Daydreamy Side of the Moon

Mm, I was in a weird mood on my day off, and wanted to document my first - and probably last - attempt at actually writing a fanfic. I didn't get far - I don't think anyone liked it and my dialogue is stilted due to lack of experience. I'm a RPer by trade, and without others to bounce off of or rely on for the main plot, I falter pretty darn quickly. Still, I liked my notes well enough to save a record of them here.

The idea was an unexpected HGW at a sleepy Scottish town called Bardsley on an isolated island - unplanned by anyone, and unexplained to the point a Ruler was produced to oversee the Grail War and investigate its cause, invoking the 'danger to the world' excuse for his presence. The title was a silly little thing - FTP was a convenient acronym and 'pride' was an issue that many of the masters - and some of the servants - dealt with to varying degrees. It would also become a devastatingly stupid pun when the nature of the Grail was unveiled.I'm archiving it as a formal admission of abandonment - GO this week dealt the last, and biggest, deathblow to the concept and I am so very done.

TOSHIMA TAKUTO

Main character and frustratingly my least developed character. I can't even find a good faceclaim, though my closest is a dark-tanned Kodaka from Haganai. I had a dreadfully hard time trying to come up with a good 'primary' character and I feel I work better as a contributor to an ensemble than being responsible for anything approaching a main event. What I came up with was Takuto, a dark-skinned, blonde half-Japanese boy being raised in the sleepy Scottish island town of Bardsley after the death of his father as a child. His father was a mage who died before transferring any of his crest to Takuto, and leaving precious little else for him to pick up the pieces with. As a result, his mother spirited them away to her old birthplace, raising him in secrecy and denying him his magical heritage.

As a result, Takuto grew up resentful and was infamous for acting out in middle school and high school, earning a bad reputation among his peers. It was only when he met a wandering magi passing through the town that he began to settle down - when his mother signed him up for a martial arts class to try and work out his aggression, the elderly teacher turned out to be a former mage with no heir who identified Takuto as someone he could teach his art before he died. I could never write this as well as I wanted to, but the concept was a school of martial arts that encoded magecraft self-hypnosis into physical kata - identifying specific routines of physical motion with specific spells and allowing A-rank rituals to be condensed into only minor physical movements and attacks, each of which have great meaning written into each reaction of muscle and alignment of thought. In practice, the idea was an Avatar mage, in Takuto's case having the element of wind.

Spoiler:

My idea for Takuto was that he had never been able to master his school's final Mystic Code - the ability that Saber takes an interest in and attempts to cultivate over the HGW - which is the ability to forcibly change his elemental affinity, making Takuto a REAL Avatar magus - not by the genius of an Average One, but through the painstaking mental training to switch it through strength of spirit. He'd only learn it in the last third or so, and struggle with it until the finale.

Through him I confirmed I am abysmal at writing protags, eheh.

SERVANT SABER

http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...71#post1295071

Whoo boy, did GO kill this one dead. My plan for the protagonist servant was the sword saint himself, Miyamoto Musashi, answering the call of a boy whose techniques just happened to intrigue him enough to serve as a catalyst. Unpredictable to a T, Saber was by equal parts a fierce combatant and an easy-going ally, vicious and unsportsmanly to his enemies but cheerful and lackadaisical when not in combat. He would begin to mentor Takuto, revealing himself to be a strict, hellish taskmaster when actually seriously teaching him to better control his magecraft.

He would initially lie about his primary Noble Phantasm, claiming his A-rank katana had no special qualities beyond its strength and sharpness - a flagrant lie revealed when he had his first big fight against Berserker in a Bardsley mall. His true Noble Phantasm - Niten Ichi - was the ability to treat anything he held in his off-hand as a twinned existence with his main katana, temporarily giving it the traits of the first blade. That means a branch in his off-hand was as good as a Noble Phantasm sword, and anything he threw would be akin to a thrown blade, letting him pull off absurd feats of dual-wielding and discarding - or my favorite example, reaching into a coin fountain and shredding Berserker's arm to pieces by tossing a handful of tiny swords. The visual properties of the item wouldn't change - they would just slice like they were a blade.

