Sephiran

Light of Creation
Sephiran
Real Name	Lehran
Species	Laguz (Heron)
Class	Chancellor
Affiliation	Ashera
Hair color	Black
Eye color	Blue
Weaponry	Creiddylad
Base	Begnion
Relatives	Altina (wife) Misaha (descendant) Sanaki, Micaiah (descendants) Reyson, Leanne, Rafiel (believed descendants)
Debut	Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

Sephiran, in actuality the ancient heron Lehran, is one of the primary antagonists who engineers the events of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and its sequel Radiant Dawn. Though in the former game he has only a relatively minor supporting role, it is in Radiant Dawn that the secrets of his past are revealed and he appears as the penultimate boss as well as a potential playable unit in the second playthrough of the game.

Background

Life as Lehran

Lehran was a heron who lived during the time of the Great Flood. He helped the Three Legendary Heroes Altina, Dheginsea and Soan in their battles againt Yune, the Goddess of Chaos, for Ashera, the Goddess of Order. Lehran acted as the bridge between the goddess and the people of Tellius as well as the representative of the bird tribes. After defeating Yune, they attempted to talk Ashera into reabsorbing Yune into her, but Ashera would allow no imperfections to herself and wanted Yune erased. Altina suggested that beorc and laguz pledge to coexist and never try to exterminate each other again, and when Ashera refused this due to accept this and continue to let Yune exist, Lehran was able to convince her to let them seal Yune within a medallion until one day when they would be worthy of Ashera. Ashera accepted this and after further convincing from Lehran, went into her own slumber for one thousand years. But she would be awakened if Yune was awakened from the medallion by the galdr of the release or by overwhelming chaotic forces of war, and is she was not pleased she promised to use her judgement to remake the world.

Lehran kept the medallion, which also came to be known as the Fire Emblem, and went to Begnion, as he had fallen in love with Altina. They were married and had a child together, but then misfortune struck when Lehran lost his laguz powers, becoming unable to transform or sing galdrar. Lehran temporarily lost his hope and his mind, no longer considering himself a true laguz or worthy of acting as the bridge between Ashera and Tellius, which led him to several suicide attempts. He also could receive no comfort from the goddess due to being unable to sing the galdrar of release, so he retreated into seclusion until he regained his sanity and came up with a plan. He told Altina and close friends to spread the story that he had died in an accident and that the birth was merely a false rumor. When Altina remarried a beorc husband, the child was passed off as a beorc as well. Lehran then left the medallion with the heron tribe in Serenes Forest and went to Goldoa, where he lived under the protection of Dheginsea for over 700 years, and over this timespan he seemed to gain a mastery of magical abilities. However, Lehran grew discontent with problems such as laguz slavery and attempted to convince Dheginsea to use the power of the dragons to free the laguz from bondage, but Dheginsea refused to take any action which could evolve into war that could awaken the goddess. This led Lehran to flee Goldoa to Begnion to seek his own way.

In Begnion, he met with Misaha, the ruling empress and apostle, sometime seemingly soon after she had emancipated the laguz. She believed his story due to inheriting his ability to sense the truth. Lehran found that she had inherited many of his abilities, including his link to the goddess. Misaha told him of her intentions to reveal herself as one of the Branded to the public, feeling no shame in it anymore despite Lehran's attempts to warn her of the danger. She was determined to guide her people to a brighter future, which inspired Lehran to return to Goldoa to tell them of the hope she had brought. However, he was within Begnion when the apostle's death was announced and the mob was roused to the Serenes Massacre. Lehran attempted to quell the medallion's chaotic energies at that point, but after seeing the destruction laid to Serenes and his people as well as the apostle, he saw both the beorc and laguz of the world as deeply flawed, and he began to wish for the goddess to awaken and pass her judgment upon the world.

Becoming Sephiran

He soon invented his new identity as the beorc Sephiran, becoming Duke of Persis and posing as the youngest senator in the Begnion senate. He also gained an ally in his cause in the form of a Branded soldier named Zelgius, who came to serve in the Begnion army. Zelgius became his closest pupil and it seemed to be from Sephiran that Zelgius received his blessed Black Knight armor as well as the swords Alondite and Ragnell, which had originally been wielded by Altina. Sephiran planted the seeds of his plan by giving a young Ashnard the medallion so that he could awaken Yune with either heron galdrar or by starting a massive war, inadvertently putting his own kin in danger. He also sent Zelgius to serve Ashnard and observe his activities in his guise as the Black Knight.

