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Before writing anything first I would like to thank the judges for using their free-time and being good enough to read through and comment on all the stories that were entered in. Even Leo who got banned halfway and especially to Jor who got very sick in the middle of it. Either way thank you very much for making this possible. And congratulations to everyone who won I am sure it was well deserved.

Now it’s pretty obvious but my entry was Breakdown. It did pretty badly, but thinking about it now I don’t feel much attachment to it since like a week after I submitted it that Strange Fake trailer came out and I was “welp, out the door that plot goes.” Haven’t actually thought about it since then but re-reading my notes and the comments I felt it was appropriate to at least flesh out what I was thinking and set up the skeleton of what it was supposed to be.

So the thing I learned from this contest was, I need to get a beta. For anything, and everything, I need to get a beta and that is exactly what I am going to do for any future projects. Happened with Lorelei, happened with this, need a beta.

Okay so the biggest problem looking back was In Media Res and it took all the judges saying that to make me realize that. In fact when I planned it out before this contest the first scene was supposed to be Luvia fighting a Somalian pirate. But then remembering BL’s aversion to OCs, out the door that went and I decided to go Apo. Yeah, I was surprised no one caught that. The organization is a rip from the organization of the prologue in Apo. We have ambiguous setting with two people talking, climatic battle with climatic stuff, and first person account of approaching threat.

And the whole problem with powerlevels can be explained because of In Media Res. Zouken’s had two weeks draining the Ryuudouji leyline. He’s also putting everything on the line so he’s more like Hero!Zouken and Acht’s using the power of an army of homunculi maids that he brought. Which is something Megas talked about. And Zouken’s illusion thing was a plot point earlier. So yeah In Media Res really sucked.

As for the whole Prisma thing. That was the big clue. I was actually doing the Prisma Status Sheets when the contest started. And yeah I brain-farted and believed it was canon. It was like during the stream for the UBW anime announcement where they should prisma stuff I was like “ohhh yeahh this isn’t canon, oh well.”

I was pretty sad that no one thought the magecraft was impressive. Tohsaka concept jewels? Zouken using his absorption attribute on himself to fuel more absorption spells? Zouken absorption insects? Yeah Acht was lame, but Acht’s supposed to be lame.

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Anyway enough on that stuff. Since I’ve thrown this to the wind this is the concept and everything for the story.
So it’s after Fate Route and set directly after Shirou and Luvia solve the Van Fem casino thing which was actually Rin’s job but they ended up having to save her. Since it was a favor for Waver, Rin finally strong-arms him into appealing to the Association to dismantle the Grail. They send Forte and some guy to do it, where they encounter Zouken who is against this because he doesn’t want to die and still wants to be immortal. There’s a tussle and Zouken gets owned but he manages to activate the reserve system (what were you thinking? Yeah at this time I totally forgot the reserve system was only Apo). However since Fuyuki’s leyline had been depleted ten years earlier cos of the 5^th and Fuyuki isn’t as great as Trifas, it’s going to take a few weeks to distribute Command Spells and allow for Servants to be summonable. At the same time this will render Fuyuki impotent as a spiritual land.

The Association has a problem now. There have people who want to use the Grail but the Association doesn’t want to lose face, as well as lose land holdings, so they decide to send a team to move the Grail out of Tohsaka land and hold the War somewhere else. Waver and Rin don’t agree with this so Waver collects his own team and they head to Fuyuki to dismantle the Grail.
And basically have a magi war over the Grail without Servants.

As for the thing with Prisma and Zelretch. Zelretch owes Waver from Prisma-land because of the Card thing, so to pay his debt he promises Waver he’s going to get rid of the Prisma Grail, but he owes other Waver as well so as a “kill two birds with one stone,” thing he’s going to help both of them. He plays no role in the story until the very end but he’s an essential part of the Waver faction’s plan to destroy the Grail.

Here Tohsaka finished that Mini Jewel Sword pendent in HA which serves as a receiver and transmitter for signals across parallel worlds, kind of like a radio. She’s meant to stick it into the Greater Grail to let Zelretch know what to transfer into the Prisma world and that’s meant to destroy both Grails because it’s be a Grail collapsing on another Grail. As seem Ilya is there to help because Zelretch is too weak for something like that.

The Association’s plan was to steal the Zelretch box and shove the Grail inside of that because you’re supposed to be able to fit most things in the Zelretch box so why not a giant monolith.

Either way the war revolves around these two objects as well as Ryuudouji temple as place.

Characters

Association

Acht:

Spoiler:

A magus is someone who throws away his ambitions for his family’s ambition, is what I wrote for concept.
Acht and Zouken were meant to be foils of each other. Acht being a magus who would do anything for the sake of his family even if that mean exploiting his family. He would come in mid-way after Ilsa died with a maid army. I imagined this entrance scene to be on a plane where the entire plane is taken up by the maid army and the only other passenger was Layneth and they’d be half-threatening each other. He and Zouken would have a talk about family and argue about what that means as Silvertongue listened. There would be something made up about his past and a spiritual land conflict.

