Asch the Bloody (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodyashes) wrote2016-07-21 09:58 pm
bloodyashes) wrote2016-07-21 09:58 pm
Entry tags:
HISTORY
A note: underlines indicate headcanon, most of which is taken from implications in canon. For clarity's sake, Asch is called by that name throughout this history, and "Luke" is used exclusively to refer to his replica (except in discussions of the name itself).
[And he shall be of royal blood and hair of red, and he shall be called the light of the sacred flame.]
Asch was born Luke fon Fabre to Duke Crimson Fabre of Belkend and Suzanne fon Fabre, ne Lanvaldear, younger half-sister of His Majesty Ingobert VI, king of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. Suzanne was a sickly woman, and only bore a child because the Score called for a child of royal blood with hair of red. Indeed, her entire marriage to Crimson was to facilitate the 100% chance of a red-haired heir after the Princess Natalia was supposedly born blond to the dark-haired queen. Asch was born just twelve days from the end of the year, indicating a last-minute pregnancy to fulfill the Score, one that caused further complications to his mother's health.
Why all the hullabaloo over one kid who wasn't even (technically) a prince? Because the Score, the prophecy that is the effective ruler of Auldrant due to being the main point of its religion, called for his birth with a specific set of traits. ...And, likewise, it called for his death at the age of seventeen. Asch's mother was never told of this section of the Score, but the boy's father and uncle knew from before he was born. Asch himself isn't sure if his mother is aware or not.
So the child was born as per prophecy, named as per prophecy (Luke fon Fabre being a fairly literal translation of "light of the sacred flame" - though the game gives the translation to just 'Luke,' I find it makes more sense as his full name, as the 'fon Fabre' formation is pretty clearly one that indicates an 'of [noble house]' the way 'von' and 'de' are used in our world.) A few weeks after he was born, his engagement to Princess Natalia was announced; though first cousins are a fairly close marriage even by the standards of Kimlascan royalty, which bred for centuries to ensure the red hair that was their pride and a requirement of Asch's birth, Natalia was born blond and her heirs would need to have at least a chance of the red hair.
(Of course, Natalia's supposed mother was dark haired, and Natalia herself wasn't actually of the royal line at all, but a replacement for a stillborn girl. But that's another story.)
Asch, of course, was raised in complete ignorance of his future role, alongside Natalia as virtually the only person in his age group that he knew growing up. The boy took to the future role of king exceptionally well, proving not only to be intelligent, but deeply compassionate in a way far beyond his years. By seven or eight years old, he was frequently sneaking out to the city to see the lives of the citizens for himself, and imparted wisdom about the matter to Natalia - walk with your own feet, look with your own eyes, or you won't really know what's going on. On Natalia's tenth birthday, just after his eighth, Asch proposed marriage to her himself by means of a promise to fix their beloved country together, for the rest of their lives.
When Asch was about five, new servants arrived at Fabre manor - a gardener named Pere, and the man's 'nephew' and young ward, a boy five years Asch's senior called Guy. Though Guy had no love for the young Asch, Asch got attached to the new servant almost immediately, seeing him as an older brother figure. It frequently became the case afterwards that Asch would abandon Natalia to play with Guy instead, while Guy attempted to keep a lid on his resentment of Asch and the real reason he had come to the manor - to kill the child as revenge on the Duke who had killed his family during the Hod war.
Guy was one of several factors put in place around the Fabre Manor by Van Grants (by birth, Vandesdelca Musto Fende, another native of Hod and a descent of Yulia, the woman who penned the primary Score followed by the Order of Lorelei). Van used his position as the rising star of the Order's military branch, the Oracle Knights, and got himself hired on as a swordsmanship tutor for the young heir about two years after Guy was hired on. He took advantage of Duke Fabre's coldness towards his son to grow close to Asch and earn the young boy's trust.
This, of course, was all in preparation for the kidnapping. In late winter the year Asch was nine (note that Kimlasca is in the southern hemisphere, so this is the equivalent of July-August for Earth), Van took advantage of that trust to approach Asch on one of his explorations outside the manor, and used the First of the Yulian Hymns to induce sleep in the boy and carry him off. Asch awoke in a dark, damp cell, in what he would later find out was the basement of his family's abandoned vacation home, Choral Castle (near the Malkuth border).
There, Van put his true plan for Asch into action. With the assistance of Dist the Reaper, one of the developers of fomicry, and an assistant researcher of loose morals named Spinoza, he set about creating a replica of the kidnapped boy. Due to complications related to Asch's fonon frequency being identical to that of the Seventh Fonon, creation of a stable replica was very difficult. Eventually, they had to bypass the usual middle step of putting the replica data in a piece of fonamin ore, and used the fonons from Asch's body directly to create the replica. (This is why Luke is a perfect isofon of Asch, the FIRST perfect isofon ever.)
Asch's state of mind is as much hallucinations as not during this time period, but he does has distinct memories of Van standing over him, Spinoza and Dist (based on his immediate recognition of the former at Belkend), and the sensation of fonons leaving his body to form Luke. Eventually, a stable replica was created, which Van carried back to Baticul under the guise of having 'rescued' him from Malkuth. Malkuth, of course, being not to blame, has no idea this happens until Luke tells the story to Jade seven years later aboard the Tartarus, but the incident is the cause of increased border tensions that would eventually lead to the state of near-war that we see in canon.
Asch himself was taken by Largo and Dist to Daath, where he was allowed to 'escape' after a brief period. He stowed aboard the first ship be could from Daath, to Belkend, and from there, when unable to obtain further passage back to Baticul, crossed the Inista Marsh on foot. Using a sword stolen during his escape to defend himself, he slew a lot of monsters on the way, as well as a pair of bandits. He pushed down every emotion he could during this period in favor of his mission - to return to the place he called home, where everyone was waiting for him.
Except, of course, they weren't. Asch was turned away at every gate by disbelieving guards, and snuck into the manor directly using one of his old favored routes. There, he found a vision that seemed like a dream, but which quickly grew horrifying - his mother and Natalia, playing happily with a redheaded boy who looked like him but wasn't. The replica Luke, at this point, could barely toddle, and was in fact described by Asch's watching father as a baby in a ten year old's body (unbeknownst to Duke Fabre, he was right on the money). Suzanne, in her gentle way, countered that they should be glad he had been returned at all, even if 'trauma' had cost him all of his memories. The replica, meanwhile, trips, falls, and begins to cry, until Natalia places a flower crown on his head, implied to be a symbol of the promise between her and Asch.
Asch, who is still watching, hears Van behind him say that his family doesn't really need him if he's so easily replaced, and that Van is the only one who really needs him instead of a replacement. Still reeling and devestated, Asch goes back to Daath with Van, who gives him the name 'Asch' as something of a constant reminder of what he is.
There, Van fills him in on all the nasty details of why he was born - that his only reason for existing is to die at a town called Akzeriuth in order to ensure the prosperity promised in the Score. Van tells Asch that he needs the power Asch alone possesses (as far as is known at the time; even Dist is not aware that Luke and Asch are perfect isofons until the game). That power - the power of Lorelei promised by the Score - is hyperresonance, the ability to vibrate Seventh Fonons together to disperse matter on the atomic level (among other things). Though Van reassures Asch that he needs him to save the world from the Score, he doesn't give the boy very much detail about what Van actually needs his power FOR. Van also tells Asch that the reason for the creation of the replica was so that it would die in Asch's place in the Score, and that if Asch attempted to go back to Baticul, he would be forced to die as ordained. To further break Asch's desire to return, Van also tells Asch the truth about Guy - born Gailardia Galan Gardios, the only remaining heir of that house, who only joined the Fabre Manor to get close to Asch and kill him as revenge.
At around this time, Asch starts having strange headaches and occasionally hearing an odd voice. Unlike Luke, who also has these headaches, Asch has the context to identify the voice as Lorelei eventually; the problem is that he doesn't understand what the entity wants. The headaches are debilitating enough that he can't hide them, but he keeps hearing Lorelei's voice to himself.