Some time after Greil fled Daein with the medallion, Sephiran and Zelgius tracked him down to Gallia presumably to retrieve it, only to find that Greil had already touched it and killed his wife Elena as well as many others in a berserk rages. Sephiran, thinking the medallion had been too much to entrust Ashnard with, was about to take it away when Mist saw him and said no one was allowed to touch her mother's medallion (having been momentarily tricked into thinking her parents were only sleeping). Mist grabbed it before he could stop her, and Sephiran was shocked to find that she could touch it without being affected. However, he realized that their son Ike had seen all that had happened and been paralyzed by the shock, so he used his magic to make Ike forget the incident. He then decided to leave, judging that the medallion was safe with Mist for the time being.

Fifteen years after the death of Misaha, her granddaughter Sanaki became the new apostle at the age of five. She threw many tantrums due to her young age, but she was instantly calmed when Sephiran held her. To take advantage of this, the corrupt senators placed Sephiran as the prime minister, which also served to boost their public image, and he became her aide. However, Sephiran also worked with Sanaki to crack down on the corruption of the senate, which would later cause the senators to regret their decision. Sephiran formed a close bond with Sanaki, even though she could not hear the voice of the goddess; only the firstborn Micaiah could, but her existence was unknown to Sanaki and the public, and she had been believed to have been killed along with Misaha. This would have eradicated the last link between men and the goddess, which probably added to Sephiran's desire to end the world.

Path of Radiance

As the Mad King's War broke out, Sephiran spent his time traveling across the land in various guises, as he was often known to do, in order to ascertain the condition of the neigboring countries, or at least that is what he told Sanaki he was doing. He gave Zeligus orders to, as the Black Knight, hunt down Greil and retrieve the medallion to return it to Ashnard to increase chances of awakening the goddess. While in Crimea, he was arrested by Daein forces after being caught aiding the Crimean soldiers Brom and Nephenee by healing their wounds, the soldiers likely being unaware of his position in Begnion or his much more secret connection with Mad King Ashnard. He remained in a cell within Canteus Castle until he was liberated by Ike and his allies in "Chapter 10: Prisoner Release". He posed as a simple pilgrim for them at first, although Ike was suspicious that Sephiran was someone other than whom he claimed to be. He explained his action in healing the Crimean soldiers by saying that some people like Ike and Sephiran would almost instinctively act to help someone in need. In "Chapter 11: Blood Runs Red", Sephiran arrived at Port Toha to halt the Black Knight's battle with Ranulf, ordering him to stand down and not to pursue the ship containing the Greil Mercenaries and the Princess Elincia, the incident being staged so that it would look like the Black Knight halting in order to avoid conflict with Begnion.

Sephiran stopped at Begnion at some point later on tell Sanaki about Ike and his group, and he also confirmed Elincia as the princess of Crimea. However, he remained traveling for a while, which delayed the arrival of Begnion reinforcements for the Crimean Liberation Army until he returned to Begnion by "Chapter 22: Solo". Sephiran did not appear againt in person until the epilogue, when he appeared to congratulate Ike on his journey and told him about Altina, and that Sanaki was descended from Altina, which led Ike and Mist to believe that only Sanaki could awaken the goddess with the galdrar of release. He had Ike tell him all that he had discovered during his journey, likely to see how much he knew, and found out that Ike thought Ashnard was the mastermind behind the Serenes Massacre, the assassination of Misaha and the attempts to awaken Yune from Lehran's Medallion, acting as if all of this was new information to him. He noted Ike's humbleness and after finding out he would give up his rank of general to live as a mercenary, Sephiran broke out into laughter which caused Ike to consider him rude. After Ike left, in the last scene before the ending cinematic, Sephiran noted that Ike's story, the story of the common mercenary who becomes a hero would cause many to emulate him and "awaken ugly appetite and ambition to many". This would fit into Sephiran's plan, as he noted the seeds of total warfare were now scattered throughout Tellius.

Radiant Dawn

During "Part 1: Silver-Haired Maiden", the Black Knight was sent into action again to protect Micaiah, whom had emerged as the leader of the Dawn Brigade. This was likely at Sephiran's urging, as he probably just learned that Micaiah was alive as her fame grew among the Daein Liberation Army, and this led to him sending the Black Knight to aid her at several other points in the game. Sephiran himself was first seen in "Chapter 8: Glory Unwanted", when he was assigned to lead the investigation team to investigate the war crimes committed by Begnion forces in Daein. Later on in "Part 3: Intersecting Vows", when Sanaki decided to pursue claims that the Serenes Massacre was actually caused by the Begnion Senate, the senators decided to make their move by secretly capturing Sanaki and accusing Sephiran of treason in her name, stripping him of his titles and having him imprisoned. He remained imprisoned until Zelgius freed him at the end of "Chapter 12: The Price", and after learning that Sanaki was well decided that it was time for them to make their move.

