Veigue Lungberg

Veigue Lungberg is the main protagonist of a Japanese-only PS2 game, Tales of Rebirth. He is a Huma orphan from the village of Sulz and adopted to the Bennet family. Claire Bennet is his childhood friend and he's very protective on her. Like all major characters, he is a Force user and uses the Force of Ice, and wields a two-handed sword in battle. Veigue himself is a cold, silent young man who is mostly unaware, not ignorant, of the problems around him, unless it's happening right in front of his face, or involves Claire.

He is voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama.

Awakening
It's not known who Veigue's parents really are. When he was little, he was adopted by Marco Bennet of Sulz village and befriended his daughter Claire Bennet. Along with their pet Zapie, Veigue spent his childhood until his teens in the village of Sulz. In the world, Huma and Gajuma (beastmen) coexisted in peace, and Veigue never has any problems about it. He never thought that during his teens, he would become involved in a grand quest that deals with racial issues.

When Veigue turned 17, in the Capital City of Balka, Gajuma King Ladras Lindblum passed away and at that point, a certain event of chaos erupted in which several Huma suddenly gained the ability known as Force, which was formerly exclusive to Gajuma. Veigue is one such Huma that has his Force awakened. His force ran wild and this worries Claire. However, as she approached Veigue, his Force attacked her, sealing her within an ice coffin. From that point on, guilt overcame Veigue and he spent his time guarding his house where Claire was frozen, accompanied by Zapie.

A year later, in the current timeline of the game, Veigue is visited by a boy who has no memory, Mao, and ex-commander of the Karegia Army, Eugene Gallardo. They claim that they're seeking Force Users like Veigue to find out what's actually going on. Veigue refuses to listen to any of their stories, claiming that he needs to protect Claire. After a brief fight with Mao, he's told that he must learn to control his force and thus won't freeze Claire again. Mao helps him un-freeze Claire.

As a token of gratitude, Claire invited them all to eat at her house. While eating and discussing the current situation, the village is visited by two members of the Karegia's King's Shield lieutenant, Saleh and Tohma. They demand the most beautiful girl in the village to be surrendered to them under the order of Queen Agarte Lindblum, and Claire is selected as the 'most beautiful'. Veigue tried to stop them, but Eugene knocks him out before Tohma and Saleh can seriously kill him.

Rescuing Claire
Eventually Veigue resolves to journey ahead to rescue Claire. Marco also sends Zapie to accompany him. Although he is at first accompanied with Zapie, Mao and Eugene, he later also receives the help of several more people, such as Annie Barrs, a girl with initial dislike towards Gajuma; Tytree Crowe, a hotblooded worker from Petnadjanka; and Hilda Rhambling, a Half formerly under the King's Shield. As he journeyed, Veigue also witnessed some minor issues regarding on races, between Huma and Gajuma (mostly due to Annie's dislike towards Gajuma). But such thing mostly never concerned Veigue, as he's used to refer Gajuma and Huma as the same, or just 'people'. He also makes several confrontations against other members of the King's Shield, Walto and Militsa.

At the end of the journey, Veigue and his group arrives at the capital of Balka. They eventually learns a way to sneak to the castle, through the sewers. Before sneaking, Veigue tells his companions that should he die, they should continue on and rescue Claire. His friends say otherwise and says that they will stick together. Unfortunately, they are ambushed by the King's Shield upon reaching the Castle, and after an audience with Agarte, they were thrown to jail. They managed to get out thanks to the 'Black Wings' trio and eventually Veigue, after defeating Saleh and Tohma (infuriating Saleh greatly), reaches the ceremonial site where Agarte attempts to revive the 'King of Sacred Beasts' Geyorkias in order to save Karegia. Veigue is unable to stop the ceremony. Geyorkias announces that he will destroy the impurity of the world, and that is the Huma race. Veigue and his friends battled Geyorkias and come out victorious. Just before Geyorkias exploded, Veigue leapt and managed to get Claire into safety. After these events, Veigue's group separated on their own way.

Ressurecting the Sacred Beasts
Veigue makes it back to Sulz. However, when Claire regained consciousness, she is acting a bit weird. Before Veigue can confirm this, he is informed that his Gajuma aunt Popura causes a ruckus in the town plaza. When Veigue reaches the plaza, he witnesses Popura spewing a lot of racist remarks regarding on her race of Gajuma. Veigue tries to calm her down, but he is unable to do so. Luckily, Annie comes in and successfully calms Popura temporarily with her Force of Rain.

