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A page for Link, Zelda, Impa, and Ganondorf, the four chosen heroes of Hyrule, and their respective spirits.
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The Heroes Four
General
These are the four characters chosen by Din, Farore, Nayru, and Hylia to protect Hyrule from Demise's curse. These tropes apply to all of them in their entirety.
- Action Girl: Zelda may not be as trained Impa is, but nonetheless, they're both more than capable of kicking ass as much as Link and Ganondorf can.
- Action Hero: Link has been this for thousands of years across numerous lifetimes, vanquishing foes left and right. Ganondorf should have been this, but Demise's curse had other plans.
- Animal-Motif Team: Each of these four wield different spirit animals.
- Badass Crew: Four warriors chosen to serve and protect Hyrule. Ganondorf, too, it's just that he was overtaken by Demise's curse.
- The Chosen Ones: All four of them are chosen by the Goddesses to fight for Hyrule. Zelda is Nayru's, Link is Farore's, Ganondorf is Din's, and Impa is Hylia's.
- Chromatic Arrangement: The colors of their spirits.
- Competitive Balance: Link and Ganondorf tend towards offensive power and physical combat as Fighters, Impa uses stealth and teleportation mobility for quick strikes as the Thief, and Zelda is the Mage with her extensive divine powers.
- Link and Ganondorf separately are this for the Fighter. Link is the tactician focusing on skill while Ganondorf is the brute focusing on raw strength.
- Elite Four: The Champions are the Elite Four to current Hyrule, but the Four Chosen heroes are the Elite Four for all of Hyrulean history going back thousands of years.
- Five-Token Band: Owing to their Comic-Book Fantasy Casting, you have a white male in Link, a black female in Zelda, a Japanese female in Impa, and an Ambiguously Brown Ganondorf.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: There are four of them, but all of them fall in this dynamic, with Link and Ganondorf adopting two sides of the same role.
- Link is a fighter, baking on powerful combat skills developed over his whole life. Ganondorf is also a fighter, but his focus is more on brutal and overwhelming strength.
- Zelda's the mage, relying on extensive magical powers granted to her by her bloodline. She has access to her three natural Goddess powers and eventually the power of the Owl.
- Impa's the thief, relying on her skills as a stealthy ninja-like Sheikah with small blades and teleportation spams. Gaining the Frog Spirit enhances these capabilities to immense levels.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: Two males, two females.
- Legacy Characters: All four of them have reincarnated various times across Hyrule's history. Impa is the most inconsistently reincarnated, partly because she wasn't originally intended to be one of the heroes, but nonetheless has still appeared multiple times throughout Hyrule's history.
- Magic Knight: Only Zelda averts this. The other three are very well-trained in physical combat, and all four wield powerful magic abilities.
- Mythical Motifs: All four of them have a parallel characters found in mythology.
- For Link, it's Odin, specifically, the heroic interpretation of him. Odin was The Beastmaster to Geri and Freki, just as Link is the master of the Wolf Spirit, and both are determined to stop an apocalypse. Furthermore, they both tried to avert a prophesied apocalypse and failed, though Link gets a second chance to do so and succeed. In addition, Link encompasses both negative and positive aspects that Geri and Freki embody. He's prone to extreme anger and violence against the Yiga, but he's also headstrong, brave, and above all loyal to his companions.
- For Zelda, it's Athena. Zelda is the wisest woman in the land and one of the most powerful magic-wielders, and she's also associated with owls, just as Athena was an undefeated warrior goddess and the goddess of wisdom who was said to have a little owl accompanying her.
- For Impa, it's Jiraiya, a powerful ninja with the magic power to shapeshift into a toad. While for Impa, it's a frog, she essentially is the female Jiraiya after obtaining the Frog Spirit and being able to summon its giant spectral appearance as a shell for herself.
- For Ganondorf, it's the Erymanthian Boar, a borderline mindlessly violent entity that the gods would send to get revenge, and was said to be the manifestation of the gross vital, primary, wild, brutal, insensitive energy that indiscriminately attacked and killed. Ganondorf often manifested as a Boar, and Calamity Ganon fit all of these to a T until he was finally freed from the Curse of Demise.
- New Body, Old Abilities: They each have reincarnated throughout time, and they retain memories of their old lives, and accordingly, their skills.
