Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies is a 2009 role-playing video game developed by Level-5 and Square Enix for the Nintendo DS. Published by Square Enix in Japan in July 2009 and by Nintendo overseas the following year, it is the ninth mainline entry in the Dragon Quest series. The storyline follows the protagonist, a member of the angelic Celestrian race, after a disaster in their home scatters magical fruits across the mortal realm. While carrying over traditional gameplay from the rest of the series with turn-based battles, the game is the first Dragon Quest entry to feature a customizable player character, and the first to include a multiplayer mode, with the option of trading treasure maps and loaning player characters through Nintendo Wi-Fi. Online functions ended in 2014 when it ceased operations.