0 fonons
Character: Asch fon Fabre, also known as Asch the Bloody
Series: Tales of the Abyss
Timeline: post-game
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History
It was not the kidnapping that turned the original Luke fon Fabre into Asch the Bloody. For the future king of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear, the Light of the Sacred Flame, this was merely a setback. True, it was a rather major setback, but not a crippling one. And despite being all of ten years old, he fought and clawed his way back to the manor, braving tough terrain and countless monsters, arriving bloodied and battered at the gates, only to be turned away.
Yet even that was not enough to deter him, and, clutching his sword, he scaled the walls of the manor, revelling in the joy of being home at last, back in the place that he belonged. For even if the guards at the door didn’t recognise him, surely his parents would.
But as he tumbled from the wall, crashing to the ground below, he was greeted by a sight that would change his life forever.
His family. His family and servants and friends, standing in garden, as a boy who shared his face, stumbled across the grass towards his mother, who held out her hands to him, calling him to come to her.
Luke, she said.
In stunned silence he watched as the boy tripped, falling on his face and bursting into tears. In shock he watched as his own mother comforted him, calling him son, explaining away the changes, the differences - and weren’t they just obvious? Were his parents so blind? - as trauma from his kidnapping. Watched as his father shook his head, oblivious to the fact that he was looking at an imposter. Watching as the servants cooed over “Master Luke”.
He might still have fought against that. He might still have leapt up, shoving his way out of the dark corner he’d fallen into, to confront them all and show them how mistaken they were. And perhaps if he could have persuaded his limbs to move - limbs that suddenly felt as though they were made of lead - history might have been very different.
But at that very moment, as his grip tightened on his sword and he made to stand, Natalia, Princess of Kimlasca, and his fiancée, stepped into view and placed a crown of flowers upon the head of the boy that was supposed to be him.
And in that moment, Luke’s world collapsed.
I shall be called Asch. For that is all I am - ashes of the Sacred Flame.
Broken in heart and spirit, Asch discarded his old identity and all that came with it. He returned to Van’s side, for want of anywhere else to go, although the trust that he had had before was shaken, and it wouldn’t be long before it fell.
The impact of the loss was so great that it drove Asch to a life of seclusion. He closed off his heart to all others, keeping them at arm’s length or beyond, suffering none to talk about his past. He was trained as a soldier, raised as an Oracle Knight in the service of Daath. As a child, he had already been skilled with the blade; and as the years passed, that skill only grew until it won him the rank of God General and Commander of the Special Forces at the young age of sixteen.
Despite the bloodshed that he wrought in the name of the Oracle Knights, bloodshed that would eventually earn him the title of ‘Asch the Bloody’, there was a part of him that never changed. The child who had once sworn with Princess Natalia to ensure that war would not come to Kimlasca, and that no one would ever have to suffer again, turned into a youth who still loathed the spilling of innocent blood, and who would spend his life fighting for the lives of others.
“Dainty”, Van called him, and it was that difference in opinion that led to Asch finally abandoning his loyalties and turning on his one-time teacher and mentor.
His reluctance to open up to others, however, as well as a great deal of pride, meant that Asch still favoured the modus operandi of working alone and from the shadows. Reliance on others was, at best, a hated necessity, and he shunned it wherever possible. No one needed to get close to him - he was a doomed man, in his own mind. The reason for his existence had been stolen from him, his previous life ended. And when he discovered that the Big Bang effect would result in his imminent disappearance, he realised that his new life - even if it was a meagre, pathetic existence - would also end prematurely.
The knowledge filled him with yet more resentment towards the replica who never even knew what he had stolen, but also increased his determination to accomplish some good before he died - by stopping Van. It also created a streak of fatalism a mile wide in him, driving him to often desperate and suicidal techniques in a vain attempt to achieve his ends.
Perhaps his biggest blow was his inability to singlehandedly stop Van. Thwarted in his attempt to sacrifice himself at the Tower of Rem, he finally lost the will to live when he lost to his replica at Eldrant. On a purely unconscious level, he felt that his existence had finally been negated entirely - Luke had truly grown into the Light of the Sacred Flame, and despite all his efforts, the world had cast him aside.
It was this morbidity that cost him his life in the end, blunting his instincts and causing him to be taken by surprise even as he stood on the threshold of victory. He perished on the battlefield, run through by enemy swords, alone in death as he had been in life.
And yet not so alone, for his spirit reached out to the one he called his replica, lending him his strength, aiding him in his final battle with Van.
Personality
A doomed man does not need friends, and if anything, is liable to cause more grief in his passing if he were to become close to others.
It is this philosophy that drove Asch’s interactions with others in life, leading him down a lonely road. Distant and uncommunicative even with those he had no issue with, he cultivated no ties and made no friendly overtures (except with Natalia, and that was only with extreme reluctance, and very much despite his own wishes). Anyone who threatened to get too close to him was driven away by silence and stone walls, and for those who failed to get the hint, outright aggression.
