Edward Elric

OOC:

Player Name: Tetra
Age: 18+
Contact: Tetradecimal

IC:

Name: Edward Elric
Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist
Canon Point: Chapter 83
Age: 16

Spoken language(s): ...Amestrian?
Username: caduceus
To the Mods: Ed has a metal prosthetic arm and leg that would probably need to be rendered soundproof.

History: http://fma.wikia.com/wiki/Edward_Elric
Personality: Edward is a willful, prideful, short-tempered young man. He is deeply loyal to his friends and family, easily moved to displays of emotion, and possessed of a strong sense of justice and incredible determination. While these traits make him a vibrant personality, they, combined with his incredible talent for alchemy, have also cast a pall over his life that he is still attempting to dispel.

When Edward was a young child, he lost his mother to a consumptive illness. Unlike most other children who eventually come to terms with their parent's death, Edward became convinced he could restore her to life. Via alchemy, of course (see powers for details)! Though human alchemical transmutation was expressly forbidden by his state, Edward reasoned that the only reason it was illegal was because no one had ever been successful at it -- and he would, naturally, succeed where all others had failed.

In the end, he and his brother Alphonse made a tragic miscalculation that would leave Alphonse's soul bound to an empty suit of armor and Edward without the use of two of his limbs. Ever since then, Edward has been single-mindedly pursuing the only thing he can be sure will return Alphonse to his original body: the fabled Philosopher's Stone. Edward resolves to burn down his old family house, the only real home he and Alphonse ever knew, then leaves his hometown to join the Amestris army as a State Alchemist.

Though State Alchemists are reviled throughout the country as greedy, corrupt individuals who use their abilities only for self-gain, Edward reasons that the research resources that will be available to him as a State Alchemist will dwarf anything he could access as a civilian, and that as long as he can keep what happened to him and Alphonse secret, he can slowly use these resources to track down rumors about the Philosopher's Stone. The threat of being drafted into military conflict is, ultimately, secondary to his desperate search to find some way to restore Alphonse to normal.

While Edward puts on a bold, carefree front in everyday life, it's also clear that he harbors deep-seated guilt for what happened to Alphonse. He was the one who suggested they attempt to transmute their mother, he was the reason Alphonse lost his human body, and he was also the reason Alphonse now has to live his life as a disembodied spirit tenuously attached to a suit of armor. It is for Alphonse's sake that Edward continues his search for a way to restore his brother. In fact, when at one point Alphonse became convinced that Edward was not his brother, but rather that Edward created Alphonse wholesale in some kind of unethical human transmutation experiment, Edward was unable to defend himself at all from the accusations -- not because he was guilty, but because he was terrified that Alphonse blamed Edward for what had happened to him.

This aside, not all of what Edward does is motivated by guilt -- he also has an overarching sense of human sympathy and desire to help those who are unable to help themselves. Injustice rankles at him, and he feels compelled to help people avoid the kind of fate the he himself has been subjected to. For instance:
* When he encounters a town of beleaguered miners being cheated out of their livelihoods by a corrupt government official, Edward illegally transmutes lead into gold in exchange for the deed to the mine, then sells the deed back to the miners for a pittance.
* He goes out of his way to reveal a prominent religious figure as a fraud before the man can leverage his power to turn his congregation into a religious army.
* Ed endangers his own life to prevent his superior officer from killing another character out of cold blood, reasoning that the act will irreparably damage his superior's spirit and prevent the man from ever achieving his dream of moving Amestris toward positive political change.

Through years of sticking his neck out to help the common citizenry, Edward has slowly gained fame as the Fullmetal Alchemist, an alchemist sponsored by the state, but who still works for the good of the people.

For all his good intentions, however, Ed's general irascibility and recklessness often land him in trouble. For example, he:
* Refuses to trade information with a possible ally on general principle, even though the trade would be mutually beneficial and refusal will mean turning a potential ally into a real enemy.
* Routinely engages opponents stronger or more skillful than himself, with the benefit of only loose preplanning.
* Refuses to abandon allies in battle, even when this choice may end in more casualties.

In other words, he's good of intention, but causes many of his own problems!

Abilities/Skills: Edward is an alchemist, someone with the ability to near-instantaneously transmute base materials into an object of similar mass and chemical makeup. For instance, he can transform a broken radio into one in perfect working order, transform sand into a spear, a piece of wood into a rocking horse. Moreover, Ed is not limited to working on solid objects; he can, for example, change the percentage of oxygen in the air, or boil water. While an object is being actively transmuted, Edward can also perform some limited manipulations on it; for example, he can create grasping hands out of stone, or materialize roofing materials into the correct configuration on a roof.

There are some caveats to this ability, most notably in transmuting living creatures. He is prohibited by the law of the state from attempting transmutations using human beings as materials or end products. Though it's possible, and he's performed alchemy with humans as materials before, the practice is dangerous and especially prone to backfiring if the ingredients used in the transmutation are not exactly what is required for the end product. This backfiring, called ‘rebound’, usually involves nearby materials being seized or unexpectedly warped in order to satisfy the conditions for producing the intended end result of the transmutation.

In general, alchemy involving organic matter is trickier than inorganic matter, especially where humans are involved and without the use of a philosopher's stone, which allows alchemists to 'bend' the rules of alchemical transmutation and exchange human souls to pay the alchemical price for the desired result. If successful, however, it is possible to perform feats such as treating wounds using the power of a human’s life force (with accompanying depletion of that person’s lifespan).

Edward's range is advanced enough that he could (for example and in theory) build a solid stone bridge across a chasm. However, he would be limited by his materials and the structural strength/weight of the stone. For instance, the amount of stone required to bridge the gap might take more rock than he actually has to work with, or the weight of the stone section stretching out from his location to the other side might collapse under its own weight before it can reach.

In addition, alchemy consists of two distinct stages of manipulating matter, 'destroying' the base materials and 'creating' the end product out of them. Edward is capable of stopping an alchemical reaction before it's complete, with the end result of simply destroying/breaking apart whatever he was using as his ingredient base. Because this doesn't require the process of reforming anything, Edward can use this to destroy organic or inorganic matter with little risk of alchemical rebound.

Edward's right arm and his leg below the mid-thigh are prosthetic limbs made of metal and attached to his nerves, allowing him to move them as he might ordinary limbs. This allows him to, say, block a lion's fangs with his arm, but also renders him incapable of swimming, as the weight of the metal negates his natural buoyancy.

Samples:
Network style: un: caduceus
Hey. So you might have noticed that there's a big circle drawn in the dirt around House Eleven. I spent a lot of time drawing that, so don't mess with it.

I mean it; I'm in the middle of a delicate stage right now, and I don't need any amateurs futzing with my equations. Since I guess some of you are bound to ask, no, it doesn't have anything to do with magic and it's not some stupid demonic ritual.

To be precise, I'm gonna borrow some diastrophic energy and use it to reform the stone around the foundation. You'll thank me later.
Log style: https://into-spring.dreamwidth.org/27589.html?thread=2781381#cmt2781381