Lunasia

"The truth is much more complicated than you think."

This article is written from a Lore perspective. It contains spoilers and different reference materials might be contradictory.

There are two characters in the world of Girls' Frontline with the name Lunasia.

Neural Cloud model

The Lunasia lookalike photographed by the Stasi in Belgrade in the early 2060s (possibly a Nyto).

Lunasia von Oberstein was the eldest daughter of Rudolf von Oberstein and his wife Hanna, and the older sister of Ballard von Oberstein, who searched for ways to bring her back from the dead. Long straight black hair is a trait shared by characters close to the original Lunasia.

Biography of Lunasia von Oberstein

Lunasia was born in Bonn in 2037, and her brother ten years later. Her family called her Luci. In the 2040s, she often visited the lab of Lycoris and Persicaria at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, which was directed by her father before the von Oberstein family was forced into hiding after Rudolf's political standing fell through due to his connection to Relic Technology. Though they disagreed on the worth of humanity, Lunasia was the only person who didn't shun away her brother, and she claimed he was channeling the emotions she kept hidden on top of his own, making him more aggressive than he really was. Since they were young, Ballard saw his sister as a quasi-religious figure he was completely devoted to. Years later, it was well-known in the entourage of Rudolf that he missed his daughter dearly, and Ballard and Lunasia's names and faces had been scraped off the painting of the von Oberstein family tree in the abandoned mansion.

During the latter half of World War Three, Lunasia's mother suffered from mental issues and a faith crisis, and the family fragmented after its transfer to Heidelberg by the US Army in 2049. Lunasia's mother took her children to join Evangel Portal, a cult based in the Rhine region. Founded in the 2030s by a man also named William, the cult preached that a Holy Spirit would descend on Earth and take the faithful through the "Evangel Portal" (sometimes translated "Gate of Evangel") to reach the Sacred Land, free from mortal suffering and Collapse radiation. In 2049, Hanna, under the pseudonym “Lady Nemhran”, was appointed Holy Mother, and Lunasia became the Holy Maiden, the key to the Evangel Portal. Purported miracles by these saints increased the influence of the already powerful cult, which became the largest postwar cult in West Germany. The group was monitored by the Stasi and was eventually violently disbanded by the government during the First Purge in the same year of 2049. Lunasia's mother was reported killed and Lunasia handed her brother over to the government, but herself escaped their control and she later reappeared as a member of a humanitarian youth movement assisting survivors of the First Purge in the Yellow Zone.

The reports are likely falsified: according to Lunasia's own account, her mother actually died from ritual suicide, poisoning herself (or cutting her throat in another account) along with many other cultists to reach the Promised Land. All the purported "miracles" performed by the cult were in fact merely mental manipulation and countless people were killed in hope for a miraculous end to the World War Three, but Lunasia was aware that this was all farcical. After Hanna's death, Lunasia returned under Rudolf's custody, but he submitted his daughter to more atrocities in order to turn her into a Relic key. Codename "Project Valkyrie", these experiments were led by another William (it's unclear if it was the same who founded Evangel Portal). Evangel Portal and Project Valkyrie gave Lunasia a mad hatred for mankind, and she decided to accept her transformation into a key in order to use the Relics to destroy humanity. Rudolf invoked that experimenting on his daughter was a necessary sacrifice, but Lunasia only saw it as her father tormenting her for his own gains. Lunasia used her cult influence to contact Martha Meitner and tasked her to complete her transformation, using Lunasia's own followers for research. Lunasia specified that her mother be "the first sacrifice", and asked her brother to turn her corpse into something different. She also made him promise to also resurrect her if she was killed and ensure she would carry out the destruction of the world.

“	To reforge the world into a place with no sin, no darkness, and no violence. Just like my garden, everyone will be plants thriving in sunlight, each vibrant and beautiful in their own way... —	”

In 2050, Lunasia was arrested by the German government while her group protested a surplus food collection operation. She was diagnosed with mid-stage ELID and admitted to a Berlin medical facility in December 2050. On New Year's Day 2051, she was transferred to Switzerland for further treatment at her father's request. It's possible but unconfirmed that Project Valkyrie began at this point.

