Jude

Jude carries the marks of his failed transmutation on his face. Trying to raise the dead cost him both eyes, taken by Truth at the Gate, leaving him sightless with pronounced scars running down either side of his face. Because of the blindness he can no longer practice alchemy on his own, needing servants to lay out his preparations.

Devotion to the Hamburgangs sits at the center of who Jude is. Where other transmutation survivors dreamed of saving the world, his sole aim was to serve the household that employed him, and it is that narrow, loyal focus that likely kept the Homunculi from marking him as a Human Sacrifice. His willingness to surrender his sight for the family's sake is precisely why they choose to shelter him from the painful truth.

Jude serves the affluent Hamburgang family as their alchemist, and when their little girl Rosalie dies he sets out to bring her back, settling on a human transmutation much like the one the Elrics and Izumi Curtis attempt. The Gate claims both his eyes as payment and scars his face. Coming to in his laboratory, he asks whether Rosalie has been restored; the transmutation in fact yielded only a shriveled, mummy-like husk, but her grieving parents swallow their horror and tell their loyal servant that his work succeeded and their daughter is as lovely as ever. In secret they quietly go to an orphanage and take in a girl, Amy, whose looks pass for Rosalie's, casting her in the daughter's role to spare Jude the truth. With Amy and the whole staff sustaining the fiction, he never learns that the real Rosalie is gone for good and that the thing he pulled back sits nearly lifeless in a hidden room, some unknown soul trapped inside. Later, the Elric brothers turn up after hearing that he pulled off human transmutation, wanting to know how; Madame Hamburgang forbids Jude from sharing his method, and after he politely bows out, she and Amy reveal the deception to the brothers and warn them never to try human transmutation themselves.