Fessler

Fessler cuts a squat, thickset figure, a short and stout officer rarely seen without a cigarette between his lips. He wears the uniform of the Amestrian State Military, holding the rank of Brigadier General.

Small-minded and self-serving, Fessler cared far more about his own standing than about the men under his command. Desperate to finish clearing his assigned territory ahead of rival commanders, he rushed into reckless calls that got a great many soldiers killed, then shrugged off the carnage as home runs so long as the objective was met. His pettiness went further still. When Major Alex Louis Armstrong buckled under the anguish of slaughtering Ishvalan civilians, Fessler answered not with any mercy but with scorn, berating the broken man and deepening his distress. His single fixed purpose was the total eradication of the Ishvalan people.

Fessler held command over the Kanda district of Ishval during the civil war, charged with bringing it to heel. His downfall came when Colonel Basque Grand brought the Ishvalan monk Logue Lowe to him, hoping to arrange an audience with Fuhrer King Bradley that might bring the bloodshed to an end. Fessler flatly refused and instead ordered every soldier back into the fighting, whereupon Grand shot him through the chest at point-blank range. Though the killing happened in full view of witnesses, every soldier present quietly agreed to record it as a stray bullet, a silent verdict on just how despised their commander had been. Basque Grand took over the Kanda post in his place. Fessler's role was largely trimmed from the 2009 anime, surviving only as a single stray line in one of Armstrong's flashbacks.