Fou-Lu

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Fou-Lu is a fictional video game character in the PlayStation and PC role-playing game Breath of Fire IV. While initially antagonistic towards the main characters, he stands out from the usual video game villain archetype by actually being playable during several sequences of the game.

[edit] Biography

Over 600 years before the game takes place, the western continent was in a time of unrest following a long period of imperial rule. The influence of the Muuru empire, the Fou Empire's predecessor, was waning, and the entire eastern continent had sunk into civil war. Judging the situation to be grave, the Muuru emperor came up with a scheme to summon a "god" from another world, with the intention of using said "god" to reunify the Empire. Although the summoning was imperfectly executed, the summoned dragon-god, "Fou-Lu," unified the western continent a little over ten years later, thus creating the Fou Empire.

During the period of unrest prior to the summoning of Fou-Lu, the people of the eastern continent had taken advantage of the chaos by crossing the sea of mud and repeatedly invading the west. After the unification of his lands, Fou-Lu continued to carry out the ambitions of the old Muuru empire, which had summoned him, and constructed the great imperial bridge, a device that could transport people and things, in order to deal with the invasions from the eastern continent. He intended to make a counterstrike and completely unite both continents.

However, shortly after the war's outbreak, Fou-Lu died (actually, he lost his strength due to the imperfect summoning and had to be temporarily sealed away). The empire's counterattack lost its initial fierceness, and the war ended up more or less in a deadlock.

After Fou-Lu's "death", both continents, having developed misgivings about becoming involved in a prolonged war, offered compromises, and negotiated a truce. Unfortunately, the two sides were unable to agree on the foundations for a true alliance, and so they entered an endless cycle of battle and ceasefire. The game begins in the middle of the time of the fourth truce.[1]

The faulty summoning that brought Fou-Lu to the game's world resulted in him being split into two souls, divided by space and time. One (Fou-Lu) arrived in the present (six hundred years pre-game), and the other (Ryu, the game's main character) in the "future" (at the beginning of the game).

Near the beginning of the game, Fou-Lu senses the arrival of his "other half" and emerges from his tomb, intent on reaching the Imperial Capital at Chedo. However, his successor, the fourteenth Fou Emperor, does not want to return Fou-Lu's title to him, as was promised long ago. And so, the monk Yohm is dispatched to deal with Fou-Lu by any means necessary, whether it be through conventional attacks or though the use of his powerful black magic. Weakened by his long sleep, Fou-Lu is seriously injured in Yohm's initial attack and falls into a river after being trapped in a burning forest. A hermit fishes him out and tends to his wounds, after which Fou-Lu once more sets out for Chedo . . . only to have Yohm find him and attack him again. Once more injured, this time in an aerial battle over a southern forest, Fou-Lu collapses a second time. This time, the person who comes to his aid is a young peasant woman, Mami, who treats his wounds and takes him into her home, claiming he his her injured cousin, "Ryong".

The game suggests that Mami may have been the only mortal who really meant anything to Fou-Lu.

Fou-Lu gradually becomes semi-accepted by the other people in Mami's village, especially after he deals with a rampaging super-boar and a problematic local volcano godling, but a young man named Ryong, the source of the name Mami chose for Fou-Lu, remains suspicious of the dragon emperor, and when he discovers that the imperial army is searching for someone matching Fou-Lu's description, Ryong informs on him. This results in Yohm and his soldiers coming to the village. Mami helps Fou-Lu escape from them, but is herself captured by the soldiers.

Yohm sacrifices Mami to power the hex cannon or Carronade--the empire's most powerful weapon--because she is a traitor, and also because of her relationship with Fou-Lu, which would make the Carronade even more potent a weapon against him. The malignant energy of the Hexes fired from the Carronade destroyed entire towns on the eastern continent during the war, but it is not sufficient to destroy Fou-Lu. However, the fact that they would use such a powerful weapon against him, combined with the fact that the bell Mami wore in her hair was also fired from the cannon and falls to earth beside him in the aftermath of the shot, telling him who they used to power it, enrages Fou-Lu. He loses his hope, and, perhaps, his sanity as well. Believing that humanity is worthless, he decides to destroy the Fou Empire.

In his next appearance, Fou-Lu has reached Chedo. There, he fights his way into the palace and instructs his supernatural animal servant A-tur, left behind long ago to guard the palace, to destroy the city. Then he heads for the throne room and the current emperor.

On his way there, he encounters and fights Yohm one last time, this time without getting himself seriously injured. Yohm, seeing that he will otherwise suffer for what he has done to Fou-Lu, commits suicide by setting himself on fire. Fou-Lu then proceeds to the throne room, dispatching the emperor's elite guards as if they were mere insects. There, he meets the fourteenth emperor, who attempts to kill him using a "god-slaying sword" given to him by the courtier Yuna. The emperor does succeed in stabbing Fou-Lu in the side, but (in the original Japanese version only--the American version censors the portion of the scene after the stabbing), Fou-Lu pulls the sword loose and decapitates the emperor, resuming his title and throne.

When Ryu, his other half, finally reaches the capital and fights his own way into the palace, Fou-Lu initially meets him as a projected illusion, as he is aware that there is some risk that Ryu will not see things his way. Indeed, his worst fears are confirmed: Ryu attacks the image and pushes on through the palace until he finds the real Fou-Lu.

Upon their first true meeting, Fou-Lu engages Ryu in a one-on-one battle, where it becomes apparent that he massively outclasses his younger half. But after Ryu is defeated, his companion Nina rushes to his side and heals him of the wounds Fou-Lu has dealt him.

Fou-Lu then attempts to convince Ryu of the worthlessness of mortals. Even the brief memory of Mami is not enough to convince the dragon-emperor that humans have any value, and his despair invades Ryu's mind.

At this point, Ryu--and the player--must make a choice: either to side with Fou-Lu, or to oppose him.

If the player decides to side with Fou-Lu, Ryu and Fou-Lu merge with Fou-Lu dominant, and the dragon-emperor engages Ryu's traveling companions in a battle they cannot win. After swatting them down like flies, Fou-Lu exits the screen, saying that he knows his path to be the right one, and the game ends.

If the player chooses to side with humanity and oppose Fou-Lu, the merger fails, and Fou-Lu transforms himself into a dragon and attacks Ryu and his companions. Together, they succeed in accomplishing what Ryu could not do alone, and defeat him. Fou-Lu makes another, rather half-hearted, attempt to convince Ryu to see things his way, and then transforms into an even more powerful dragon, beginning the final battle of the game.

When Ryu and his companions defeat Fou-Lu's final form, Fou-Lu concedes that humans may have some value after all, and the two merge with Ryu dominant. Ryu, now the dominant personality, decides to sacrifice his powers and immortality to drive the gods on Earth away, claiming that the world no longer has a need for gods. He then continues to live his mortal life in peace until his death, and apparently without Fou-Lu overshadowing him any further.

(Most material not otherwise sourced is paraphrased from the game.)