Scar

Scar carries a cross-shaped scar across his face, a right arm tattooed with the destruction half of his people's sacred transmutation, and a mission of vengeance that gradually becomes something far more complicated than killing the alchemists who destroyed Ishval.

Background

Scar was an Ishvalan monk who survived the State's extermination campaign through a combination of chance and the desperate action of his older brother, who used forbidden alchemy to transplant his right arm — and with it, the ability to destroy at the alchemical level — onto Scar's body to keep him alive. His brother believed that an exception to Ishvalan religious prohibition against alchemy might be justified to save one life. Scar disagreed, and then used the arm anyway to kill Ishvalan alchemists, specifically targeting State Alchemists responsible for the massacre. His trajectory across the series is one of its more complex moral arcs: from a character introduced as an unambiguous threat, through the recognition that his grievance is legitimate even when his methods aren't, to someone who eventually directs his capacity for destruction toward a different kind of justice.

Powers & Abilities

Ability	What it does
Destruction Arm	The tattoos on Scar's right arm allow him to deconstruct any material or alchemical construction on contact — he can dissolve armor, weapons, or the transmutation circles of State Alchemists, making him uniquely dangerous to people who rely on alchemy for defense
Reconstruction	After eventually completing the second stage of his brother's research, Scar gains the ability to reconstruct as well as destroy — making him capable of performing full transmutation without a circle
Combat Training	His physical conditioning from his years as a monk and a fugitive make him a formidable fighter independent of his alchemical arm; he doesn't rely on alchemy to win fights, just to end them efficiently

Personality

Deeply serious, carrying grief and conviction in equal measure, and not interested in making himself sympathetic. He knows what he's doing, knows the religious contradiction it represents, and continues doing it because he has decided that the obligation to the dead outweighs the obligation to doctrinal consistency. He softens slightly as the series continues — not because his pain diminishes but because he begins to find people whose causes he can align with rather than simply fighting alone.

Relationships

• Edward Elric — the State Alchemist he fails to kill multiple times and eventually comes to regard as something like an ally; Edward's willingness to acknowledge Ishvalan suffering changes the dynamic between them
• Roy Mustang — the Flame Alchemist who participated in the Ishvalan campaign and carries specific guilt Scar recognizes; their relationship is defined by a reckoning that the series does not resolve easily
• Riza Hawkeye — Mustang's adjutant and one of the campaign veterans; her presence alongside Mustang is a constant reminder of what they both did and what Scar remembers

Role in the Story

Scar is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood's primary embodiment of the argument that institutional atrocity produces consequences that don't resolve through protagonist goodwill alone. His arc demands that the series — and its heroes — reckon with Ishval as something more than backstory, and the fact that he eventually finds a different direction doesn't erase what drove him there.