After two years of private training, Asch enters the Oracle Knights on Van's recommendation. He goes through the officer's academy, but in part because of Van's molding and in part because of his age, remains isolated. After graduating, he rises quickly through the ranks, and at fifteen reaches the position of Commander in the Special Operations division. He also rises in the civilian part of the Order and is one of the six Maestros by the time of the game - supported by the names of his equipment (Maestro robe etc) and the implication by the replica Ion that he could have visited Yulia City prior to when he actually DOES in the game.
He is not trained as a Seventh Fonist, and indeed his ability to use the Seventh Fonon at all (much less as well as he potentially could) is kept completely secret. This is because Van was worried that his untrained hyperresonance would go off in an area as full of Seventh Fonons as a healer's training room. Van does train Asch to control his hyperresonance in secret, but not until he's significantly older, and he never does train the boy in healing or Score-reading.
Outside of the officer's academy, while Van was nominally Asch's guardian until he was old enough to be considered emancipated, Asch's actual upbringing was largely handled by Largo. Van was the authority figure that was only around long enough to check on Asch, who worked tirelessly for his approval; Largo handled the sorts of things Asch needed to learn to be an independent adult, but the two of them never got emotionally close. Dist was also frequently around, but between his complete lack of maturity and Asch's SEVERE dislike of the man for his involvement in the fomicry experiments that resulted in Luke, Dist could never be called anything like a guardian to Asch.
While we don't actually know what Special Operations does in the context of the Order, I have several headcanons on the matter. It's the Order's assassination squad, for when someone needs to be removed in the name of the Score, has survived a Score of death and gotten caught, or speaks out too openly against the Score; it was in charge of hunting down survivors of the sinking of Hod; and it served as internal police and inquisition for the Order itself. All of these are things Van would have wanted one of his own in charge of, because all three apply to him; additionally, the nature of the position would have made Asch easier to isolate (and thus, manipulate), and the things he had to do to maintain his own cover would have made Asch hate the Score all the more.
Asch, for his part, only acted on the position when expressly ordered to, and had some creative ways of making people 'disappear' as he got older that weren't exactly within the bounds of his mission. He secretly shuttled a number of his targets in the direction of the Dark Wings and other such groups that look out for the Score-doomed, though as much as possible while avoiding coming into contact with those groups himself. Making any kind of active overtures to them would have been too much of a risk in his position.
That's not to say that Asch didn't gain a well-deserved reputation within that position all by himself. He earned the title 'the Bloody' from frequently returning from his own personal missions with bloodstains up past his elbows (hence the exceptionally long gloves on his game outfit) and was known for being ruthless and temperamental at best. And then, of course, there was his red hair, which he refused to dye and grew out exceptionally long, which marked him clearly as related to the Kimlascan royal line. The few people who questioned the matter were fed a line about Asch being the bastard child of his own father - which, of course, only deepened his resentment of the situation.
Somewhere around this time, a God-General named Cantabile who had been against Van's faction mysteriously disappears. Though information about Cantabile beyond her name only appears in side materials (specifically, Tear's story in Tales of Fandom), it wouldn't do to not mention her as she's the only high-ranked person in the Oracle Knights who isn't under Van's thumb at the time. My headcanon is that Van had it arranged for her to be framed for heresy and executed in relative quiet, with only the higher ranks of the Order even aware. Asch, as the commander of special operations, was the one who actually carried out the execution.
Throughout these years, Van acquires additional allies. First is the strange feral girl named Arietta, who Van places as the guardian of the Fon Master, Ion, a sickly boy who commands a hell of a lot of power both politically and otherwise. ("Fon Master" is the head of the religion approximately equivalent to the Pope, if the Pope was decided by prophecy says so instead of the vote of the cardinals.) The second was Legretta, already a high-ranked member of the Oracle Knights in her own right, who became Van's lover and the mentor to his sister. The last was a boy named Sync, who constantly wore a mask and strangely resembled the Fon Master - yeah, right. Asch knew exactly there was fomicry involved with Sync and the Fon Master from the moment Sync appeared, though it wasn't until Arietta was removed from the Fon Master Guard that he realized that the Ion from that time forward was a replica as well. The original Ion died approximately two years prior to the main events of canon, in the year Asch was fifteen. Around this time, Asch began to grow suspicious of Van's motives and plans; Van promptly set Sync to watching him, however, preventing Asch from doing much in the way of investigating for more than a year.
And what a difference that time made. Not long after turning seventeen, Asch is sent on a mission to hunt down the missing Fon Master - nominally, anyway. In reality, this mission leads to the takeover of a Malkuth landship, the Tartarus, and the near-complete slaughter of its crew in the name of taking possession of the Fon Master. But the Fon Master isn't the only interesting cargo onboard the ship - it also carries an obnoxiously arrogant boy with a face Asch has seen in the mirror every day for his entire life.
Asch doesn't know how Luke got there, and to his credit, he actually does NOT attack his replica immediately, though the set-up of the scene may give that impression. Rather, he watches as Luke has his first encounter with a genuine kill-or-be-killed situation - and very nearly flubs it into 'killed,' followed by having a complete mental breakdown over it. It's only then, disgusted by what he considers weakness in his replica (after all, Asch himself has by this point been killing people for a long time, and for a lot worse reasons than 'if I didn't he would have killed me first') that Asch drops an Icicle Rain over Luke. Jade Curtiss (the other creator of fomicry and a major Malkuth officer) and Tear Grants (Van's younger, somewhat estranged sister) arrive on the scene after a failed attempt to retake the ship's bridge. Only Jade gets a clear look at Asch's face as Legretta stops him from ordering the group to their deaths and has them thrown in the brig instead.
It's not long before the trio escapes again, taking with them the Fon Master that was the genuine objective of the mission. The replica Ion had been taken outside the ship with Legretta for reasons unknown to Asch; when the escapees and the newly-arrived Guy make off with him, orders are to follow them and retake the Fon Master at all costs. (While the rest of the God-Generals follow the group towards St Binah, Asch is sent to back-track to Engeve, explaining his absence in the scene the party observes.) Asch's doubts grow; he seeks out Van privately, but Van's words offer him no reassurances, and he decides to take the investigation into his own hands - using Luke as a proxy.
(In game canon, there is a scene at the Kaitzur border crossing where Asch jumps in out of nowhere, attacks Luke, is stopped by Van, and jumps away again with no explanation. This scene is omitted in all future adaptations, and I primarily reference it as canon evidence that Asch jumps like a bloody dragoon if he wants to. It doesn't really add anything to the plot besides Van being able to call Asch down and Asch obeying basically immediately.)
There's one little problem, and that is that in order to do that, he needs to get Luke into the fomicry machine in Choral Castle. Fortunately, Arietta and Dist are easily enough to manipulate into lending a hand, with promises of time with Ion and fresh interesting fomicry data respectively. Sync goes along with it for whatever reason it is he does, and Asch is able to get Dist to open Luke's fon slots to his interference. Asch himself doesn't go to Choral Castle, because he practically gets panic attacks at the idea of going there because of the kidnapping. I assume he got the idea of synchronizing their fon slots from the sensations he experienced when Luke was born and the fact that Lorelei talks in his head. Otherwise there's no explanation for it.
Luke and company go back to Baticul, while Van takes Arietta 'to prison' in Daath. (Yeah, that totally didn't actually happen.) Asch, after witnessing an encounter Luke as with bandits in Chesedonia the old-fashioned way, hires them to 'collect' Ion from Baticul. Asch had been aware of the Dark Wings' movements in general due to his role in Special Operations, but as he hadn't been given any orders on the matter, he more than contentedly let them be. They only attracted his notice in this case due to the party encountering them in Chesedonia. On the way out, when the Dark Wings are giving Ion to the Oracle Knights at the Tartatus (most prominently, Asch and Sync), Luke's group jumps out of an abandoned factory above them.
For the first time, Luke is able to see Asch's face - in pouring rain that heightens their resemblance by removing the difference in their hair, no less. Luke attempts to attack, demanding Ion's return, and is fended off by Asch. Sync basically tells Asch to get in the car, and they leave, while Luke freaks out and pukes into the grass because that was sure a disturbing thing that just happened.