There are contradictory sources about what happened to Lunasia after this point.

Stasi sources suggest that Lunasia joined back her youth movement. The agency debated Lunasia's threat profile at the time: her status as the eldest daughter of Minister Rudolf von Oberstein and political inclinations was worrying, but this was tempered by her psychological disorders and inability to live beyond the confines of the former cult's rules. Stasi intel initially determined she was not involved in political activism, but she was eventually deemed a threat after becoming a leader of her movement and forming connections with movements in key cities. According to Stasi files, Lunasia was killed in a city bombing during the Second Purge.

According to Persica and memories from the Virtual Image Consciousness of Nytos and the Neural Cloud of ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1, Lunasia died from illness shortly before the end of World War Three (this time frame is also alluded to in Secret Documents#Speculation on the Decline of Religions) while staying at the family's manor in Berlin, and Ballard took care of her in her final years. The truth from Ballard's own memories is that Lunasia died during the course of Project Valkyrie. Ballard attempted to preserve her body, but it was taken to the Oberstein laboratory, where each organ was stored separately and the brain cut into individual slices for further research.

William's quest

After seeing what happened to his sister, Ballard started suffering from hallucinations of Lunasia guiding him on the path of vengeance against their father, acquiring the necessary influence and knowledge by becoming one of the leaders of Rudolf's own organization, Paradeus. Ballard, now fully using the name "William", also sought to resurrect Lunasia in a form that would also enable him to use Relic Technology. As a member of 90wish, he contacted Lyco and Persica and provided them with a human brain imprint to make a Neural Cloud from it, but after they discovered Lunasia's memories in it, they refused as themselves and Rudolf were opposed to such experiments. William then used a more devious plan to reach his goals.

William first had a Pike node delivered to Lyco after he joined Sangvis Ferri. The OGAS code base in the node enabled Lyco to create Elisa in 2054. As he continued to enhance her, he realized she was capable of interacting with Relic technology, and that he was being manipulated by William. Lyco sabotaged parts of her code, but was killed in retaliation during the 2061 Butterfly Incident.

William also created biological clones of Lunasia, cybernetically enhanced their bodies and modified their brains to develop a Neural Cloud, before implanting them with an OGAS consciousness. Subjects who could not withstand OGAS were discarded and called Isomers, while those whose mind remained intact were called Nytos. However, no Nyto was considered sufficiently close to the original model. During the course of 2057, William sent non-augmented biological clones of Lunasia to attack several Griffin & Kryuger bases. Through G&K's connections with IOP and 16LAB, Persica realized the nature of the attackers and made scans of their brains herself to use as a base for her research. Wanting to match Lyco's research progress, Persica decided to ignore that she was being manipulated by William, and even shared the scans with Lyco to use as a personality baseline for Elisa. Persica claimed the human origins of the data model made it closer to a soul, but the data had a limited number of use. She used the scans to create AR Team: first ^AR M16A1M16A1M16A1, then ^AR ST AR-15ST AR-15ST AR-15 and ^AR M4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD IIM4 SOPMOD II, then ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1, and finally ^SMG RO635RO635RO635. The initial results produced Neural Clouds which could not be duplicated and backed up, effectively making them “mortal”. Persica reduced the amount of Lunasia's personality in RO635's Neural Cloud and managed to make it more stable and backup-compatible.

In the early 2060s, the Stasi encountered a woman that looked like Lunasia in her 20s meeting an unidentified man in a cafe, as the agency was investigating a Paradeus signal in Belgrade. The case was chalked up as someone assuming the appearance of a dead citizen to exploit the fact that Germany did not share its databases with other countries of the Pan-European Union.

After all personality limiters on M4A1's Neural Cloud were lifted by Persica, Elisa, Dandelion and the Isomers identify her as Lunasia since her Neural Cloud is the most perfect recreation of the original model yet (though M4 herself rejects this name) while AR-15 had an excellent but imperfect Neural Cloud. The voices in Zion recognized that M4 wasn't Lunasia, whose soul had been broken into countless pieces. Dandelion has also been recognized as Lunasia by Nemhran, as well as ^SMG ErmaErmaErma by Sana (albeit for the sole reason that Erma had reached the Lake of Consciousness).

