# 6 - Vanessa (Sacred Stones)

                        Yeah....Vanessa. She exists and does stuff. Not going to sugarcoat it here, there isn't a whole lot to write about when it comes to Vanessa. She seems, more or less, like Karin 2.0. Vanessa is just another early-game rescue-bot who's not that good at fighting and that seems to be all about there is to her. There's a reason why Mekkah listed Vanessa and Karin together when he made his Top 30 Greatest Fire Emblem Characters Countdown. To quote Mekkah from that same link that I just provided you, here are some things that Vanessa (and other Pegasus Knights like her that he listed) can do:

- Move a juggernaut such as Seth, Marcus, Othin, etc towards a boss or group of enemies to be killed.
- Get to a village before brigands do or before you end a map.
- Get a lord to a throne/gate to seize.
- Rescue NPCs that do things you don't want them to do, or transport the NPCs to where they need to go.

                      Vanessa does have to worry about the fact that the first few levels in her game are full of axe users so she's likely to take a few axes to the face without being able to dish out as much damage back. Unlike Karin, Mekkah also was kind enough to show us some of the applications of Vanessa's utility:

Ch2 Ross, Ch5 villages, Ch7 skip around 80% of the map
Then Tana joins so it's only half credit from here, but sometimes you can make use of two fliers.
Ch9 Eirika, Tana has an annoying starting position that makes Vanessa a better choice for carrying someone over the south sea.
Ch10 Eirika, you need both fliers to drop Seth and Eirika near Pablo.
Ch12 Eirika, you could possibly use two fliers since there's so many places to go to over the mountain ranges.
Ch10 Ephraim, not sure what strategies you can employ safely here with fliers, but I'm sure there's something.
Ch15, from here you have Cormag but there's also a desert. Using Vanessa and Tana to ferry thieves and combat units around allows Cormag to actually fight things.
I'd make a point about Ch20 if you don't have Warp but by now you have Syrene so I won't.  

 

              Personally, I believe that Karin's utility makes a bigger impact on her game, but Vanessa does have access to the Luna, I mean the Pierce skill if she promotes to the wyvern knight class so her offense does end up better than Karin's. Also, Vanessa isn't quite as outclassed in her game as Karin is. Karin has to deal with Asvel, Safy, Dean, Fin and Nanna while Vanessa's only competition is Seth, Franz, Cormag and....Gerik? Yeah, Vanessa doesn't get outclassed as bad as Karin does. This means that her contributions are a little more valuable in the long run.

              So in short, Vanessa is an early joining rescue-bot with the potential to get Pierce. There's not really much else to her.