This time, Asch is let in on a little of the secret for why they even need Ion, as the boy is lead down into the depths of the Zao Ruins to unlock the seal on the Sephiroth there. (The Sephiroth are officially the energy centers of the planet; in reality they're the locations of ancient machines called passage rings that control the Sephiroth trees, which are... we'll get to that.) Asch uses the connection between them to communicate this information to Luke, as a test to see what his replica would do.
Luke and company dive into the ruins after Ion and show up practically on the heels of the three God-Generals escorting him. Sync and Largo engage the party while Asch watches over Ion at the seal. Eventually, he steps in, trading blows with Luke (who is confused about how they have the same moves, prompting what's basically "we're trained in the same style you moron" from Asch - note that Van is the ONLY teacher of this style as it originates from Hod). Ion is taken back to the party when the ceiling threatens to come down in their collective heads, and Largo makes a comment about Natalia that prompts a ??? from Asch, followed by a snarky comment from Sync about not needing to know each others' pasts. (Sync is also the one to ascribe the 'charred remains of the sacred flame' meaning to Asch's name in this exchange.)
Asch, still suspicious, continues to spy on Luke aboard the Tartarus. (In game canon, there follows a scene where he attempts to control Luke's body into attacking Tear via their connection. This is omitted from every other version, presumably because it goes against nearly the entire rest of his characterization, much like the scene at Kaitzur. I can only explain it as "testing his power + abused kid on a power trip.") Through this connection, he learns that Van has told Luke that he's ~*~special~*~ and wants to meet with him at Akzeriuth, and has ordered Luke to keep this a secret from everyone else. This raises alarm bells like hell for Asch, and he abandons the Tartarus to make for Akzeriuth like a man possessed, in the hopes of being able to do something.
Outside, he runs into Tear escorted by a group of Oracle Knights - further evidence that nasty shit is going to go down, because the whole point of it is for Van to get his sister out of the way. Asch gives her a lowdown of what he thinks Van is about to do and the two sprint inside down into the mines, where Van has already led Luke away from the rest of their group. Asch attempts to delay Luke with their connection, but Luke - having no reason to listen to this guy over the teacher he trusts - ignores him. Asch passes Tear when she stops to explain things to Jade, and arrives alone to the Akzeriuth passage ring, which Van had Ion open.
He's already too late. Van has used a combination of hypnosis and emotional shock to send Luke into a panic, triggering an uncontrolled hyperresonance that destroys the passage ring. The land they're on begins to shake and crumble. Van, lamenting that he had intended to use it to rescue Ion for further use, has a flying monster grab Asch, riding a second himself out of the mines and thus out of danger. Tear and the rest of the group arrive just after they're gone, in time to see only Luke and Ion and for Tear to secure their safety within the barrier-creating second Yulian Hymn.
From the sky, Asch sees Akzeriuth - and with it, Natalia and Guy, two of the people most important to him from childhood, and ten thousand other people - collapse inward on itself and fall into the crust, and down, down, down into the region of the planet called the Qliphoth, a sea of mud and poisonous miasma. Van all but laughs off Asch's concern, telling him to go to Yulia City if he's so concerned about survivors, intending, of course, for Asch to discover that there are none, and thus for Asch to become even more bitter at the world and join forces with him.
This is stupid on Van's part for two reasons. The first is that (unlike the party, who really never do get the full story out of Luke and pretty much never apologize for blaming him for it throughout canon) Asch lays the blame for Akzeriuth properly at Van's feet. It is in fact a more significant split than Van realizes, because for all that he claims to be trying to stop the Score, what Asch sees is a man who condemned ten thousand people to death for it. To Van, it's no big deal, as his eventual plan would have involved them dying anyway, but to Asch it's deeply significant.
The other thing is that there are survivors - Luke's party parks a rather banged-up Tartarus at docks that have been unused for millenia (except, of course, when the same few fortunate survivors came from Hod) just about the time that Asch reaches the city. By this time, Luke is reeling in guilt, shock, and isolation, and the sight of Asch flips the switch over into too much. He draws his weapon, despairing, and he and Asch duel to a sound defeat on Luke's part. Asch takes Luke's unconscious body to an unoccupied house in the city, which turns out to be Tear's.
Asch makes the decision to show Luke how the world really works - by taking his replica's consciousness into his own body. It's more than a bit uncomfortable - especially when (as per anime adaptation) Luke sees one of his nightmares of trying to get home to find the replica already there - but it seems to work. Luke is left with nothing to do in Asch's head but THINK and see how the world is when you're not being an arrogant, ignorant ass to everyone. For all that Asch is poorly socialized, he's a guy with a mission and if nothing else he can see that through, and he has enough respect for other people that they treat him with respect back (for their various values of respect, Jade).
And he takes steps after that mission - having completely left Van, he makes use of the party and half-broken Tartarus to pursue leads on Van's activities. After, of course, a number of awkward moments with the rest of the party, especially Natalia, where Asch explains what Luke really is and what's happened in the last seven years. Natalia acts heedless of the seven year gap, overjoyed that 'her' Luke has returned, which makes Asch deeply uncomfortable; Guy, in contrast, bonded with the replica Luke the way he never did with Asch, and isn't exactly pleased at having the original around.
The first lead takes them into the replica research labs in Belkend, where the group encounters Spinoza, who reveals to everyone that Jade is the creator of fomicry (except Asch, who presumably already knew from his lack of reaction. Again, he was brought up around Dist). Though Spinoza himself is closed-mouthed, other researchers give them a further lead to Ortion Cavern, a major fonamin mine. Guy chooses to split from the party here and go back for Luke, which garners objections from everyone EXCEPT Asch, who (calmly and with perhaps a bit of resigned disappointment) tells him how to get to Aramis Springs, which houses the route to Yulia City that doesn't involve taking a dive through the crust.
At Ortion Cavern, Asch forces Ion to remain with the ship, has a moment with Natalia where he protects her from monsters, and leads the group to the lab at the back. There, they discover that Van and Dist have managed to expand fomicry to a hypotherical tenth of Auldrant's surface - and that's just the data that's left behind for them to find. Beginning to get a nasty inkling of Van's plans, Asch and company also come upon a pair of cheagles, perfect isofons created in the same way as Asch and Luke. The original cheagle is weakening and dying. Jade reassures everyone that that won't happen to Asch - who has already survived seven years - and they leave just in time for an earthquake indicating a major chunk of the land falling. Asch kicks Luke back to his own body and separates from the party to explore on his own.
From here, we can't be exactly sure of many of Asch's activities, as he spends a great deal of time off screen (and the manga adaptation centered on him comes to an end). It is known that he re-hires the Dark Wings as extra hands, and that they grow somewhat fond of him in spite of his best efforts. He continues to investigate Van's movements, and in the process discovers that Natalia is to be executed as a false princess, and Luke a a replica, for the destruction of Akzeriuth. Rallying the common folk of Baticul to the defense of their beloved princess, he and the Dark Wings stage a rescue that comes to a head in the throne room. Asch stands between Largo (actually a threat) and Dist (not so much) to allow the rest of the party to escape, in front of his greatly shocked uncle and father.
The party escapes by crossing Inista Marsh, and Asch meets them again on the other side, bearing a book of secret forbidden history to Jade from Ion so that they can make a plan to take care of the lands falling. The next day, they get together and make a plan, only for Asch to discover Spinoza listening at the windows. He tears off after the man, but doesn't manage to get a hold of him before information about the plan is leaked to Van. This directly leads to Sync's attempt at sabotaging the dive to place the Tartarus in the core to stabilize the Sephiroth, which Asch witnessed over his connection to Luke, including the bit where Lorelei possesses Tear and talks about being sealed within the core.
Not long after that, Asch discovers that he's begun to weaken like the cheagle in the lab, and goes to Spinoza to demand answers. The information he receives is incomplete, as Spinoza tells him that he's going to die, but not that it will result in him waking up in Luke's body. Asch's understandable panic about his limited remaining life greatly influences his actions throughout the rest of the game. The party also happens to be in Belkend at the time, and Asch and Tear steal away in the middle of the night to confront Van in Ortion Cavern themselves.
