Before I go on, I guess it would be useful at this point to explain to you just who Anatia is and how the Manipulatives came to be. It all started a couple thousand years ago, in ancient Animia.

All living things (including plants) have "lifeforce." It is a sacred substance that is life itself. It is what makes things alive, what gives things a conscience and the ability to feel things: sensations, textures, pain and all the rest of it. In ancient times it was only gods and the silent plants of the world who had lifeforce within them. Anatia was the goddess of lifeforce, but because of her abilities to create lifeforce as well as give or take it from things, she was banished from the place in the heavens that the world's gods called home.

With light comes dark, and where there is lifeforce there is darkforce. Darkforce was a mysterious substance which the world's gods knew little about. However, because darkforce was lifeforce's dark counterpart, Anatia actually knew quite a lot about it. Darkforce mixed itself with lifeforce and corrupted it. Darkforce was what made the gods do bad things. Anatia was the only god who knew just how to permanently banish darkforce from a person so that it would never take hold. You know how sometimes you might do something you know is wrong, and later you feel guilty about it? Well, your darkforce made you do it, but your lifeforce was trying to overcome the darkforce. Every human has darkforce; it balances out the lifeforce.

Thousands of years after she was banished, Anatia found a large piece of land that the humans and other gods had not found yet. She created a home for herself in the heavens above this place. When humans did eventually find this place, Anatia revealed herself to them. In those times, all humans worshipped a god or gods. None knew of Anatia though, for she had been banished long a go.

Because these humans worshipped Anatia and knew of her existance, their darkforce became weaker. Eventually the only way it could "live on" was for it to exit the humans' bodies and manifest itself as demons and mosters. Anatia knew that some humans would have to know of lifeforce and its secrets and she decided that she favoured this kingdom. To stop the darkforce creatures from destroying it and its people, Anatia closely watched the people of the land to find one whose lifeforce was the purest naturally. Anatia transferred just a tiny bit of her own lifeforce into this person when she found them.

His name was Arithmius. Arithmius was a brave and kind soul, and Anatia knew he would be perfect for what she was about to do. For the first time, humans would know the true nature and power of the sacred substance, lifeforce.

Anatia revealed herself to Arithmius when he was alone, and told him that she had chosen him as Animia's guardian. She taught him how lifeforce might be manipulated, used as a weapon itself, and to transfer a little of his own lifeforce into another, just as she had done with him. He thus became the first Manipulative.

Arithmius accepted his divine duty and he destroyed many of the beasts plaguing the land. But it soon became clear that one Manipulative was not enough. As he destroyed one monster, more arrived, and sometimes monsters he had already faught were reincarnated. Anatia told Arithmius in a dream that he would need allies to win the war against the dark, and so he trusted his closest friends with the secrets of lifeforce.

Arithmius and his small group managed to keep the monsters at bay for some time but it became clear that their mortal bodies were not strong enough for their task. They had to strengthen their lifeforce powers to keep the monsters gone now, and it was taking its toll on them. But Arithmius was a resourceful man. Because Anatia favoured him and his land and wanted to do all she could to help banish the darkforce creatures for good, she gave him a sacred substance known as Anatium. Only Anatia had known of this substance; it was a divine metal only she could find. Anatia taught Arithmius of the mystical properties of Anatium, and how it might be used to host a person's lifeforce and human essence.

It took many years for Arithmius to complete his work, and in that time he had a son. His son had inherited the Manipulative powers from his father and knew he had to be the subject for the test, as Arithmius was growing old and the monsters were growing ever stronger. As a last gift to his son, he transferred some of the young man's lifeforce into the mechanical body he had created out of Anatium. The next day, when the son of Arithmius was badly hurt, his lifeforce fully transferred into the new form. His head remained, but from his neck down, he saw his new form of Anatium.

The Anatium amplified his Manipulative powers, as it "conducted" the lifeforce better than any mortal body could. However when he returned to his father and told of his new abilities (not just amplified Manipulative powers but entirely new abilities), his father was puzzled, as he had not built such mechanisms into the new form that would allow the use of such powers. It is believed that these strange added powers came from the guardian's "human essence" itself; what gave him his personality and ideas of what was right and what was wrong, and what made him "him."