for the series and they're honestly really different, but there's so much of his work that inspired mine. Check Out His Guides because they really are awesome, and a bit more suited to just plugging a build into the Guide and playing with it. Hope these are interesting, I tried really hard to balance the combination of Skyrim and Fate, though I'll freely admit to focusing more on the latter.
Arabelle Davaux, Investigator and Spy
Arabelle Davaux may not be a name that everybody knows, but the stories of Investigator Vale are perhaps some of the most famous fictional stories in modern history. The tales of a detective who could seemingly solve any murder, any crime in barely a few hours, and would regularly save cities, towns or even the world from dire threats. Truly they feel like stories written purely in fiction, but during Arabelle's life several connections were made between her life and that of Vale's, leading to the theory that the fictional stories were at least based off of real events.
Sadly the exact details of Arabelle's life are still relatively unknown, but tales of a warrior who had no match, a spy whose genius was matched only by her beauty were common during the time she was alive, and there are too many parallels between Vale and Arabelle for anyone to truly believe that she wasn’t the inspiration for the books. Interestingly, it goes further then that, Arabelle was also the writer for the Investigator Vale series (or the assumed writer as she was never fully uncovered), cementing her legend in two separate ways.
Qualified Servant Classes
Note 1: All Heroic Spirits are summoned into a specific ‘class container’ which dictates many of their skills, parameters and even personality. While they’re often most suited for a particular class, there are many heroes that qualify for multiple classes and thus could theoretically be summoned under any of those classes. An easy example is Almalexia. She is well known for both her swordsmanship and magical abilities and would commonly be summonable under the classes of Saber or Caster.
Potential Classes: Saber, Rider, Assassin and Lancer
Arabelle was a rather interesting character to design because I know so little about her, and adding in elements of Investigator Vale shakes things up a little bit. She could arguably qualify as any of the above classes considering her history as a soldier of some sort is barely covered and while a Spy and an Assassin are obviously fairly different, but considering they have a fairly similar skill-base (stealth, disguise, etc.) they tend to cross over a bit. Personally I've decided to go with Saber for this version of the character, it's a bit more 'basic warrior' than the others but I have a few twists that give her a more interesting combat style than just "HIT 'EM TILL THEY DIE!".
Class for this Guide: Saber
Parameters
Note 2: Parameters are defined both by the individual and the class they’re summoned under. For example, all Caster’s have a base Mana of A, but there are individuals who have specific restrictions that may reduce their Mana to B or are incredibly powerful and thus could have a rating of A+. The system is hardly a way to judge a servant fully, just because an individual has higher stats doesn’t mean they’ll automatically defeat someone with lower stats, but it would mean that (for example) a Servant with a Strength of A will be naturally stronger than one with a Strength of B.
Note 3: The ranking is E, D, C, B, A, EX. Ranks E through A can also have a modifier (either + or -) that designates that their skill has certain restrictions or increases in certain situations. Essentially a + or – means that their highest level isn’t stable or permanent, with a B+ being normally weaker than an A but being stronger than an A in certain circumstances. Examples – fighting a specific foe, being blessed or cursed, having a spell cast on you, etc
Note 4: A servant is more powerful than a normal mortal by default (or the average human). E is 10x more powerful than an average human. D is 20x more powerful and so on and so forth. EX is theoretically 100x more powerful, but the scale is ambiguous.
Strength: B
Endurance: B
Agility: C+
Mana: D
Luck: EX
Noble Phantasm: B
Class Skills:
Riding: C+
Riding is a skill that designates the Heroic Spirits ability to ride mounts into combat. Despite the double meaning of it (If you think about it) Arabelle is not an awfully skilled rider, and while she's capable of riding horses and other similarly 'normal' Mounts, she is not capable of doing it to any outstanding degree or riding more unique or magical creatures.
Magic Resistance: B
The combination of being a Saber and Breton has combined to create a rather potent Magic Resistance for Arabelle. With it at such a high level, she can essentially shrug off most damage from spells of all types, allowing her to fight openly to a much higher degree than if she lacked the skill.
Personal Skills:
Charisma: EX
An EX rank in a skill is a unique signifier that the user either has no true upper limit to the skill, or that it's beyond human recognition. Many of the skills that reach this rank are unique skills that might as well be replaced with N/A because the skills are difficult to comprehend at the very least. For Charisma this is not the case, and the most common use of the skill is to boost the morality of any who follow the Charismatic Heroic Spirit. It does not mean that the Heroic Spirit is well liked by everyone, only that they have a certain...presence that draws people to them.
Arabelle is entirely unique in having this at an EX skill, and it essentially allows her to convince individuals that she is capable of anything. She could, theoretically, tell a crowd that she is capable of lifting a mountain, and it's entirely possible that the crowd would believe her without asking for proof or doubting her for a second. It's a skill that makes her incredibly deadly if she's allowed to talk, even to other Servants that don't have a conflicting skill, hatred towards her, madness or high Magic Resistance.
Investigator and Spy: A
A unique skill, Arabelle is able to fully implement tactics of both a Spy and Investigator to a nearly unmatched degree. She is more stealthy than most Saber Class Heroic Spirits, is capable of disguising herself outside of battle (and during it to lesser extents) and discover clues and hints about any task she puts her mind to as easily as others decide what to eat for breakfast (or easier). During combat the skill has almost no use, other than allowing her to disguise some things like her hair colour, eye colour and voice...Which is arguably useful, but not incredibly so.
