Ariel

A recurrent support character in the Legacy of Kain series, Ariel appears almost exclusively as a ghost. She offers enigmatic advice to the main characters, which, in the first Blood Omen and Soul Reaver games, inform the player of her/his next objective. While Ariel continues to provide clues and guidance in later games, they are mainly of a plot-advancing nature. Ariel is voiced by Anna Gunn throughout the series. Early in the production of Blood Omen, Ariel was known as "Adonathiel".

Ariel's death, first depicted in Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, is a background event to which other characters often refer and a keystone element of the overall Legacy of Kain plot. In life, Ariel was a powerful and beautiful sorceress,[1] the Guardian of the Pillar of Balance and leader of the Circle of Nine. Her assassination by dark forces was the catalyst for the downfall of Nosgoth. Nupraptor the Mentalist, Ariel's lover and fellow Guardian, fell into a paranoid madness upon finding her corpse, which he psychically inflicted on all the other members of The Circle of Nine. The insanity of the Guardians causes the corruption of their Pillars and the gradual decay of Nosgoth, motivating Kain's quest in Blood Omen and forming the basis of Kain's subsequent dilemma.

In the games, Ariel is encountered with few exceptions at the Pillars of Nosgoth, to which her spirit is bound. Her appearances across the series do not occur in chronological order and her behavior toward the main characters, particularly Raziel, varies widely. In Blood Omen, she guides Kain as a fledgling vampire while concealing the fact that he is her replacement as Balance Guardian and must sacrifice himself to succeed in his quest. In Soul Reaver she is an ally to Raziel, offering him cryptic advice, while in her brief Soul Reaver 2 appearance, which precedes Soul Reaver chronologically, she treats Raziel with ambivalence. Ariel goes back to a more substantive role in Defiance, in which she initially identifies Raziel as an enemy but later guides him to undo the harm caused by her murder, resolving her subplot.

The scrapped original ending of Soul Reaver was to include an event in which Raziel strikes down Ariel to absorb her soul into the Soul Reaver, intended to enable new powers in Raziel's weapon. A scene describing this event is used in the final version of Soul Reaver to foreshadow future plot lines, and the concept is adapted into the plot of Defiance.