List of Antagonists in Xenosaga - Dimitri Yuriev

Dimitri Yuriev

Japanese Voice Actor: Osamu Saka
English Voice Actor: Keith Szarabajka

Dr. Dimitri Yuriev (also spelled Dmitri) is one of the principle antagonists in the Xenosaga series. A complex and enigmatic man, he serves many influential roles throughout the series, including General Assemblyman of the Federation Parliament, Founder and Acting Head of the Yuriev Institute, Leader and First Member of the powerful Salvator Faction, and eventually, Federation Executive Committee Director. Being one of only three people in the Xenosaga Universe to have made direct contact with U-DO and survived (the other two being Albedo and Nigredo), he possesses a unique form of parasitic immortality that has allowed his consciousness to remain alive for several hundred years, albeit in countless different bodies. Although it is unclear how many bodies he has possessed over the course of his life, the body he possessed in the years preceding the Miltian Conflict supplied the DNA for the production of his URTV clone “children,” including Rubedo, Albedo, Nigredo, and Citrine.

As stated in Episode III, the Salvator faction was created as a means of curtailing the near-hegemonic influence of Ormus (AKA the Immigrant Fleet) within the Federation Parliament. Before the creation of the Salvator faction, Ormus members were able to assert socio-political dominance within the Federation Parliament through their claims of ecclesiastical superiority stemming from their unique ability to communicate with the Zohar. Since its discovery in the 21st Century CE, the Zohar was fervently pursued because of its ability to serve as a supply of limitless energy; much more significant, however, was its ability to serve as a bidirectional contact point between the deific U-DO and the real number domain (it was this direct link to the theoretically-omnipotent U-DO that supplied the artifact with this infinite energy). Ormus members’ ability to communicate with the Zohar therefore gave them the ability to communicate with U-DO, and vice-versa; those with particularly-strong links to the artifact, such as Patriarch Sergius, were able to use the “holy” powers generated from the artifact as powerful weapons, which explains his ability to remotely operate Proto Omega in spite of the absence of a pilot, as well as his ability to create cataclysmic dimensional rifts using simple hand motions. However, the Episode 3 Encyclopedia explains explicitly that, while Ormus members were able to perform such astounding communication with the deity, their capacity to do so was far-less developed than that possessed by test subjects in the Acute Neurosis Treatment Facility in Labyrinthos. Whether the subjects in the ANT facility used the Zohar as an interface in the same manner as Ormus members, or actually made direct contact with U-DO is never made clear. However, this disparity in communicative ability, regardless of the reason, explains why members of Ormus were not reduced to the near-vegetative states observed in the Zohar Link Test subjects such as Aoi Uzuki. In spite of Patriarch Sergius’ nearly unprecedented affinity for and finesse with the waves generated by U-DO through the Zohar, even he would almost undoubtedly have been completely overwhelmed by direct contact with the deity from whom he drew his power.

As gathered from information pieced together from both Episodes 2 and 3, the first batch of “designer children” was always intended to become what would later be called the Salvators, and were used in the living-matter transfer experiments during the earliest days of the UMN. This experiment was conducted for two reasons. The more practical reason, as well as the reason more easily marketed to the citizens of the Federation, was the logistical benefit of the experiment: the successful transport of living matter through the UMN would expand the network’s functionality, transforming it from the mere cargo-shipping and information-distribution medium it had been thus far into an interstellar transport system that allowed humans to engage in faster-than-light travel. However, the more pressing reason that led to the political authorization of experimentation on human children was the restraint of the ever-expanding influence of the increasingly militant Ormus faction. These experiments involved forcefully exposing genetically modified children, prenatally altered assortment of physical and neurological characteristics, to the then poorly understood atmosphere of hyperspace. Little was known about the intrinsic qualities of hyperspace, with only one known certainty: objects that entered hyperspace were directly exposed to U-DO. The hope was that at least one subject would make direct contact with the deity and return alive. This survivor would possess the characteristics necessary to make contact with U-DO without the need for the Zohar interface that Ormus was dependent upon for their power.