This goes... poorly. Van attempts to convince Asch to join him again (yeah, not happening), and when that doesn't work, shanks him pretty hard (anime canon has it as a blow to the stomach, which is what I go with). The party shows up just in time to witness it, and Asch reveals the centerpiece of Van's plan - that he intends to replicate the planet by using Lorelei as a source of raw Seventh Fonons. Van says he intends to use Asch to destroy Lorelei, completely dismissing the idea that Luke might be capable of it, and leaves. Asch, in turn, runs off himself, even though his injuries aren't fully healed. No time to wait, gotta stop Van... Especially when he looks at the cheagle cage and realizes that only the replica remains.
The next time you see Asch is in the just-before-apparent-final-dungeon set of scenes at Keterburg - after talking to all the party the night before, Luke has a headache and wanders out to find Asch in the square, still suffering from his injuries. Asch basically gives Luke a "I'm injured, so I can't go, so you'd BETTER NOT FUCK IT UP" speech. Luke is like "okay, okay" and the party sets off for the Radiation Gate.
...Of course, Asch being Asch, even with his injuries he won't actually let someone else do the thing. Rather than resting, he makes for the Radiation Gate (this is when he posed as Luke to get the other Albiore from Sheridan, otherwise there's no way he could have made it fast enough). Apparently by himself, still injured, he makes his way through the penultimate dungeon of the game in order to support Luke's attempt to lower the land from that passage ring. It's a good thing he does, as Luke's hyperresonance alone isn't enough to control the descent. Working together through their connection, they do it together.
And then Lorelei cuts in with a message - Van, who Luke allowed to fall into the core instead of killing properly, is using the hymn to bind Lorelei to himself. Lorelei sends Luke and Asch each half of a relic called the Key of Lorelei; Asch receives the Sword half, but Luke fails to get the Jewel half, and generally doesn't interpret Lorelei's message properly at all.
After the immediate crisis is over, the Dark Wings drag him to their settlement, Nam Cobanda Isle, for a time to force him to recover fully from his injuries. Aware of his reputation as a slaughterer of Hod survivors and the like, he... basically hides in his room the entire time, and leaves as soon as he can manage.
Cut to a month later, where Asch has been running around like crazy trying to find the Jewel that Luke didn't get. Luke and company eventually hunt him down and get the real meaning of the message out of him - and Asch, as is typical, attacks Luke for being an idiot and not getting the job done properly. The two groups part ways for now as Asch continues on his quest.
By the next time they meet up, a number of really awful things have happened - Sync is back on the surface and the replica Ion is dead, having delivered the true ending of Yulia's Score under pressure from Grand Maestro Mohs, who was previously allied with Van but really only cares about the Score. (Another thing Asch spied on this over his connection to Luke.) Also, the miasma is back. That's the biggest problem of the batch. Jade comes up with an idea that would allow it to be eliminated... But doing so would cost the lives of either ten thousand Seventh Fonists or ten thousand replicas, as well as either Luke or Asch to control a single massive hyperresonance made from their fonons.
Luke, feeling the weight of his friend's death and the possibility of his own, forces Asch to come to the manor in Baticul to see his parents. The encounter is extremely awkward, though Asch permits his parents to call him Luke, as he allows not even Natalia to do so. His mother embraces him, and Luke leaves the room - thus the player isn't sure exactly what transpires. The encounter is, however, brief, and Asch leaves it in a fairly sour mood. (Honestly, probably mostly because he was trying not to cry.) He gets mad at Luke and says that he's not Luke anymore and is never coming back before leaving.
Fortunately or unfortunately, as a side effect of Van's plans, there's currently a bunch of replicas gathering at a structure called the Tower of Rem. Upon hearing the plan, Asch makes the decision that, well, if he's going to die anyway, it might as well be for a good cause, and heads there to make the offer to them of doing that thing. The party follows him and he and Luke have a fight over which of them is going to do it. They leave for a time, both to take care of loose ends and to give the replicas time to make their decision.
What loose ends you ask? SIDE QUESTS. Asch only really appears in person in two of them, and only one of them am I going to bother to explain here - it's called Mushroom Road, and the general plot of it is that his and Luke's mother (who is sick as heck, remember) is running out of her medicine, so the party sets off to get this one specific mushroom. When they arrive, Asch is already there, presumably because he spied on the whole thing over the connection. Luke stays by the ship in case something happens and because he and Asch can't be in the same party at once. They find the mushroom, and Asch is incredibly tsundere about "no you take it back" which leads to a cute scene where Luke explains to his mom that HE didn't go into danger to get the mushroom, ASCH did it. And Asch gets themother's boy loving son title.
And then it's back to the Tower of Rem. Asch beats the party to the top, but Luke - being a replica - would die anyway just for being present, so he grabs the Sword from Asch and starts the process, while Jade holds Asch back. The replicas begin to dissolve. But something goes wrong, because the Jewel of Lorelei has actually been INSIDE Luke this entire time. Once again, it takes both replica and original working together to do the thing. As a result, happily, neither of them dies! ...Yet.
In reality, the damage was just spread between both of them. They both begin to experience fonon separation (or rather, in Asch's case, it grows more severe). There's still work to be done, though. Asch tells Luke to hang onto the Jewel for now and takes the Sword back. All that remains is to stop the Planet Storm, go to Eldrant, and beat Van actually to death.
First is the Absorption Gate - there, another Ion replica is forced to read a repeat of the Score, and Van returns. Van finally seems to have gotten the message, though - when Asch turns him down this time, he finally extends the offer of "help me destroy the world" to Luke. Asch attempts to kill him, but is stopped by Largo (who then dies against the party to cover the retreat) and Sync. The baddies escape, and Asch tells Luke to keep the Jewel safe. Guy observes that he's acting nicer towards Luke after he leaves.
The party goes on to close the Radiation Gate side of the Planet Storm, shutting down Eldrant's main protection. Asch meets them outside Grand Chokmah, and throws a fit when Luke misinterprets his offer of a handshake as a request for the Jewel, and says that as the original, only Asch can do the thing. Asch goes off on Luke about them being the same, Luke asserts that they're different people, Asch tells him to stuff it and that he's Van's real student and Luke is just an imposter. It concludes in Asch demanding a duel with Luke at Eldrant and chucking the Jewel back at him.
He then sends the Dark Wings back to their people, and attempts to convince his pilot to let him fly the airship in to Eldrant by himself. Fortunately (regardless of which pilot you have in game - it's Ginji in every adaptation), he isn't allowed to do so. Unfortunately, his ship crashes into Eldrant as Eldrant attempts to ram the two airships and crashes into the ground, and after making sure the pilot isn't dead, Asch heads inside.
Only to fall into a trap hole, one that Luke soon falls into as well. After a comment from Asch about how their family must have stupid genes, it's time for a DUEL, because the trap is set up to let only one of them out while the other remains and holds the door open. They fight, and Luke is the victor. Asch, grudgingly, acknowledges him, and gives him the Sword of Lorelei. Luke attempts to protest, but replicated soldiers arrive and Asch orders Luke to GO. Luke extracts a promise from Asch that is Doomed To Never Be Fulfilled and leaves while Asch faces down the whole room full of them. There's a dramatic moment where Asch reclaims his name as Luke fon Fabre, and then he settles in to fight.
It's. One hell of a long doomed fight - Luke and company clear a segment of the dungeon that takes you as a player about twenty minutes to pass through at minimum before Asch is overwhelmed. Finally, he's run through, by not one but THREE swords. and even then, slays the last of his assailants before collapsing against the wall. (For obvious reasons, I headcanon that by some stroke of luck, none of the three swords hits him in the heart.) Luke witnesses this through their connection, and hears Asch's last words - "the rest is up to you" - before returning to himself with a new level of power with hyperresonance and the Key completed. (And a good thing, too, as he then has to use second order hyperresonance to disable a trap of Sync's.)
Luke goes on to beat Van and free Lorelei, and as Eldrant begins to collapse, catches Asch's corpse as it falls through the ceiling. Lorelei gives Luke a Good Job as he leaves, and Asch's hand twitches, making for all the more of an Ambiguous Ending in regards to the redhead who shows up in the epilogue. However, for my purposes, both Luke and Asch are dead there, and the man in the ending is Lorelei in a physical form, called by Tear's singing of the Grand Fonic Hymn.
