Immortals

The Immortals (不死者 fushisha) are a group of people who attained immortality, stopped aging and became impervious to injury.

All immortals must follow a set of rules and guidelines. Although they are able to use a false name for temporary introductions to mortals, their bodies reject all attempts to establish lasting false identities. In addition, they must use their real names when speaking to another immortal. Immortals can transmit information and images to another immortal by placing their left hand on the other's head and thinking about the information or image. To kill an immortal, another immortal must "devour" them by placing their right hand on the other's head and thinking "I want to eat you." In addition, the more often an immortal is injured in a certain way, the faster they will recover from that injury.

History
How many immortals there have been and for how long immortality has been possible is unknown. So far, at least three generations of immortals are known to exist, the first being the generation consisted of an alchemy teacher named Dalton Strauss and his students; however a decade after peace one of the students devoured his own mother and started a war with the rest of his generation, eventually windling them down to only three survivors those being Renee Paramedes Branvillier, Archangello and their teacher Dalton. Archangello who loved Renée took away all threats on her life which were his fellow immortals. Dalton tired of this and instead cut off his own Right Hand (the threat to Renée) and gave it to Archangello who burried it in a place only he knows in exchange for sparing him. The survivors than either opened up, continued or inheirited a secret school for alchemy and taught their craft, passing it down to future generations, notable including various future-immortals themselves. Said institute was not the only source of Alchemical knowledge in the day however as Czeslaw Meyer's grandfather was the teacher of Fermet Lebreau Viralisque and Beg Garrotto, though he seemed to have some degree of connection with the school.

Dalton Strauss would eventually tell Maiza Avaro, one of his students of the Alchemy school how to summon a demon. Dalton has said that he and his ten students had summoned the demon and attained immortality, but only three have survived till now: him, Renee, and Archangelo (who devoured the rest).

It is unknown if there are any earlier generations, so for the sake of convenience and until this matter is put to rest they shall be classified as "Elder Immortals" until further clarifications come to light.

The second generation of immortals was a group of about thirty alchemists (Among which included most of the Alchemy School's former students, Huey Laforet, Elmer C. Albatross, Fermet, Beg Garrotto, Zank Rowan, Nile, Denkuro, Sylvie Lumiere, Victor Talbot, and Fermet's ward Czeslaw Meyer) who were traveling aboard the ship Advenna Avis in 1711. On the ship, they summoned a demon in the hopes of gaining immortality. They are successful and the demon gives them the Grand Panacea. Their leader Maiza Avaro is given the formula for the elixir. Later, the group decides they must keep immortality to themselves. Szilard Quates disagrees and devours thirteen of the alchemists, obtaining half of the formula Maiza gave to his brother, Gretto Avaro. Realizing the danger Szilard poses to them, they scatter throughout the world. Szilard devours five more of the second generation of immortals, bringing the total to eighteen, before he himself is devoured. It was later revealed that Huey and Elmer sent some left over elixir to Lucrezia who shared some with Nikki.

The third and most recent group of immortals was created in 1930 after Szilard had managed to recreate the elixir, but lost possession of it. After it was passed around Manhattan by gangsters who believed the bottles contained alcohol, Isaac Dian and Miria Harvent, the three Gandor brothers, Firo Prochainezo and all of the Martillo executives drink it at a party.

Those who drank Szilard's incomplete immortality elixir became partially immortal. Although they could be killed through devouring, they could not devour back and did not stop aging. Huey's Homunculi in the Lamia are the "other half", meaning that they do not age, but they can be killed like normal humans.

Upon Szilard's death both Huey and Nebula attempted to bloster the partial immortals by getting their hands on the incomplete elixir. Huey sent his Lamia homunculi, Christopher Chareau de Red, Chi and Adele working under Huey's lieutenant Tim (real name Tock Jefferson) to steal the elixir but instead Nebula distributes it to their workers under the guise of it being a mandatory vaccine for their jobs. The operation in failure Tim tries to call it off but Christopher duels Claire Stanfield (who had purchased the name Felix Walken) and losses, disappearing from his comrades in the commotion and is taken in by Lydia Russo under the alias Ricardo while disguising her gender.

