Kefka Palazzo



Kefka Palazzo is the primary antagonist of Final Fantasy VI. Kefka acts as a mere general of Emperor Gestahl early in the game, merely carrying out orders. However, behind Gestahl's back Kefka attacks various towns and drains the power of Espers meant for Imperial usage. This gradual culmination in power leads Kefka to overthrow Gestahl and take control of the Warring Triad, effectively becoming the God of Magic itself. With his newfound power, Kefka scattered his enemies across the world, ripped the world apart and built a gigantic tower from which he ruled the new world, burning entire towns from it with his "Light of Judgment".

Kefka broke the mold in comparison to previous villains in the series. While previous villains were distant, cold, ruthless and bent on their goals, Kefka was loud, short-tempered, maniacal and destructive with a deep hatred of nearly everything on the planet and he possessed an infamous sadistic sense of humor, finding joy in the deaths of innocents. Kefka's popularity as a villain outside of Japan is surpassed only by Sephiroth. Kefka is well-known for his many one-liners, his final appearance as an Angel of Death, and his sociopathic hatred of virtually everything in existence. His dark humor and jester-like appearance have earned him the nickname "the Psycho Clown" among fans. Kefka's most defining character trait is debatably his laugh, a trademark high-pitched cackle that was repeated numerous times during the game.

Early Life
Born to unknown parentage, Kefka was abandoned at birth. Raised in an orphanage in Thamasa, Kefka was beaten severely by the orphanage head, and developed a taciturn personality. Eventually he left Thamasa for Vector. Graduating at the top of his class from the Imperial academy, Kefka became the apprentice of Cid del Norte Márquez, and agreed to be the first experimental test subject for Magitek infusion. The experiment was initially a success and granted Kefka great magical power. But while it had no immediate side effects, the infusion would lead to the gradual degeneration of Kefka's sanity.

At the age of 23, Kefka was appointed commander of the Magitek Knights. In the following years, he took an interest in the recently orphaned daughter of an Imperial soldier and a Tzen female aristocrat, Celes Chere. Kefka used his political pull to make sure that Celes was brought up a Magitek Knight. Kefka political ascension culminated when at age 31, he was appointed to the position of Imperial Prime Minister. Kefka's reign, however, would be short-lived. At a banquet celebrating the appointment of his protégé Celes Chere to Rear Admiral, Kefka cracked. The Magitek infusion from years prior finally manifested itself and Kefka began to slip into insanity.

Kefka began to show marked change in behavior; once a shy, reserved man, Kefka began dressing in garish robes, wearing makeup, and playing with dolls. His once keen strategic mind deteriorated, and all that was left was a thirst for death and destruction and a twisted sense of dark humor. Kefka was promptly removed from military duty. Still feeling indebted to him for his years of service, and appreciating his loyalty, Gestahl appointed Kefka to the position of Court Mage of the Gestahlian Empire.

Servant of Gestahl
Shortly before the events of the game, Kefka, possibly unauthorized by Gestahl, enslaved Terra Branford with a slave crown, ordered her to kill 50 of the Empire's own soldiers as a test of her loyalty, and proceeded to send her to Narshe to acquire the frozen Esper Valigarmanda, sending Biggs and Wedge with her. The mission fails when Valigarmanda awakens in response to Terra's power, dispatches Biggs and Wedge and damages the Slave Crown, restoring Terra's free will but leaving her with amnesia. In her subsequent attempt to flee from Narshe, Terra's memory is temporarily restored and she remembers Kefka ordering her to kill his own men and enslaving her before she blacks out.

Kefka's first appearance in person is when he comes to Figaro Castle seeking Terra under orders from Gestahl. King Edgar, who is sheltering Terra in the hopes she will join the Returners against the Empire, conceals her whereabouts. Kefka doesn't believe Edgar however and that night sets the castle on fire. When the castle burrows under the desert, Kefka has his bodyguards attack the fleeing Edgar, Terra and Locke Cole. The trio dispatch them and leave Kefka fuming.

Kefka eventually comes to the kingdom of Doma after this, in a battalion led by General Leo Cristophe. Although Leo is attempting to win the siege against Doma with minimal casualties, Kefka is secretly plotting to poison the river and kill the entire castle. After Leo is called away by Emperor Gestahl, Kefka takes command of the Imperial forces and orders them to dump the poison. Sabin Rene Figaro and Shadow attempt to stop him, but Kefka flees and dumps the poison himself, killing everyone in the castle except for Cyan Garamonde. Until his ascent to Godhood, this was considered Kefka's worst crime. This also sends Cyan into a deep depression over his guilt which has potentially disastrous complications for him later in the game.

