| “ | Shadow beasts attacked our land. I was infected with a strange disease - the Scourge. Shadow promised to cure me. | ” |
| –Moira explaining the origin of her strange condition. | ||
Moira is one of the twin Legion princesses in Shadow Fight 3. She is the younger sister of Iolanda. Being the younger one automatically turned Moira into an Abdicator, Legion royals who do not inherit claim to the throne. Moira possesses many strange powers, in the sense that she is capable of projecting her feelings and emotions into real - sometimes living - things, most of the times unintentionally. She also has an unusually strong affinity to Shadow Mind, capable to not only speak but to also bind it under her control. And despite her child-like appearance, Moira is actually older than she looks, as she has been living since before the Legion was founded.
Story
Just like other Abdicators, Moira lived in isolation inside a huge Tower in Legion Fortress, in which the biggest part of the library is located, where she was raised as a zealot. Abdicators have nothing but books, solitude, and meditation. This could be the cause of why Moira was a bit weird. When the Descendant was born, the shadow beasts known as the Scourge went rampage on her homeland. They were thwarted by Shadow, and the Shadow Mind that summoned those beasts was then imprisoned inside The Sphere.
Once, Moira touched The Sphere, it resulted in her getting infected by the Scourge and this caused her to slowly die. In order to save her life, Shadow took Moira away from her land to find a cure. He once took her to Bolo, the Third Arrow, to no success. The only option left for Shadow was to take Moira to a secluded island. When she arrived on the island, a source of shadow power appeared on the island, and the Scourge influence disappeared from her. However, Moira is not fully cured, as the Scourge will reappear once Moira leaves the island. Shadow told Moira to never leave the island because the Scourge could not reach her there, before he left. From then on, Moira lived on the island with the locals, who accepted her and treated her like their own kind. People outside the island, however, believe that Moira has died from the Scourge.
Chapter V: Shadow Island
When the party enters the island, the Shadow Mind suddenly rises out, after hearing a call from Moira. The player stopped it, and they continue forward to the island. The party meets her, and Moira says her hello to them. It is revealed that she has stopped aging completely, as Moira still looks exactly like how she was many years ago: a child. Before they could talk further, the island Chief cuts off their conversation and threatens the party to leave the island. They refuse and the player deals with the Chief. Moira reveals to them that this Chief has been exploiting the shadow power for his own benefits, and he used it to rule over the island. Hearing this, June asks Moira to come with the party, and that she will try to convince the island people to go against the Chief. Moira really wanted to see Shadow again, so she agrees to come with them. She informs them that they can find Shadow in the north, where her homeland, the Legion Fortress, lies.
Along their way to the ship, the party encounters shadow bots and enemies who are trying to stop Moira from leaving the island. While the player deals with them, Moira tells her story to Marcus and Itu about the Scourge and why she is in the island. Itu convinces her that the Heralds can cure her disease, while Marcus recalls a portrait of her in the Fortress castle and wonders how could Moira have lived since his time and still look so young. Itu speculates that it probably had something to do with Shadow, he may have somehow made Moira immortal. They are also clueless about how Moira can speak to Shadow Mind.
Once everyone makes it to the ship with Moira, they sail away from the island. Captain Phang and Master Okada are confused to have a new guest. Before she could introduce herself, however, Moira starts to weaken and she desperately warns everyone to run. Before they could do anything, the Scourge returns and appears upon them, manifested in the form of a shadow Angel. The player fights the Scourge and defeats it, finally freeing Moira from it completely. Marcus recalls a legend about a foreign hero who saved a land from a Scourge. He comes to the conclusion that Moira is one of the twin princesses who is thought to be dead.
Chapter VI: Heart of the Legion
With Marcus' guidance, the party finally reaches the Legion Fortress. Upon seeing Iolanda, her twin sister who is now a Queen, Moira greets her and comments on how she has grown up and introduces herself and her friends to Iolanda. Iolanda spots Moira wearing a pendant familiar to her, therefore making her believe that this little girl is her missing twin sister. However, Iolanda holds Moira and June captive in the throne room, and she imprisons the rest of the party in jail. Iolanda intends to send Moira to her master, Bolo, hoping to find out how she could be cured from the Scourge. Thankfully, the player and the others make it to the throne room with Sarge's help. Seeing everyone here, the Queen attempts to execute them all, and reveals her doll-like body, surprising Moira. She reveals this is Bolo's doing to ensure she survived from the Scourge. Moira pleas to her twin sister to stop this and to sign a treaty peace with June, as they are not her enemy, to no avail.
