The new job makes me spend hours driving daily between clients/students, so I have waaay too much time to think about a new homunculus AU, no time to seriously write it, and little energy to do so in the first place.
That having been said, here's the concept in the broad strokes:
03 and Bh mix leaning on 03
Dante and Hohenheim have made themselves functionally immortal and watched Amestris grow. They form an on-and-off relationship (nasty breakup), so they no longer study or cultivate the same thing. Hohe wound up looking into how he could further act as a god (create new life, break old life); Dante looked into more wordly affairs (eventually body hopping when she grew bored of her original). They are two extremes.
The Dwarf in the Flask, Envy, and much later Ed (Mettle) were made by Hohe; Gluttony, Pride, and Greed were made by Dante. Both had various cults, started religions, infiltrated governments/monarchies, etcetera. They've had a millennia to do whatever with.
The Flask was Hohe trying to get rid of his guilt; Envy was him trying to recreate what he'd destroyed; and Mettle was the embodiment of his selfish self assurance that he had repented, started anew.
Greed was more accurately Dante's lust; she made herself a toy to groom and play with after Hohe left her (who then ran off, was recaptured, and eventually hides away inside Ling).
Gluttony was an experiment to see if the power derived from the destruction of Xerxis could be more slowly harvested (Gluttony stores a slowly growing stone fed by new flesh). He thus needed to be docile, ravenous, and diligent.
Pride is Dante's current figurehead, on par with canon.
Envy (William) is unable to die and has been forced to live through the ages, meaning he's had plenty of time to be hurt, happy, cruel, repentant, worshipful, and worshipped. Unlike Dante and Hohe, he can reproduce and has done so to the point of effecting the genome pool. He prefers to be a guy but has lived for long enough to have carried children as well. The ones he carries inside his own womb seem to always have a strong inclination to alchemy and might have some odd traits.
Envy's ultimate goal is to kill his parents. Originally this was because of what they did to Xerxis (Will had been a musician in the court, his parents held a higher position), then his reason shifted to being payback for forcing him to live for the rest of eternity, and finally he just wants to kill them so they stop destroying civilization in their petty games. Apocalypses are boring! Stop that!
In the present day, Envy's taking a swing at cultivating the country. He has selected a replacement puppet (Roy) and infiltrated to be close beside him (Envy swapped out with Ed, who is off researching the red water and reversing its damage to the countryside). He meets Ling- a prince! A prince who is readying for succession! Isn’t that interesting? He meets a mournful man with the arm of his brother and steers his rage to suite his interests (with less than constant success). Envy is alive whether he likes it or not, and if he must survive then he wishes to live.
Ed, for his part, is aware of Envy but doesn’t quite grasp him as unusual or a danger. Ed is the product of grooming and the unknown. Trisha had been Hohe's patient, then his wife to incubate his newest creation. She tried having a second kid and lied that it was Hohe's, Hohe was disgusted at the skewing of data, and with him went the treatments keeping her alive. Ed and Al have both read all of Hohe's research and know that (1) there are things they are not supposed to talk about even when they are seemingly just facts of life and (2) people will use you.
Al doesn’t know he's the product of infidelity (might change that) and wants to believe their dad is a good person. He then wants to believe that all is normal, that maybe sometimes your teacher will abandon you to starve far, far away from where help might come, that sometimes strangers will appear in masks to clobber you, that sometimes your brother can groan and writhe with a necrotizing wound from a wild animal's bite and a nice old lady can just wave it away. When Roy came, this belief intensified as the brothers are tricked into a dangerous hostage situation on what had been a simple train ride. When Tucker brutalized his daughter, it was awful, but she was fine in the end. That's just what parents do.
Envy, who has been an influence in their lives for a little while, cares for the brothers as a slightly antagonistic mentor. They are the embodiment of Hohe's failures, and for this reason he loves them dearly. They know Envy is their half brother, and why shouldn’t he be able to change his face and form? Al did for a few years. Tucker, too. It's just not something you bring up in polite company. Here, Envy almost takes the role of Truth, only more hands on.
Envy plans on using Gluttony to kill Hohe but first must find him, and then there's Dante to deal with. Dante knows she's safe so long as Hohe's around to serve as a less available scapegoat. Envy makes a hobby of foiling his parents' schemes, Lust serving as his protege (might change that bit), and now comes time for something new: overthrowing a regime and installing a new one.
On the way he catches wind of the Promised Day and realizes he has very few years to prepare. Time to mobilize the Flame.
Hughes eventually finds out that the Ed he knows and the one Roy has on his payroll are different entirely. Riza looks for the truth.
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