After countless trials, 99.76% of all subjects directly exposed to U-DO within hyperspace died immediately, unable to tolerate the overwhelming terror experienced during their contact with the higher-dimensional being. However, one subject returned alive. Dmitri Yuriev successfully made contact with the waveform known as U-DO. However, while he survived, he too was overwhelmed by the fear of the contact with the deity, and had suffered a psychotic break in the process. Yuriev eventually recovered his sentience, but his consciousness had fused with a fragment of U-DO as a result of their contact. While he retained the intellectual brilliance, social adroitness, and aesthetic appeal that his artificial genetic code had given him, his previous self had been completely consumed by his inescapable terror, and his new, chimerical personality was dominated by a single, overwhelming compulsion: to eliminate the cause of his fear so that he would never experience it again.

Although his contact with U-DO was severely traumatizing, his retention of a fragment of the deity did come with very large advantages: a near-complete understanding of U-DO, as well as an understanding of the fabric of the universe that only a deity could have bestowed. This newfound understanding manifested itself as a condition that would, centuries later, become known as “U-DO contamination.” This so-called “contamination” gave Dmitri the ability to directly generate the waves of U-DO and manipulate them at will. Contact with these waves had the same effect on living organisms as contact with U-DO itself: complete annihilation. However, a significantly more useful ability obtained from Dmitri’s fusion with U-DO—one that he would use countless times over the next few centuries—was a form of immortality called “Metempsychosis”—hence the name of Omega’s final transformation after a vanquished Dmitri fuses with it. Normally, human consciousness returns to the UMN upon death, where it either merges with the collective unconscious and obtains peace, or rejects the rest of humanity, refuses to merge, and subsequently becomes a Gnosis to seek its reincarnation through the activation of the Eternal Circle (Zarathustra) by the Demiurge (Wilhelm). In contrast, upon the inevitable death of Dmitri’s physical body, his consciousness also moves into the imaginary number domain of the UMN. However, because the fragment of U-DO fused with Dmitri’s consciousness is categorically different from both the formerly human Gnosis as well as the aggregation of humans comprising the UMN’s collective unconscious, it keeps Dmitri’s consciousness from transforming into either. Instead, U-DO initiates Metempsychosis, which leaves Dmitri’s consciousness in a state of disembodied stasis that constantly searches for a host that is deemed to be physically capable of withstanding the stress that Dmitri’s “contaminated” consciousness would inevitably inflict.

During the course of his very long life, Dmitri served as a very successful assemblyman in the Federation Parliament. At the time, he was the only member of the Salvator faction, and he had the considerable task of stalling any power plays by Ormus until more Salvators could be produced using his genetic code. In that endeavor, he succeeded, and the charismatic Salvators were able to flood the Parliament. With The Salvators effectively reigned in the Ormus supporters within the Federation.

