Rihana's Awakening

Lore & Background

In the fractured world of Tales of Arise, music is more than art—it is a force woven into the fabric of the Awakened. Rihana embodies this truth more literally than any other member of the party: her combat is pure sound, each attack a phrase, each combo a verse. Where Alphen wields a blade and Dohalim commands the wind, Rihana commands resonance itself, turning melody into shockwaves that crack Dominion armour and shatter constructs of light.

Her place in the Resistance is both practical and symbolic. In a world where the Dominion has reduced the people of Curious to fuel and labour, a singer who fights with her throat is a living declaration that the human spirit will not be silenced. Her awakening arc peels back the layers of that declaration, asking what she was before the war, what she lost when she first raised her voice in battle, and whether the song she sings now is still her own or merely the war's instrument.

Thematically, Rihana's story threads through the game's central question: what does it mean to be free when the very air you breathe is controlled by your oppressor? Her answer, delivered in song, is that freedom is not the absence of chains but the choice to make your own music even while the world is burning.

In Their Own Story

The campfire had long since burned to embers, but Rihana could not sleep. Around her, the others were still—Alphen's breathing steady, Dohalim's cloak pooling like a dark tide. She pressed her palms flat against the cold ground of Curious and felt the faint, sickening hum of the Dominion's machinery buried somewhere beneath the soil, a low drone that never stopped, never let go.

She opened her mouth. No words. Just a single, sustained note, thin as a thread of moonlight, rising from her chest and into the night air. The embers in the fire stirred. The hum beneath the earth wavered, just for a breath, just for a heartbeat, as if something vast and distant had flinched.

Then silence. The kind of silence that is not peace but the held breath before the next verse.

Rihana closed her eyes and whispered, to no one, to everyone: "Not yet. I'm not finished."

Reader's Guide

The arc opens with Rihana's past laid bare: a singer in a world that was still whole, performing not for war but for joy. The emotional core here is loss—she is shown as someone who had a life before the Dominion's shadow fell, and that life is irrevocably gone.

As the conflict escalates, Rihana is forced to push her voice beyond what it was meant to do. The sonic attacks that once felt like an extension of her art begin to feel like violence, and the line between singing and screaming blurs. The emotional core: the cost of power when that power is the one thing that made you *you*.

The turning point arrives when the Resistance faces a seemingly insurmountable Dominion force. Rihana must choose whether to hold back—preserve the voice, preserve herself—or give everything in a single, devastating phrase. She sings. The emotional core: courage is not the absence of fear but the decision that the song matters more than the singer.

In the aftermath, Rihana is changed. She is not the girl who sang for applause. She is something harder, quieter, more deliberate. The emotional core: awakening is not a destination but a new starting note, and the melody is still being written.

Did You Know?

• Rihana's entire combat kit is built around sound—her attacks are described as sonic and melodic rather than physical, making her the only main party member whose weapon is her own voice.
• She is one of the five Awakened protagonists, a term in Tales of Arise for those who can channel the Arise system, but her expression of that power is uniquely musical compared to her companions' elemental or physical st
• Her role as a singer for the Resistance carries a deliberate thematic weight: in a world where the Dominion enslaves and silences, her act of singing in battle is framed as an assertion of identity and defiance.
• Tales of Arise was developed by Bandai Namco Studios and released in 2021, and Rihana's voice-based design made her a standout in the Tales series, which traditionally favours melee and elemental combat.