Multi-Character Spotlight:  Morphs

Enough of the heroes, I want to talk about some of the villians in the Fire Emblem series, starting with Rekka no Ken’s Morphs. The morphs are creations made by Nergal to do his bidding in the case of collecting Quintescence for resurrecting the Dragons. Their skins are a pale white like plaster, which amplifies the already evil yellow-gold eye color to ultimate evil levels, along with jt-black hair and blood red lips. They have different personalities, but with one thing in common: an overall disdain for humans coming from the fact that they are not controlled by their emotions. This disdain is told through different ways: Ephidel sees all humans as pawns; Sonia believes that she is a “perfect” human being and is therefore higher than other humans. Denning has no discrenable personality. Limstella is the only exception to this statement. They could be considered to be equal to the Homonculus from Full Metal Alchemist. There are 5 total morphs in the game that the player will come face-to-face with or fight. They are: Ephidel; Kishuna; Sonia; Denning; and Limstella.

First off is Ephidel, he is the main villain for the first half of Eliwood or Hector stories, attempting to sow seeds of rebellion in Lycia to start a war. The reason for this is that after the war and all the armies return, Nergal can take the deads’ Quintesscence for his plan. While Ephidel is the first morph the player meets, he does not actually fight, simply standing at the sidelines watching the chaos, which spawned from that his own archetype: a villain who does not fight the player and instead directs all of the footsoldiers, but is the subordinate of the Gharnef character, in this case his creator Nergal. Ephidel perishes at Chapter 19/ H 20 when a failed attempt to awaken a dragon causes him to be sucked into the gate and disappears from Elibe. He would have been an interesting boss, if given the chance, and perhaps instead of getting stuck in the gates path, he would be weakened by the fight enough to break down.

The next morph that is introduced and most likely the first one that the player fights is Kishuna, the Magic Seal. He can only be fought on sidequests, and usually is very hard to defeat until the last sidequest on Hector’s story. He is the first morph the Nergal created and also a failed creation because of him being unable to fight and unable to collect Quintesscence, being a frail being. However, Kishuna could actually be considered an anti-morph because of his ability and class title. His class is Magic Seal, which as it suggests nullifies, or shall I say seals the use of magic within a certain area, and since most of the morphs use magic, he nullifies their fighting capabilities. Usually in the first couple of stages, there is some room from magic units to be used, but on the last fight with him no magic units can attack because his area covers essentially the entire stage. During his stages, he remembers being created, but then being called a failure, compared to the other morphs. He dies with his body crumbling to dust.

The third is Sonia, the most human of the bunch, but still inhuman. Sonia’s first job was to disguise herself as a homeless woman to let herself in on their house. She then holds their baby daughter, Nino hostage, to allow her master to gain information on the Dragon’s Gate, then killed them but kept Nino on Nergal’s orders. Her next assignment is getting into the Black Fang’s highest by marrying Brendan Reed, thus making Nino his stepdaughter. From that position, she then orders the Black Fang to capture Ninian and Nils, the keys to open the gate, as well as deal with Lyn and her crew in her story, and fight Eliwood and Hector with the full might of the Black Fang. She has a personal follower, Ursula the Blue Crow, who learned from her and hangs on her every word, believing that she is cut from the same cloth of leaders. However, Sonia believes that as Nergal’s creation, she is perfect and thus beyond the comprehension of humans, similar to Homunculi from Full Metal Alchemist, the closest personality to them. This however is her greatest downfall, as in the chapter where she is the boss, Chapter 26x, she flaunts her supposed perfection, but dies with that perfectionist image in ruin as her body crumbles to dust. If the player does not go on the sidequest, she injures herself defeating Brendan and is met with Limstella telling her that her services are no longer necessary, and destroys her. Her use was to control the Black Fang, and now that she has lost all of the Fang’s members, she has outlived her usefulness. As a boss, she is a Sage, with balanced stats, including Defense, which is a rarity for Magic units. The one thing she lacks is Luck, which at level 10 is 0. She is also the first boss unit to be able to cast Bolting, the long range anima tome with frightening accuracy and power. Her secondary spell, after she’s done sniping at the units is Fimbulvetr, the A rank magic spell, devastating in most units’ hands. She also carries, and drops after she is defeated, a Fell’s Contract, the promotion item for thieves.

The first mandatory morph boss is Denning. Denning seems to be created not as a actual morph for battle, but as a messenger. The only thing that he says is “This is a message from Lord Nergal ‘ I await you on the Dread Isle’” over and over again like a broken record. Actually, when he dies, he does sound like a broken record, saying the exact same thing but pausing inbetween words as his life is extinguished. He is also the only morph that would not be affected by Kishuna. As the boss of Chapter 27/ H29, he comes as a level 19 Sniper equipped with the best bows of the game, excluding the S rank bow, with similar stats to Sonia, and the same Luck.

The last morph is Limstella, the boss of Chapter 30/ H32, and the only morph the player has to defeat if no side         quests are taken. Limstella, quite the opposite of all the other fully fuctional morphs, is very calm, composed, and aware of her limited life in exchange for power given to her by her master. Before the chapter the player faces her, Nergal tells her that he has given her magic beyond powerful, and beauty, calling her his masterpiece, but stating that before tomorrow, she will die of a corrupted body. He then tells her that it is an honor to die in his service, which she accepts. In her fight with the player and subsequent death quote, she states that both her body and her emotions, thus her feelings towards death, are constructs, showing that she understands and accepts her death as something that was going to come. The beauty part comes in earlier as she deals with Sonia, if the player doesn’t go on her sidequest, being the one who notifies Sonia of her outlived usefulness. Her class is, like Sonia, a Sage with higher caps and 0 Luck, but she as a higher level unit, has higher stats with the same Luck. The biggest difference is that she doesn’t have Bolting until hard modes, but she can dish out higher damage than Sonia did with the same tome.

Personally, I feel that the morphs could have gone farther in the story, because they are well written each with a very distinct personality. As I mentioned earlier, they are similar to the homunculus in Full Metal Alchemist, but the homunculus get some form of redemption when they are killed. On the other hand, only Limstella really has any redemption, and she was more aware of her faults. For the remake of the game, I would suggest allowing them to gain some kind of redemption, perhaps a past scene from their pasts before becoming morphs, or the tactician turning them into humans again.