- Past-Life Memories: They each carry memories of their past lives once they unlock their spirit animal's power.
- Power Tattoo: All four of them have tattoos on their backs of their respective Spirits. Each one has a motif of their spirit animal carrying an orb of power.
- Power Trio: Thanks to Ganondorf being enslaved by Demise's curse for so long, many times it was only Link, Zelda, and occasionally Impa who would be around to fight for Hyrule.
- Time Abyss: All four of these people existed in some form or another as far back as the Era of the Skies. The only one who didn't was Ganondorf, who existed in the form of Groose who looked drastically different from how Ganondorf would look.
Link
See Link & Zelda
Zelda
See Link & Zelda
Impa
Lady Impa Sombreada
Species: Sheikah
Citizenship: Hyrulean
Affiliation(s): The Chosen Heroes
Likeness Based On: Ruriko Asaokanote , Marie Iitoyonote
Appearances: Breath of the Wild | Age of Calamity
Once upon a time, she was a close friend to Zelda. In the present, she's the leader and elder of the Sheikah Tribe, having waited for 100 years for Link to awaken. She was one of the people who helped Link get to the Shrine of Resurrection to save him. Even though she's aged beyond 100 years, it's clear that her age has done little to diminish her capabilities as a Sheikah warrior.- Action Girl: She has no issue getting into the thick of things despite her age. She's reduced to her 20-year-old body, allowing her to fight with even greater proficiency, as she now has her spry young body with her 100 years of experience.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: When Link asks Paya the origin of her name, Paya gets up the energy to tell him about her birthmark in the shape of a papaya seed. And then Impa screams from downstairs that it's on her butt cheek, much to Paya's horror.
- Amphibian Assault: This was a power she could wield in her youth, summoning giant frogs to attack her foes. It gets even more drastic when she's deaged and gets her own spirit animal, the Frog, which allows her to transform into a giant spectral from to dish out immense damage.
- Ancestral Weapon: Adapted from Age of Calamity, her Devoted Kodachi is inscribed with her name, but it's been in her family for a long time. Paya is the next one who's supposed to wield the blade.
- Ancient Keeper: She's "only" 120 years old, far less than the Sheikah Monks around Hyrule, but she nonetheless fulfills the role by holding onto messages for Link for 100 years.
- Animal Motifs: When she's deaged, a couple of times, her paragliding pose is compared to a flying squirrel.
- Ascended Extra: Compared to the game, Impa plays a much more central role in the story. She even gets a chance to get her own spirit animal, and ascends to being one of the four chosen heroes of Hyrule. Especially noticeable since the canon series demoted her role when Ganondorf was introduced.
- Badass Adorable: She's a cute feeble old woman...who can kick tremendous ass without struggle. She becomes a different kind of cute when she's de-aged, and once more looks like her granddaughter.
- Best Friend: Link was Zelda's lover, but Impa was Zelda's closest friend.
- Blade Spam: Her fighting style emphasizes speed, using speed to evade attacks and to strike fast and fiercely. She's more than capable of doing this even in her elderly years. She gets even faster once Purah deages her to her 20-year-old body.
- Choice of Two Weapons: She uses her Devoted Kodachi in combat as well as mystical kunai blades.
- Cool Old Lady: She is 121 years old and is still able to scrap with the best of them.
- Cute Bruiser: She's an adorable and sweet elderly woman who can still throw you down to the floor without a struggle. She becomes a different kind of cute when she's deaged to her young adult body.
- Death from Above: She, and numerous Sheikah, are fond of summoning giant kunai blades down from the air to slice foes apart. She can do this herself on a massive scale when she gets the Frog Spirit and can literally fly high in the sky.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Impa was able to do this in her youth, summoning blue clones to fight with her. She can hold up to eight different clones at the same time. The Frog Spirit ups her power, and lets her get sixteen clones.
- Energy Weapon: Her Devoted Kodachi is blessed to become the Goddess Kodachi, which she can use to channel divine energy to enhance her attacks.
- Fatal Fireworks: Purah creates Sheikah Plates that allow other characters to use Runes. Impa uses her powers to create a vacuum of energy and throw a bomb into the air to blast apart her foes.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: She's the thief to Zelda's mage, and Link and Ganondorf's collective fighter.
