The Empress



The Empress (ジ・エンプレス) is a weapon that can be used by Luxord in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. It can be upgraded to The Empress+.

Design
A card from The Empress deck has an odd, star-like shape. The corners are spikes shaped like the spikes of the Nobody symbol. The top and bottom of the card both sport an arrowhead-shaped protrusion, between two of the corners. The border of the card is thick and black, white the bulk of it is orange. There is a thin, white outline of a star that has a similar design to the top of the Nobody symbol in the center of the card. Each of the tips of this outline are almost completely filled by a white diamond, but they leave a thin orange space to distinguish the diamonds from the outline. This deck's cards are almost completely identical to those of The Hierophant. In fact, the only difference between the twois that the green sections on The Hierophant are orange on The Empress.

Gameplay
The Empress offers Luxord long-range attacks and combos. The ground combo begins with an very long-range summoning of the cards, in which they surround Luxord and damage enemies around him in a realtively long radius. The second attack involves Luxord send out a line of cards on the ground, which then flip to damage enemies. In the combo finisher, Luxord throws many cards from The Empress deck out directly in front of him. The aerial combo begins with a simple slash attack with one card. Then, Luxord ends the combo by wielding two cards in hand, using them to hit enemies around him, while riding a third card in the air. The Empress+ shares all of these attacks and combos with The Empress.

Etymology
The Empress is one of twenty-two cards that make up a Tarot deck's Major Arcana. It is numbered III (3).