After the Returners all meet at Narshe, Kefka gathers a larger force and leads a second attack himself, ordering them to destroy anyone who stands in their way. In a battle over the Narshe clifftops, the Returners battle their way through Kefka's army and confront him face to face in battle. Kefka flees and the town is saved for the time being.

Acquisition of Power
Shortly after this, Terra confronts the Esper Valigarmanda again and is transformed into an Esper. Tracking her down, the Returners meet the Esper Ramuh who tells them the true source of magic; Magicite. Magitek only allows a small infusion of minimal magical power while Magicite, an Esper's remains, can teach magic at a much higher concentration. Armed with this knowledge, the Returners use Setzer Gabbiani's air Blackjack to fly to Vector and release the Espers imprisoned by the Empire.

Within the Magitek Research Facility, the Returners spy Kefka torturing and beating Espers, specifically, Shiva and Ifrit. They also overhear Kefka cackling over the power he has gained from the Espers of the facility, and his plans to restore the Warring Triad. After entering the heart of the facility and retrieving the Magicite of the dead Espers there, the Returners meet Cid who realizes the true source of Esper energy. Kefka, overjoyed to learn this, attempts to have Celes, who has betrayed the Empire, hand the Magicite to him, but Celes spirits them away so the Returners can escape. Kefka appears afterwards in the Imperial Castle, activating two large cranes to attack the Blackjack as the Returners flee the continent.

With Terra now aware of her origins as a half-human half-Esper hybrid, the Returners go to the cave to the Land of Espers in the hopes of securing their support for an attack on the Empire. Kefka follows and declares that Gestahl had told him to let Terra ally with the Returners in order to have them open the gate; if any of this is true or not is unknown, but with Kefka's penchant for lying it's unlikely. Kefka was subsequently defeated when the Espers emerged from the gate. It is unknown how he was returned to Vector, but Gestahl had Kefka imprisoned as a ploy to earn the trust of the Returners so they would ally with him to find the Espers that had escaped.

Ascent to Godhood
Kefka was released by Gestahl and dispatched to Thamasa, where he proceeded to have his soldiers attack both the Returners and the troops of General Leo, before killing all the Espers there and taking their Magicite remains. When Kefka ordered his troops to burn the town, General Leo stepped in and fought Kefka. However, he only succeeded in destroying a shade of Kefka, and the real one emerged moments later and slew him. The sealed gate subsequently ripped open, and a second wave of Espers flew straight to the town to attack Kefka. However, Kefka had simply grown too strong and their attacks had no effect: Kefka easily killed them all and took their Magicite, enhancing his already potent powers even further with the dozens of shards he acquired.

With the sealed gate open, Kefka and Gestahl crossed over the Esper world, found the Warring Triad and raised the Floating Continent. When the Returners and Celes confronted them, Kefka rushed into the field of the Triad and demanded they bestow their power upon him. Ignoring the warnings of a shocked Gestahl, Kefka had the Triad strike him down and pitched his body to its doom off the edge of the island. After this, he moved the Triad out of alignment, shattering their delicate magical field. Through the intervention of Shadow, the Returners narrowly escaped. However, the damage was done and the Apocalypse occurred; the Triad awoke from their slumber and the world was shifted into the World of Ruin.

In the aftermath of this, Kefka drained the Triad of their power, turning them into weakened husks and himself into a God. Kefka built a gigantic tower, fittingly called Kefka's Tower, from the rubble of the world he had destroyed. With more or less the entire world fearing him, Kefka ruled over the World of Ruin from atop the tower, smiting anyone who defied him with the Light of Judgment, a beam of magical energy that could destroy entire towns.

Defeat
Celes eventually rallied the ranks of the Returners and the reformed faction assaulted Kefka's Tower. Battling their way to the summit, Kefka revealed his final, ultimate revelation; that life is meaningless and insignificant. Not content to rule over the world in its ashes anymore, Kefka's new goal was the destruction of life itself. Denying his claims with examples of love and friendship from their own lives, the Returners battled Kefka's final servants and confronted Kefka themself. In a final epic battle, Kefka was defeated, but as the God of Magic, Magic vanished from the world along with Terra's powers. Terra, due to her connection with the children of Mobliz, was spared and became a human, but Magicite and Espers vanished and Kefka's Tower collapsed as the world was restored to its former glory.

Symbolism
Kefka's name may come from Franz Kafka, a German philosopher. Franz Kafka wrote several novels with a dark humor describing the struggles humanity forces upon itself, and the futility in fighting such hardships. This is reflected in Kefka's nihilism and contempt to life. "Palazzo" is a common last name among individuals of Italian descent and means "Palace" or "Mansion", or even "Castle".

