Part 124: HenryEx - Gameshark Fire Emblem Explanation

That "special character" to signify the end of the name is very common in text everywhere on computers. Text in Fire Emblem is stored mostly in null-terminated strings, it seems. They're useful for variable length strings, as you don't need to know how long the string is before you feed it to the engine, and it can just continue reading text until it hits zero.

In case you were curious, here are some of the actually "special" characters in Fire Emblem text. They are used for dialogue scripting.

00 : End convo/text [X]
01 : New line [NL]
02 : Two new lines [2NL]
03 : Blue arrow (push A to continue) [A]
04 : Short pause in speech [....]
05 : Longer pause in speech (alltext uses this one) [.....]
06 : Longer pause in speech [......]
07 : Long pause in speech [.......]
08 : Open speech bubble [OpenFarLeft]
09 : Open speech bubble [OpenMidLeft]
0a : Open speech bubble [OpenLeft]
0b : Open speech bubble [OpenRight]
0c : Open speech bubble [OpenMidRight]
0d : Open speech bubble [OpenFarRight]
0e : Open speech bubble [OpenFarFarLeft]
0f : Open speech bubble [OpenFarFarRight]
10 : Character 0x10 sets a portrait with the byte that follows; use a Portrait List to check value labels [LoadFace]
11 : Clear current speaker's face [ClearFace]
14 : Close speech bubble quickly [CloseSpeechFast]
15 : Close speech bubble slowly [CloseSpeechSlow]
16 : Makes characters move their mouth or stop [ToggleMouthMove]
17 : Makes characters use their smiling frames or cease [ToggleSmile]
18 : Gives a yes/no prompt (starts on yes) [Yes]
19 : Gives a yes/no prompt (starts on no) [No]
1a : Gives buy/sell prompt (glitches if no shop?) [Buy/Sell]
1c : Sends selected character to back of display [SendToBack]
1f : Short pause - text printing SFX still play [.]

Of course they're not meant to ever appear in the Tactician's name.