Short-tempered by nature, Asch was always harsh on others, and harsher on himself. To exacerbate matters, desperation made Asch an angry man, with zero tolerance towards those he deemed incompetent and those who wasted his time. Pride meant that he would not tolerate weakness in himself, and viewed weakness in others with scorn. With his replica this became a particularly sore point - for it always hurt and rankled to know that his life had not only been stolen, it had been stolen by a wimp. A wimp who could not even do justice to the name Luke fon Fabre. If the Light of Sacred Flame were thus, he figured, then the world was doomed. He shouldered the burden of being the saviour of the world, but he never viewed himself as such, believing that it was simply doing whatever he could in place of the incompetent piece of dreck that was supposed to be doing this.
He cared little for accolades or the regard of others - what use were praises to a dead man? And his cherished mentor, whose opinion he had cared so much about, had used that devotion to betray him, trapping him in an existence worse than death.
Asch would have made a decent commander, if his explosive temper and his inability to work well with others didn’t result in him getting carried away if left to his own devices. Particularly if the mission involved Luke.
Asch in AT
Asch enters Nuadoria shortly after his death. Awakening in a land where he has no past to be stolen, the future stretching out ahead of him, he loses a bit of that desperate edge. It is a calmer, less suicidal Asch that enters Nuadoria. But there are certain ingrained personality traits and habits that even death cannot remove.
Asch still rushes in where angels, demons, replicas and possibly Jade the Necromancer fear to tread. Although intelligent - particularly in military affairs - Asch not only lacks the patience to strategise and plan - he actually rather detests standing around and thinking, and vastly favours acting on instinct. He secretly hates logic, as logic provided no answers to the pain and heartbreak in his life. Logic failed to explain why his life was stolen from him, logic told him that he could never go back, and when confronted with no solution, no way out, Asch chose to shut down completely, discarding the past and vowing never to think about it ever again. That has seeped into other parts of his life, and Asch is used to never thinking too closely about anything, particularly not the hows or whys. Philosophy and the like is best left for idiots and replicas. Or idiotic replicas. Asch doesn’t reflect on the Why. There isn’t any point and the answer would piss him off anyway.
Asch is still brusque, perhaps in an effort to leave behind the formal speech of the court and the nobility that marked his childhood. Although he appears to have no people skills whatsoever, this is more a conscious (or subconscious) decision to disregard this point, as years of etiquette training knocked enough manners into Asch to know how to behave when necessary.
On the otherhand, Asch has a natural charisma that would have served him well if he had taken the throne of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. Unfortunately, years of neglect have left it undeveloped, and it only manifests in the occasional flash. Again, this happens more around Luke than anyone else.
As such, this leads to an Asch who can be loud and abrasive when he opens his mouth, but who is generally quiet and withdrawn, keeping his thoughts and council to himself. He rarely shares his insights and findings with others, usually divulging information purely on a need-to-know basis. But he has an inconsistent approach to that, and is known to occasionally volunteer information about himself or his past, particularly to Natalia.
Despite all the irritability and temper and intolerance, however, Asch is a man who cares deeply about the welfare of others, placing the lives of his people before himself. He still loves his mother deeply, and is fiercely loyal to the kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. He might have made a good king. Ah well. Such is life.
Relationships
Asch’s relationship with Luke is complicated. He doesn’t understand it himself, mostly because every time he sees that worthless dreck, the aggravation boils up in him and explodes, clouding any kind of rationality he might otherwise have. And contrary to popular opinion (i.e. Luke’s), Asch can be pretty level-headed, aside from the suicidal tendencies.
...Sometimes.
...On good days, anyway.
...Assuming Van isn’t up to any monkey business.
When Asch looks at Luke, he sees his replacement. The mere sight of Luke reminds him of everything that he’s lost, and it doesn’t help that, in Asch’s eyes, he’s lost it to a weak crybaby who takes for granted everything that he has. It also doesn’t help that Asch has no patience for idiots in the first place, and Luke isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
Luke’s gradual growth throughout the series helps to pacify some of that explosive fury within Asch, but in turn gives rise to bitterness and melancholy. Even as Luke grows stronger, Asch feels like he’s fading in comparison, and gives weight to the knowledge that his time is short. His inability to accept Luke’s friendship and compassion stems from the emotional pain of feeling that he’s growing so weak that even his replica is pitying him, and Asch loathes pity or sympathy in any form. Even from Luke. Especially from Luke.
As Luke matures and his swordsmanship improves, Asch’s feelings of being replaced grow correspondingly stronger, until, in an unbearable fit of pain and rage, he finally decides to end it, once and for all, at Eldrant.
The anger is nine parts jealousy and bitterness, but there’s also something else, buried so deep within Asch that he isn’t aware that it exists - and that’s a token bit of protectiveness, as well as a desire to see the replica outgrow his weaknesses and become a person worthy of the name Luke fon Fabre. It’s all about vicarious living - and a hefty dose of if you’re going to be me, you’d damn well be an awesome me, you stupid replica! That, and it’s probably some residue charisma left over from the boy-who-would-have-been-king.