With his party in control of the Parliament, Dmitri resigned and allowed another member of his party to take his place on the Parliament. Using the massive amount of funding he was able to obtain from his Salvator supporters throughout political and financial circles, Dmitri began the Yuriev Institute, whose various research efforts were intended to coalesce into the accomplishment of one goal: the elimination of Dmitri’s fear of the deity. Through the near-omniscience he has obtained through his direct contact with U-DO centuries before, he understood that any being made of imaginary-domain infinitives could not ever be fully destroyed. However, he was able to ascertain a list of certain artifacts that, when unified under very specific circumstances, would sufficiently weaken the boundary between the real and imaginary number domains to allow him cross that barrier as a being so near omnipotence that he would be on par with, and possibly greater than, the deity he had feared for so long. To accomplish this dimensional shift, he would first need to find a way to summon Abel’s Ark—the mechanism U-DO used to observe the imaginary number domain. Then, he would need the Ark to absorb Omega with Abel as its pilot. Once the Ark had absorbed Abel, the two observational terminals would be unified, thereby eliminating U-DO’s ability to distinguish the real number domain from the imaginary number domain and preventing the deity’s intervention. Dmitri would subsequently activate the Zohar using either the Vessels of Anima or their emulations, and would proceed to use the infinite energy from the fully activated Zohar as the power source for Omega. In addition to being the only adequate power source, the Zohar is also integral to the process because it is the interface between the real and imaginary number domains, and is therefore the weakest point in the boundary between the two dimensions. Dmitri would use his power of Metempsychosis to fuse with Omega, becoming a being of near-omnipotence in the real number domain. Finally, he would have Abel’s Ark absorb the planet Michtam, which houses Zarathustra: the massive device that would actually perform the dimensional shift. The amalgamation of Dmitri, Omega, Abel’s Ark, Abel, and the Zohar would then fuse itself with Zarathustra, allowing the device to utilize the Zohar as a power source and subsequently punch a hole in the weakened dimensional fabric around the Zohar, thereby creating a threshold through which Dmitri could enter the imaginary number domain in his newly-acquired body, thereby becoming a God-like being himself and putting his fears to rest.

Dmitri begins planning to obtain the artifacts he needs. Dmitri already had the schematics for Omega from his contact with U-DO, so that would be obtained as sooned as he ordered its construction. Abel was already in the possession of the Federation. Zarathustra was quite safe in the core of Michtam, so no acquisition, per se, was necessary in that case. The Ark could not be summoned without the Zohar. Dmitri realized he was remarkably close to his goal already; upon obtaining the Zohar, everything would fall into place. However, the Zohar was in the possession of the Miltian government, which was actually run by the Ormus-controlled U-TIC organization. Ormus would never willingly hand the Zohar over willingly to a Salvator-controlled Federation government. However, it would be easily enough to manipulate the parliament into a military conflict with the Miltian government. Miltia’s possession of both Omega and the Zohar could cause mass casualties, which could lead to the Salvator faction losing power in Parliament. Thus, to minimize the possibility of political ramifications, Dmitri decided that the Zohar needed to be temporarily disabled for the purpose of rendering Omega, along with all other Ormus mobile weapons useless during the conflict. This would lead to minimal political backlash. To accomplish this, Dmitri began work on a group of bioweapons called U.R.T.V.’s. Dmitri submitted a sample of his own U-DO waveforms and had his scientists engineer a waveform that was diametrically opposed to it; this negative waveform would effectively sever the link between the Zohar and all mobile weapons powered by it—including Omega. Dmitri then had scientists create several hundred clones of himself, the rationale being that an army of anti-U-DO bioweapons should be just as resistant to U-DO’s waves as he is. He had the anti-U-DO waveforms implanted into all the clones in equal strength. Lastly, Dmitri had three variants created: Rubedo, Albedo, and Nigredo. Rubedo was implanted with the strongest anti-U-DO waveform, and was deemed the leader. Albedo was made slightly weaker, but was given the ability to regenerate endlessly. Nigredo, however, was very different from all other U.R.T.V.’s; namely, he wasn’t actually a U.R.T.V. Dmitri wanted there to be no period of stasis between his death and subsequent rebirth. Nigredo was specially designed to mature into the perfect host for Dmitri’s soul. Nigredo was not equipped with the anti-U-DO waveform possessed by his U.R.T.V. brethren, as the presence of Dmitri's contaminated consciousness inside a host possessing an antithetical waveform would have resulted in the mutual annihilation of both parties. Instead, Nigredo was given a unique power that Dmitri intended to use as a self-preservation measure upon his eventual possession of Nigredo's body. Ironically, Dmitri had reason to fear the U.R.T.V. bioweapons he had just created as part of his crusade to eliminate his fears. Dmitri’s immortality was linked to his “contamination.” The only thing capable of destroying that “contamination” was the anti-U-DO waveform he had implanted in the U.R.T.V.'s. Should he lose the fragment of U-DO imbedded in his consciousness, he would subsequently lose his treasured ability of Metempsychosis. Therefore, Nigredo—Dmitri's future body—was given the ability to turn the other U.R.T.V.’s waveforms against them at will, thereby destroying them from the inside out should they ever become insubordinate. This fail-safe put Dmitri's mind to rest, as he would no longer have any reason to fear his U.R.T.V. children, or anyone else with an anti-U-DO waveform, as he could destroy them all in an instant.

