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