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In Fullmetal Alchemist, there have been several facts about human
transmutation that have been established:

  1. To learn or perform about human transmutation, an equivalent exchange must be performed.
  2. You can force another being to perform human transmutation and open their gate of truth.
  3. You can restore the body of another who is linked to you through human transmutation.
  4. You can sacrifice your own knowledge of alchemy as part of the equivalent exchange.

This got me thinking: Could you sacrifice your own knowledge of human
transmutation to pass the knowledge down to family members? As a father, let's
say that you sacrificed some part of your body to gain knowledge of human
transmutation and gain the ability to perform transmutation without a circle.
Then, you are nearing the end of your life, but you wish to pass the knowledge
you gained on. Could you sacrifice your own door to open your child's door, to
prevent rebound on the child? Could you also sacrifice the remaining years of
your life?


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2021-07-27T09:13:00.937
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2021-08-09T17:23:07.743
2021-07-28T02:22:47.393
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fullmetal-alchemist-series
Can knowledge from the Gate of Truth be passed down?


Probably, the method seems pretty straightforward so long as you think ethics
are for suckers. Let's start by touching on some of the points you bring up.
Forcing someone else's gate open is not a well understood phenomenon and
probably doesn't serve a meaningful purpose in this case. Forcing someone else
to open their gate of truth is possible but is far from trivial, it was only
done once by Pride to Mustang and given how fervently the homunculi tried to
get Mustang to perform a human transmutation of his own volition before Pride
forced the issue, how Pride notes that it took a lot out of him and we see his
philosopher's stone fueled body crack slightly afterwards we can surmise it
was a transmutation that leveraged the power of the philosopher's stone as an
alchemical catalyst and cost a significant amount of the philosopher's stone's
power that Pride would not have used if he hadn't been forced. With that in
mind it doesn't seem likely a human without a philosopher's stone to serve as
a catalyst could force someone else's gate open. Why not just draw the human
transmutation circle for the child and have them activate it willingly, no
philosopher's stone needed.

Truth always exacts a toll from those who attempt human transmutation and
sends them through the gate where they acquire vast alchemical knowledge. We
don't know if Truth accepts philosopher's stones, gates, debit, etc. as
payment to waive the usual toll, it's never come up. But for the task at hand
why not just pay the toll? Truth doesn't tend to exact enough of a toll to
kill you, with the exception of Alphonse (even if your kid gets Alphonsed you
could just pull an Edward and bind their soul to something while you try to
revert the situation). Then when they get back missing an arm, their hearing
or whatever just do what Ed, Al, Mustang and Izumi refused to do and use a
philosopher's stone to regrow/fix whatever was taken like the homunculi do. At
the start of FMA Edward and Alphonse knew once they had gotten their hands on
the philosopher's stone they could transmute their broken bodies whole again
but once they learned about the true nature of the stones they adamantly
refused to use the lives of others to fix their mistakes. If you have no such
qualms you're good to go.

If you have some qualms and are looking for a less morally bankrupt way to pay
for a limb there are possible replacements. Edward demonstrates you can
exchange your gate of truth as part of an alchemical exchange but it is made
clear such an exchange is not meaningful for others. The gate of truth is the
only way out of Truth's domain, without it there is no way to return to
reality. Edward is a special case because his gate is somehow linked to
Alphonse's gate, when Edward gave up his own gate he and Alphonse left through
Alphonse's gate together. Mustang later confirms transmuting one's gate is
useless for most when he expresses he is down to swap his gate for his sight
but laments not having a way back afterwards. The fact that Edward and
Alphonse share a connection through their gates is an unnatural occurrence and
the mechanism and reason for it isn't well established, all we know is the
linking of the gates probably happened the day the boys tried to transmute
their mom (whether it be from the human transmutation itself, Edward swapping
an arm for Al's soul or Edward binding Al's soul to an object) since it was
later established Alphonse's body trapped in Truth's domain derives
nourishment from Edward through the connection of their gates which
necessarily began here. It's unclear if you can restore the body parts of
someone else without your gates being linked and you certainly will end up
trapped in Truth's domain if you don't have a linked gate to exit from.

Rather than the lives of others could you exchange your own life for a limb?
You can in fact exchange life force in a transmutation, philosopher's stones
are the condensed form of the life forces of many people, their use as an
alchemical catalyst is shown repeatedly throughout the series, from
regenerating the bodies of the homunculi to allowing Father Cornello to
seemingly subvert the law of equivalent exchange all the way to possibly
allowing Pride to force Mustang's gate open. The philosopher's stone however
does not subvert the law of equivalent exchange, it only balances out
otherwise unbalanced exchanges with life force. The philosopher's stone is not
limitless in use either, eventually all of the life force contained within is
expended and it ceases to be, such as when Mustang fried Lust repeatedly until
her stone ran out of power. On a more local scale one can use their own life
force while alive as an alchemical catalyst which Edward demonstrated after
getting impaled by a steel beam fighting Kimblee. He notes that he needs to
expend some of his own life force to boost the transmutation needed to close
his wound and at some point also points out that he himself has 1 soul's worth
of life force (where a philosopher's stone contains many). Is 1 soul of life
force enough for a limb? No idea, either way this method is still dubious
since sacrificing someone else's life to restore a limb is the exact
circumstance we are trying to avoid.


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