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Oct 26, 2011 17:27



Lust was created in Ishbal sometime within the last 30 or so years, made via alchemy in an attempt at human transmutation. An Ishbalan man was attempting to revive his dead, beloved fiance. Unfortunately, human transmutation is impossible, and a homunculus in the image of the deceased was created instead. Left in the desert to die as a half-formed monster, Lust was taken by the homunculus Envy to Dante and was raised as one of her minions. Fed red stones until she took human shape, Lust was inducted into the group of homunculi named for the Seven Deadly Sins and christened Lust. She was the third homunculi to bear this name, and is the third youngest of the homunculi.

Dante, their master, was an alchemist who had achieved a form of immortality in her ability to transfer her soul from body to body. We see during flashbacks in the later part of the series regarding Sloth that Dante purposefully repressed and sublimated any memories a homunculus had of its former life. Lust knew nothing of where she came from or how she had been made, only that she was a homunculus in the service of her master, Dante. She, along with the mentally challenged homunculus Gluttony and the eldest, Envy, were sent into the world to find likely budding alchemists and manipulate them to create The Philosopher's Stone.

It's unknown how long Lust has been doing this, but it can be assumed since she was fully formed and grasped the complexities of alchemy.

When we first meet Lust in the series, she's controlling a corrupt priest named Cornello in the desert city of Lior. With Lust's help in the form of a faux Philosopher's Stone, Cornello had convinced the people that God worked through him and he could perform miracles - even raising the dead. But the arrival of the Elric brothers, Edward and Alphonse, interrupted all of Cornello and the homunculi's plans. The deception - using the faux Philosopher's Stone, to perform his 'miracles' - was discovered and Cornello became useless. Lust had Gluttony kill him, and Envy assume his form to keep the people behaving the way they wanted. Eventually, with help from ill forces, a rebellion occurred in Lior, driving a further divide between the desert peoples and the Amestrian military.

Following Lior, Lust and the others continued on seeking out other alchemists to use to make the Stone, as well as being involved in horrific alchemical experiments in Central City, the Amestrian capital. At this point, she is shown as being willing to do anything to attain a Philosopher's Stone. Even wiping out entire cities and towns, as shown in the Other Brothers' Elric arc. And she shows no care for the alchemists she uses, repeatedly leaving them to die when things go wrong without a care. Her only motivation was attaining humanity, and a soul.

After the incident in Xenotime with the red water, Lust decided that the Elric brothers were their best bet for getting a Stone. They had shown themselves obsessed with it, and the homunculi had been keeping tabs on the boys since they were small. The trio returned to Central City, where Lust's life began to take a turn.

Following the same trail as the Elrics, Lust broke into the Central City alchemical library, searching for notes from a State Alchemist that held vital information regarding creating a Philosopher's Stone. But while there, she encounters the Ishbalan outlaw known only as Scar, a serial killer with a vendetta against State Alchemists. Scar appeared to recognize Lust, and the two fought, burning down the library by accident in the process.

But the main plan continued. In the nefarious and disturbing Laboratory Five, a secret lab in Central devoted to inhumane alchemical experiments, the truth behind the homunculi's obsession with the Philosopher's Stone came to light. After taking Alphonse Elric hostage, Lust and Envy lured Ed deep into the lab and struck a bargain with him. His brother's life for a Philosopher's Stone. Everything was provided, and Lust proved that she knew how to kill someone soulbound to an object. She revealed they wished the stone to become human, and that a philosopher's stone could only be created with the death of a substantial number of human beings. She also revealed that homunculi couldn't preform alchemy themselves, so needed human alchemists to do so for them.

Unfortunately (from her point of view) Edward refused at the last minute, unable to sacrifice other life for his own ends - even his brother. The homunculi are foiled, with the aide of Scar, and the laboratory destroyed. Lust and the others escaped by posing as soldiers, and the fact that their own held high places in the government - the Furher and his secretary, respectively. All files and information regarding Lab 5 subsequently disappeared, and the one man determined to investigate was killed for his troubles. The homunculi were determined to keep whatever had happened there a secret.

During the excitement in the lab, the sealed homunculus Greed was released, and we don't see Lust taking an active role in anything for a bit. Not until the appearance of a half-homunculi child capable of performing alchemy on himself. Despite being taken in by the Elric brothers and their teacher, Dante sent her homunculi to retrieve the boy and complete her collection.

It's around here that Lust's desire to be human seems to grow a bit stronger than that of her companions. Until around here, she had been presented as the leader of the homunculi, the one calling the shots and making the plans. But during the Greed arc, things begin to change. She showed little interest in Wrath, the half-homunculus boy, and took a back step in proceedings. After Greed's death at the hands of Edward, Lust began to question her own reality and the state of her existence. She even asked Envy questions regarding where homunculi come from, and what happens to them when they die. Envy calls her crazy and tells her to drop it, but she can't.

