Santalla

Santalla is a 5-star character in Arknights. Santalla's class is Caster. Faction: Sami.

On our Arknights tier list Santalla is C tier, 205th of the 293 characters ranked, from where 5 current tier lists put Santalla.

A 5-star Caster who gains ATK and Status Resistance after 20 seconds on the field. Swift Strike γ raises ATK and attack speed, while Witch's Tears extends her range and rapidly drops icicles over random spots, inflicting Cold and Arts damage. She's a serviceable area Caster whose second skill is her main draw.

Her codename is named after the feminine form for santalum, Latin for "sandalwood." Her Chinese codename is literally translated as "frozen sandalwood."

Santalla's animal motif is based on the Norwegian Forest cat breed and the said cat is present on her Elite 2 artwork.

Prior to her announcement many people suspected her to be a Vulpo instead.

Santalla first appeared in Operational Intelligence as a NPC.

It took her almost 4 years to be promoted as a playable operator.

Santalla is the first Splash Caster to be released since Dusk for almost 2.5 years.

Unlike others, Santalla's artist is instead labelled as "Studio Montagne," the main production studio of Arknights, rather than the artist's names or aliases.

She would be followed by Vendela.

It is still unclear why this happens, but a possible reason could be that her artist who drew her earlier might have left Hypergryph, hence the illustration credit is attributed towards the studio.

In fact, the art style between her base art and her Elite 2 artwork have several differences, suggesting that the latter could have been done by other artist.

Despite the skill description saying 'random', the tiles Santalla chooses to hit in her second skill are not truly randomly chosen.

Its first blast will target a random tile on her left, the second blast will fall on a random tile to her right, then one on the center.

As Santalla cannot attack map boundaries, one can actually tighten her attack range in certain maps and make her Freeze guaranteed.

Santalla is the third operator to have a talent that lets her gain Status Resistance after several seconds of deployment.

The other two are Blaze and Gnosis (with the latter also applying it to other operators from the Karlan faction).

The visual effects of these three operator's talents are all the same.

Operator tab

Profile: A shaman of a Sami tribe, who's exiled for some reason, she regards Rhodes Island as her new tribe after receiving Oripathy treatment and has since started her life anew.

She's proficient in manipulating the wind and snow and can go back and forth in low temperature area with low visibility.

Called "witch" by her adversaries who don't know anything about Sami.

Clinical Analysis

Imaging tests have shown the outlines of her internal organs to be indistinct due to abnormal shadows.

Originium granules have been detected in her circulatory system, confirming her to be infected with Oripathy.

【Cell-Originium Assimilation】10%

Her left eye was severely infected and completely crystallized, but it remains functional

【Blood-Originium Crystal Density】0.16u/L

She's been infected for some period of time and I'm not quite optimistic with her condition.

Fortunately, she cooperated with the treatment procedures and recently her conditions are stable.

“I'm not sure if what I hear is true or not, but did she just say her crystallized eye is still functioning well?”

——Anonymous Medic Operator

Sucralose, Archive File 1: Santalla rarely appears on Rhodes Island, preferring to stay amongst the wood and stone and walk with nature than live amongst the steel.

She’s usually active within Sami. She’s in charge of the combat missions assigned to the area, being a guide for operators newly arriving in Sami, or escorting Sami civilians with Oripathy to Rhodes Island headquarters for help.

Sami operators working in Sami sounds like a very normal thing, but according to a census conducted by the HR department, out of all the operators, those from Sami had the highest percentage of unwillingness to leave their place of origin for work.

Some people believe that it’s a common trait, especially for the central-north Sami.

They don’t feel comfortable after they leave the natural environment of the Sami region.

In a way, it is the truth. There’s almost no similarity between Sami culture and the rest of Terra’s culture.

The only knowledge the Sami have about the world outside are the trades between Ursus and Columbia.

After coming into contact with the outer world and realizing that living there will completely flip everything they’ve known for the first half of their lives upside down, its normal to want to back down and go back to Sami.

Santalla also knows this very clearly, so when she’s at Rhodes Island, she’ll go to class with the children.

While the others write on their notebooks, she carves and draws with a wooden board.

She rarely talks. This gives people a feeling that she’s quiet and calm, but in reality, she’s just trying to prevent her Sami accent from causing her unneeded trouble.

In other words, when she’s talking to other people, she doesn’t want her words to have an accent.

In her understanding, it’s disrespectful to the other languages.

There are very few people who can see the Santalla without all her burdens, when she can talk to her heart’s content.

But even then, Santalla is still a thoughtful and warm confidant and listener.

However, even fewer people know about how stubborn Santalla was when she just arrived at Rhodes Island, when she had not yet become an operator.

Archive File 2: Very few people know that Santalla is the "Witch" who haunts the border between Sami and Ursus, giving the Ursus authorities lots of headaches.

She was near hysterical, attacking the Ursus at all costs, not at all noticing the damage the Originium was doing to her body.

When an Rhodes Island operator on a combat mission in Sami stumbled upon Santalla, she had already been unconscious on the field of ice for a long time.

Santalla never thought she would be helped by an outlander, but it was reality and she couldn’t argue against it.

She gave one unconditional promise to the other so she could repay the favor, and the outlander – the Rhodes Island operator – suggested that she leave Sami with them so she could receive treatment for her Oripathy at Rhodes Island.

She had never been far from Sami and did not know what was out in the world, so she instinctively declined the invitation, but because she had made a promise, in the end, she reluctantly boarded the steel structure with the operator.

When Santalla first arrived at Rhodes Island, she felt very uncomfortable.

On one hand, she hadn't gotten used to living in a giant structure of steel, and on the other hand, the Ursus that were everywhere made her instinctively feel threatened.

