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The young emperor of the New Bronquian Empire, a warrior known as the Blazing Emperor. Both his attitude and personality are overwhelmingly passionate; at heart he's hot-blooded and loves his friends. But from Yggdra's point of view, he's the villain who killed her father Ordene and the adversary she aims to defeat.

In the past, Bronquia was ruled by emperors who carried the blood of Brongaa, the Dragon of Purgatory. But as the ages passed this bloodline gradually became diluted; by the reign of Gulcasa's predecessor, children born with Brongaa's blood had instead become seen as cursed.

Gulcasa so happened to be born with the strongest blood tie to Brongaa seen in centuries, but because of this he was brutally abused from a tender age.

Three years prior to the events of Yggdra Union, Gulcasa rose up against the previous emperor, whose tyranny embittered the lives of the Bronquian people. Gulcasa personally lost friends during the revolution, but he was able to overcome the odds by assuming the full power of his demon blood. Yet even after his victory, Gulcasa sought to realize his ideals not just in his own country, but across the world; to do this he seeks to spread the empire's control across the whole continent. Seen by Bronquia's neighbors he's nothing short of an existential threat, but Gulcasa's own people adore him wholeheartedly between his charisma and the way he saved them from oppression.

Gulcasa's direct subordinates include the Five Dragon Generals: Gulcasa's own half-sister Emilia the Scarlet Princess, his partner Nessiah the Prophet, his close friend Leon the Black Knight, longtime Imperial Army veteran Baldus the God of War, and relative newcomer Russell the Astral Fencer. His personal guard include Aegina the Phantom Valkyrie and his scythe-wielding dragon rider Imperial Knights; his intelligence forces are led by the assassin Zilva, and his court magicians are led by his ballistics expert Eudy. Together they boast an intimidating array of martial talent.

Gulcasa himself first appears in Chapter 3. There, he is the final obstacle in the way of reclaiming the Fantasinian capital city of Paltina, and fights alongside Aegina.

During this initial encounter you can see Gulcasa genuinely enjoying himself on the battlefield, but as the war drags on and begins to turn in Fantasinia's favor, his attitude becomes much more grim.

As you may imagine from the title of his personal field BGM "Gulcasa's Fierce Attack", he tends to fight on the front lines and come barreling directly into his enemies' forces in a dazzling show of brute force; even when he's at a disadvantage his tactics rarely change. From certain parts of the story, the player can see that Gulcasa actively takes on personal risks and has a reckless, self-sacrificial streak.

During the early story Gulcasa comes off as your typical ruthless final boss, but one can catch glimpses of his true temperament in his interactions with his friends and allies, and the player gets to see more of his humanity as the story goes on.

Gulcasa has the mental fortitude to eat even rotten food with no hesitation, but even he can't quite keep from grimacing at foods he really hates.

Gulcasa serves as one of the protagonists of series spinoff "Yggdra Unison", and between his army's overwhelming strength and numbers his route of the game is incredibly easy. Because of this, the conditions to actually unlock his route are the most unforgiving in the whole game.

One of the audio dramas for Yggdra Unison is about the New Bronquian Empire, but Gulcasa himself only appears a few times. But in his brief screentime he shows both his true colors and an unexpected side of himself.

The prequel game "Blaze Union" explains how Gulcasa came to be the man he is today.

Appearance

Has golden eyes and very long bright-red hair. How long? The sides are down to his waist, and the back is heel-length. That's pretty frickin' long. He also has somewhat more prominent facial features than most of the other male characters around his age.

Comparing Gulcasa with the body double who appears in one map, you can see that Gulcasa's dark red and gold plate mail is actually too big for him, to the point that his gouget (throat plate) completely covers the lower half of his face. His helmet and his gouget partially obscure his facial expressions. Even so, he cuts a gallant figure.

In battle he rides a red dragon and wields a scythe.

While activating his skill Genocide (see below), for just one instant he takes on an "awakened" form, which the unit demo poetically describes as the living embodiment of scarlet flame. While in this state Gulcasa is engulfed in an aura of red fire; his helmet goes AWOL for a moment to show that his ears have gone pointed, his skin has turned a warm brown, and his eyes are blank yellow with no iris or pupil. His long hair poofs out behind him and flutters like fire.

Towards the end of the game it will eventually become clear what Gulcasa's change in appearance means and what it has to do with the Genocide skill.

In Combat

Between his incredibly high stats, the fact that scythes are strong against most weapons and possess no weaknesses, and the fact that dragon riders can cut not just through enemy lines but even across water, the sight of Gulcasa charging across the battlefield to bring the pain has traumatized more than a few players.

His unit traits are "terrain bonus on wasteland" and "nullifies fire attacks".

To go into detail on those high stats, at level max he has 20-star stats, the same as Yggdra, Milanor, and Nessiah. His ATK and GEN (defense/leadership) are especially high, but his TEC and LUK are nothing to sneeze at either.