After the player entered the grave with Shadow Mind, Moira leaves her homeland once again. She goes to the Dynasty Palace, where June takes her to live there. Once Shadow had returned to the world and set his way to decimate the Dynasty, Marcus rushes to the Palace to warn the Emperor about the incoming attack. Moira runs outside at that moment and when she sees Marcus, she seems to be sensing what would happen and lets out a scream. This casts a kind of a Dome of parallel reality, inside an invisible barrier between the Dynasty Palace and the outer world. Moira is then safe from the attack along with the other Dynasty nobles, while the rest of Dynasty outside the parallel Dome is razed to the ground by Shadow's force.
Moira is later found by the Nomads - survivors of Shadow's attack and what is left of the Dynasty - wandering outside the Dome parallel at the Palace ruins. Her presence is enough to drive away lunatic shadow freaks like the Moths, which in turns caused the Nomads to call her Shadow Bogey. The Nomads take Moira with them, completely unaware of the Dome existence.
Chapter VII, Part II: Behold the Future
Eventually the Legion finds out about the Dome existence and they set their eyes there, aiming to take the Dynasty down for good and to retrieve Moira, who is a crucial part for the Cleansing. Shadow arrived at the Palace before the others and he easily kills everyone in his way, sparing only one Nomad because he provides Moira to him. Shadow then takes Moira with him to the Accelerator, while the Legion takes care of the Palace. The party has no choice anymore but to confront Shadow. The Descendant goes to the Accelerator with Bolo, while the rest defend the Palace.
When they arrived there, Moira instantly recognizes the Descendant and pleas to Shadow to not fight her friend. Shadow does not listen, simply convincing her that she will have new friends in the new world after the Cleansing takes place. He then orders Moira to take Shadow Mind from the Descendant and put it into the Core to start the Cleansing. Moira is unwilling to do such thing, and she cries while watching helplessly as both the Descendant and Shadow fight. Shadow proves to be a deadly adversary, but thanks to Shadow Mind's assistance, the Descendant manages to gain the upper hand against him. Unable to watch any longer, Moira runs towards them in an attempt to stop this. However, Moira briefly loses control over herself and with her power, unleashes a shockwave that pushes both the Descendant and Shadow away. This causes Shadow Mind to rises out with a physical form. When it realizes this, Shadow Mind tries to attack Moira. Shadow quickly shields Moira and tries to stop Shadow Mind and as a result, he accidentally fuses with it. Shadow then enters shadow form and with his new godlike powers, continues the fight. Despite this major turn in the tide of battle, the Descendant emerges victorius against Shadow, taking him down for good. Moira runs toward Shadow and starts crying over his death. Feeling huge grief, Moira completely loses control over herself. Her eyes glow with shadow energy and she pushes the Descendant away, knocking them out. Moira then levitates and forcefully pulls Shadow Mind out telekinetically from Shadow's lifeless body. Shadow Mind desperately tries to free itself from Moira's grasp as she throws it into the Core, triggering the Cleansing. It releases a huge shockwave and evaporates the entire world in shadow energy, killing everyone including herself.
Transformation: June's Plane
Moira appears as the Queen of Legion in June's Plane, an alternate plane where June's dreams are realized, formed after one of the three time travels performed by the Descendant. Unlike the real one who stopped aging completely, this Moira is a grown up adult, although she is still an Abdicator. When she was still a child, Bolo - The Arrow of Knowledge - forced Moira to be around The Sphere for hours on end. He forced her to take the Shadow Mind inside the Sphere and put it into baby Kibo, just like how Galen - the Arrow of Power - wanted it. A fake Sphere was then made in order to trick bandits.
At one point, Moira had to take the throne from her older twin Iolanda, who was too crazy to rule anything. It is unclear how this was achieved, although the Legion could not be happier with this.
The Dynasty have a deal with the Legion that they will destroy The Sphere. Due to her special bond with it, Queen Moira could hear its call since she was a child, burning her from the inside. For people like Marcus, The Sphere is just some abstract curiosity. But for her, it is a living nightmare. The Dynasty kept promising her that they could stop it, although that never happens and it only grew stronger instead. Queen Moira has grown weary of the sweet, empty promises of the Dynasty and when she finds out that the Dynasty has lost the fake Sphere, the Queen has enough of their lies and decides to destroy The Sphere with her own hands. She is satisfied when The Sphere's voice caused the shadowline pipes under the Dynasty capital to blow up and ruining the Capital, happy that the Dynasty finally pays for their greed. Queen Moira is at the destroyed bazaar with her Liquidator army when the Dynasty prince/ss and the others face her. She lectures Marcus to learn how to pick his allies carefully, which she needs to do, too. Phang, still not realizing the truth, promises the Queen that they will find the real Sphere, which in turns caused her to call them useless junks. She then informs them a part of the truth about The Sphere, including how it is technically not a "sphere" and her motivation to eliminate it once and for all. The party refused to let her go, so Queen Moira has no choice but to fight the prince/ss.