[And he shall be of royal blood and hair of red, and he shall be called the light of the sacred flame.]
Asch was born Luke fon Fabre to Duke Crimson Fabre of Belkend and Suzanne fon Fabre, ne Lanvaldear, younger half-sister of His Majesty Ingobert VI, king of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. Suzanne was a sickly woman, and only bore a child because the Score called for a child of royal blood with hair of red. Indeed, her entire marriage to Crimson was to facilitate the 100% chance of a red-haired heir after the Princess Natalia was supposedly born blond to the dark-haired queen. Asch was born just twelve days from the end of the year, indicating a last-minute pregnancy to fulfill the Score, one that caused further complications to his mother's health.
Why all the hullabaloo over one kid who wasn't even (technically) a prince? Because the Score, the prophecy that is the effective ruler of Auldrant due to being the main point of its religion, called for his birth with a specific set of traits. ...And, likewise, it called for his death at the age of seventeen. Asch's mother was never told of this section of the Score, but the boy's father and uncle knew from before he was born. Asch himself isn't sure if his mother is aware or not.
So the child was born as per prophecy, named as per prophecy (Luke fon Fabre being a fairly literal translation of "light of the sacred flame" - though the game gives the translation to just 'Luke,' I find it makes more sense as his full name, as the 'fon Fabre' formation is pretty clearly one that indicates an 'of [noble house]' the way 'von' and 'de' are used in our world.) A few weeks after he was born, his engagement to Princess Natalia was announced; though first cousins are a fairly close marriage even by the standards of Kimlascan royalty, which bred for centuries to ensure the red hair that was their pride and a requirement of Asch's birth, Natalia was born blond and her heirs would need to have at least a chance of the red hair.
(Of course, Natalia's supposed mother was dark haired, and Natalia herself wasn't actually of the royal line at all, but a replacement for a stillborn girl. But that's another story.)
Asch, of course, was raised in complete ignorance of his future role, alongside Natalia as virtually the only person in his age group that he knew growing up. The boy took to the future role of king exceptionally well, proving not only to be intelligent, but deeply compassionate in a way far beyond his years. By seven or eight years old, he was frequently sneaking out to the city to see the lives of the citizens for himself, and imparted wisdom about the matter to Natalia - walk with your own feet, look with your own eyes, or you won't really know what's going on. On Natalia's tenth birthday, just after his eighth, Asch proposed marriage to her himself by means of a promise to fix their beloved country together, for the rest of their lives.
When Asch was about five, new servants arrived at Fabre manor - a gardener named Pere, and the man's 'nephew' and young ward, a boy five years Asch's senior called Guy. Though Guy had no love for the young Asch, Asch got attached to the new servant almost immediately, seeing him as an older brother figure. It frequently became the case afterwards that Asch would abandon Natalia to play with Guy instead, while Guy attempted to keep a lid on his resentment of Asch and the real reason he had come to the manor - to kill the child as revenge on the Duke who had killed his family during the Hod war.
Guy was one of several factors put in place around the Fabre Manor by Van Grants (by birth, Vandesdelca Musto Fende, another native of Hod and a descent of Yulia, the woman who penned the primary Score followed by the Order of Lorelei). Van used his position as the rising star of the Order's military branch, the Oracle Knights, and got himself hired on as a swordsmanship tutor for the young heir about two years after Guy was hired on. He took advantage of Duke Fabre's coldness towards his son to grow close to Asch and earn the young boy's trust.
This, of course, was all in preparation for the kidnapping. In late winter the year Asch was nine (note that Kimlasca is in the southern hemisphere, so this is the equivalent of July-August for Earth), Van took advantage of that trust to approach Asch on one of his explorations outside the manor, and used the First of the Yulian Hymns to induce sleep in the boy and carry him off. Asch awoke in a dark, damp cell, in what he would later find out was the basement of his family's abandoned vacation home, Choral Castle (near the Malkuth border).
There, Van put his true plan for Asch into action. With the assistance of Dist the Reaper, one of the developers of fomicry, and an assistant researcher of loose morals named Spinoza, he set about creating a replica of the kidnapped boy. Due to complications related to Asch's fonon frequency being identical to that of the Seventh Fonon, creation of a stable replica was very difficult. Eventually, they had to bypass the usual middle step of putting the replica data in a piece of fonamin ore, and used the fonons from Asch's body directly to create the replica. (This is why Luke is a perfect isofon of Asch, the FIRST perfect isofon ever.)
Asch's state of mind is as much hallucinations as not during this time period, but he does has distinct memories of Van standing over him, Spinoza and Dist (based on his immediate recognition of the former at Belkend), and the sensation of fonons leaving his body to form Luke. Eventually, a stable replica was created, which Van carried back to Baticul under the guise of having 'rescued' him from Malkuth. Malkuth, of course, being not to blame, has no idea this happens until Luke tells the story to Jade seven years later aboard the Tartarus, but the incident is the cause of increased border tensions that would eventually lead to the state of near-war that we see in canon.
Asch himself was taken by Largo and Dist to Daath, where he was allowed to 'escape' after a brief period. He stowed aboard the first ship be could from Daath, to Belkend, and from there, when unable to obtain further passage back to Baticul, crossed the Inista Marsh on foot. Using a sword stolen during his escape to defend himself, he slew a lot of monsters on the way, as well as a pair of bandits. He pushed down every emotion he could during this period in favor of his mission - to return to the place he called home, where everyone was waiting for him.
Except, of course, they weren't. Asch was turned away at every gate by disbelieving guards, and snuck into the manor directly using one of his old favored routes. There, he found a vision that seemed like a dream, but which quickly grew horrifying - his mother and Natalia, playing happily with a redheaded boy who looked like him but wasn't. The replica Luke, at this point, could barely toddle, and was in fact described by Asch's watching father as a baby in a ten year old's body (unbeknownst to Duke Fabre, he was right on the money). Suzanne, in her gentle way, countered that they should be glad he had been returned at all, even if 'trauma' had cost him all of his memories. The replica, meanwhile, trips, falls, and begins to cry, until Natalia places a flower crown on his head, implied to be a symbol of the promise between her and Asch.
Asch, who is still watching, hears Van behind him say that his family doesn't really need him if he's so easily replaced, and that Van is the only one who really needs him instead of a replacement. Still reeling and devestated, Asch goes back to Daath with Van, who gives him the name 'Asch' as something of a constant reminder of what he is.
There, Van fills him in on all the nasty details of why he was born - that his only reason for existing is to die at a town called Akzeriuth in order to ensure the prosperity promised in the Score. Van tells Asch that he needs the power Asch alone possesses (as far as is known at the time; even Dist is not aware that Luke and Asch are perfect isofons until the game). That power - the power of Lorelei promised by the Score - is hyperresonance, the ability to vibrate Seventh Fonons together to disperse matter on the atomic level (among other things). Though Van reassures Asch that he needs him to save the world from the Score, he doesn't give the boy very much detail about what Van actually needs his power FOR. Van also tells Asch that the reason for the creation of the replica was so that it would die in Asch's place in the Score, and that if Asch attempted to go back to Baticul, he would be forced to die as ordained. To further break Asch's desire to return, Van also tells Asch the truth about Guy - born Gailardia Galan Gardios, the only remaining heir of that house, who only joined the Fabre Manor to get close to Asch and kill him as revenge.
At around this time, Asch starts having strange headaches and occasionally hearing an odd voice. Unlike Luke, who also has these headaches, Asch has the context to identify the voice as Lorelei eventually; the problem is that he doesn't understand what the entity wants. The headaches are debilitating enough that he can't hide them, but he keeps hearing Lorelei's voice to himself.
After two years of private training, Asch enters the Oracle Knights on Van's recommendation. He goes through the officer's academy, but in part because of Van's molding and in part because of his age, remains isolated. After graduating, he rises quickly through the ranks, and at fifteen reaches the position of Commander in the Special Operations division. He also rises in the civilian part of the Order and is one of the six Maestros by the time of the game - supported by the names of his equipment (Maestro robe etc) and the implication by the replica Ion that he could have visited Yulia City prior to when he actually DOES in the game.