Ilsa von Einzbern

Spoiler:

Rather than a Justicia model she was an Ilya model. Appearance is Ilya in 10 years. She was sent to Fuyuki to show that the Einzberns supported the Association since the Tohsakas did not and the Matou super did not. Also she was their Master in case things went south and the Servants were going to be summoned in Fuyuki, as well as the Grail.
Interesting factoid, she was supposed to use wire swords. And then UBW anime came out and I was like “you stole my idea.” Either way she was to be killed in the first battle and because of that Acht would come to perform maintenance and everything.
Her struggle was about being Ilya and learning about who Ilya. Taiga mistakes her for Ilya and treats her as Ilya. She hears a lot of about Ilya and is compared to Ilya by Acht. So her sub-plot is about who is she, and coming to terms with being a homunculus and whether or not she is a magus and what that entails. She would be heavily in conflict with Moeko.
She would be wheelchair bound because of defects as well and would use the metal from that as a weapon. Basically weaponizable wheelchair.

Zouken

Spoiler:

Zouken would be Zouken. He would be the one who set everything into motion. He wants the Grail War to happen in Fuyuki because the next one is the one that counts and he’s pulled all the stops for it. So pathetically he’s the guy fighting for a chance to fight. His main body gets pulled out of Sakura very early on and he gets owned in the cavern. His main body sits on that leyline for the two weeks where his normal body agrees to help the Association side. Like I said before he’d be Acht’s foil, that family is only a tool for one’s own ambitions. He tries to destroy both sides but he does have some nice talks with the Association faction. Either way he does a Gilles and goes to the bottom of the Miongawa River and absorbs the Noble Phantasms that Gilgamesh fired in Zero (which are still there because let’s assume that they’re not made of pure magical energy and can stay in the world even if Gil’s dead). Either way he goes Cthulu penis worm and Sakura puts him down in an Absorption vs Absorption fight with help. After that he hangs low and is like the final boss who everyone thought was dead who gets offed by the true final boss.

Forte

Spoiler:

Forte I wanted in because of I wanted to develop her magecraft. Also she’s like super competent Burial Agent-tier. Either way I imagined her as the Mary Sue character. She is a super special strong snowflake, has a horrible past, is an orphan, has a smoking hot husband, and cute kid and is a good person. And the point of such a character was showing that it couldn’t survive in a war like this. Her personality would be that being a magus does not give someone the right to harm others and that if 100 people needed to be sacrificed for a ritual to save the world she would damn the world and save the 100. At the beginning she would baby-sit Sakura who was used as insurance for Zouken (who doesn’t really care), but she would do stupid things like release Sakura, help Sakura, help the other side for the sake of saving people and Sakura would be the one to kill her because of magecraft attribute compatibility.
She would have sorcery trait that made her origin and her family’s attribute wind. However her stave-swords would have the attribute “flow.” She was going to have four of these one for each element and they combo-ed with her element to make something else. Like the Water one, Aquilo would produce ice, the earth Auster, dust. There would be four of these swords and she would use these combo-ed elements with her Aero strikes, so the ice one would have an ice impact etc. When the swords all combined they’d make Aeolus which controlled the flow of ether and magical energy with its Aero Strikes.

Sakura

Spoiler:

So yeah Sakura was going to do stuff. She’d been studying magecraft for the ten years and Zouken had been “teaching” her. Either way she was not good at all. At this time she views magecraft itself as a curse; however she spends most of her time here talking with Forte and aspiring to be Forte and they end up with a very mentor student bond. Also I was going for the sisters angle and well as involvement with Ilsa because of the Ilya thing. She doesn’t like Luvia because she’s going out with senpai. And later on she strikes up a frenemy relationship with John who basically has the opposite outlook about magecraft as her and basically at the end she would view magecraft and what it means to be a magus differently.
I imagined part of the ending to be Sakura actually knocking on the door to Forte’s house to tell her family that Forte was dead and Forte’s daughter thinking it was her mother.

Luviagelita Edelfelt

Spoiler:

So Luvia strong-armed Shirou into going out with her during the Van Fem thing and this creates most of the conflict between Luvia and Rin. Luvia here is only agreeing to go to Japan to beat Tohsaka as well as to meet Shirou’s guardian because she’s a lovestruck child like that. What I wanted to do here character-wise was to amplify the Luvia Rin rivalry past their gag nature into something that was unhealthy for both of them. Make them realize they’re on a battlefield however they still fight like they’re competing at school and eventually escalate that until one of them kills the other out of hatred. From a magecraft perspective nothing new, went more for a “quantity vs quality,” type of concept duel between them. Also thanks to Mahoyo. Gandrs can now stop hearts I guess I would have used that as well.
She was supposed to die. Killed by Tohsaka in their final fight where Rin loses her dignity.