Annie explains that lately many Gajuma has developed some hatred thoughts on Huma. Eugene is also one of victims and has been calling out Veigue, Tytree and Hilda to come to him for some reason. And Annie is the one to go fetch the three while Mao stays with Eugene. Veigue decides to meet up with Eugene along with Tytree (only because he'll get angry if he's not involved), but on the way Claire requests to tag along. Veigue accepts her request.

After fetching Tytree from Petnadjanka, Veigue heads straight to Messechinia Cavern, where Eugene holed himself up. To his surprise, Eugene tells Veigue to kill him before he's consumed with his rage and kill them all. Veigue will not let that happen and resorts to find a medicine to cure Eugene. Following Annie's advice, Veigue heads to the Eastern continent while leaving Claire to accompany Mao guarding Eugene.

In the town of Razilda, Veigue witnessed that the racism issue has grown stronger in the town, where Huma and Gajuma isolate themselves and has been hating against each other. He is reunited with Hilda in the town and helped with a non-racist Huma named Igol, they managed to retrieve a cure for Eugene. Upon making it back to the Cavern, Veigue is forced to fight a berserked Eugene until he calmed down a bit and is able to consume the cure calmly, regaining his old self.

Eugene explains that this all may have some connections with Geyorkias. It turns out that after his defeat, several 'thoughts' of hatred from Geyorkias began to grow from the hearts of every Huma and Gajuma. Eventually it is concluded that to dispel the thoughts, they need to retrieve the power of the Sacred Beasts who fought against Geyorkias in the past.

When jouneying, they came upon the oriental town of Kyogen. In order to get the hint of the next Sacred Beast (after Tytree and Mao managed to gain the trust of two beasts), Veigue agrees to become a temporary bodyguard for a man named Wan Gin, while Claire becomes his guest. Later, from Zapie, Veigue learns that Claire is kidnapped. But when he rescues her, once again she's acting rather weird. When Veigue met two other prisoners, they told him that they were with Claire. But when he met her, she was alone. Regardless, Veigue knew that Wan Gin was behind this and quits being his bodyguard.

Eventually, they reached the next Sacred Beast and after Annie gains his trust, Mao becomes possessed by a Sacred Beast calling himself Shaorune. He tells Veigue to meet him, or he'll lose something dear. Veigue becomes more frustrated hearing this.

The group decides to gather the hints in the town of Belsas. In the town, Claire asks Veigue about things regarding on Queen Agarte, which slightly confuse Veigue. But he confirms he'll still like Claire even if she is of a different race. And to his surprise, he learns that Agarte is spotted somewhere in the town.

In the next day, when the racist Huma leader Scarab is about to execute Agarte in public, Agarte delivers a speech that only Claire will actually say that. Veigue realized that Claire is in Agarte's body and she is once again in danger. He quickly rescues her. In the meantime, the general of Karegia Army, Milhaust Selkirk, arrived and quickly put the crowd at rest.

Eventually, Agarte reveals that during the ceremony, she uses the Force of Moon to ressurect Geyorkias. However, after Geyorkias' defeat, Agarte switched her body with Claire as an additional effect of the Force. Veigue demands that Agarte returns Claire's body to her, but she runs off. Veigue then agreed to cooperate with Milhaust to return Claire and Agarte's bodies and spirits to the proper places. Shaorune once again possesses Mao and tells the group that he's at the town of Babilograd.

Veigue eventually arrived at Babilograd. Shaorune claims that he will give him three trials to prove Veigue's worth. As for the first trial, on the way to reach Shaorune, Veigue constantly sees several events in his life where his beliefs about which is Claire and which is Agarte is tested, such as refusing Claire's body where he knows Agarte's soul reside there.

When the group approached Shaorune, the second trial begins, which is to defeat him in combat. Shaorune is defeated and asks Veigue who the girl besides him is. Veigue vehemently answered that it's Claire, although she's in Agarte's body. The trial is considered over and Shaorune lends his help to the party, acting like an air transport. Unfortunately, he can't grant Veigue's wish to restore Claire and Agarte's body.

Doubts
After finally achieving the power of all the Sacred Beasts, the thoughts of hatred are purified. But the tensions that are born from the thoughts are not. Veigue is forced to go from town to town, stopping any racism issues he meets. Along the way, however, Veigue begins to feel uneasy on Claire in Agarte's body. He wants to believe that it's Claire who's next to him, but he couldn't help to consider her as 'Agarte' due to her body. These thoughts starts to take toll on Veigue's Force.