The final battle against Kefka draws strong symbolism from the Divine Comedy, an epic poem in which a man called Dante travels through Heaven and Hell. The first tier in the battle is represented by a demon, and in the Divine Comedy the first tier is Hell where Satan is entrapped up to his waist. The second tier of the battle contains beasts, people and machinery, which collectively represent Purgatory, the second tier in the Divine Comedy. The third tier is inspired by Michelangelo's Pietà, a sculpture of Jesus' body lying in Mary's lap after he is crucified. This represents the third tier in the Divine Comedy, Heaven, with Rest and Lady in the positions of Jesus and Mary in the Pietà. The final tier in the Divine Comedy is when Dante comes face-to-face with God, who explains to him the meaning of life. This again reflects Kefka, who has become the God of Magic and tells the Returners that life is meaningless. The tiers of the Divine Comedy could also be reflected in the Warring Triad: Demon, Fiend and Goddess could be taken to represent the first three tiers, with Kefka as their ruler again at the fourth tier representing God. Kefka himself appears to the Returners as a dark angel, with four angelic wings and two black, demonic wings. This appearance draws parallels to Lucifer, the fallen angel that became Satan. One of Kefka's attacks is "Fallen One", which was later retranslated as "Heartless Angel", both of which draw back to the idea of Kefka as a fallen angel. Another of his attacks is "Forsaken", which again hearkens to Lucifer and his rebellion against God. Kefka's six wings could be taken as a reference to the Seraph, the highest choir of angels with six wings and the choir to which Lucifer belonged to before he rebelled. This appearance also draws a comparison to Kefka as an Angel of Death, a common interpretation of Death. The battle with Kefka takes place against a backdrop of glowing yellow clouds with beams of light shining through them, obviously meant to represent Heaven.

Power
Kefka is a rarity among Final Fantasy villains in that at the beginning of the game he is not exceptionally powerful. He attacks Sabin in the Imperial Camp with a simple flail, and in Narshe he knows spells that are strong for that point in the game, but are overall weak in the grand scope of the game's spell list. Kefka acquires his power slowly by absorbing the strength of Espers, and by the time he appears in Thamasa, he is easily able to single-handedly kill dozens of Espers and is largely immune to their powers. He is also able to project realistic illusions of himself at this time.

Following his taking control over the Warring Triad, Kefka becomes the God of Magic itself. Now knowing the most powerful magical attacks in the game, including Ultima, Kefka levitates debris from around the world to form his tower, a bizarre patchwork of terrain and rooms. He also uses his "Light of Judgment" to smite those who do not acknowledge his ruling of the world, and at least half a dozen towns are hit by the Light and devastated. Kefka also creates various new monsters to guard his tower and creates a new magical spell called "Forsaken", his signature attack with 220 magic power, the highest in the game; Ultima, the strongest spell the player can learn, only has 150 magic power by comparison. However, Forsaken does not ignore defense like Ultima does, limiting its potential power.

In Battle
Kefka fights the party a total of five times during the course of the game, including the final battle. In all of these fights except for the final one, Kefka flees or uses an illusion of himself to fight. Of the first four fights, only the second is actually winnable - Kefka flees from the first fight after any attack and the third and fourth battles end in cinematic scenes and have no conclusion.

Music and Sound
Kefka's theme is simply titled "Kefka" and plays frequently during the first part of the game and during the party's confrontation with him before the final battle.

During the final battle, the piece Dancing Mad plays. One of the longest musical scores in the series, depending on how many times each section is repeated, a remix of Dancing Mad by The Black Mages runs for just over twelve minutes - other remixes last even longer. The music is divided into four sections, one for each tier of the final battle. The piece also includes remixes of Kefka's theme, as well as themes from throughout the game.

In addition to his music, Kefka is well known for his high-pitched trademark cackle. Kefka laughs many times over the course of the game, but usually only cackles prior to large events in the plot. As the game progresses the laugh is also remixed slightly, and in the final battle is extended to almost five seconds in length at the battle's start and the normal laugh is frequently repeated during the rest of the fight. In fact, Kefka's laugh is played just as many times as his musical theme and is certainly recognized just as much by fans.

Other appearances
Kefka appears as a chance card in the game Itadaki Street Portable.

A toy based on Kefka's god form has been released in the Final Fantasy Master Creatures series of Final Fantasy toys. It bears the name Cefca Palazzo. It depicts Kefka floating above the swirling yellow mists quite like in the final battle, and is decidedly more demonic-looking than the one featured in the game.

Kefka also had a small cameo role in the Japanese only Playstation 2 title Izaru Makimoto.

Kefka appears with many other villains on the poster for Dissidia -Final Fantasy-, although he has not been seen in-game yet.

Kefka Palazzo