Silvertongue

Spoiler:

An OC whose name was supposed to be Aria. Was trying to think of a last name. She was supposed to be the definition of a “basic bitch,” as they call them. An incredibly normal girl with normal taste and normal everything. She was adopted into a magus family because of a talent and became Sealing Designated because of that. So she was put into the Association faction so the people researching her could get data on what she could actually do.
As for what she could actually do, it was as her name suggested, she’s an Incantation based magus. She can cast any spell in one bar. So even faster than Alba, however she can only cast one spell and that one spell had to have affected her in some way. So if someone used Gandr on her she would only be able to use Gandr and it would take her one bar to use when it usually takes someone a single action; however if someone used Sea of Flames on her she would be able to use Sea of Flames in one bar when it usually is a ten bar. If no one hit her with another spell she could only use Sea of Flames the rest of her life. So a complete specialist who seems overpowered but incredibly flawed. Either way the Association thinks it’s because her Alignment is Incantation and she has a sorcery trait that allows for this.
It would turn out that she is a very weak Holy Child like Merem is and that manifests itself in her as a magical foundation in itself. In CM3 it’s said that people can be foundations, but this would be taking it a step further since she has no magical energy requirement and some other mechanical stuff.
She was supposed to be a main character and the whole “what is a magus,” was supposed to be seen from her eyes. She would learn from the Association team and she would feel like they’re a family, and at the end come up with her own definition of what a magus was.
She has no fighting abilities so she’d be like Jinako in the beginning.
Her last stand was supposed to be pretty climatic, something like her guarding the Ryuudouji Stairs just flinging grand rituals down Medea style. Yeah she was going to die from the beginning, something about how average people with average morals can’t survive in this world.

Bai Zheng Yu

Spoiler:

Another OC. I’m pretty proud of this one. So he’s also a Chinese Sealing Designated Magus and he got roped into this because they would redact the Sealing Designation on his successor who was his great-granddaughter if he helped them. He’s a workshop magus prodigy, so he basically goes around the place making workshops for people. And because his workshops are so great, they maximize the magical energy flow, they keep what’s necessary inside, he got a Sealing Designation for that. He practices Feng Shui and his elements are Wind and Water, but the weird thing is that in every magic system his elements are Wind and Water. So like you know how in the Chinese system if someone was Wood element, in another system they would be a different element? In every magecraft system he would be Wind and Wood which goes perfectly with Feng Shui. He would not see combat, instead he would work on securing the defenses for Ryuudouji, and they called him in because there were remnants of Medea’s magecraft and defenses there. He basically hijacks them and uses them to make an ultra magical fortress. Of course he can’t use everything since AOG magecraft and but since by himself he can make workshops on the same level as Temples yeah. Basically the best workshop maker in the magus world at the time.
There was going to a nice backstory about his family and a giant turtle and how members of his family can live as long as they have magical energy in his body since their souls require magical energy to stay anchored and to keep from rotting.
He was going to be a grandfather figure to Aria and well as one of the grandfather trio. He was the perfect magus in his day and now he’s alone because of that so he’s trying to make amends.
Forgot if he dies or not. I think he does.

Enda

Spoiler:

The guy who went with Forte to dismantle the Grail. Wears an iron mask like the Dumas novel. Instead of talking he writes in fire. Turns out that’s a disguise later on and he’s actually Sola’s father and head of the Spiritual Evocation department. He used to be an apprentice to a Barthomeloi however the heir to the family died, there was that power struggle in Zero materials that was mentioned and he ended up being the head having married a woman from the Sophia-Ri family. He was the father who was never there from Bram and Sola, instead he and his wife were doing magecraft things by themselves. Either way Sola’s death hit him hard and he’s trying to help dismantle the Grail because of that. For political reasons he couldn’t let it be known he was the one dismantling the Grail. Either way when the reserve system is activated he intends to betray the Association and destroy the Grail; however he sees Bram with the El Melloi faction and decides to be a father and be there for his son, by being his enemy.
His attribute was Assimiliation and the reason why the family was the head of the Evocation department. Basically they can assimilate their Evocations. Anyway he and his wife were working on another project in which they Assimilated a magic system into theirs so he can use both Eastern and Western magecraft.
I wrote that he needed to take ground up poppy seeds when doing this but I forgot why. Anyway he was supposed to act as a father figure to Aria letting her know that magecraft isn’t everything in life, reinforcing turtle guy’s point.
So basically he is the daddy Bram has issues with. Other than that he’s a nice guy.