The Next year Nebula distributes the remaining incomplete elixir to the higher ups of the Russo Mafia under the condition and incentive of capturing the Lamia (ironically having one, Christopher, among their mafia who was thought to be deceased by the others and thus overlooked by Nebula and Huey's various organization) to do this the newly part-immortal Placido Russo calls Graham Specter back from New York to Chicago to capture them alive as is his specialty, he is able to easily over power the Homunculi but they escape and instead plot what to do next. During this time Huey is incarcerated and Victor Talbot, one of the surviving Immortals and an agent of the FBI uses Firo as a mole inside Alcatraz Island Prison along with Isaac Dian who was arrested previously for his eccentric robberies. He in a rare moment of intelligence recognizes an undercover policeman and allows himself to be arrested and serve out his time so that Miria can stay at large.The guard who watches Huey's prison is in fact Sham, one of Huey's homunculi who can share his conciousness amongst multiple bodies.

With the Chicago problem in mind Leeza decides to try and blackmail Graham by capturing Ladd Russo who is also being held on Alcatraz for his bloodshed on the flying Pussyfoot, but instead she is captured and forced to stay quiet while Ladd bring holds onto her while he can strike at Huey Laforet in his madness driven homocidal tendency. Huey during this time befriends Isaac Dian who reminds him of Elmer C. Albatross, and Isaac believes that Huey is the Fairy King. When Ladd bursts in to Huey's prison with Leeza Huey reveals that Firo is also an immortal, which Firo proves by biting his finger and letting Ladd observe the healing. Ladd however notes that Firo is still aware of death and continues to want to kill Huey Laforet, the puppet master behind his various experiments. It is than revealed that Renée Paramedes Branvillier had hired the Jack-of-all traits mercenary group who had all purchased the name Felix Walken to steal Huey's eye but they are easily dispatched. Firo however decides to join them and so knocks out Huey and steals one of his eyes. Sham than betrayed Huey and aided Firo in escaping, but not before Leeza, part of Hilton's network in actuality, steals Firo's eyes using a hawk's body. However she later returns it using Annie, another of Hilton's hosts. Isaac Dian is released that year and reunites with Miria, and Huey also escapes the Island by 1935 in order to hire Vino to guard Melvi Dormentaire as a part of his big experiment.

Meanwhile back in Chicago Rail is taken in by Christopher who found her in the road and later duels evenly with Graham specter to a standstill. With the Russo Family's failure they have become a liability and so Renée Paramedes Branvillier devours them starting first with Placido and ends with a capo who had managed to escape on the train.

Limits, qualities and potential
Being immortal means that they are completely impervious to death under most circumstances, solely excluding being "devoured" by another immortal. To devour an immortal, the eater must place his right hand atop of the head of the person he wishes to devour. Then he must think the words "I want to eat". The process of devouring seems to be painful given the horror-stricken expressions of death that most show when they are devoured (at least in the anime). The devourer then "inherits" all of his victim's memories, abilities, and knowledge. Devouring may not be limited to immortals, as Ronnie Schiatto proclaimed himself capable of devouring despite being a demon (though given the details on demons at this point in the story leaves to question many things that are addressed later on). Though lethal, it is not impossible to survive an attempt at being eaten, as exemplified by Fermet on at least two occasions, despite the large gap on knowledge on how he survives, without the present devourer being aware of it, nor how Fermet's method was not later copied by the immortal who was eaten by Szilard. Surviving the devouring process also seems to corrupt the "inherited" memories, given Firo's inability to properly recall Fermet's memories, but it could also be the fact of the significant gap of inherited devourers (mainly being from an original immortal to Szilard to Firo making it no less than a three generation gap of sorts). Czeslaw Meyer also seems to be unable to recall certain aspects of Fermet and could only accurately remember Fermet's sadism in torturing him (though the justified trauma of constant torture for many years may have had an impact on what he can actually remember).

