Ishvalan

Three features mark almost every Ishvalan: deep brown skin, red eyes, and white hair. These run strong in the bloodline, surfacing even when an Ishvalan marries outside the group; Miles, only a quarter Ishvalan, still inherited all three straight from his grandfather. Exceptions do exist, such as the boy called Rick, whose skin reads noticeably paler than his kin. The two anime treat this differently. The 2003 series leans into variation, giving most Ishvalans dark or yellow-brown hair and only a handful, Scar among them, the signature white, with skin tones that shift person to person. The 2009 series goes the other way, painting every Ishvalan in one uniform brown complexion with red eyes and white hair, so even Rick loses his distinctness.

Ishvalan life revolves around a devout, tradition-bound faith that names Ishvala as the lone true deity behind all of creation. Following teachings passed down by prophets like Logue Lowe, they pray to Ishvala together and pursue plain, upright living, a discipline likely shaped by their harsh, resource-poor homeland. They treat their names as sacred gifts from God and commonly wear sashes striped in burgundy and gold as a token of belief. Their monks train hard in hand-to-hand fighting, each a match for roughly ten ordinary soldiers. Most divisive is the faith's stance on alchemy: traditionally the Ishvalans reject it as arrogant sacrilege that twists Ishvala's creations, a view Scar later revises, arguing the craft was never truly heresy when practiced with care.

Under Amestris's annexation of Ishval, its people became legal citizens, free in principle to keep their religion, join national life, and even enlist in the State Military. Their sharp cultural differences, the distaste for alchemy chief among them, kept them at odds with the wider population. By 1901 that friction erupted into the Ishval Civil War. Seven years of grinding, deadlocked combat followed before the Führer ordered the whole Ishvalan race exterminated, spearheaded by State Alchemists. The slaughter nearly finished them off, scattering survivors into slums across the country and beyond, including the Xerxes ruins, and sinking them below second-class status under a cloud of fear and contempt. The manga grants a kinder close: the refugees receive amnesty and go home, with Miles and Scar leading a push to rebuild Ishvalan culture under Roy Mustang's command.