- Frog Ninja: As with her whole tribe, she has a motif of frogs, which she can summon to help her attack enemies. It extends to her powerful Spirit Animal in the Frog, which manifest as a giant white frog swimming through the air.
- The Ghost: She's never seen in the flashback sequences, which entirely focus on Zelda's relationship with Link and the Champions. That being said, Link does remember her as those memories come back, it's just that Impa's never with them in those moments.
- Glass Cannon: She's just as vulnerable to physical harm as anyone else, but like any warrior, she can dish out tremendous amounts of damage, and it's also very difficult to hit her at all.
- Hand Seals: The narration name-drops this trope when she starts to perform them as part of her ritualistic summoning motions.
- Identical Granddaughter: Link notices that Impa's granddaughter Paya looks just like Impa did at that age. When Impa's deaged, everyone notices that Paya looks just like her, save for a different colored facial marking and longer hair.
- Irony: She's an elderly woman, while her sister looks like a six-year-old girl. In truth, she's younger than her sister Purah, who's 124 years old. This is fixed in the ending when Purah deages Impa and ages herself back to adulthood.
- I Was Quite a Looker: If Link's words to Paya are any indication, Impa was very beautiful when she was Paya's age. Paya finds this out herself with Purah deages her to her 20-year-old body.
- Kite Riding: She paraglides by literally holding onto the corners of her paragliding cloth.
- Legacy of Service: She, along with the rest of the Sheikah, have been devoted royal family servants for a long time.
- Magikarp Power: She's strong on her own, but as she collects symbols and clones, she becomes a veritable One-Woman Army that can shred her opponents without a struggle.
- Meaningful Name: Her name is the Spanish word for "shady", referencing the Sheikah's Dark Is Not Evil aesthetic.
- Miniature Senior Citizen: She's a tiny old woman. It's actually rather jarring because when she's deaged, she apparently grows to rival Link's height.
- Ms. Exposition: Early on in the story, this is her role, filling in an amnesiac Link on everything that has happened during and before his 100-year-slumber. She also directs him to find her sister in Hateno Village to find his memories and life.
- My Greatest Failure: She was the leader of the Sheikah Tribe and spearheaded the excavation and research of the Sheikah Technology. She feels responsible for what happened. This is partly mitigated when she learns that the Great Calamity was meant to happen either way, regardless of any of her actions.
- Never Mess with Granny: Make no mistake, she may be an old woman, but she's just as capable of kicking ass as when she was a young woman.
- Ninja: As with the typical customs of the Sheikah, she's very skilled in stealth and the usage of small deadly blades.
- Ninja Maid: As skilled a fighter as she is, she was Zelda's best friend and advisor, which was her official job in her youth.
- No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: Her first words in the fanfic are the same as in the game, where she addresses Link by admitting that she's way older than when he last saw her. He doesn't recognize her at all at first, but when he remembers her, he recognizes that Paya looks like a young Impa.
- Not So Above It All: She's very poised and formal and well-spoken, but she's not above being an Amazingly Embarrassing Parent to her granddaughter Paya.
- Paper Talisman: Name-dropped multiple times when she teleport spams during battle. She mostly does this when she's deaged, not when she's elderly.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: When she's deaged, she starts fighting with her clones, and whenever she uses her most powerful clone attack, she screams, "STEEL YOURSELF!"
- Razor Wind: Her Devoted Kodachi can create beams of sharp winds, like most Sheikah weaponry.
- Retired Badass: Averted. She may be an old woman, but unlike her appearance in the game, she's still just as capable of fighting as when she was young.
- Sixth Ranger: She's the newest member of the main heroes. There are fewer incarnations of Impa than Zelda or Link because Impa wasn't actually a chosen hero from before Hyrule. Instead, she was a last-minute addition to the heroes, with Hylia acting as the Goddess who chose her.
- Smoke Out: Along with talismans, she tends to disappear in smoke as well when she warps.
- Stuff Blowing Up: When she was young, she could use her clones to summon barrel bombs that would explode with pure Sheikah magic and energy. She could use eight of these at once for great damage. After getting the Frog Spirit, she could get sixteen clones, and likewise would get sixteen barrels for even more powerful explosions.
- Summon Magic: She uses her powers to summon magical kunai blades and giant frogs to attack with. Her clones will do the same thing, and she can use this to attack foes en masse.