Her home was destroyed because of the Ursus’ invasions, but the Ursus here greeted her as if nothing had ever happened.

If Santalla hadn't made a vow on the first day of treatment that she wouldn't make a move against the Ursus on Rhodes Island, she probably would have made a big fight out of it already.

However, Santalla herself didn’t anticipate that she would be able to re-experience the warmth of friendship and trust in this cold steel structure.

Her heart rejected everything outside of Sami.

This was caused by the brutality of the Ursus, and the portion of the tourists who thought they were superior.

But when she let go of these stereotypes and looked at all the different people in Rhodes Island rationally, she realized that she and they were not different.

They were all bitter people tormented by the pain of Oripathy, stumbling around in a tough world trying to live.

Venting your emotions to others just because you didn’t understand or didn’t want to understand, or even imposing your own pain on other people...

this kind of narrow-minded and selfish attitude is not what a Sami or a shaman should have.

So, she put aside her prejudice and resentment, and tried to make a change.

Her friends saw these efforts and chose an opportune moment to give a set of clothes that were long ago customized to Santalla.

It was only after then that she slowly became what we know her as today.

Archive File 3: The name of the tribe Santalla belonged to was “Freezing Cold”.

It existed at the border between Sami and Ursus, close to the forest at the entrance of the ice field.

Because of the harsh climate, the clan had the tradition of throwing the babies away.

Santalla had been one of the babies that were destined to die at the mouth of the wild beasts, but as she was about to be thrown out, the clan’s old tree’s branches were being blown by the wind, and it hooked on to the cloth they swaddled her in.

Her destiny was changed by the dead, withered tree.

The clan saw this as a decree from Sami, so they brought Santalla back to the clan and made her parents keep on raising her.

And when her parents died in a hunt, the clan's Snowpriest raised her and taught her the clan's shamanic heritage and originium skills.

At that time, everyone believed that when Santalla grew up, she would become the new Snowpriest and the clan’s leader.

However, nature doesn’t listen to mankind’s wishes.

Snowstorms from the north kept on claiming parts of the forest land, and if they were to keep on living here, the entire clan would perish, but if they left the clan tree, they would become the laughingstock of all the other clans in Sami.

In the end, the clan separated into two branches.

One migrated towards the south in search for land better suited for living, and the other branch stayed with the tree, guarding it until the last moment.

Survival triumphed over religion, and most of the people followed the Snowpriest, leaving the old tree.

Only Santalla and a few other pious believers stayed behind.

The wind and snow quickly tore down most of the forest, only leaving the old tree standing.

The people who stayed behind built a camp around the tree, and Santalla used her Originium arts to control the direction the snowstorm went in, directing the most furious gusts of wind elsewhere so the tree would be safe.

Her life started from this tree, so she was also prepared to end her life for it.

She planned for everything, but she didn’t expect for the Ursus to suddenly arrive, calling it their land.

Everyone died because they weren’t willing to leave or submit, but Santalla, who was luckily out patrolling, wasn’t harmed.

When the Ursus troops stationed at the border tried to set traps to ambush her, she summoned a snowstorm, hiding everything within.

The Ursus massacred her clanmates, and she used nature to massacre the Ursus.

In the wind and the snow, a crazed Ursus soldier penetrated her eye with an Originium spike, wanting to force the pain and curse of Oripathy onto Santalla, but to her, it was just another stack of hay added to the fire.

Ever since then, she’s been roaming at the Ursus border, killing any Ursine target she sees.

She was called the “Witch” by the Ursus and had a high bounty to her name.

This hatred hasn’t melted, even now.

Archive File 4: Santalla has already experienced too many deaths.

Her death, the death of her parents, the death of her clanmates, the death of the old tree, the death of her enemies.

There’s going to be more death waiting for her in the future.

She was born with death as a partner.

She wants to deny this, she wants to defy it, but it’s bound to be fruitless.

When hate overwhelmed reason, she was so close to thinking that was right.

Without the help of her new friends, and without Rhodes Island, she would have awakened from her pain and continued to kill and go mad until her Oripathy acted up, until she was arrested and executed by the Ursine authorities, or being influenced by the evil and becoming the “Cold Plague”.

The climate in Sami was so frozen and cold that even the little warmth left in her heart floated away on the wind, turning her into cold ice, making the only way she knew to interact by giving a cold shoulder.

So, when Santalla saw Amiya shaking hands with her while smiling, when the child beside her asks about the definition of a work, when she receives a piece of candy that’s sweeter than honey from someone else’ hands—

When she engraves codes for other people once again, when she drinks the whole cup of alcohol, when she sleeps without a single worry......

Only when the love of life turned over the coldness in her heart did she understand that what accompanied her wasn’t death, but the past.

It had also once been filled by the warmth of life, but unfortunately, neither light or heat can last forever.

And so, it morphed into memories and symbols, surviving in words and pieces of paper.

What it wants to keep isn’t the pain and remorse when you lose someone.

On the contrary, it wanted the present to know the warmth and wonderfulness of the past.

Now that Santalla knows this, she’s going to act how it wants her to act.

Because the past defines the present, and the present defines the future.

Promotion Record: The curse from the Ursus gave Santalla a crystallized eye.

She had originally thought that the Originium spike that pierced through her eye would’ve taken away her life or her vision in one eye completely.

But in the end, neither of those happened.

The crystals slowly gathered and formed a new eye.

Of course, in that eye, everything on the land no longer appeared in the way she was familiar with.

Living things, dead things, no matter what was in front of her, it released information beyond its appearances.

No matter when.

The training she underwent as a shaman allowed her to observe an object below its surface, but her new eye didn’t provide a comprehensive view—

Instead, it received.

Large amounts, repetitive, unending information.