Eventually in Minal, Veigue heard about Agarte in Claire's body stopping a fight. But he finds nothing. When he is asking around, several Gajuma soldiers saw Claire in Agarte's and claims that Agarte has return. Veigue vehemently refuses and eventually his Force goes berserk. His friends managed to subdue him. But when he wakes up, Claire is nowhere to be seen.

Veigue decides to pursue Claire, but he is stopped and soundly defeated by Milhaust, whom asks about his resolution back in Belsas. He wakes up in Minal and finds out that he's saved by Agarte in Claire's body. Veigue requests her to change Claire's body back again, but Agarte reveals that she has failed to reuse to force for many times. Veigue then resorts to exchange Agarte to Milhaust, blaming all the events to Agarte. This irritated Tytree and he stops the confrontation and invites Veigue to meet him at the beach alone.

In the beach, Tytree suddenly punched Veigue on the face, irritated on how Veigue seems to be so closed on himself, not letting his friends to feel his pain or difficulty, and claims that it's that attitude that drove Claire away. Veigue and Tytree ended up in a fight where both of them kept punching at each other's face. Eventually, Tytree demands that Veigue speaks his feelings and mind. Veigue did so and eventually calms down a little after Tytree tells him that since they're friends they should help each other.

Veigue then requests to go back to Sulz, where he asks for advice from Marco and Rakiya, and later getting Popura back to her old self, which causes her to hold a festival for everyone, regardless of race. Veigue is glad on seeing the view, and speaks to Agarte, expressing his gratitude and new trust on her. He also promises not to give up, for Claire and her. Finally he learns what is important above race, and that is 'heart'. As he prepares to leave, Veigue calls Marco and Rakiya as Father and Mother and bid them farewell.

Final Battle
When they leave, the group find out that the negative emotions stemmed from the tensions from the thoughts are welling up into an evil force. Veigue then decides to gamble on reviving Geyorkias once more and persuade him to save the world, as he is the one capable of doing it. They eventually make it to Geyorkias' sleeping place in Mount Sovereign, where they later learn that the negative emotions gives birth to the evil being called Yuris, and left alone, it can destroy the world. Veigue decides to defeat Yuris.

While on the way to defeat Yuris, the party feels like their power diminishing. However, as of that time, in the real world, people starts to help each other regardless of races, which gives power to Veigue and his teammates. Eventually, they defeated Yuris and Agarte is able to execute the Force of Moon to switch back to Claire, and uses it again to revive Geyorkias, which destroys Yuris.

Afterwards, the group bid their farewells to the Sacred Beasts, as they leave the fate of the world to the people. However, Agarte dies of fatigue. Milhaust is instated as her successor, and he asks Veigue to help him fight against the discrimination and rebuild the kingdom. Veigue silently refused but knows that no matter which part he takes, he and Milhaust are aiming for the same goal. As he bid farewell to Milhaust, Veigue let out a rare smile.

In the ending pictures that follows, it would appear that Veigue returns home to Sulz along with Claire and Zapie (who seems to have found a soulmate)

Trivia

 * Most RPG protagonists wield the fire element, or sometimes wind element. However, Veigue is probably the only main protagonist to ever use the ice element (the element is mostly wielded by female characters or male supporting characters, not male protagonists)
 * Veigue doesn't possess some of the most common Tales skills such as Majinken/Demon Fang and Kogahazan/Tiger Blade. However, equipping certain items enables him to change his original skills to classic Tales skills.
 * Veigue is prone to yell "CLAIRE!!!!" loudly whenever Claire is in danger. Tales fans and producers have taken this into account and considered his yell to be unique and has been parodied several times. This is most obvious in the the Tales of Fandom Gaiden and the Viva Tales Lemon Gumi DVDs (they come with preorders of the Japanese version of Tales of the Abyss and Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology respectively), where Veigue often yells Claire's name out of the blue. Because of this, Veigue's yell is considered something of a running gag to Tales of Rebirth players.
 * Veigue is not featured in the Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. This fact is lampooned in the Viva Tales Lemon Gumi DVD where after learning this fact, he cries and screams Claire's name.
 * Veigue and Claire's name is a play on Vague and Clear.
 * Veigue bears a striking resemblence to Woodrow Klevin from Tales of Destiny. In fact, there is a sidequest in Tales of Destiny's Remake that refers to the cast in Tales of Rebirth. However, they are not seen in the game.
 * The resemblence goes even further; in the EX Dungeon of Tales of Destiny, there is a boss that uses Dahlis' sprite. It is recolored with blue and white to suggest a direct reference to Veigue. He even has Veigue's common moveset, such as Zehhyoujin and Zesshouzan.
 * Veigue is the only main character in Tales that is fought against by the player in their his own series.