#50 Canas: Curiosity Killed the Caster
Name: Canas
Class: Shaman
Appears in: Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Fire Emblem Heroes
Rounding out my list at number fifty is Canas, an Elibean Shaman skilled in the art of dark magic. A scholarly young man with a penchant for academics, Canas is the youngest of the four sons of Niime, the fabled mountain hermit.
Canas is immediately shown to be both cordial and curious, which may at first seem peculiar for a dark magic practitioner. He joins the party seeking to learn more about the Dread Isle, and exhibits a remarkable amount of joy whenever he's able to read a new book, practice a new spell, or even just chat with another Mage. For example, he gets along swimmingly with Pent, the Count of Reglay, after finding out he was the Etrurian Mage General. However, Canas is also a bit absentminded at times, and is easily distracted. He's very much the type to accidentally walk into a pitfall because he was reading while walking, failing to pay attention to his surroundings.
However, Canas's curiosity toward dark magic in particular is interesting to talk about. In Elibe, there are three classifications of magic: dark, light, and anima. Anima covers natural magic, or magic that calls forth nature spirits, such as wind, thunder, or fire magic. Light magic is holy magic, associated with the divine, and usually the clergy. Dark magic, meanwhile, is an ancient type of magic, the knowledge of which was mostly lost to the sands of time, making it the most mysterious of the trifecta.
Canas's family, namely his brothers, had all tried to further understand the dark arts, but dark magic is stated to be addictive, far more so than any other type of magic, with some fans going as far as to compare its pull to that of drug addiction. However, such powerful magic also takes an tremendous toll on the practitioner. All of Canas's brothers had eventually burnt away their souls by overusing dark magic, leaving them alive, but as empty, silent husks in a near-vegetative state.
Canas is fully aware of what dark magic can do to deteriorate one's body, but he's fueled entirely by the pursuit of knowledge. He accepts the fact that he may not live long, and end up a husk like his brothers, but he truly believes that it will be for the greater good if he can at least learn more about the dark arts in the process. He sees it as his birthright, considering Niime is his mother.
Family is also a big aspect of Canas's character. He's a married man and has an infant son of his own, who would later be revealed as Hugh from The Binding Blade. When teaching Nino to read, however, he comes to the realization that he may, in fact, be the girl's uncle, as his wife's dead sister (an anima mage) and Nino's deceased mother shared the same name, Iris.
From a gameplay standpoint, Canas is a useful unit in The Blazing Blade. He has a fairly unique niche of being the only unit able to use dark magic until Athos is recruited at endgame. However, outside of Flux, these spells have major drawbacks, usually in the form of incredibly high weight that prevents Canas from doubling, which is especially problematic on higher difficulties. He's still a solid shaman all around, though. In Heroes, however, this is far from the case. Canas was notoriously shafted here and given a stat line comparable to a launch three star unit, literally being Raigh with three more points of resistance. At least his voice work is top notch.
However, Canas has anything but a happy ending. The epilogue reveals that he and his wife returned to the snowy nation of Ilia, but during an attempt to magically stop an oncoming blizzard, both Canas and his wife froze to death in the snow, leaving Hugh to be raised by the elderly Niime. Truly, it was ironic. Canas had been so certain that his foray into the dark arts would spell his end, but he was instead killed in a blizzard by the forces of nature, an area outside of his domain.