At that point, Lust encountered an alchemist named Lujon from her past. She had used him two years before, taking advantage of an illness in his village and his desire to use alchemy to help. He fell in love with her, and Lust abandoned the plan. She claimed not to really know why, but Lujon caused things inside of her that she didn't understand or like. She remembered things that had never happened to her, and felt things she had been told she had no capability to feel. On their second meeting, Lust agrees to return with Lujon to his village once more. He begs her to stay with him, that he loves her, and needs her with him. Lust is overwhelmed by the memories of her former life and the man who made her, and the feelings these things bring in her. When Lujon pushed her, pointing out that she's happy with him, that she wants to be with him as well, she killed him. (And his entire village, though it's implied that was actually Envy's doing.)

Following the death of Lujon, Lust became more interested in who and what she was. She was sent by Sloth - the homunculus created by Edward and Alphonse when they attempted to revive their mother - to go after the Elrics again. Lust showed hesitance and reluctance, but Sloth convinced her - including the caveat that Lust may need to kill the Elrics, to ensure plans go properly.

No answers or leads were presented to her among the homunculi, but she had other routes she could explore. Especially when her master, in the body of a young woman and stealing her identity, began manipulating the Ishbalan Scar for her own means. Scar possessed the alchemical arm of his deceased elder brother - the same man who made Lust in the first place. Something about Scar called to Lust, and she found herself chasing after him and thinking on him almost constantly. She assumed at first it was simply because he was on the trail of the stone, desperate to make it to help what was left of his people and the other desert tribes suppressed and oppressed by the Amestrian military. Lust, Gluttony and Envy were once more utilized, to arrange things ensuring the military would believe the desert tribes were going to rebel.

But it was Dante who truly called all the shots here. Using the faith of the people of Lior and the tragedy that had effected a young Lior woman named Rose, Dante worked the people of Lior into a fervor against the military. Lust's specific task was simply to ensure that none ever found out the same thing had basically been done in Ishbal, which had fallen decades ago in a slaughter at the orders of the Amestris military. Any who did were to be killed. But Lust hesitates when Edward and Alphonse learn the truth, and becomes distracted when Gluttony announces 'the beast of Ishbal' had come to Lior.

Lust watched as Scar encounters Edward, and listened to the conversation they have regarding Scar's plans. The two men fought, and when Scar was about to be killed by Edward, Lust intervened to save the Ishbalan. She even goes so far as to give Edward her name. She attempted to gain Scar's alliance, and Scar invoked his brother. Lust is overcome by memories and loses consciousness. Gluttony quickly carries her to safely, leaving Scar to explain to Ed how he knew Lust's face. He explained about his brother, and the woman they had both loved, who had fallen ill and died when he was just a boy. And subsequently, his brother's involvement in alchemy and the creation of the homunculus Lust. Edward fills Scar in on what, exactly, a homunculus is..

Lust's own memories of the events were now clear, and she remembered where she came from. That she had been an Ishbalan woman, had been made in Ishbal from the flesh of Scar's brother.

Her loyalty to her master and peers held until Dante has her plans in order, and Scar set to create the Stone by luring the army into what's left of Lior. The plan was to use the lives of the soldiers and Scar's alchemical arm to create the stone for the desert people to use. Lust's wavering loyalties were noted by her fellow homunculi, as evidenced in an exchange between Lust and Pride. Pride reveals to Lust that the plan is different and things wouldn't be happening as she had thought. He teases her cruelly, reminding her that it's their master's plan, and tells her to finally get over her 'ridiculous schoolgirl's crush'. She argues with Pride, and showed her first signs of going rogue. Even Gluttony begs Lust to forget about Scar, and refuses to join her when she reveals she's going after him.

Until that point, Lust and Gluttony were never separated.

Lust left for Lior, arriving in the early morning when the city was nearly abandoned. But she found more than just Scar in Lior. Alphonse Elric was there as well. He had come searching for his brother, but got caught in a battle between Scar and a sociopathic alchemist who had been involved in the war. Alphonse had been transmuted into a bomb, set to explode once the chemical reaction was complete. Edward had already left Lior, leading the people away in secret. Lust saw what had happened, and explained that Scar couldn't fix what had been done. She urges him to leave Alphonse to his fate, ignoring everything else but her own desire for humanity and Scar, begs him to make the stone and turn her human. She swears that then she'll be the woman he loved, and they can be happy together. Scar informs her that she will never be the woman she had been made from. He claims the proof is simply how callously she reacts to Alphonse's plight, that the woman she had been would never be so cold and selfish. Lust continued to argue, even apologize that she didn't have all of her memories yet. She was unable to interfere when Scar transmuted Alphonse, altering the reaction inside of him and turning him into the base for the Philosopher's Stone itself, sacrificing his own alchemical arm. Scar kept with him a locket containing hair from the human woman Lust had been made from - the one weakness of a homunculi.

