Majhal

Majhal initially appears dignified, helpful and nostalgic. He welcomes the Elric brothers because of his old connection to Hohenheim and speaks openly about Karin, the woman he loved when he was younger.

His grief has developed into obsession. Majhal refuses to accept Karin's apparent death and becomes so committed to recovering her that other people's lives lose value beside his imagined reunion.

He is also capable of profound self-deception. Evidence that contradicts his belief is dismissed because acknowledging it would mean admitting that years of experimentation and suffering were built around a false premise.

Majhal practices alchemy using a transmutation circle incorporated into a bracelet on his right arm. This allows him to activate transmutations rapidly without drawing an array on the ground each time.

His research focuses heavily on human transmutation and soul attachment. He attempts to imitate the principle that binds Alphonse's soul to armor, but his own technique is incomplete.

Majhal creates mannequin bodies resembling Karin and attempts to bind the souls of kidnapped village girls to them. The souls reject these artificial vessels, producing the wandering figures that villagers mistake for resurrected corpses.

Edward remembers Majhal's name from Hohenheim's correspondence and visits him while traveling toward Central. At the same time, Linter Village is frightened by reports of a woman resembling the long-dead Karin wandering at night and by the unexplained disappearance and deaths of young women.

Clause, whose older sister is among the victims, believes Karin's ghost is responsible. Edward investigates and discovers that the supposed supernatural incidents are connected to Majhal's experiments.

Majhal has been abducting village girls, transferring their souls into mannequin replicas of Karin and discarding the failed results. He attempts to use Clause as another subject after she discovers the truth. Edward stops the transmutation and exposes his crimes. Majhal then attacks Edward and accidentally impales himself on a sword Edward had transmuted. Before dying, he encounters the real Karin—who survived the accident decades earlier—but refuses to recognize the elderly woman because she no longer matches the youthful image he preserved.

Karin is Majhal's former lover and the focus of his decades-long obsession. She actually survived the accident in which Majhal believed she died, but when they finally meet again he cannot accept her aged appearance as that of the woman he remembers.

Van Hohenheim corresponded with Majhal about alchemy and human transmutation, which is why Edward recognizes his name.

Edward Elric visits Majhal hoping for information about Hohenheim and instead uncovers his experiments.

Alphonse Elric becomes particularly relevant to Majhal because his successfully bound soul represents the technique Majhal has failed to reproduce.

Clause distrusts the supposed resurrected Karin because her sister died amid the incidents surrounding Majhal's experiments. Majhal eventually attempts to make Clause another vessel for Karin's soul.

Lust observes Majhal's work from a distance while searching for alchemists who might create a Philosopher's Stone. She dismisses him as a second-rate alchemist once she sees the inadequacy of his experiments.