At first, Queen Moira fights with her fighting prowess alone. After the prince/ss wins one round, Queen Moira then enters shadow form permanently. She has a deadly shadow form - a pair of angel wings grow on her back. While in this form, the queen is capable of flight, she can fly around the battlefield to smash the ground or charge towards the prince/ss with deadly shadow attacks. After a long effort, the prince/ss manages to defeat Queen Moira. Marcus speaks to the Queen, saying that he thought luck finally smiled upon the Legion when Moira took the throne from poor, crazy Iolanda. He was Moira's loyal servant, and he still is in his heart, although he asks the Queen if what he thought as her bravery is actually her bitterness and anger. Queen Moira then tells Marcus how her past is to him, drawing his sympathy and apology to the Queen. As Moira feels fatigue, the party is suddenly teleported into the destroyed dojo. After she get herself together, Queen Moira continues to the unscathed Palace by herself, where she can feel the living Sphere is. She reaches there and not long after that, the party catches up with her. She witnesses Kibo, the living vessel for Shadow Mind who just murdered the Emperor, with her own eyes but she is unable to bring herself to destroy Kibo - she strangely feels relieved all of a sudden. The queen does not know why she does not want to hurt Kibo, as she instead feels Kibo is not the one to blame, referring to her as a poor thing.
Transformation: Itu's Plane
Transformation: Marcus's Plane
Moira in Fights
Moira is a unique case where she mostly appears as a background character instead of being directly fought as an opponent.
She can be seen crying on the ship during the fight with Angel. Later on, Moira is also prominently appears during the final battle with Shadow. At first, she is seen crying the whole time when Shadow fights the player from inside his giant Robot. Later, after Shadow accidentally fused with Shadow Mind, Moira can be spotted watching the rest of the fight.
In June's Plane, however, Moira is fought as a boss. Like every boss fight in the plane, Moira fight is designed to mirror a previous boss fight in the main world: the Inner Evil boss fight to be exact. This fight can last up to five rounds and the player must score three victories in order to be declared as the winner. It carries the Hydra fight rule, which allows Queen Moira to regenerates her health when she is not taking any damage. The lower the player's Stability, the faster Queen Moira regenerate health. Unlike the majority of the boss fights in the plane where the only differences with their main world counterpart is different gear or two and a rule slapped in, Queen Moira has a some unique differences that makes it stand out from Inner Evil boss fight. For starter, she starts the first round without shadow form at all. And when all her health is depleted, she activates the Abdicator ability, which put her in invincibility state while doubling her damage for 10 seconds. After she loses once, Queen Moira loses her Abdicator ability, but instead enters shadow form permanently. And when she loses twice, Queen Moira gains the same flight abilities used by Angel.
Moira is fought yet again in Itu's Plane part III. Proxy and Kitsune-1 we're sent to Moira's dream after Shibata sent them away from the incorrect timeline. She herself the exact same equipment, perks, and special abilities like in the previous fight with her, except the permanent Shadow Form and the angel abilities. She constantly restores health throughout the battle, the rate of restoration depends on the player's stability. Moira is fought along with her living nightmare called Phantasm. It utilizes the Torturous Nightmare set bonus and the necessary gears to utilize the set. Phantasm is in permanent Shadow Form, and each successful hits (both contact and non contact) dealt by the player on it poisons the player. The effect can stack and the health depletion rate as well as the stacking rate depends on the player's stability.
Gallery
.jpg "Inner evil (6).jpg (759 KB)")
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.jpg "I Hear Voices (7).jpg (605 KB)")
.jpg "I Hear Voices (13).jpg (505 KB)")
Trivia
- Moira's power in projecting what is inside her mind can be borderline creepy, as she can even project her nightmare into a real, living being.
- The cause of Moira having weird powers - mind projection, having an abnormal affinity with Shadow Mind, and her aging stopped altogether - is never explained clearly in the story.
- It is very likely caused by The Sphere's influence and her touching it; although the Emperor - who has had contact with The Sphere as much as Moira, if not more - does not possess such uniqueness even in the slightest.
- Itu speculates that at least the stopped aging part could be a side effect of Shadow's attempt to cure her from the Scourge.
- The fight with Moira in June's Plane carries a rule that allows her to regenerate health. This can be seen as a reference to how the fight with her older sister, Iolanda, plays out: she has the ability to regenerate her health as well, albeit with a different mechanic.
- This is also a reference to their father, which is somewhat a combination of their abilities (can regenerate his health thrice after reaching less than 5% of his health bar).