Although this is less applicable now that Asch has been given a second chance at life, it’s hard to unlearn years of ingrained resentment. That, and Luke still isn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier.
Asch doesn’t want to care about Natalia. Asch wants to be exactly what he says he is - a different person from the Luke fon Fabre she knew. But Asch’s heart doesn’t want to cooperate, and despite it all, he still has a soft spot for her. Whether or not he loves her is not clear to him, however, because all those emotions are deeply buried beneath years of neglect and angry denial, and, as with everything to do with his past, Asch opts to ignore it entirely. In life, Asch looked upon this love with the same bleak fatalism that he looks at everything else with, believing it lost beyond recall. In death, perhaps, it may be possible to make a fresh start, but old habits die hard.
Asch’s strict policy of not reflecting on his past life except when Luke is around, but that’s the damn replica’s fault extends to not thinking about the fact that Jade was the father of fomicry and therefore arguably responsible for the entire trainwreck that stole his life. Asch has some (perhaps grudging) respect for Jade as a soldier, and finds him useful, on occasion, and marginally less annoying than the other tag-alongs that the replica has (with the exception of Natalia, of course, but Natalia is always an exception). He doesn’t trust him, however, and is quite happy to go his separate way when he no longer requires Jade’s assistance.
Guy was Asch’s childhood friend. However, after Asch’s kidnapping, Van informed him of Guy’s true motives for entering the fon Fabre household, which only served to increase Asch’s sense of isolation and betrayal. The fact that Guy prefers Luke over him grates on Asch’s nerves, but as with everything involving his past life, Asch doesn’t think about it. And tries very hard not to let it get to him. He’s not supposed to be likeable, after all.
Powers / Skills
Or: “What do you mean there are no fonons here?”
Asch is an expert swordsman and skilled in fonic artes. Unfortunately, a lack of fonons means a lack of fonic artes, leaving Asch with nothing but his ability to wave a sword around and his Glare-O’-Death, guaranteed to give the bearer wrinkles by age 30.
Asch has a general aptitude for anything military related, which is offset by an absolute ineptitude for anything that’s not associated with war. He has some skill with operating and repairing machines, although building them from scratch is not something he’s ever engaged in. He’s also versed in field medicine, out of necessity, and can cook and clean and sew.
...The perfect house husband, almost.
What are they bringing to Nuadoria?: Asch brings with him his sword, and his God General uniform. He might have left a bit of his grumpiness at home, but that’ll probably come back. Just add Luke.
Third-Person Sample:
The first thing that he became aware of was snow, and he wondered why that felt somehow apt. For a long moment he was content to lie there, luxuriating in the ability to ... simply be. Gone was the sense of impending doom, the crushing sensation of time moving inexorably onwards, and his own time growing increasingly short. Gone was the weight of responsibility, the race to make something meaningful out of a meaningless life, the pressure of something urgent always looming on the horizon.
It was nice, he decided.
Five minutes later, he also decided that it was cold.
It took a whole ten minutes, however, before he decided it was dead boring, and it was also ridiculous and potentially vulnerable to be lying flat on his back in the middle of nowhere, getting dusted with a fine layer of freshly fallen snow. Even God-Generals were not immune to the common cold.
Snorting mentally at himself for getting carried away by whimsical stupidity, he pushed himself to his feet, and glancing around. It looked like Ketersburg, but it could also have been Baticul on a snowy winter’s night. He had no way of telling how much time had passed, while he floating on a seemingly endless sea of golden light. There had been music, he recalled. Songs that made his heart ache with some emotion he couldn’t identify, and he remembered thinking surely death isn’t supposed to be this sad.
He remembered feeling like part of him awoke and left, and a voice promising that he would be able to follow soon after. He remembered thinking that it was ok. He didn’t recall what had made him think that way, and he figured it was best not to think too closely on it. Dead was dead.
And he was... by some miracle... somehow alive.
Second chances, perhaps. He didn’t even mind when he walked through the gates of the city and found that it was no place he recognised, the streets quiet and deserted. He swept past people who didn’t stop and point and stare, and there was no recognition in their eyes, which was fine, because there was no fear either.
It was fine that he didn’t know the place, because it seemed that the place didn’t know him either.
Second chances. Second beginnings. The spark to the ashes, to relight the glowing embers, maybe...?
He paused, realising just how stupidly whimsical that last train of thought had been. Bah. He was turning into the replica. He had been given more time, but that time better put to good use, not spent bumbling around thinking useless thoughts.
...But then he paused, realising suddenly that he didn’t know where to go at all. Without Van, without any knowledge of the threats that faced this place, for the first time in his life being truly without any form of history or identity... he realised that he was at more of a loss than he had been after his kidnapping.
He didn’t care for this place. His heart remained firmly rooted in Kimlasca. And remained with a certain Kimlascan princess, if he could ever bring himself to admit to that. And this place wasn’t Kimlasca. Which meant that the only thing he wanted from it was ... out.
He huffed. His breath emerged as a small puff of smoke, even as his eyebrows gravitated towards each other in a scowl. Damnit. He’d been alive for twenty minutes and it already sucked.