Devouring aside, Immortals are highly durable as they can recover from any injury in a matter of seconds ,and the more an immortal receives a certain type of injury, the quicker they heal from it, showing that despite immortals having stopped aging, they do not stop changing and adapting like mortals do. Though they will not die, an inflicted injury will still cause pain. Some of the injuries that immortals and partial-immortals have been seen recovering from include being shot, stabbed, beheaded, the breaking of their necks, and extremes such as being encased in cement and sent into the river to drown constantly and being pressed head-first onto the railway in front of a moving train. When the latter happened to Czeslaw Meyer, his blood and body tissues raced to him at constantly increasing speeds, eventually catching up to a speeding train. One of the best exemplified feats of endurance shown was by Denkuro, who was frozen for nearly three hundred years and yet survived thanks to his immortality. The only limitation is that should their body parts be taken away, then the immortal will not have the body part to attach to become reunited. In addition, injuries sustained prior to attaining immortality will remain, as the elixir merely preserves the body in the state during which it was consumed. Some body tissues, such as hair and nails, appear to grow and are capable of being cut naturally. Szilard has found some way to bypass this and instead utilize the body's reporductive system to create a homunculus with both his cells and the DNA of another woman, but the exact process is undisclosed.

However, immortality is an ability and not a tool. While immortality will provide basic advantages, one's own abilities need to be taken into account when facing certain opponents in combat. Therefore, even if one is immortal, their body will maintain the strength it possessed just prior to becoming immortal. The over all power of Immortality is more akin to supreme healing than anything else but only to the point from when they gained their immortal existance and as such the body's condition when becoming immortal should be taken into consideration as well as seen with Czeslaw Meyer being a permanent child, and Nikki is forever bed-ridden and bandaged because she was hurt badly when she drank the elixir. Certain bodily functions will also fail in circumstances against the body, as evidenced by Luck passing out through exhaustion. Incapacitating the immortal and tying them up will also stop them from doing any harm, and during their ceak, they are vulnerable and defenseless to other attacks or strategies to incapacitate them. Also while the body parts will make the attempt to seek out their immortal it is possible to stop this by keeping them in a container or burying them. Also as the severed body part will be drawn to the immortal it can be used against them as a homing beacon as sorts as the body part will guide whoever has it to them by simply following the direction of the body part, which is what Renée did to find Huey in New York City while having possession of his eye.

Elder Immortals (pre-1711)

 * Dalton Strauss
 * Renee Paramedes Branvillier
 * Archangelo

Immortals Created aboard the Advenna Avis (1711)

 * Elmer C. Albatross
 * Czeslaw Meyer
 * Denkuro
 * Begg Garott
 * Fermet
 * Gretto Avaro
 * Huey Laforet
 * Maiza Avaro
 * Nile
 * Sylvie Lumiere
 * Szilard Quates
 * Victor Talbot
 * Zank Rowan
 * Lucrezia
 * Niki

Immortals Created with Szilard's Cure-All Elixir (1930)

 * Firo Prochainezo
 * Berga Gandor
 * Keith Gandor
 * Luck Gandor
 * Isaac and Miria
 * Don Molsa Martillo, Mr. Yagu and several other executive members of Martillo Family, including Lia Linshan Senna, Randy and Pecho

Huey Laforet's Homunculi

 * "The Poet"
 * Adele
 * Christopher Chareau de Red
 * Hong Chi-Mei
 * Leeza Laforet (Hilton)
 * Sham
 * Sickle
 * Rail

Szilard Quates' Homunculi

 * Ennis
 * Felt Nibil
 * Phil

Incomplete Immortals

 * Dallas Genoard and his cohorts
 * The 1200 employees of the Nebula association (including Renee's team)
 * Don Placido Russo, and a few of his subordinates