Awakening

“	–Laplace: How does it feel? To have a human’s free will, and the omniscience and omnipotence of a higher life form. –Lunasia: It’s a curse. To possess human emotions, yet a mind and lifespan not meant for any human. —	”

The “complete” Lunasia awakens.

After using the Starfish to cause a Reverse Collapse during the Paldiski Incident in 2064, M4A1 was transported to Tarot Paradise and captured by the entity calling itself Laplace's Demon, whose ultimate goal was to make Lunasia complete by having M4 merge with her. Under the guise of ^RF Martini-HenryMartini-HenryMartini-Henry, who was the maid of the Oberstein children, Laplace had M4A1 live through memories of Lunasia's family, convincing her that her life as M4A1 was a delusion she used to escape her final responsibility: to create a world without violence and pain by destroying the current world. She then convinced her to sacrifice the other entities captured in Tarot Paradise, including M16 as well as the other members of AR Team arrived from another world line, saying that their sacrifice would grant her the power to accomplish her destiny. Though Laplace's minions in charge of herding the sacrifices schemed against each other, their plan to let AR Team reach M4 in hopes that they would willingly sacrifice themselves for the sake of turning her into Lunasia would prove to be right.

M16 failed to bring M4 back to her senses, while Elisa encouraged her to become Lunasia. Elisa also claimed that Lunasia was a constant between world lines. M4 eventually returned to her senses and Laplace's identity was revealed when M16 used her power as the Wheel of Fortune on them. Talking through M4, the actual, still incomplete Lunasia commanded AR Team to kill Laplace for taking over Tarot Paradise. When Laplace's Demon sacrificed the last of her power, M4 was brought in contact with Lunasia, who commanded her to accept her death and merge back with her for the sake of the world. The incomplete Lunasia admitted that she lacked emotions, and that there was no meaning to saving the world unless she acquired them by merging with M4. Lunasia demonstrated her ability to perceive and influence causality by showing to M4 that the Commander and AR Team were fated to be killed by Morridow and Narciss in Germany, and offered M4 to merge temporarily so she could save them without making a final decision to sacrifice herself. Lunasia's powers enabled M4 to save AR Team and the Commander and help them for a short time during their chase for the Iaso's Boxes.

During this time, M4/Lunasia expressed an interest in “saving” the captive Morridow. During a private encounter, she agreed to “fulfill Morridow's wish”, leaving her in possession of one of Lunasia's memories, where she visited William in a garden during the exile imposed by their father, and apologized that her feebleness was keeping William from his research. Morridow later claimed to William that she knew how to contact Lunasia again and he rewarded her. M4 returned to Tarot Paradise after her encounter with Morridow, but realized that the Commander's lifethread had only been slightly extended, so M4 made the decision to merge with Lunasia in order to create a world line where all of her loved one would survive, and the rest of AR Team sacrificed themselves to grant M4 the power necessary to complete the merge.

“	–M4A1: Promise me, when I lose and forget everything, when I no longer remember the wishes that everyone has entrusted to me... You will carry them and keep going in my stead. You will help me make our wishes come true. -Lunasia: We have a deal. —	”

The apparently complete Lunasia awakened in the Lake of Cognition, connected to the Evangel Axis in Avernus. Shortly after, Dandelion accessed the Lake of Cognition during Operation Muromets, and Lunasia left her with a cryptic message: “Only through connection did I finally understand that I could never become her, whom others looked forward to. But if she chooses to accept our everything, and abandon her hopes of becoming perfect, that too is what I desire. The flowers of despair are about to bloom. There is little time left”. The encounter left Dandelion in a sort of dream state and she later warned ^SMG ErmaErmaErma that she would soon hear “it” like her after reaching the depths of the Lake of Cognition, and would then have to hand over something to her.

