Asch

Asch the Bloody is a God-General and the commander of special operations of the Order of Lorelei. He can be arrogant and rebellious, and almost always seems angry.

Backstory
Asch is, in truth, the original Luke fon Fabre. As a child, the true Luke took his responsibilities as the future ruler of Kimlasca extremely seriously, developing a cold and impersonal disposition. However, his love for his country and his people was evident at the time, and he made a promise to Natalia that he would marry her and create a world where "no one has to be poor" and "war never happens".

When he was ten years old, Asch (then still known as Luke) was kidnapped by Van Grants to make a replica, who would later become known as Luke after assuming the position that Asch once held within the kingdom. Van's initial intention was to mould Asch into a perfect servant and to use his power of hyperresonance in his plot to overthrow the Score. Asch attempted to escape and to return home, only to find that Luke had usurped his life, family, fiancée and home.

Following this discover, he became Van's servant, after which his master is able to exert influence to raise his protégé through the ranks, all under an assumed name and identity, though it does become apparent that a few of his fellow God-Generals are aware of his true identity. At first, Asch was willing to follow Van's plan to destroy the Score, until he found out about his intent to replace the world with replicas. Asch came to secretly despise his master's plan and has come to cherish a hatred of all replicas as he still harbors resentment toward the one that took his life and happiness in Kimlasca. He began to act as a double-agent, secretly working behind the scenes against Van while appearing to following his orders. He uses his cold exterior as a shield to protect himself and to repel anyone who makes inquiry into his true intentions, making a vow that he will never return home and going so far as to reject Natalia, to whom he insists that he is not the boy she once knew, though it is later revealed that he thought and spoke of her often.

Personality
Asch is a very cold and impersonal man. This is a result of his upbringing, where he was not only groomed from birth to become the ruler of Kimlasca but was also treated very coldly by his father, who knew that his son was destined to die at Akzeriuth. Thus, he separates his internal emotions from his external appearance. He was also forced to do this after he became the servant of Van, in order to hide his true intentions while appearing subservient. He has a tremendous amount of pride and cares deeply for his country and the people around him. He is also an extremely talented cook. He's extremely short-tempered and hot-headed (more so then Luke), and nearly always insists on doing things on his own.

Despite his smart and calculating exterior, Asch has moments of incredible goofiness. At one point he masquerades as Luke and is asked (by someone who had met Luke a few days previously) how his hair had changed from short to long in such a short time. Asch's improvised excuse was, "My hair grows fast." In addition, during a quick sidequest, Asch accidently walks into a lab in Belkend where the rest of the party is, forcing them to accidently drop a chemical. After the incident he rebukes that everytime he's with the main party, something bad happens.

Role in Story
Asch has the same goal as Luke and friends, but most of what he does is the "behind the scenes" work. He seldom works with the party, except at times of necessity. For example, to get out of the Qliphoth and investigate Ortion Cavern, he had to cooperate with the party (in Luke's place) and use the Tartarus. However, most of the time, he outright refuses to work with them. He has helped the party in several occasions, some of these include: Lowering the outer lands, eliminating the miasma, preventing Luke and Natalia from getting executed, etc.

The End
At Eldrant, Luke and Asch fought to find out who the real Luke was, Luke won and Asch gave him the Sword of Lorelei, after that some soldiers arrived and Asch stayed to hold them of. He fought to the end, but he was killed by one of the soldiers, his last words to Luke were: "The rest is up to you". Before dying, he gave Luke the power to do a Second-Order hyperresonance. After the defeat of Van, Luke stayed behind to release Lorelei. As he was doing so, he was sinking into perhaps the core of Auldrant, and caught Asch's corpse along the way. After Lorelei thanked Luke, Asch's hand twitched. It was there that the two fused due to the Big Bang.

Relationships
Luke Fon Fabre - Luke is Asch's replica and his perfect isofon (A person with the same fonon frequency; they don't exist unless artificially created). Asch despises Luke for being the one who stole everything from him, and he's not afraid to show his hatred. Most of the time Asch says that Luke's an inferior replica, and contradictorily hates him for having an inferiority complex and tells him that if he really is his substitute, he shouldn't accept being called inferior, but Luke doesn't think of himself as a replacement and says that he's a different person from Asch. By the end of the game, Asch acknowledges Luke as the real Luke Fon Fabre and tells him that he's the one that has to kill Van and stop his scheme.

Tear Grants- Tear and Asch's Relationship is not very well shown throughout the game. As she is the only way to stay behind in Yulia city wity with Luke and did not really get to know him.

