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Ronda - Maiden of the Marsh

Ronda takes inspiration from Richter Belmont (Rondo of Blood), Trevor Belmont (Judgement, not sorry), Alucard (SotN), King D3 (SmashBros), a bog standard catholic nun, and mosquitos.
With these influences haphazardly shoved into a blender, Ronda plays into the mosquito role by being annoying with exceptional reach and an arsenal of marsh based fauna. With all that said, she belongs to the Water tribe due to her arsenal's topography and themes of purification.


While Ronda does have range, her furthest reaching attacks are used to pull herself to the target instead of zone. This keeps range "balanced" while offsetting her weird ground mobility.
Using a boomerang-esque projectile and an army of marsh monsters (Muddies), Ronda holds stage control steadily with targets to dash to and bounce off of.
Additionally, Ronda can purify the opponent, stealing their "corruption" and adding additional properties to a number of her attacks as well as increasing her weight.


Ronda and her elder sister, Nousha, were travelers of the realm performing mercenary oddjobs for coin. Ronda had gained a heavy conscious from all the deeds done, and while Nousha agreed with her sister's concern, she would always justify it with their own livelihood coming first.
Later in life the siblings found themselves a permanent residence in a quiet town built on a sprawling marsh where Ronda took a liking to the residents' quieter way of life. With Nousha acting as commander to it's tiny patrol and Ronda performing her purification rituals, turning corruption into life, the two would provide aid and relief to the townsfolk of Mahpe.
Then one fateful day, as the moon rose and Nousha's squad made their way back from patrol, the ground below them began to shake. The wetland beneath Nousha and her troops gave way to a split in the earth, and something corrupted was down there. Below their foothold the abyss lashed out, dragging those unfortunate souls to the world below.
Ronda, having seen her sister pulled into the crack, gathered what little supplies she could and jumped in after her.
insert fighting game arcade mode
One by one Ronda would find and purify the lost soldiers, growing her army of excess corruption and traveling ever deeper into the abyss.

tl:dr castlevania but going down instead of up


Ronda's initial dash starts slow, but quickly picks up speed and becomes invincible while she's under the mud. If the control stick is returned to a neutral position, Ronda will keep that momentum into the next attack. If near or holding a Mud, Ronda has less traction.


Starting with a mudslide, Ronda vaults off of the ground to avoid damage. The airborne portion of the roll can be interrupted at any point, allowing for varied mix-up and approach options. The roll gains distance when near or holding a Mud.


Ronda disappears in a cloud of cattail pollen. Her airdodge lacks vertical distance but has great horizontal coverage and is fully steerable, additionally, inputting the opposite vertical direction before your actual direction will increase it's distance.
If Ronda is near a Mud when starting her airdodge, she'll pick up and throw the Mud while keeping her airdodge momentum/Rival's equivalent of a WaddleDash.



The whip spins forward like a buzzsaw, this attack can be angled Up or Down.

Twirling dodges projectiles.

A long whip forwards that can tipper. If the whip hits a valid target, Ronda will pull herself into it and deliver a strong punch. Ronda can turn during the dash as well as Jump, Roll, or Parry.
If Ronda has Corruption, FStrong can be used midair.

A long whip upwards that can tipper. If the whip hits a valid target, Ronda will pull herself into it and deliver a strong punch. The dash can be Jump or Airdodge canceled.

A straightforward projectile that breaks apart after some time. If the Seedrang hits a Mud or Muddy, it becomes a Mudrang that travels the entire screen.


Ronda throws a flask containing a Mud. Muds will traverse the stage without a care in the world and attack at their own pace. If Ronda strikes a Mud with FStrong, UAir, or DAir, she will gain the On Hit effects they provide such as dashes and bounces. Additionally, being near a Mud alters attacks such as UTilt, DTilt, DAttack, BAir, and USpecial.


Ronda grabs the target, purifying their "corruption". Using "corruption", Ronda's FTilt and BAir gain power and multiple hits, her Specials gain new properties (ex. FSpecial will throw a Muddy, an explosive Mud variant), and her weight increases.
DSpecial afterwards becomes a charge move with 3 levels.
If Ronda grabs a Mud, she plops it on her head. This "mud hat" state counts as being near a Mud, but Ronda will drop the poor guy when getting hit.



This has no bearing on Ronda's current playstyle, this is just extracurricular because I'm not the happiest with how the purity gimmick ended up, but it's on me for concepting her more for Rivals2 than Rivals1.

Woe 1: DSpecial is Ronda's literal grab. This caused issues all around as it should only reward 1 pip of "corruption" (Special pummel for an extra pip), but letting the player perform regrabs in a game with very limited defensive options was, not good, so I made it a full 3 pips per grab and prevented DSpecial from being used again while "corruption" is available. Might've been a better way of going about that, but we ended up moving the original DSpecial to DStrong.

Woe 2: Ronda's original gimmick was a more generalized Kirby where the Element of the opponent she purified would change the properties of her whip attacks (ex. using NAir, Fire made the whip a multi-hit with no tipper, Air would fire a projectile with low damage but major knockback). This ran into major issues, 1. I could only make it work for basecast and specified workshop characters, and making a "support code" character was out of my ballpark. 2. The amount of sprites needed, 5 per whip attack x 4 per pip level, even with a post_draw/pre_draw cop-out it just wasn't going to work in the amount of time I projected I had.
So I went and thought "man, I miss waddle dees", though elemental Muds would be kinda funny.