He is not trained as a Seventh Fonist, and indeed his ability to use the Seventh Fonon at all (much less as well as he potentially could) is kept completely secret. This is because Van was worried that his untrained hyperresonance would go off in an area as full of Seventh Fonons as a healer's training room. Van does train Asch to control his hyperresonance in secret, but not until he's significantly older, and he never does train the boy in healing or Score-reading.
Outside of the officer's academy, while Van was nominally Asch's guardian until he was old enough to be considered emancipated, Asch's actual upbringing was largely handled by Largo. Van was the authority figure that was only around long enough to check on Asch, who worked tirelessly for his approval; Largo handled the sorts of things Asch needed to learn to be an independent adult, but the two of them never got emotionally close. Dist was also frequently around, but between his complete lack of maturity and Asch's SEVERE dislike of the man for his involvement in the fomicry experiments that resulted in Luke, Dist could never be called anything like a guardian to Asch.
While we don't actually know what Special Operations does in the context of the Order, I have several headcanons on the matter. It's the Order's assassination squad, for when someone needs to be removed in the name of the Score, has survived a Score of death and gotten caught, or speaks out too openly against the Score; it was in charge of hunting down survivors of the sinking of Hod; and it served as internal police and inquisition for the Order itself. All of these are things Van would have wanted one of his own in charge of, because all three apply to him; additionally, the nature of the position would have made Asch easier to isolate (and thus, manipulate), and the things he had to do to maintain his own cover would have made Asch hate the Score all the more.
Asch, for his part, only acted on the position when expressly ordered to, and had some creative ways of making people 'disappear' as he got older that weren't exactly within the bounds of his mission. He secretly shuttled a number of his targets in the direction of the Dark Wings and other such groups that look out for the Score-doomed, though as much as possible while avoiding coming into contact with those groups himself. Making any kind of active overtures to them would have been too much of a risk in his position.
That's not to say that Asch didn't gain a well-deserved reputation within that position all by himself. He earned the title 'the Bloody' from frequently returning from his own personal missions with bloodstains up past his elbows (hence the exceptionally long gloves on his game outfit) and was known for being ruthless and temperamental at best. And then, of course, there was his red hair, which he refused to dye and grew out exceptionally long, which marked him clearly as related to the Kimlascan royal line. The few people who questioned the matter were fed a line about Asch being the bastard child of his own father - which, of course, only deepened his resentment of the situation.
Somewhere around this time, a God-General named Cantabile who had been against Van's faction mysteriously disappears. Though information about Cantabile beyond her name only appears in side materials (specifically, Tear's story in Tales of Fandom), it wouldn't do to not mention her as she's the only high-ranked person in the Oracle Knights who isn't under Van's thumb at the time. My headcanon is that Van had it arranged for her to be framed for heresy and executed in relative quiet, with only the higher ranks of the Order even aware. Asch, as the commander of special operations, was the one who actually carried out the execution.
Throughout these years, Van acquires additional allies. First is the strange feral girl named Arietta, who Van places as the guardian of the Fon Master, Ion, a sickly boy who commands a hell of a lot of power both politically and otherwise. ("Fon Master" is the head of the religion approximately equivalent to the Pope, if the Pope was decided by prophecy says so instead of the vote of the cardinals.) The second was Legretta, already a high-ranked member of the Oracle Knights in her own right, who became Van's lover and the mentor to his sister. The last was a boy named Sync, who constantly wore a mask and strangely resembled the Fon Master - yeah, right. Asch knew exactly there was fomicry involved with Sync and the Fon Master from the moment Sync appeared, though it wasn't until Arietta was removed from the Fon Master Guard that he realized that the Ion from that time forward was a replica as well. The original Ion died approximately two years prior to the main events of canon, in the year Asch was fifteen. Around this time, Asch began to grow suspicious of Van's motives and plans; Van promptly set Sync to watching him, however, preventing Asch from doing much in the way of investigating for more than a year.
And what a difference that time made. Not long after turning seventeen, Asch is sent on a mission to hunt down the missing Fon Master - nominally, anyway. In reality, this mission leads to the takeover of a Malkuth landship, the Tartarus, and the near-complete slaughter of its crew in the name of taking possession of the Fon Master. But the Fon Master isn't the only interesting cargo onboard the ship - it also carries an obnoxiously arrogant boy with a face Asch has seen in the mirror every day for his entire life.
Asch doesn't know how Luke got there, and to his credit, he actually does NOT attack his replica immediately, though the set-up of the scene may give that impression. Rather, he watches as Luke has his first encounter with a genuine kill-or-be-killed situation - and very nearly flubs it into 'killed,' followed by having a complete mental breakdown over it. It's only then, disgusted by what he considers weakness in his replica (after all, Asch himself has by this point been killing people for a long time, and for a lot worse reasons than 'if I didn't he would have killed me first') that Asch drops an Icicle Rain over Luke. Jade Curtiss (the other creator of fomicry and a major Malkuth officer) and Tear Grants (Van's younger, somewhat estranged sister) arrive on the scene after a failed attempt to retake the ship's bridge. Only Jade gets a clear look at Asch's face as Legretta stops him from ordering the group to their deaths and has them thrown in the brig instead.
It's not long before the trio escapes again, taking with them the Fon Master that was the genuine objective of the mission. The replica Ion had been taken outside the ship with Legretta for reasons unknown to Asch; when the escapees and the newly-arrived Guy make off with him, orders are to follow them and retake the Fon Master at all costs. (While the rest of the God-Generals follow the group towards St Binah, Asch is sent to back-track to Engeve, explaining his absence in the scene the party observes.) Asch's doubts grow; he seeks out Van privately, but Van's words offer him no reassurances, and he decides to take the investigation into his own hands - using Luke as a proxy.
(In game canon, there is a scene at the Kaitzur border crossing where Asch jumps in out of nowhere, attacks Luke, is stopped by Van, and jumps away again with no explanation. This scene is omitted in all future adaptations, and I primarily reference it as canon evidence that Asch jumps like a bloody dragoon if he wants to. It doesn't really add anything to the plot besides Van being able to call Asch down and Asch obeying basically immediately.)
There's one little problem, and that is that in order to do that, he needs to get Luke into the fomicry machine in Choral Castle. Fortunately, Arietta and Dist are easily enough to manipulate into lending a hand, with promises of time with Ion and fresh interesting fomicry data respectively. Sync goes along with it for whatever reason it is he does, and Asch is able to get Dist to open Luke's fon slots to his interference. Asch himself doesn't go to Choral Castle, because he practically gets panic attacks at the idea of going there because of the kidnapping. I assume he got the idea of synchronizing their fon slots from the sensations he experienced when Luke was born and the fact that Lorelei talks in his head. Otherwise there's no explanation for it.
Luke and company go back to Baticul, while Van takes Arietta 'to prison' in Daath. (Yeah, that totally didn't actually happen.) Asch, after witnessing an encounter Luke as with bandits in Chesedonia the old-fashioned way, hires them to 'collect' Ion from Baticul. Asch had been aware of the Dark Wings' movements in general due to his role in Special Operations, but as he hadn't been given any orders on the matter, he more than contentedly let them be. They only attracted his notice in this case due to the party encountering them in Chesedonia. On the way out, when the Dark Wings are giving Ion to the Oracle Knights at the Tartatus (most prominently, Asch and Sync), Luke's group jumps out of an abandoned factory above them.
For the first time, Luke is able to see Asch's face - in pouring rain that heightens their resemblance by removing the difference in their hair, no less. Luke attempts to attack, demanding Ion's return, and is fended off by Asch. Sync basically tells Asch to get in the car, and they leave, while Luke freaks out and pukes into the grass because that was sure a disturbing thing that just happened.
This time, Asch is let in on a little of the secret for why they even need Ion, as the boy is lead down into the depths of the Zao Ruins to unlock the seal on the Sephiroth there. (The Sephiroth are officially the energy centers of the planet; in reality they're the locations of ancient machines called passage rings that control the Sephiroth trees, which are... we'll get to that.) Asch uses the connection between them to communicate this information to Luke, as a test to see what his replica would do.