While they argued, the armies advanced. Scar told Lust to stay away from them, and to let him finish what he had started. She followed him, still arguing, begging him to make the stone for her. She nearly killed him when he refused, but found herself unable to when he pointed out that it wouldn't bring her any closer to being human. She decides to let things happen as they will, and simply hope she has a chance to get her hands on a Stone and use it herself, somehow.

When the soldiers came to Lior, Scar was still creating the transmutation circle needed to make the Stone. Scar was spotted, and the soldiers moved in to kill him. Lust changed her mind, and caught up with Scar, informing him that isn't right. The soldiers found them both and opened fire. Scar, without thinking, leapt between the bullets and Lust, fatally wounding himself. Lust did what she could for him, but all she could do was listen as he explained why he saved Alphonse, and why the Elric brothers were so important to him. He also admitted he loved the woman she was, but it didn't matter anymore. He told her to leave Lior while there was still time, and sacrificed himself to complete the array and turn Alphonse into the stone.

Lust, moved by Scar's words and his devotion to the Elrics, ignored her orders and went against her master and warned both Elric brothers that they needed to run - both the other homunculi and the alchemists. Knowing she couldn't take the stone - Scar had left the locket with Alphonse - she chose instead to help them in her way.

For her actions, Lust was taken by Sloth to their master and punished. Dante had Lust pinned to the wall with three blades, allowing Lust to be privy to her master's secret past. Lust was given a chance to redeem herself, and told to go with Sloth and Wrath to deal with the Elrics. Sloth was to abduct Alphonse, and Lust and Wrath to kill Edward. However, when Wrath and Lust cornered the young alchemist, Lust turned traitor in full and attacked Wrath instead. She struck a deal with Edward - everything she knows about her master in exchange for Edward using the Stone to make her human when he'd finished restoring himself and his brother. She plans, with Edward, to take out Sloth. Lust used her dagger nails to carve a sealing transmutation into stone floor, which Sloth would be led into and destroyed by Ed.

However, things didn't go as planned. Wrath, armed with the locket that was Lust's weakness, trapped her in the circle instead, after separating Ed and Lust. He taunts her as she's paralyzed, teasing her with her impending death. Lust shows no fear, only a philosophical sadness, and muses how at least she'll finally know what it feels like to be human. Even if it's only to die like one. Wrath transmutes his arm into a blade and stabs her through the heart. Her last thoughts are of her human memories and Scar.

What point in time are you taking your character from when he/she appears at Landel's and why?:

I'm taking Lust from her canon death.

Please give us a detailed description of your character's personality:

Lust's personality often seems to be at odds with itself, due to her perplexing (to herself) nature. She feels things strongly, and is often dictated by her emotions, simply due to the fact that she has difficulty understanding her own emotions. For the majority of her existence, she held the belief she was taught that homunculi have no true feelings. But even at this point she's begun to have flashes of memories from her birth and the human life she was created from. She begins waxing philosophical following Greed's death, expressing curiosity about her origins and her true nature. She begins to realize she does have feelings akin to those humans feel. The most obvious example is the episode Reunion of The Fallen, and her inability to deal with her feelings for Lujon, preferring to simply kill him rather than accept her emotions.

Lust's conflicting memories are at the core of her personality. She's a fiercely independent woman, but forever torn between the woman she is and the woman she was. While she expresses desire to become human and become the woman she was, she doesn't truly want to give up her sense of self. When Wrath immobilizes her, she shows no fear, and even claims she welcomes death, because she can feel human then. All of it stems from a desire to understand herself.

Those personality aspects aside, Lust is an intelligent woman capable of keeping a calm head in a crisis. She has a quietness and a subtleness to her, in her speech patterns and her movements. She presents an air of mystery, and rarely offers anything of herself to others. Not without a great deal of trust between them, not something Lust builds very easily. She's also opportunistic, and won't hesitate to change her loyalties or betray an ally for her own ends, at least to an extent. She has always had a sort of a loyal streak, as evidenced by her relationship with Gluttony. They had an almost familial relationship, with Lust looking after him as though he were a younger sibling or even a child.

At this point, she's capable of forming deep connections that she honors in her own way with various people.

She uses her beauty and her skills as a seductress to further her own agendas, even for harmless ends, and that does tend to be what she falls back on. She has a knack for intrigue and acedamia, allowing her to present herself as whatever a particular man would be most likely to respond to.

Occasionally, she suffers bouts of intense pathos and depression. These bouts tend to make her snappish and short tempered, and she can brood intensely when wrapped in one of her fits. Usually these are triggered by a memory or a reminder of what she is. She finds it difficult to keep up any pretexts when she's like that.
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