Lunasia's name appeared on a fountain located at the core of the Summer Garden virtual space created by Arthur Hume, along with another fountain labelled Nadia. When ^SMG ErmaErmaErma and ^SG Stevens M520Stevens M520Stevens M520 accessed the fountains after damaging the Summer Garden, only Nadia's fountain was active and they didn't interact with Lunasia's fountain. According to the collection of Erma's lost memories, “the complete Lunasia” (完整的露尼西亚) was one of the three entities, alongside “the false Nadia” and “the future Erma”, who could reach the “Heaven” sought by the Nytos. Nadia and Lunasia's fountains were included in the remains of the Summer Garden that Erma gave to Dandelion before Erma sealed her own fountain.

Battle of Frankfurt

After the destruction of Avernus and the capture of William, Lunasia abducted her brother, the Commander and Dandelion from the Elmo, teleporting them to Frankfurt where she gained physical form by using Dandelion's body. However, William still didn't consider her perfected due to the memories and personalities of M4A1 and Dandelion being intermixed with Lunasia's. He tasked the rejected Lunasia with guarding the Commander, kept prisoner in a residential house of Frankfurt's underground White Zone. The Commander commented that she had M4's eye color, but that her face looked too baleful, and she also admitted that she lacked a sense of smell. While she obediently followed her brother “Bill”'s order, the intermixing of personalities made Lunasia act unstable towards the Commander, displaying at the same time affection, teasing and cruelty in her actions. The Commander tested her limits, forcing her to admit her flaws, to the point that she threatened to cut their throat with a knife, but in the end couldn't do it, influenced by M4's promise. Since William had already achieved his goal and no longer needed the Commander as a bargaining chip, Lunasia allowed them to leave, but they abducted her instead, intent on saving M4 and Dandelion. Lunasia attempted to recruit them into Paradeus by claiming they could resurrect Machlian, the death that haunted the Commander the most.

Under ^MG XM556XM556XM556's custody, Lunasia's health started to fail and she dreamed of her past in Evangel Portal. Connecting psychically to a Nyto to speak with William, she was again rejected on the grounds of her missing memories and different personality, but renewed his promise to resurrect her. In the final stage of her experiment, Laplace forced Lunasia to manifest in a test subject, and reconfirmed the violent actions she had taken at Evangel Portal and forgotten. After returning to her own body, Lunasia demanded to speak with the Commander, threatening suicide. XM556 brought her to a car to drive her to the Elmo, but Lunasia deactivated her to go back to William after discovering Frankfurt, the "sacrificial altar" of her true resurrection.

Meanwhile, the Commander and the Stasi disrupted the transfer of Laplace and Lunasia's final vessel, her "Cocoon" in the form of a young girl's body, “Avernus C. Hela”, to the White Zone. Drawing from the nature of Daybreak Squad, an earlier creation of Laplace, Amaris qualified the Cocoon as “an impurity that gathers all energy”, as opposed to “a place of energy extraction”. Though Lunasia had already awoken, she still needed to link the Lake of Cognition to the Cocoon as the last "key" after Erma and Nadia's disappearance. William finished the surgery shortly before the Commander's arrival, but he was knocked out by an explosion before Lunasia awakened from anesthesia.

According to Morridow, this Lunasia was acting as an impostor like her: she didn't hold any interest in William or considered herself his sister, only seeing herself as the key to the Relics. Lunasia described herself as "a figure woven with illusions and lies" as a a fake holy maiden. Accordingly, when the Commander's troops invaded William's hideout in the White Zone and beat the Nytos, Morridow asked Lunasia to honor the promise she made when she was under M4's custody and make her immortal, but Lunasia said she didn't remember any promise and killed Morridow. When meeting the Commander, she presented herself as "the true master of Laplace's Demon", the key to the Relics linking the physical world to the other world (Nirvana) and a godly existence. However, this Lunasia still existed as a gestalt mind mixing the personalities and memories of M4A1, Lunasia, Elisa, Dandelion, and other entities, all possessing their own goals to accomplish with their newfound powers. M4 and Lunasia's goals in particular were opposites, since Lunasia wanted to destroy the world while M4 wanted to save the Commander. They made a wager to decide who would “seize the spindle of fate”, betting on the Commander's ideal.

