Nergal

Nergal
Species	Human
Class	Dark Druid
Affiliation	Black Fang
Base	Valor Island
Relatives	Nils and Ninian (children)
Debut	Fire Emblem

Nergal is a dark sorcerer who is the main villain of Fire Emblem.

Background

Early Life

During the time of The Scouring, Nergal lived on Valor Island and was a researcher of dark magic. He was married to a dragon woman and they had two children, Nils and Ninian. However, the interspecial relationship was doomed by the friction between humans and dragons, as Nergal's wife was eventually captured by some angry humans at Aenir. Nergal set out to rescue her and left his children behind with rations, urging them to pass through the Dragon's Gate if he did not return within ten days. Presumably he both failed his mission and failed to return to Valor before his children passed through the gate.

Some time later, Nergal gave himself to dark magic, presumably in order to gain the power he needed to protect his loved ones. The study of dark magic required one to erase one's self and become an empty vessel for the powers of darkness. But there was a price to pay for this power, as those who underwent the process usually forgot why they sought the power in the first place and became consumed by a lust for more power. Nergal attempted to prevent this by leaving a picture of himself and his wife in his library as a reminder, but this failed because he wound up never entering the library again after undergoing the process. It is unknown at which point in Nergal's life he made the full transition to darkness, but it was most likely before he began his quest for quintessence in Arcadia.

Nergal and Athos

Around 500 years after The Scouring, Nergal met with Athos while traveling through the Nabata Desert. They quickly became friends after seeing how much they had in common, as both of them were engaged in the search for the world's truth, and they believed that together they could solve all of the world's mysteries. They were equal in both power and knowledge. Eventually the two discovered Arcadia, a village in Nabata where humans and dragons lived together in peace. Together the two sorcerers created a barrier and an oasis for the denizens of Arcadia.

They spent at least two centuries living in Arcadia and studying from the dragons' highly advanced libraries. However, by this point Nergal had been overcome by his lust for power and learned from a dragon book about how to steal the living essence, called quintessence, from a creature and then convert it into power. Nergal began experimenting with stealing the quintessence of smaller creatures. Athos attempted to warn Nergal after learning of his research, but Nergal did not listen and continued to experiment on larger creatures until he began human experimentation. At this point, Athos decided to intervene. He teamed up with the villages' elders, and together they defeated Nergal and banished him from Arcadia. He was left with a scar by his right eye from Athos's magic, and Nergal took his defeat as a sign that friendship was worthless and would only invite betrayal.

Years of Solitude

Nergal retreated to Bern and there he slowly built up his power over the years. he later began conducting experiments in order to create his own servants, which he called morphs. He managed to bring in a scarred mercenary, Renault to serve as his assistant as well as his guinea pig, as Nergal exposed Renault to various experiments that made him less than human. Renault served Nergal because Nergal had promised to revive his dearly deceased friend. Nergal did honor his promise by making his first morph that of Renault's friend, but Renault was horrified by the soulless shell of his old friend and left Nergal.

Afterwards, Nergal was able to make various morphs. Even though he constantly showered them with praise and affection, he truly cared not for them and saw them only as more pawns in his schemes. Their main purposes were eliminating his enemies and gathering quintessence for him. His most powerful morph and right-hand person was Limstella. At one point he attempted to create his first morph with emotions, Kishuna. However, after seeing that Kishuna had no powers, Nergal dubbed him a mistake and rejected him, sending him away to wander alone. By this point, Nergal's power had grown to great lengths, and he began to set his eyes on the quintessence of dragons.

Waking the Dragons

With the aid of his morph Sonia, Nergal interrogated and killed a family of Lycian mages who knew the secrets of the dragons. However, Nergal decided to spare the youngest daughter Nino and give her to Sonia to raise in case she proved to be useful someday. Nergal himself raised an orphan into the cold-blooded assassin Jaffar. Seemingly from the information provided by the mages (since Nergal seemed to have no memory of his earlier life), Nergal learned about the Dragon's Gate and moved his base of operations to Valor Island where he began planning to summon large amounts of dragons so he could steal their power.

Twelve years later, Nergal moved ahead with his plans. He attempted using a dragon call to summon dragons from the other side of Dragon's Gate. It succeeded in attracting, by some twist of fate, his own children Nils and Ninian. Neither the father nor the children recognized each other (likely since Nergal had lost his memories of his previous life, and Nils and Ninian did not recognize Nergal with how the years had changed him although they did recognize his dragon call as the call of an "old friend"). The two lost most of their powers after returning to Elibe, and Nergal stole their dragonstone in hopes of using it to summon more dragons. However, Nils and Ninian were able to somehow escape. Around this time, Nergal had also gained control of the Black Fang organization of assassins through Sonia. He used their vast resources to aid in hunting down and capturing Nils and Ninian.

