Chai

"The impetuous and willful Chai is an odd salamander who draws upon the magical power of the forest."

Chai is a party member in Magical Starsign. He is a young mage of the salamander race who can command the element of wood and attends Will-o'-Wisp Academy. He and Pico are best friends.

Party member
Chai is first present as a member of the party in the game's tutorial sequence at Will-o'-Wisp Academy. He is later recruited as a permanent party member after Mugwort is defeated on Puffoon. His initial level is 10.

His starsign is wood, receiving aura when Gren is in alignment. His spells are primarily geared towards stat boosting, and his offensive spells have a chance to inflict thorny on enemies.

Personality
Chai is sensitive, but has a high mental capacity regarding stress. He is often first to project his feelings about a subject, and is very expressive. Even with these traits, it is said that Chai is very timid and quiet most of the time. Though he is often ostracized by his own kind for his magic powers, he is very open towards the subject. Pico also describes him as "such a chill little salamander" at one point in the game. When changing his name, Chai is described as shy and kind, as well as highly unusual for his kind. In the Japanese version, he has a habit of ending sentences with ノ no.

Appearance
Chai is a green salamander. On his head, he has yellow lightning-bolt shaped markings that trail down to his face, blue eyes, and red hair that appears in tufts on his cheeks and in a fluffy ponytail atop his head. He wears golden rings on his neck that match the golden hair tie on his head. The only garments he wears are blue boots with white and red geometric accents, and a golden belt with red jewels. On the belt are also white strips of cloth that appear to have been sewn on, and have blue and red arrows embroidered onto them.

Early life
Chai was born as the only son of a salamander family who lived near the academy. Like all salamanders, his parents could not use magic, but they soon learned that Chai was a rare exception. His ability to cast magic made him an outcast amongst other salamanders.

Magical Starsign
Chai and his five classmates learned of Miss Madeleine's orders to fly to Puffoon, wherein she would face a rogue magician named Kale. Madeleine later took them to the academy's Meditation Room, and Chai assisted the protagonist in learning the basics of rows in combat. Once the lesson was over, Chai eagerly asked Madeleine if the students would be going to space as well, to which she said "no", but admitted to having an odd foreshadowy feeling.

It was not until three months later when the students grew concerned, as Madeleine had not been in contact with anyone on Kovomaka following her voyage to Puffoon. When Lassi suddenly went missing, their curiosity led them up the academy's clocktower and into a hangar crowded with rockets. One of these rockets was being operated by Lassi, who carelessly activated it and blasted off into space. The protagonist boarded one as well in an attempt to chase after Lassi, resulting in the two of them crash landing on Erd.

After the protagonist and Lassi escaped from Erd, and subsequently reunited with Mokka on Cassia, they were given the option of either flying to Puffoon or Gren. Upon landing on Puffoon, they berthed their magic rocket in the planet's spaceport, and to their surprise, a Will-o'-Wisp rocket was parked there too. They entered the city of Bena Rikashi to file a Missing Persons report to the Space Police, believing it would bring them one step closer to saving Madeleine. However, they passed by each desk in the Space Police HQ to no avail, that is until they reached the top floor where the chief's office was located. They addressed Kale and his astro pirates with the stand-in chief, Mugwort, but he condescendingly turned down their pleas.

With the Space Police no longer being of use to the students, they left the HQ building and bumped into a felin named Parfait, who correctly assumed that they attended Will-o'-Wisp. She invited them over to "her house" on the city's outskirts, where she asked them to help her find a special book. This book turned out to be the Book of the Darned; a grimoire that supposedly cursed and killed anyone who read its contents. Parfait hastily took the book and alluded to her possible familiarity of Madeleine and Kale, but when the students tired to follow her, they were instead confronted by a Space Police officer. It turned out Parfait had duped them, and "her house" was actually Kale's laboratory. Suddenly, the officer received a call about a salamander escaping custody, which he urgently responded to. Down the street was none other than Chai, who anxiously warned his friends that the Space Police were pursuing them. Before he could say anything else, two officers chased him out of the city and into Quinoa Plain. The students left the city as well and encountered Brioche the rabbit. Brioche invited them to meet up with Chai in the village of Honey Mint, revealing that he had run off with secret police documents. The students finally reunited in Honey Mint with Brioche, who was accompanied by his father Cresson. Lassi took a peek at the documents that Chai stole, which was actually a list of magicians kidnapped by the Astro Pirates. They read further down to see Madeleine's name, with the arresting officer being cited as the Space Police's fighting instructor, Biek Fowler. Brioche suggested the students ask Twigadamus the local clairvoyant for help, but before they could do so, Mugwort flew in alongside Brie Pourri, the true Space Police chief. Pourri ordered Mugwort to deal with the students as she flew back to the HQ building with Chai in her grasp.

The Will-o'-Wisp group, sans Chai, won against Mugwort, only to be scolded for assaulting an officer. In a last-minute effort to get Mugwort off their backs, Cresson offered Brioche's piggy bank containing two million bira as compensation. The bribe surprisingly worked, to the dismay of Brioche, and the stand-in police chief sailed back to Bena Rikashi. As Brioche sobbed at the loss of his hard-earned money, he was consulted by Twigadamus, who arrived to tell him that his dreams were destined to come true. The students talked to Twigadamus, who seemed familiar with Madeleine, and let them gaze into the magic crystal at his house. Presented to them was a brief vision of the Space Police HQ, a floating island off the edge of Quinoa Plain, and a treasure chest near brownie outside the village.

After sending down a chest from the floating island, and subsequently talking to the aforementioned brownie, the party obtained a special item called the tempus forget, a clock which had the power to manipulate peoples' consciousness. The students returned to Bena Rikashi and unleashed the tempus forget in the Space Police HQ, making every trooper temporarily braindead and allowing safe access to Brie Pourri's reception desk. Next to her was a treasure box containing Chai, and upon his release, he proposed a theory regarding the Space Police and Astro Pirates. He alleged that someone was gathering magicians from Gren and sending them off to Razen, meaning Madeleine was likely on Gren in some sort of pirate hideout. Chai seemed discouraged when he admitted to not having a functional rocket, but luckily for him, the other students brought him to Neumann, and he joined the party.

Return to Kovomaka
When he returned to Kovomaka, Chai studied further in the hopes of improving his skill in magic. However, he grew bored with studying roughly a decade later, and chose to sneak into a storage locker near the fuel tank in Mokka, who had been converted to a rocket by Lassi, prior to his launch into deep space.

Trivia

 * His comes from 'masala chai', an Indian tea made with aromatic herbs and spices.
 * Chai is the only party member in Magical Starsign whose name was not changed between Japanese and overseas versions.