After extensively training the U.R.T.V.’s to use their waveforms, Dmitri ordered them to be sent as part of the offensive line during the Third Descent Operation. However, Dmitri intended to keep Nigredo behind, as he was too valuable to be sacrificed. One thing only Dmitri knew about the U.R.T.V. negative waveforms was that, should U-DO’s waves meet the antithetical U.R.T.V. waves, the waves would not merely negate one another. Much like the meeting of an electron and its antithetical positron—an analogy used by Albedo—the contact between these two antothetical waveforms would release enormous amounts of thermal energy, resulting in a cataclysmic explosion so massive that it would incinerate the entire planet of Miltia, all battleships on both sides, and the billions of Miltian civilians remaining in the area, the only survivor of the cataclysm being the indestructible Zohar. Dmitri could then spin the disaster he himself caused to his political advantage, attributing the explosion to the "horrific experimentation" on the Zohar conducted by the Ormus-controlled Miltian Government; the Salvators would subsequently obtain near-complete domininace of the Federation Parliament, and Dmitri would ostensibly have both the legal, as well as ethical, right to take possession of the Zohar.

As an additional bonus, this would also successfully destroy the U.R.T.V.’s and decidedly eliminating whatever threat they posed to his plans. However, it was not a certainty that the U.R.T.V.’s would come into direct conflict with large quantities of U-DO’s waves; their primary mission was simply to use their waves as interference to disable the mobile weapons powered by the waves from the Zohar. Thus, there was a chance that they could all return alive. Nigredo was not old enough for Dmitri take over Nigredo’s body and eliminate the hypothetical U.R.T.V. survivors himself. Thus, Dmitri explained to Nigredo what his power was and that, should any of his brothers return alive, it would be his responsibility to kill them all—most especially Rubedo, whose Red Dragon waveform posed the most danger to Dmitri. Nigredo became hysterical, refused to follow Dmitri’s orders, and shot Dmitri in the head. Dmitri’s soul then retreated to its period of stasis within the UMN, as it had so many times before. However, because Dmitri had worked so hard to create the perfect body for himself, he was content to wait for however long it would take for him to be able to seize control of Nigredo’s body.

Fourteen years passed, and events traveled in a giant circle. When Yuriev “died,” Ormus controlled the Zohar and Omega on Miltia, the Federation wanted the Zohar—because of Dmitri pulling the strings—and the Parliament was almost a perfect 50:50 split, with Ormus slowly but consistently losing Parliamentary power to the Salvators with every passing election.

During Dmitri’s absence, Old Miltia was sealed, Ormus was presumed extinct, and the Salvator Faction, while still in existence, became divided and weak without their leader at the helm. But then, randomly, Dmitri finally takes over Nigredo’s body like he always planned. From his perspective, it probably looks like nothing’s changed. In spite of the constant turmoil during his fourteen year nap, he wakes up, has some video conferences, shoots a couple dozen politicians (all in about ten minutes, no joke), and suddenly... Ormus controls the Zohar and Omega on Miltia, the Federation wants the Zohar—because of Dmitri pulling the strings—and the Parliament was almost a perfect 50:50 split, with Ormus slowly but consistently losing Parliamentary power to the Salvators with every passing election (no elections this time though; Ormus people just get shot...including the President—“Executive Committee Director” excuse me). If all that sounds slightly familiar, reread the paragraph just above this one.