Sephiran and Zeligus began inciting the peasents of Begnion to believe in the apostle and rise against the senate, which earned more time for Sanaki's army. He was then in Ashera's slumbering chamber when she awakened at the end of "Endgame: From Pain, Awakening" by Micaiah's galdr, and gave his opinion that both beorc and laguz were too weak, and there was no point in waiting the last few hundred years for the thousand years to be filled. Ashera then began her judgement, but many, including the forces of Ike and Micaiah, were not affected by her judgement.

In "Part 4: Of Gods and Men", Sephiran was the last obstacle awaiting Ike and Micaiah's combined forces outside the chamber where Ashera awaited. He sealed the doors to the chamber with a magic that could only be undone by his death. In conversation with Ike and Sanaki, he revealed his role in engineering the Mad King's War and intentions to have Ashera remake the war, but he did not feel the need to dwell on his motives as he did not believe they would understand. Yune, who inhabited Micaiah's body, recognized Sephiran as Lehran, but Sephiran said that name had been discarded as part of his past and that all he wanted now was the end of everything. Sephiran battled them despite their protests, Ike bringing up the incident from years ago if certain conditions had been reached to cause him to remember it, only to be defeated. As he lay dying, Yune saw what he had gone through and felt pity, and both she and Sephiran agreed that it was best for him to die then so that he could finally get the peace he sought. He apologized to Sanaki for everything and gave her the Rudol Gem as a keepsake of him, and in his dying words said that Zelgius was waiting for him (he having died in his final battle with Ike).

Lehran at the end of Radiant Dawn.

However, if certain conditions were met Micaiah would use Sacrifice to bring Sephiran back from the brink of death after the gates to Ashera's inner sanctum had opened. Yune refused to let Sephiran die at this point, although Ike thought differently and said that what Sephiran had done was unforgivable. He did invite Sephiran to join them for the final battle with Ashera and gave him the choice between helping them to defeat the goddess and starting to atone for his mistakes or to stay behind doing nothing if he truly sought the end of all creation. Sephiran ultimately chose the former and came to them in the final battle against Ashera, reclaiming his old name of Lehran and saying that he had become blind to the beautiful things of the world because of his suffering, but he had come to his epiphany in seeing that the people of the world deserved their lives back. Ashera refused to be swayed anymore by Lehran, accusing him of being too flexible and inconstant. Ashera was ultimately defeated and disappeared with Yune. Sephiran then rested within Serenes Forest at the urgings of Loraziah, where he was healed by the herons' songs. In the final scene, he was seen with black wings welcoming back Ashunera when she returned twelve hundred years later, when the world was on the brink of warfare again, but Ashunera promised she would protect the world. She then asked Lehran to sing for her again, and when he began to say he could no longer sing galdr she said that she would sing and he could then sing along with her.

Stats

Path of Radiance

Sephiran

Base Stats

• Class: Bishop
• Lvl: 10
• HP: 42
• Str: 4
• Mag: 29
• Skl: 22
• Spd: 14
• Lck: 30
• Def: 12
• Res: 30
• Wlv: Staff/Light S
• Affin: Light

Radiant Dawn

Sephiran

Base Stats

• Class: Chancellor
• Lvl: 20
• HP: 50
• Str: 11
• Mag: 40
• Skl: 40
• Spd: 36
• Lck: 40
• Def: 25
• Res: 40
• Wlv: Light SS, Dark SS, Staff SS
• Affin: Light

Lehran

Base Stats

• Class: Chancellor
• Lvl: 20
• HP: 50
• Str: 11
• Mag: 40
• Skl: 40
• Spd: 40
• Lck: 40
• Def: 23
• Res: 40
• Wlv: Light SS, Dark SS, Staff SS
• Affin: Light

Trivia

• Throughout Path of Radiance and at several points in Radiant Dawn, he is described as an ancestor of the herons. The revelations about his relationship with Altina in Radiant Dawn cause some confusion about this though as to whether or not Reyson and his siblings are related to Lehran by blood. This would be impossible unless Lehran had children with a heron before his relation with Altina.
• He can only be unlocked as a playable character in the second playthrough by selecting the Black Knight as one of the player units used in the endgame chapter of Part 1 and later by having Ike battle the Black Knight and survive in Chapter 7 of Part 3. Completing both of these conditions will cause Ike's memory scene to appear in the final chapter and will lead to Sephiran/Lehran becoming playable.