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| - Just as a normal-sized Philosopher's Stone Transmutation Circle is powered by a number of live humans placed at multiple intersecting points, the Nationwide Transmutation Circle is designed predominantly around ten locations near the outskirts of Amestris. These locations have, as part of their preparation for the circle's activation, been the sites of extreme bloodshed in the form of civil wars, rebellions-turned-massacres and grisly border struggles orchestrated by Father and his Homunculus agents as part of a ritual they call the Crest of Blood (血の紋, Chi no Mon) - in which the lifeblood and sorrow of the people is soaked into the land, making it ripe for the harvesting of souls for the Philosopher's Stone. As a result of their inhuman interference, these ten points of intersection (Rivi
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| abstract
| - Just as a normal-sized Philosopher's Stone Transmutation Circle is powered by a number of live humans placed at multiple intersecting points, the Nationwide Transmutation Circle is designed predominantly around ten locations near the outskirts of Amestris. These locations have, as part of their preparation for the circle's activation, been the sites of extreme bloodshed in the form of civil wars, rebellions-turned-massacres and grisly border struggles orchestrated by Father and his Homunculus agents as part of a ritual they call the Crest of Blood (血の紋, Chi no Mon) - in which the lifeblood and sorrow of the people is soaked into the land, making it ripe for the harvesting of souls for the Philosopher's Stone. As a result of their inhuman interference, these ten points of intersection (Riviere, Cameron, Fiske, Wellesley, South City, Ishval, Fotset, Pendleton, Reole, and Briggs) will serve as activation points while all humans within the circle become materials for the transmutation. Nearly four hundred years in the past, after leaving the dead ruins of Xerxes, Father ventured westward and taught his brand of alchemy to the settlers who would go on to call themselves the nation of Amestris. This fledgling country, presumably under Father's guidance, attacked and conquered the city-state of Riviere soon afterward without first declaring war. Since that incident, the country of Amestris would continue to grow as Father slipped into the shadows to control the nation's expansion from behind the scenes. Through an almost constant series of military annexations, Amestris would grow to a large enough size so as to properly house a Transmutation Circle of sufficient size for Father's goals, all the while carving the crest of blood into areas that corresponded to the intersection points of the circle as it was formed. With his Homunculus agents Lust, Envy, and Gluttony (and initially Greed) acting as instigators to inspire violence and deepen the crests of blood, Sloth digging the tunnel by hand for nearly a century, Wrath posing as Amestris' Führer to ensure a continuation of the country's warlike legacy during the last phase of the plan and Pride acting as overseer of the other agents and watchman over the tunnel, Father's dastardly machinations move like clockwork toward his ultimate goal as the man himself waits patiently in his lair beneath Central City, at the very heart of the circle, for the moment of truth - The Promised Day. When the Promised Day arrives and the Nationwide Transmutation Circle is activated, it becomes apparent that Father's array was significantly more complex than previously thought. In addition to the double pentagon pattern formed by the ten Crests of Blood, another transmutation circle is formed at the heart of Central City by way of the five Central Alchemical Laboratories and the circular underground tunnel connecting them, all arranged around Father at the center. (This shows that the Nationwide Transmutation Circle does, in fact, perfectly mirror the smaller circle in the Fifth Laboratory, both in design and function.) The energy drawn when the Nationwide Human Transmutation begins to open the Gate of each Human Sacrifice, causing each one of them to conflict with one another, and the resulting clash releases enough Human Transmutation energy to open the Gate belonging to the Earth itself. As the massive Gate opens under Father's control, the Nationwide Transmutation Circle resonates with the Gate of the Heavens, which opens by way of the circle formed by the Sun's corona around the Moon during a passing solar eclipse. The planetary and celestial gates pull against each other and Father pulls the Gate of the Sky, which he calls God, into himself. Although Dr. Tim Marcoh, the Crystal Alchemist, was among the first to realize that the Homunculi's plan was to create an extremely powerful Philosopher's Stone using the people of Amestris during the Ishval Civil War, it was Lt. Colonel Maes Hughes who first realized (at the cost of his own life) the true secret behind secrets. While investigating information that the Elric brothers had shared with him after the Laboratory 5 incident, Hughes discovered by cross-referencing the pattern Ed saw against records of the country's bloodiest historical incidents that the very nation of Amestris had been built from scratch specifically for the purpose of constructing and activating the Nationwide Transmutation Circle. Ed would go on to recognize a similar circle in the ruins of the ancient, but alchemically-advanced civilization of Xerxes and come to the same conclusion as Marcoh, but would not stumble upon the same findings as Hughes until discovering Sloth's nearly completed tunnel at Briggs.
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