Luke and company dive into the ruins after Ion and show up practically on the heels of the three God-Generals escorting him. Sync and Largo engage the party while Asch watches over Ion at the seal. Eventually, he steps in, trading blows with Luke (who is confused about how they have the same moves, prompting what's basically "we're trained in the same style you moron" from Asch - note that Van is the ONLY teacher of this style as it originates from Hod). Ion is taken back to the party when the ceiling threatens to come down in their collective heads, and Largo makes a comment about Natalia that prompts a ??? from Asch, followed by a snarky comment from Sync about not needing to know each others' pasts. (Sync is also the one to ascribe the 'charred remains of the sacred flame' meaning to Asch's name in this exchange.)
Asch, still suspicious, continues to spy on Luke aboard the Tartarus. (In game canon, there follows a scene where he attempts to control Luke's body into attacking Tear via their connection. This is omitted from every other version, presumably because it goes against nearly the entire rest of his characterization, much like the scene at Kaitzur. I can only explain it as "testing his power + abused kid on a power trip.") Through this connection, he learns that Van has told Luke that he's ~*~special~*~ and wants to meet with him at Akzeriuth, and has ordered Luke to keep this a secret from everyone else. This raises alarm bells like hell for Asch, and he abandons the Tartarus to make for Akzeriuth like a man possessed, in the hopes of being able to do something.
Outside, he runs into Tear escorted by a group of Oracle Knights - further evidence that nasty shit is going to go down, because the whole point of it is for Van to get his sister out of the way. Asch gives her a lowdown of what he thinks Van is about to do and the two sprint inside down into the mines, where Van has already led Luke away from the rest of their group. Asch attempts to delay Luke with their connection, but Luke - having no reason to listen to this guy over the teacher he trusts - ignores him. Asch passes Tear when she stops to explain things to Jade, and arrives alone to the Akzeriuth passage ring, which Van had Ion open.
He's already too late. Van has used a combination of hypnosis and emotional shock to send Luke into a panic, triggering an uncontrolled hyperresonance that destroys the passage ring. The land they're on begins to shake and crumble. Van, lamenting that he had intended to use it to rescue Ion for further use, has a flying monster grab Asch, riding a second himself out of the mines and thus out of danger. Tear and the rest of the group arrive just after they're gone, in time to see only Luke and Ion and for Tear to secure their safety within the barrier-creating second Yulian Hymn.
From the sky, Asch sees Akzeriuth - and with it, Natalia and Guy, two of the people most important to him from childhood, and ten thousand other people - collapse inward on itself and fall into the crust, and down, down, down into the region of the planet called the Qliphoth, a sea of mud and poisonous miasma. Van all but laughs off Asch's concern, telling him to go to Yulia City if he's so concerned about survivors, intending, of course, for Asch to discover that there are none, and thus for Asch to become even more bitter at the world and join forces with him.
This is stupid on Van's part for two reasons. The first is that (unlike the party, who really never do get the full story out of Luke and pretty much never apologize for blaming him for it throughout canon) Asch lays the blame for Akzeriuth properly at Van's feet. It is in fact a more significant split than Van realizes, because for all that he claims to be trying to stop the Score, what Asch sees is a man who condemned ten thousand people to death for it. To Van, it's no big deal, as his eventual plan would have involved them dying anyway, but to Asch it's deeply significant.
The other thing is that there are survivors - Luke's party parks a rather banged-up Tartarus at docks that have been unused for millenia (except, of course, when the same few fortunate survivors came from Hod) just about the time that Asch reaches the city. By this time, Luke is reeling in guilt, shock, and isolation, and the sight of Asch flips the switch over into too much. He draws his weapon, despairing, and he and Asch duel to a sound defeat on Luke's part. Asch takes Luke's unconscious body to an unoccupied house in the city, which turns out to be Tear's.
Asch makes the decision to show Luke how the world really works - by taking his replica's consciousness into his own body. It's more than a bit uncomfortable - especially when (as per anime adaptation) Luke sees one of his nightmares of trying to get home to find the replica already there - but it seems to work. Luke is left with nothing to do in Asch's head but THINK and see how the world is when you're not being an arrogant, ignorant ass to everyone. For all that Asch is poorly socialized, he's a guy with a mission and if nothing else he can see that through, and he has enough respect for other people that they treat him with respect back (for their various values of respect, Jade).
And he takes steps after that mission - having completely left Van, he makes use of the party and half-broken Tartarus to pursue leads on Van's activities. After, of course, a number of awkward moments with the rest of the party, especially Natalia, where Asch explains what Luke really is and what's happened in the last seven years. Natalia acts heedless of the seven year gap, overjoyed that 'her' Luke has returned, which makes Asch deeply uncomfortable; Guy, in contrast, bonded with the replica Luke the way he never did with Asch, and isn't exactly pleased at having the original around.
The first lead takes them into the replica research labs in Belkend, where the group encounters Spinoza, who reveals to everyone that Jade is the creator of fomicry (except Asch, who presumably already knew from his lack of reaction. Again, he was brought up around Dist). Though Spinoza himself is closed-mouthed, other researchers give them a further lead to Ortion Cavern, a major fonamin mine. Guy chooses to split from the party here and go back for Luke, which garners objections from everyone EXCEPT Asch, who (calmly and with perhaps a bit of resigned disappointment) tells him how to get to Aramis Springs, which houses the route to Yulia City that doesn't involve taking a dive through the crust.
At Ortion Cavern, Asch forces Ion to remain with the ship, has a moment with Natalia where he protects her from monsters, and leads the group to the lab at the back. There, they discover that Van and Dist have managed to expand fomicry to a hypotherical tenth of Auldrant's surface - and that's just the data that's left behind for them to find. Beginning to get a nasty inkling of Van's plans, Asch and company also come upon a pair of cheagles, perfect isofons created in the same way as Asch and Luke. The original cheagle is weakening and dying. Jade reassures everyone that that won't happen to Asch - who has already survived seven years - and they leave just in time for an earthquake indicating a major chunk of the land falling. Asch kicks Luke back to his own body and separates from the party to explore on his own.
From here, we can't be exactly sure of many of Asch's activities, as he spends a great deal of time off screen (and the manga adaptation centered on him comes to an end). It is known that he re-hires the Dark Wings as extra hands, and that they grow somewhat fond of him in spite of his best efforts. He continues to investigate Van's movements, and in the process discovers that Natalia is to be executed as a false princess, and Luke a a replica, for the destruction of Akzeriuth. Rallying the common folk of Baticul to the defense of their beloved princess, he and the Dark Wings stage a rescue that comes to a head in the throne room. Asch stands between Largo (actually a threat) and Dist (not so much) to allow the rest of the party to escape, in front of his greatly shocked uncle and father.
The party escapes by crossing Inista Marsh, and Asch meets them again on the other side, bearing a book of secret forbidden history to Jade from Ion so that they can make a plan to take care of the lands falling. The next day, they get together and make a plan, only for Asch to discover Spinoza listening at the windows. He tears off after the man, but doesn't manage to get a hold of him before information about the plan is leaked to Van. This directly leads to Sync's attempt at sabotaging the dive to place the Tartarus in the core to stabilize the Sephiroth, which Asch witnessed over his connection to Luke, including the bit where Lorelei possesses Tear and talks about being sealed within the core.
Not long after that, Asch discovers that he's begun to weaken like the cheagle in the lab, and goes to Spinoza to demand answers. The information he receives is incomplete, as Spinoza tells him that he's going to die, but not that it will result in him waking up in Luke's body. Asch's understandable panic about his limited remaining life greatly influences his actions throughout the rest of the game. The party also happens to be in Belkend at the time, and Asch and Tear steal away in the middle of the night to confront Van in Ortion Cavern themselves.