And to make things worse, every time he appears he's always got some sort of advantageous equipment on. All in all Gulcasa is a powerful unit with no particular weaknesses.

His personal skill Genocide instantly raises all of Gulcasa's stats and simultaneously destroys the enemy's Skill Gauge in return for KOing all other members of his own unit, which can easily turn any clash in his favor.

However, this skill has a single drawback: If Gulcasa uses Genocide without any unit members, he has a rare chance of collapsing immediately. This aspect of the skill actually has a hidden meaning in-story, and whether or not the player understands it greatly affects one's understanding of the entire war.

※CAUTION: Spoilers for Blaze Union abound beyond this point.

Gulcasa in Blaze Union

Midway through A route, it's revealed that the story's protagonist Garlot was Gulcasa all along, and that "Garlot" was never his real name to begin with. He still had the same fiery personality at this age.

It turns out that when Gulcasa was still very young his mother Baretreenu sealed his demon blood and changed his name to Garlot; afterward she abandoned her son and husband to go to Lost Aries and study Brongaa so she would be able to make a truly unbreakable seal. Gulcasa's father blamed Gulcasa for Baretreenu walking out on them and began to abuse him from this point on; Siskier recounts that Gulcasa's father beat him every time they saw each other.

Gulcasa was so little when his mother abandoned him that he wasn't even self-aware yet, and so has no memory of either his mother or his true name. Under the false name Garlot, he grew up bearing the brunt of his father's violence, desperately wishing for the power to protect himself. Whenever he sees anyone suffering from any sort of abuse or oppression, he sees his younger self in them and reflexively tries to save them.

The trauma that Garlot has been through since childhood and the stress of his uphill battle to fix Bronquia gradually ate away at the seal Baretreenu cast on him. Velleman's betrayal and Siskier's death are so traumatic that Garlot's powers briefly overwhelm the capacity of the seal and reveal his status as Brongaa's descendant to everyone around him.

After losing everything he depended on at once, Garlot clings to Nessiah for support and comes to believe unsealing his demon blood is the only way he will be able to save Bronquia and honor Siskier's memory. Baretreenu attempts to dissuade him from this path by forcing him to duel her to the death if he wants his powers back, but Garlot is too afraid to falter and accepts her challenge. And so, he breaks his mother's curse on him and wins the right to live freely.

Having reclaimed his true name and become Brongaa's rightful heir, Gulcasa defeats the emperor in a show of dazzling force, and wins his revolution.

At this point in the story Gulcasa speaks less roughly and has adopted a more pragmatic mindset, and the player can see his efforts to appear fierce in his field and item-related dialogue. But on the other hand, despite his own mother telling him he can only become powerful by throwing away his humanity, Gulcasa balks at the mere idea of using his own men as sacrifices to Brongaa and lets his traitorous former friends escape without punishment, displaying that he has not lost his sense of compassion.

Though Gulcasa still passionately proclaims that powerlessness is not a sin, he deeply believes Siskier's death is his fault for being powerless, and is more desperate to become stronger than ever. The double standards in his ideals that already existed when he called himself Garlot have gotten even worse than before.

At the same time, Gulcasa becomes reluctant to open up about his doubts and worries to others, and is back to bottling up his own pain the way he did before he met Siskier.

To make things worse, Gulcasa is portrayed struggling to handle his demon powers after breaking the seal on his blood. When using Genocide by himself he erodes his own life force, and so whenever he pushes himself too hard he becomes feverish and collapses. As shown at the end of the story, it's possible to mitigate his sickness and recover quickly if Gulcasa offers up someone else's life to Brongaa in his place, but because Gulcasa himself isn't fond of this form of treatment, this answers a lot of questions about some things that happen during Yggdra Union. Moreover, this context really drives home just how little regard Gulcasa has for his own safety in the previous game.

And so, one kindhearted young boy's wish became as the flames of judgment, and scorched the evils of the world like the fire of purgatory.

Appearance

Gulcasa looks much the same in Blaze Union as he does in Yggdra Union at age 20, but his hair is shorter, with the sides only as long as his shoulders and the back falling to his knees. His bangs are a bit shorter too. Compared to the outfit he wore as Garlot his expressions are partially obscured by his armor, but the way he actually emotes hasn't changed at all.

His armor was already complicated in Yggdra Union, but thanks to Rui Kousaki's redesign it has even MORE detail now. Give us a break. Some notable differences are that the red part of his plate mail now has black decorations and that there are only three spikes on his pauldrons (shoulder plates) now. He wears a red tunic and black clothing beneath his armor in this game.

Blaze Union now has specific pixel art for his awakened form. His hair is impressively fluffy in it.