- Supernaturally Young Parent: She's 120 years old with a granddaughter, but Purah's antiaging Rune makes her look like she's her granddaughter's sister.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: She's the tomboy to her sister and Zelda's girly girl, as she's much more formal, combat-oriented, and put together than either her energetic older sister Purah, or the withdrawn and ladylike Zelda.
- Telepathy: She can sense when the Champions have been freed, and that Link has obtained their powers. She also can project a vision into his mind where he sees her tapestry become animated as she narrates the history of Hyrule and Calamity Ganon.
- Time Abyss: Ironically, even though she's reincarnated fewer times than the other three, she's the oldest of all four of them because she was already alive for a long time before Hyrule's creation, having lived one long single life from Skyloft's creation to the initial destruction of Demise.
- The Unchosen One: For most of her existence, she and the rest of the Sheikah Tribe, were not chosen by any Goddess, though serving Hylia has been their purpose. Subverted when Hylia explicitly decides to create a Spirit Animal for the Sheikah, the Frog. While the identity of its wielder was not prophesied, the Monks and Hylia wanted Impa to be the one to wield the Frog.
- Undying Loyalty: Even after 100 years, and losing most of the kingdom, her loyalty to Zelda and the royal family hasn't diminished one bit.
Ganondorf
Ganondorf Dragmire
Species: Gerudo
Citizenship: Hyrulean
Affiliation(s): The Heroes Four
Likeness Based On: Joe Manganiello
Appearances: Breath of the Wild
The recurring villain of Hyrule. The recurring monster that would be reborn time and time again to terrorize Hyrule in his quest to obtain the Triforce and conquer Hyrule. Each time he rises, heroes will rise to fight him and put this evil man in his place...or at least that's how it seemed.In truth, Ganondorf Dragmire is the reincarnation of an unsung hero from before Hyrule's creation. He was meant to be the third hero in a trio of heroes meant to fight back against Demise's curse...except that Demise's curse latched itself onto the soul that would become Ganondorf and used his power for its own malevolent uses.
- And I Must Scream: He has spent 120,000 years under the whims of Demise's curse. He's finally freed from this fate at the end of Breath of the Wild
- The Big Guy: He's a male Gerudo, making him far taller than anyone else on this page.
- Dark Is Not Evil: This is what he's supposed to be, but Demise's curse had other plans for him..
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: He shares the fighter role with Link, but does it differently. Link emphasizes tactics and training, Ganondorf emphasizes brute force and power.
- Fighting from the Inside: Though Demise's curse has mostly overtaken him, his able to fight through just enough to telepathically project a message to Link begging him to destroy the curse.
- The Ghost: He's only seen in a dream once, and at the end of the story when the curse is purged from his soul. Other than that, the only time Ganondorf is seen is in his Calamity Ganon form.
- Heroic Build: When he's freed from Demise's curse, he's shown as a highly muscular man. Naturally, this comes with being a Gerudo.
- Misplaced Retribution: According to Urbosa, she and the rest of the Gerudo shunned his existence as a stain on their culture. Now that she's aware of this, she realizes that Ganondorf carries no blame. She even requests that Riju help him to reintegrate into their society.
- Sixth Ranger: Impa may have joined the quartet last, but even though Ganondorf had been Din's Chosen One, he was never one of the heroes because of Demise's curse. He's only freed from the curse a whopping 120,000 years after he was chosen.
- Tragic Villain: Ganondorf turns out to be this because he wasn't actually a villain to begin with. He was a slave to Demise's curse for millennia.
- The Unchosen One: His very first incarnation was this. Specifically, when he was alive as Groose in the Era of the Skies, his actions during that era left an impression on the Goddesses. Din chose him as her Champion, just as Nayru chose Zelda, and Farore chose Link.
- Walking Spoiler: There's a good reason most of his entries are partially or entirely whited out. His involvement in the story creates most of the divergences from the original videogame's story.
The Spirits Four
General
These are the four spirits that are bound to the souls of their respective heroes. They are the embodiment of godlike power in Hyrule, more powerful than any entity residing within Hyrule.
- Animal Motif: Each Spirit matches with their respective hero's typical animal theme. In fact, for three of them, these spirits are the reason for the motif, while the fourth was deliberately created by Hylia to resemble the Sheikah's Patron animal.