This goes... poorly. Van attempts to convince Asch to join him again (yeah, not happening), and when that doesn't work, shanks him pretty hard (anime canon has it as a blow to the stomach, which is what I go with). The party shows up just in time to witness it, and Asch reveals the centerpiece of Van's plan - that he intends to replicate the planet by using Lorelei as a source of raw Seventh Fonons. Van says he intends to use Asch to destroy Lorelei, completely dismissing the idea that Luke might be capable of it, and leaves. Asch, in turn, runs off himself, even though his injuries aren't fully healed. No time to wait, gotta stop Van... Especially when he looks at the cheagle cage and realizes that only the replica remains.
The next time you see Asch is in the just-before-apparent-final-dungeon set of scenes at Keterburg - after talking to all the party the night before, Luke has a headache and wanders out to find Asch in the square, still suffering from his injuries. Asch basically gives Luke a "I'm injured, so I can't go, so you'd BETTER NOT FUCK IT UP" speech. Luke is like "okay, okay" and the party sets off for the Radiation Gate.
...Of course, Asch being Asch, even with his injuries he won't actually let someone else do the thing. Rather than resting, he makes for the Radiation Gate (this is when he posed as Luke to get the other Albiore from Sheridan, otherwise there's no way he could have made it fast enough). Apparently by himself, still injured, he makes his way through the penultimate dungeon of the game in order to support Luke's attempt to lower the land from that passage ring. It's a good thing he does, as Luke's hyperresonance alone isn't enough to control the descent. Working together through their connection, they do it together.
And then Lorelei cuts in with a message - Van, who Luke allowed to fall into the core instead of killing properly, is using the hymn to bind Lorelei to himself. Lorelei sends Luke and Asch each half of a relic called the Key of Lorelei; Asch receives the Sword half, but Luke fails to get the Jewel half, and generally doesn't interpret Lorelei's message properly at all.
After the immediate crisis is over, the Dark Wings drag him to their settlement, Nam Cobanda Isle, for a time to force him to recover fully from his injuries. Aware of his reputation as a slaughterer of Hod survivors and the like, he... basically hides in his room the entire time, and leaves as soon as he can manage.
Cut to a month later, where Asch has been running around like crazy trying to find the Jewel that Luke didn't get. Luke and company eventually hunt him down and get the real meaning of the message out of him - and Asch, as is typical, attacks Luke for being an idiot and not getting the job done properly. The two groups part ways for now as Asch continues on his quest.
By the next time they meet up, a number of really awful things have happened - Sync is back on the surface and the replica Ion is dead, having delivered the true ending of Yulia's Score under pressure from Grand Maestro Mohs, who was previously allied with Van but really only cares about the Score. (Another thing Asch spied on this over his connection to Luke.) Also, the miasma is back. That's the biggest problem of the batch. Jade comes up with an idea that would allow it to be eliminated... But doing so would cost the lives of either ten thousand Seventh Fonists or ten thousand replicas, as well as either Luke or Asch to control a single massive hyperresonance made from their fonons.
Luke, feeling the weight of his friend's death and the possibility of his own, forces Asch to come to the manor in Baticul to see his parents. The encounter is extremely awkward, though Asch permits his parents to call him Luke, as he allows not even Natalia to do so. His mother embraces him, and Luke leaves the room - thus the player isn't sure exactly what transpires. The encounter is, however, brief, and Asch leaves it in a fairly sour mood. (Honestly, probably mostly because he was trying not to cry.) He gets mad at Luke and says that he's not Luke anymore and is never coming back before leaving.
Fortunately or unfortunately, as a side effect of Van's plans, there's currently a bunch of replicas gathering at a structure called the Tower of Rem. Upon hearing the plan, Asch makes the decision that, well, if he's going to die anyway, it might as well be for a good cause, and heads there to make the offer to them of doing that thing. The party follows him and he and Luke have a fight over which of them is going to do it. They leave for a time, both to take care of loose ends and to give the replicas time to make their decision.
What loose ends you ask? SIDE QUESTS. Asch only really appears in person in two of them, and only one of them am I going to bother to explain here - it's called Mushroom Road, and the general plot of it is that his and Luke's mother (who is sick as heck, remember) is running out of her medicine, so the party sets off to get this one specific mushroom. When they arrive, Asch is already there, presumably because he spied on the whole thing over the connection. Luke stays by the ship in case something happens and because he and Asch can't be in the same party at once. They find the mushroom, and Asch is incredibly tsundere about "no you take it back" which leads to a cute scene where Luke explains to his mom that HE didn't go into danger to get the mushroom, ASCH did it. And Asch gets the
And then it's back to the Tower of Rem. Asch beats the party to the top, but Luke - being a replica - would die anyway just for being present, so he grabs the Sword from Asch and starts the process, while Jade holds Asch back. The replicas begin to dissolve. But something goes wrong, because the Jewel of Lorelei has actually been INSIDE Luke this entire time. Once again, it takes both replica and original working together to do the thing. As a result, happily, neither of them dies! ...Yet.
In reality, the damage was just spread between both of them. They both begin to experience fonon separation (or rather, in Asch's case, it grows more severe). There's still work to be done, though. Asch tells Luke to hang onto the Jewel for now and takes the Sword back. All that remains is to stop the Planet Storm, go to Eldrant, and beat Van actually to death.
First is the Absorption Gate - there, another Ion replica is forced to read a repeat of the Score, and Van returns. Van finally seems to have gotten the message, though - when Asch turns him down this time, he finally extends the offer of "help me destroy the world" to Luke. Asch attempts to kill him, but is stopped by Largo (who then dies against the party to cover the retreat) and Sync. The baddies escape, and Asch tells Luke to keep the Jewel safe. Guy observes that he's acting nicer towards Luke after he leaves.
The party goes on to close the Radiation Gate side of the Planet Storm, shutting down Eldrant's main protection. Asch meets them outside Grand Chokmah, and throws a fit when Luke misinterprets his offer of a handshake as a request for the Jewel, and says that as the original, only Asch can do the thing. Asch goes off on Luke about them being the same, Luke asserts that they're different people, Asch tells him to stuff it and that he's Van's real student and Luke is just an imposter. It concludes in Asch demanding a duel with Luke at Eldrant and chucking the Jewel back at him.
He then sends the Dark Wings back to their people, and attempts to convince his pilot to let him fly the airship in to Eldrant by himself. Fortunately (regardless of which pilot you have in game - it's Ginji in every adaptation), he isn't allowed to do so. Unfortunately, his ship crashes into Eldrant as Eldrant attempts to ram the two airships and crashes into the ground, and after making sure the pilot isn't dead, Asch heads inside.
Only to fall into a trap hole, one that Luke soon falls into as well. After a comment from Asch about how their family must have stupid genes, it's time for a DUEL, because the trap is set up to let only one of them out while the other remains and holds the door open. They fight, and Luke is the victor. Asch, grudgingly, acknowledges him, and gives him the Sword of Lorelei. Luke attempts to protest, but replicated soldiers arrive and Asch orders Luke to GO. Luke extracts a promise from Asch that is Doomed To Never Be Fulfilled and leaves while Asch faces down the whole room full of them. There's a dramatic moment where Asch reclaims his name as Luke fon Fabre, and then he settles in to fight.
It's. One hell of a long doomed fight - Luke and company clear a segment of the dungeon that takes you as a player about twenty minutes to pass through at minimum before Asch is overwhelmed. Finally, he's run through, by not one but THREE swords. and even then, slays the last of his assailants before collapsing against the wall. (For obvious reasons, I headcanon that by some stroke of luck, none of the three swords hits him in the heart.) Luke witnesses this through their connection, and hears Asch's last words - "the rest is up to you" - before returning to himself with a new level of power with hyperresonance and the Key completed. (And a good thing, too, as he then has to use second order hyperresonance to disable a trap of Sync's.)
Luke goes on to beat Van and free Lorelei, and as Eldrant begins to collapse, catches Asch's corpse as it falls through the ceiling. Lorelei gives Luke a Good Job as he leaves, and Asch's hand twitches, making for all the more of an Ambiguous Ending in regards to the redhead who shows up in the epilogue. However, for my purposes, both Luke and Asch are dead there, and the man in the ending is Lorelei in a physical form, called by Tear's singing of the Grand Fonic Hymn.