The two dragon children were eventually captured shortly after Lyn's Tale. Nergal had them locked away until he was ready to use them. In the meantime, he began advancing his schemes to gain large amounts of quintessence from humans (which he would need to overpower the dragons), and to cause large amounts of death to release many people's quintessences at one time, he began sending his agents out to spread the seeds of war throughout Elibe. First he sent Ephidel and the Black Fang to provoke Darin, the marquess of Laus, into rebelling against Ostia, which would cause a bloody civil war in the Lycian League. But Lord Elbert was suspicious of Nergal and eventually led his royal knights in a march to Nergal's headquarters. However, as they approached Nergal quickly eliminated all of the guards (save for Harken), and he soon captured Elbert.

Nergal later underwent efforts to prevent others from interfering in his schemes. He sent assassins to kill Hector before he could join Eliwood in his search for Elbert in "Another Journey" (Hector Chapter 11) (likely to decrease the possibility of Ostia aiding Eliwood's quest) that failed. Eliwood and Hector were then able to prevent Darin's rebellion and fight their way to Valor Isle. In "The Dread Isle" (Eliwood Chapter 18, Hector Chapter 19), Nergal was enraged to find that Elbert had set Nils and Ninian free. Nergal was able to taunt Elbert with the news that Eliwood had arrived on Valor and found Ninian, promising Elbert that his son would die in the woods and Ninian would be brought back to him. With the Lycian rebellion failed, Nergal sent Limstella to meet with Sonia in Bern and arrange a meeting with King Desmond so that Nergal could begin his secondary plan of moving Bern into a larger war that would encompass all of Elibe.

Nergal also briefly appeared at the end of "Chapter 19xx: A Glimpse in Time", having accidentally teleported himself to his old home. After some thinking, he recognized it as his old home and remembered that there was something important there he had wanted to see, but he ultimately decided not to look for it because if it was so important he would have retrieved it long ago (the object being the picture of Nergal and his wife). He then returned to Dragon's Gate and had Ninian returned to him in "Dragon's Gate" (Eliwood Chapter 19, Hector Chapter 20), just as he had predicted except that Eliwood and his men were still alive. Nergal then initiated a ceremony to make Ninian summon a dragon from the Dragon's Gate by using Elbert as a sacrifice to send Ninian into some strange trance. However, the ceremony was ruined when Nils arrived and snapped Ninian from her trance, causing the first dragon to crumble as it was passing through the portal.

Elbert then stabbed Nergal before he could act, dealing a grievous wound to the dark druid. Nergal was forced to retreat and spent many chapters recuperating. In the meantime he sent Sonia to mobilize the Black Fang against Eliwood and his group while keeping the king in their good graces by taking on his jobs. He also sent Limstella to gather more quintessence for him so he could repair his wound. Nergal finally recovered and returned stronger than ever in "Cog of Destiny" (Eliwood Chapter 27, Hector Chapter 29). He was able to convince Ninian to come with him peacefully by fulfilling her request not to leave Nils with Eliwood and the others, although Nergal also released a large explosion as he warped away that would have killed Eliwood and Nils if Athos had not shielded them with a magic barrier.

He found that Ninian was still unwilling to open the Dragon's Gate for him, but he did not care because he still had the option of sacrificing someone else to make her do it. However, Nergal's provocations caused Ninian to lose control and her memories as she reverted to her dragon form. Ninian then fled, at which point Nergal mused that there was nowhere she could call home and that Eliwood would reject her after seeing her hideous form. After Eliwood accidentally killed Ninian with the Durandal blade, Nergal showed up to claim Nils in Ninian's place. But Nergal became distracted after he saw Eliwood did not know the dragon he killed was Ninian, so Nergal gleefully told him the truth and taunted him for killing her. Athos made his attempt to destroy Nergal, but Athos's Forblaze only performed a measly amount of damage to Nergal. Nergal declared himself truly impervious and then left, claiming he was leaving out of respect for him and Athos's former friendship.

Nergal then returned to the Dragon's Gate and infused the dragonstone with Ninian's quintessence in order to open the Dragon's Gate. However, he was not ready to summon the dragons because of the quintessence he apparently lost during the battle with Athos. He planned to extract more quintessence from Eliwood and his friends, who were en route to Valor Isle. He first powered up Limstella and sent her with most of his remaining forces to eradicate them in "Victory or Death" (Eliwood Chapter 30, Hector Chapter 32). Limstella failed and was killed. However, Nergal still had various morphs ready to face off with Eliwood's group when they arrived in his inner sanctum in "Final Chapter: Light".

In Hector's Tale, Nergal taunted Hector by offering to create a morph of his recently deceased brother Uther, but Hector rejected this and called Nergal the true puppet, being devoid of emotion. Nergal was then told off for his criticism of Athos. For the ensuing battle, Nergal teleported away to a safe distance, but Eliwood's group was eventually able to reach him after fighting through his guards. Nergal was overpowered and defeated. In his dying words, he began to wonder why he had sought power in the first place (with a longer speech depending on the completion of Chapter 19xx and/or Chapter 32x). But just as he died, Nergal attempted to have the last laugh by calling three fire dragons from the Dragon's Gate to kill everyone.