Noble Phantasms:
Note 7: Noble Phantasms are unique to each Servant completely and is a notable part of their legend. For some heroes, these may be unique weapons or a set of armour that they wielded in their life, for others it may be a concept that is closely related to the Servant’s legend. For example, Morihaus is likely to be summoned with The Lord’s Mail as a set of armour while Tiber Septim may have a Noble Phantasm connected to his role of Emperor or Dragonborn.
The Greatest Detective: B
She may not be the hero that Gotham deserves...Wait shit, that's Batman. A completely passive, non battle-oriented Noble Phantasm that allows Arabelle to pick apart stories, facts or conversations that she's had, analyse them and make the correct 'assumption' based on the minor amount of information presented to her. It's a skill that truly emobides the nature of a detective, but has no use outside of that.
A Spy of Many Colours: A
A Spy of Many Colours is strange Noble Phantasm that is a battle-oriented Noble Phantasm that allows Arabelle the unique ability of forming 'Shades' to represent various forms she's taken in life. Most notable are those of Arabelle Davaux and Investigator Vale, but any persona she's taken at any point, any disguise she's put on, is something that can be summoned to support her in combat. These Shades are far weaker than the Heroic Spirits, arguably clocking in at E ranked, but are incredibly useful to overwhelm and distract opponents, especially considering the wider range of weapons she has access to and can use.
Translation to Skyrim
So, I have to be honest. Arabelle has easily been one of my favourite characters to write so far for this entire sub-series (the last few Heroic Spirits with no link whatsoever...even if she's kind of ended up as another Heroic Spirit starting with 'A'). There's something about her Skills, Class and Noble Phantasms that all just clicked for me even if I originally had some issues with making sure they all felt different even though the shared a few similarities. I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that she has a simple but fascinatingly different style to her than other Sabers, she's a bit more tactical, a bit more stealthy and generally fights more like a mix between a Saber and Assassin. Then there was the idea of her skills all arguably being far more useful outside of combat than during it. The combination of Charisma, The Greatest Detective and Investigator or Spy really creates a nice focus for the character.
Anyway, most of the build is going to be explained below, but it's a really awesome character as far as I'm concerned.
Skills and Stats:
Primary Skills: Sneak, One-Handed, Light Armour and Speech
Secondary Skills: Enchanting, Alchemy and Block
Stats: 1 Magicka, 4 Health and 5 Stamina per 10 levels.
Required Perks and Equipment:
One-Handed: Armsman 3/5
Speech: Haggling 2/5 and Allure
Sneak: Stealth 2/5
Equipment: Any
Roleplaying and Other Information:
Right, so lets start out with the questlines. To be honest she could easily fit in with just about anything you want to do, other than the Main Quest (though she might be able to convince the Aedra that she's Dragonborn :P). I think either side of the Dark Brotherhood would actually work with this character, you might make the argument that she isn't exactly an Assassin, but it's entirely up to you. The only questline that I think is completely compulsory is the Thieves Guild because it actually does kind of involve a lot of the skills that Arabelle is gifted with.
So it might be dissapointing, but I don't know if there's much to talk about regarding the skills. Charisma honestly just comes in as a high ranking Speech skill and Roleplaying, because...well that's all it really entails for the most part. You could go further by the fact that you can literally beat people half to death as a way to encourage them to...fight with you (Brawls are weird in that context.) Investigator and Spy is kind of funny because it's a combination of Roleplaying and, well the way that Quests work. You can actually use the Quest Log as a gameplay element for this character, because that sort of just fits together. The Greatest Detective is, again, a Roleplaying skill that has no direct use in gameplay, at least in regards to abilities, powers or anything.
A Spy of Many Colours is honestly a little more difficult and worth delving into. I'm personally of the belief that it's rather difficult to implement in Vanilla Skyrim, to be honest I still haven't figured out an easy way to do it that doesn't involve mods. I suppose my first steps would be focusing on some of the more boring companions and using them (or at least the ones that talk less), or perhaps using Illusion as an additional skill, but it's something that I think is going to require a bit more work. Which sucks, but sometimes I'm going to hit little snags with Noble Phantasms, and I'm surprised this is the first time it's happened.
Closing Notes:
Awww, yeah. It feels really good to have finished this character, because I honestly just love what I've done here to an extent that I think exceeds all of the others. Maybe Abnur Tharn comes in as a close second, but honestly I just love the character and think I captured her fairly well. I dunno, let me know what you think and about her (and the series as a whole).
Anyway, this is basically one of the more random Guides I'll be doing. If you didn't know the first 6 had a clear theme (started with A) but from now on, until my next 'set' I'll just be doing random Heroic Spirits with no guiding theme behind them. The next 'set' is going to be incredibly interesting and focus on some really fun characters but there's a hell of a lot of work that's going to go into them so I won't spoil them because it could take weeks to get the first one done. Thanks, as always, for reading and if you want to read more then check out the 'Heroic Spirit Guides' tag above.
Image Source 1
Image Source 2
Image Source 3
Teaser Image Source
More Information on Saber Class
Investigator Vale/Arabelle Sources and Information (sorta, not much to it, but yeah).
Fate - Parameter Rules | Fate - Servant Definition | Fate - Noble Phantasms | Fate - Full List of Skills
As a final note, I just wanted to thank Trekster for inspiring these guides. Obviously we've got really different takes and inspirations for the series and they're honestly really different, but there's so much of his work that inspired mine. Check Out His Guides because they really are awesome, and a bit more suited to just plugging a build into the Guide and playing with it. Hope these are interesting, I tried really hard to balance the combination of Skyrim and Fate, though I'll freely admit to focusing more on the latter.