Reactions From the Players

Gulcasa's surviving childhood friend Jenon claims that it's like Gulcasa's a completely different person now and Garlot might as well be dead. However, Medoute, who was raised as a dragonslayer to hate Brongaa's people and who actually attempts to kill Gulcasa, reflects afterwards after observing his mercy that even if he's influenced by his demon blood, he still hasn't abandoned his humanity.

After Gulcasa reclaims his true name, the story actually skips forward straight to the end of the revolution, and much of the end of the route is shown through the perspectives of other characters like Jenon and Medoute, so there's a certain degree of ambiguity preserved, giving individual fans room to interpret what they see. So it isn't a hundred percent clear whether the change in Gulcasa's behavior is due to his demon heritage, the extreme level of trauma he's experienced over a short period of time, or a mix of both.

One fan on Nico Nico Douga says of Gulcasa, "He's actually an incredibly kind person, but his actions still rain misfortune on his enemies."

Hiroaki Miura, Gulcasa's first voice actor, knew of the character's background while recording for Yggdra Union, and in his commentary on the PSP version website, says: "He's very human... I think he's actually a really good guy."

Different fans' read on Gulcasa range from "complete angel" to "why did he have to turn out like that".

Miscellaneous

• The End of the War

In Yggdra Union, Gulcasa loses every single one of his friends and is himself struck down with his ideals unfulfilled. And yet Yggdra, who was once nothing more than the sheltered heir to Fantasinia, voluntarily relinquishes the absolute military power that her country relied upon to control the continent, inadvertently picking up the torch of Gulcasa's lifelong ideals and bringing change to the world.

On the other hand, in Gulcasa's storyline of Yggdra Unison, he successfully brings his ideals to fruition and safely creates the equitable world he's aimed to create since his vigilante days. Furthermore, as of the DS version of the game, where Nessiah is now a combatant and has left Gulcasa's forces to pursue revenge against those who hurt him, it's possible for Gulcasa to not only force Nessiah to give up on his hopeless battle but also to bring him back home. From Gulcasa's perspective, this is the happiest possible ending he can obtain following the events of Blaze Union.

• In Yggdra Unison, Gulcasa is often referred to as a "tennen" (naturally charismatic/generally oblivious).

In the audio drama focused on Bronquia, Gulcasa walks in on Luciana's self-destructive rampage with no idea of the circumstances and completely misreads the situation, and yet he still says exactly the right thing to reassure her and solves the whole incident in under a minute. That's our Gulcasa.

Considering how Gulcasa overuses his demon powers to the point of giving himself chronic illness, he's certainly a tennen in the idiot sense too, but get a load of the animal magnetism of this man...

Since the Yggdra Unison drama CD was released before Blaze Union, this was actually the first glimpse fans got of Gulcasa's natural sweetness.

• On that note, Gulcasa's equipment conditions for edible items and his dialogue while using them is a little bit funny.

During Blaze Union, Gulcasa will eat even the Rotten Dozeu without hesitation, and yet he wilts after eating either the Sprouted Protato or the Sweetberry.

In addition, at age 17 Gulcasa has no problems eating Dragon Steak but won't touch dairy, but at age 20 he's come to like dairy and yet won't go near dragon meat anymore.

Also, as of Yggdra Unison Gulcasa no longer has a strong stomach. It isn't hard to guess why.

• Gulcasa loves everything red. He may hate Sweetberries enough to actively complain about the flavor, but he still recovers a huge amount of morale from being given one instead of made to equip it.

• Gulcasa was unable to read during Blaze Union, but by Yggdra Unison he has learned how.

• Giving Gulcasa the "Bible" item in Yggdra Unison reveals that he (unexpectedly?) has a quite religious side.

• Gulcasa and Nessiah's first appearance was actually in a game Ito Shinichi created in 1996, which makes them the oldest characters in the Dept. Heaven series.

Ito created this game two years before joining Sting, and it reportedly had the beginnings of Yggdra Union's game system. See the Dept. Heaven Episodes World Guidance artbook for more details.

A Few Words From His Majesty

• To be powerless is not a sin!
• Go on, fight back!
• Let us resume our fight for conquest.
• Mad crimson flames become my blood!
• Even if I’m the only one left, I…!
• I’ll fight, and fight, and keep on fighting! And after that, I’m sure I can create a new world!!
• Rule is the right of the strong… That is the way of the Empire…… I congratulate you… on your victory… new sovereign……

You’re impudent to the bitter end, little girl……

You and I will never see eye to eye…

But this new ideal of yours, that crushed our will…

I……

I’ll never… forget it……

Related Illustrations

Related Tags

Yggdra Union　Blaze Union　Yggdra Unison

Trauma for All

Nessiah　Emilia

Aegina　Luciana　Leon

Baldus　Zilva　Eudy

Elena　Monica　Canaan

Garlot　Siskier　Jenon　Medoute

Mizer　Byff　Sleip　Eater

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