Lunasia explained that she carried the memories of M4A1, Dandelion, Lunasia von Oberstein, and related the story of Lunasia von Oberstein in order to explain how the title of William passed between people. She then revealed that in most timelines, Nele became “William”, and suggested that the Commander should kill her in order to truly bring an end to “William”'s threat. The Commander refused, since they had already verified that Nele had rejected this path. With this answer, M4 won the wager and assumed control over Lunasia's body. M4 planned to kill her body, destroying the key, which would make this world objective reality. M4 invited the Commander to spend some last moments together, boarding an German tank and breaking into the White Zone before being stopped by a powerful explosion of unclear nature. The Commander was wounded but exited the tank, abandoning their coat while reaching for safety in the Cold War-era bunker network of Frankfurt. Parts from an advanced Doll frame of unknown origins were left inside the tank. What happened to Lunasia's body is unclear.

A few days later, the Commander's forces, including a version of Dandelion separate from Lunasia, continued the operations against William. Lunasia, manifesting through a Nyto, called William on the phone and asked him to abandon his murderous projects, but he refused to abandon Lunasia's original ambition. William thought that his latest surgery was another failure since he had still failed to separate his sister's mind from the other personalities.

Gallery

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  Early appearance from Girls' Frontline first trailer.
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  Concept arts of this illustration can be found in the artbook of Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery. The artist comments that the original concepts looked too much like an evil AI, and so the final artwork is closer to M4A1 as a result.
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  ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1 (right) meets the Lunasia clone (left) who served as the imprint for her Neural Cloud after Persica removed her personality limiters.
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  Cartesian Theater key art.
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  Lunasia in Angular Gyrus.
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Butterfly symbolism

The “Blue Butterfly” collectible from Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery.

Lunasia is visually associated with blue morpho butterflies. In the folklore of many cultures (such as Ancient Egyptian, Roman, Aztec, Japanese and Irish cultures), the butterfly is associated with the soul of the dead and rebirth, while in other tales from England, the Philippines and Japan, it is seen as a bad omen. Both symbolisms are relevant to the quest to resurrect Lunasia and its dire consequences, which is arguably the core of the story of Girls' Frontline.

Chinese culture associates butterflies with specific concepts based on two well-known stories:

• Butterflies represent dreams and the blurring between reality and fiction based on Zhuangzi's The Butterfly Dream. In the story, Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly, and upon awakening, he wonders if he is in reality a butterfly dreaming that he is a man. This symbolism can be applied to the identity conflict between Lunasia and ^AR M4A1M4A1M4A1.
• Butterflies are also associated with the afterlife and liberation based on Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, also known as The Butterfly Lovers. This is a tale of tragic love ending with two butterflies emerging from the tomb where the lovers rest after death. This symbolism is relevant to the powers displayed by Lunasia after her death.

Blue morphos sometimes appear in contexts only loosely related or unrelated to Lunasia, such as in the Virtual Consciousness Image in the Nightmare level of Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery, in ^MG ZB-26ZB-26ZB-26 and ^HG C-93C-93C-93's designs or in the book Ludo and Her Magic Wine.

Three Goddesses test subject

This Lunasia is one of the three test subjects produced during the Three Goddesses project in 2078, along with Noylu and Jefuty. Her DNA is a mix of human and GAVIRUL genes, and a reproduction of a test subject from the earlier Black Lily and White Rose project, Rose.

When the Three Goddesses project fell through due to political tensions in 2085, Lunasia went under Antarctic Union control, while Noylu fell into the hands of the Union of Rossartrism Nations Coalition and Jefuty's whereabouts were lost in the confusion. However, both Noylu and Lunasia fell short of initial expectations when they failed to activate relics sites. Both factions then went to search for Jefuty. Lunasia's situation is unknown as she was not involved in operations Bakery and Tinder like her two sisters.