Jade Curtiss - While Jade may be in part responsible for what happened to Asch, since he is the one who proposed the principles of fomicry, Asch doesn't feel any anger towards him and thinks that no good will come of putting the blame on him. The two seem to work well together. Jade teases him sometimes like he does with the rest of the party, yet he is worried about Asch and Luke's fate because of an effect that occurs between perfect isofons called the "Big Bang", in which only one of them will get to live.

Guy Cecil - Asch thinks of Guy as a naive fool, especially after seeing that he still trusts Luke after the incident at Akzeriuth. Guy feels hatred towards Asch for being the son of his enemy, Duke Fabre. While Asch may treat Guy like he would treat anyone else, Guy doesn't try to hide his feelings too much. By the end of the game, they both seem to have put the past behind them as best as they can in order to start over.

Natalia Luzu Kimlasca Lanvaldear - Asch still has feelings for Natalia and vice versa, but Asch tries to be distant because he's no longer the person that he used to be. Despite this, when Natalia is in trouble, Asch still helps her as her childhood friend. They both still remember and try to fulfill the promise they made when they were kids. Natalia sometimes mixes Asch and Luke in her head and thinks of them as the same person, but by the end of the game she finally understands that they're different people and sees them both as childhood friends.

Van Grants - Asch knew from the beginning that Van only wanted him for his hyperresonance, but he decided to follow him anyway. Asch respects Van and agrees with him that the Score must be eliminated, but after discovering that his master wanted to destroy the world and create a replica of it in the process, Asch betrays him and believes that it's his duty as his pupil to kill him and stop his plan.

Others - Asch enlists the help of the Dark Wings later on in the game, because after betraying Van he could no longer use his soldiers. Apparently he talks with them about Natalia, Luke, and Van. He somewhat cares about them, seeing that he didn't bring them to Eldrant because he knew that it would be dangerous. He also gets Ginji to help him, since he needs a pilot for the Albiore III.

Abilities
Asch uses the same Artes that Luke has, as well as four spells that Luke never learns, although two of those spells don't come with their respective FoF changes and the other two are FoF changes that can be used immediately but they don't create a FoF. He is also one of the two characters that can learn all the AD Skills (The other one being Anise). Whenever Asch is usable, he's at the same level as Luke. Because Asch starts off with all his Artes already learned, he's overall stronger than Luke when first used in the Ortion Cavern, but later on in the Mushroom Road sidequest he's not very useful because his equipment can't be changed (which is the same as when he was first used, and is therefor very weak at that point in the game). He's also the only playable character that has just one mystic arte.

When fought as a boss, Asch is essentially powered up, AI controlled Luke. Compared to other God-Generals, he is actually very weak, but this due the fact that both times he's fought the player only has Luke.

Tales of Fandom Vol 2
He appears along with the entire Tales of the Abyss cast in a game made specially for the fans of the series, where they meet the characters from Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2
Asch appears as a playable character. In one part of the game, Asch is seen injured, clutching the wall for support, implying that he was hurt for some reason.

Tales of Vesperia (PS3)
Asch makes a cameo appearance in the port version of Tales of Vesperia, where his clothes are a costume that can be used by Yuri Lowell through a title. The costume can only be obtained if you pre-ordered Tales of Vesperia for PS3. Scans reveal that Yuri even has his hair styled like Asch's.

Tales of VS.
He appears as a playable character. In this game he is one of the strongest swordsman raised in the New Empire, Nidhogg, to join the Yggdrasill Battle mainly for supremacy. He was never around in the previous fights, and his existence was only recently publicly announced by the government. As in Tales of the Abyss, he is looking for Luke fon Fabre in order to get revenge on him for taking his identity away from him.

Trivia

 * Born on Remday, Lorelei-Redecan 48, ND 2000.
 * His fonon frequency is Pi=3.14159...
 * Asch's favorite food is chicken, and his least favorite foods are octopi and carrots.
 * Although Luke is Asch's replica, Asch contrasts in many ways from Luke, though this is perhaps to show that they mirror each other.
 * Luke's name means Light of the Sacred Flame and Asch's name means Charred Remnants of the Sacred Flame.
 * The ends of Asch's hair are dark red, almost maroon; The ends of Luke's hair are yellow-orange.
 * Asch's hair, when down, is shown to be parted at the left; Luke's hair is parted at the right.
 * Asch wears silver and black; Luke wears white and gold.
 * Asch is right-handed; Luke is left-handed.
 * Asch wields long swords, while Luke uses short swords.
 * Asch remains largely static throughout the game; Luke changes drastically.
 * Asch is apparently a very good cook,while Luke's cooking isn't very tasty.
 * The way Asch's name is spelled likely came from the German word for ash, Asche.
 * In the last popularity contest of Tales characters, Asch ranked the 13th place.