- Arc Symbol: Each spirit carries an orb that has a symbol on it.
- Owl: the Triforce.
- Wolf: the Master Sword.
- Boar: the crest of the royal family.
- Frog: Goddess Hylia's bird crest.
- Came Back Strong: Each Spirit is born from the collective power of the various versions of all four of their chosen heroes. The result of 120,000 years of reincarnations has given all four spirits immense power.
- Color Motif: The Wolf is blue, the Owl is gold, the Boar is magenta, and the Frog is white.
- Eldritch Abomination: They're all so powerful that they're effectively this, but thankfully, they're by nature heroic.
- Embodiment of Virtue: Three of them represent an aspect of the Triforce, and the fourth represents a unique virtue. The Wolf represents courage, the Owl wisdom, the Boar power, and the Frog kindness.
- Giant Flyer: Each one is capable of flight, and the spirits themselves are gargantuan in size.
- Many Spirits Inside of One: They themselves are spirits, but they carry the power and knowledge of every one of the hero's incarnations that came before them.
- Older Is Better: Each one contains souls that are up to 120,000 years old, and they're the most powerful beings in the land.
- One-Winged Angel: The four spirits are these to their respective masters, as they bend to the whim of their masters who can transform, in a sense, into them. It's less a transformation and more of a summon, but the fact that each one is contained inside an orb carried by their spirit means the effect is still the same either way.
- Our Spirits Are Different: They're called spirits, but they don't act the same as the spirits of the Champions or King Rhoam.
- Physical God: They're ethereal entities, but they're each incredibly powerful, so much that they're practically gods in and of themselves.
- Power Glows: Each one of them glows brightly whenever summoned or when their power is used.
- Power Tattoo: Each spirit grants their hero a tattoo on their back resembling them. The narrative describes that they each carry an orb that carries a unique symbol.
- Strength Equals Worthiness: For the Frog and the Wolf, their wielders needed to earn them through trials of combat.
- Time Abyss: Each spirit was gradually being constructed over thousands of years by combining the individual powers of each incarnation of the heroes over the years. The Frog was made quickly by Hylia, but it still uses the power of all the Sheikah over the thousands of years, so it still qualifies.
Wolf
The Spirit of Courage born from the incarnations of the Heroes of Hyrule. Link obtains some of its power upon drawing the Master Sword, and unlocks the spirit itself upon completing the Trial of the Wolf.
- Noble Wolf: It's a massive ethereal wolf meant to be wielded by the Master Link, chosen by Farore, goddess of courage.
- Savage Wolves: Paya's vision displays a Calamity version of the Wolf overcome by the power of Malice.
Owl
The Spirit of Wisdom born from the incarnations of the Princess of Hyrule. Zelda gains access to its power when she unlocks her sealing powers.
- Ominous Owl: One of Paya's visions of the future displays a Calamity version of the Owl overcome by the power of Malice.
- The Owl-Knowing One: It's a massive ethereal owl wielded by Princess Zelda, chosen by Nayru, goddess of wisdom.
- Token Flyer: All four spirits can fly, but the Owl is the only spirit represented by an animal capable of natural flight.
Boar
The Spirit of Power born from the reincarnated souls of Ganondorf Dragmire. His soul was enslaved by Demise's curse, and thus he didn't organically grow into the power unlike his cohorts.
- Demonic Possession: It was a victim of Demise's curse along with its wielder, forced to use powers for the purpose of darkness and evil. Zelda manages to free him from this dark curse.
- Full-Boar Action: It's a massive ethereal boar wielded by Ganondorf Dragmire, chosen by Din, goddess of power.
Frog
The Spirit of Kindness born from the power of the entire Sheikah Tribe. Lady Impa was chosen to wield this spirit from the moment Goddess Hylia decided to create it as a fourth hero.
- Amphibians Are Abhorrent: Paya's vision of the future has her seeing a Calamity version of the Frog overcome by the power of Malice.
- Frog Ninja: It's a massive ethereal frog wielded by Lady Impa Sombreada of the Sheikah ninjas, chosen by Hylia, the goddess of light and Big Good of Hyrule.
- The Sky Is an Ocean: When it flies through the air, it's described as pumping its legs like its swimming through water.