Spoiler:

Even more hidden would be his second NP, the Book of Five Rings - an ability to change his elemental attribute and reflect it in his blades, converting them from steel to the elemental force they represent. The fifth ring, Void, would be the most carefully guarded of all, revealed only when fighting Ruler at the end. When the king Command Spelled him to kill himself, Musashi would reveal Void and slice his own body down the shoulder - causing no damage and dispelling the magical energy of the Command Spell, as Void's property was to consume and negate prana, letting him 'cut' down Ruler's spells and constructs. It is the Book of Five Rings - and Takuto's latent potential - that inspired Musashi to protect his would-be protege.

MICHELANGELO ANDRONICA HARWAY

Scion of the Harway family and current head. This character was born of my curiosity what the Harways were like as actual mages - for all the talk of his power, Leo never really did anything besides a mediocre Bomb codecast and then Code Camelot in CCC. So what would they have actually done after all the hype for Leo's overwhelming pressure? I took a ton of liberties for a non-Extraverse Harway family, essentially casting them as an amalgamation of twenty-six branch families who compete each generation to produce the strongest heir possible so that they will be chosen as the successor and that family will be lifted to the status of "main" family until the next heir is selected. Essentially a magi family practicing extreme survival of the fittest/culling. I decided to make the middle name alphabet-based with the idea that each letter is a branch family.

A slender, well-groomed young man with hair similar to Leo's but slightly longer, and wearing the red pants, white dress shirt, and gray vest that Leo wore but without the sillier-looking red blazer. He brings to mind a red version of Saber's attire in Fate/Zero, especially with his androgynous good looks. An Average One, and an exceptionally powerful one, Michelangelo's qualifications for the Grail are without question, and he treats its acquisition as a matter of right. Even his physical power is immense to a Ciel-level. One of the red herrings is that the Harways might even be responsible for this grail war since he's one of the only qualified mages who arrived early enough to get in.

In a parody of Leo's nickname origin, he would initially pretend to be a student at the Bardsley high school, where he receives the shorthand nickname "Michel". Unlike Leo, he is NOT comfortable with it. Over time, it is revealed the Harway sorcery trait is "Succession of Kingship," and that they practice a form of backdoor reincarnation by encoding the personality and memories of the original Harway head into a "magic crest" that is more similar to brain surgery than a traditional graft. This was a silly reference to the throwaway Extra line that Leo got brain surgery in his infancy to 'teach him what he needed to know.' Not true reincarnation of the soul, but maintenance of the entire experience and skills of a single magus for over a thousand years, in unbroken succession.

Spoiler:

...Unbroken, but imperfect. In reality, the perfect succession was broken in Michel's generation, as by chance at the time of the last heir's sudden death, almost no suitable heirs were currently of the appropriate infant age, save for Michel who had absurd and Ciel-like potential. He was selected as the successor after a heated dispute, and by all accounts has performed exemplary in the role, despite one small defect - he was born a girl.Once outed as a young woman desperately trying to stay the ancient man she was crafted to be, Michel (Michelle) would grapple with the concept that the contents of the vessel may have been changed by the shape of it, with new experiences conflicting with the identity she defines herself as. She steadfastly refuses to consider, until defeated, that she may actually be her own person and not just the discomfort expressed by her male identity. A-rank Average One magecraft, Ciel-power levels, and reinforcement abound to make her a credible threat as a master and one of the most dangerous enemies.

Takuto treating her as a girl upon discovery starts to break her composure and make their last fight much more heated than an original one she triumphs in.After her last defeat and admitting to her individual identity, she served a late-series Rin role, with Lancer entering into their alliance until the Gamemaster is revealed and Lancer is instantly, cruelly stripped of all individuality, leaving them with only Saber to their names.

SERVANT LANCER

The protector of Troy, Prince Hector, imagined before GO dropped him in as Super Oji-san Brother. GO Hector - and him finally confirming information about his family in the last chapter - is what convinced me to finally write this up for posterity. He was a lot more serious in my take - which I won't go into too heavily except his Durandal was a rail-gun javelin throw that concentrated all of its A-rank power to a single instantaneous point. He would be a foil to Michel and a rival to Saber at first - but his main target would be Archer, who he wanted dead so severely that he asked Michel to use a Command Spell simply to 'force' him to kill Archer at all costs.

Spoiler:

He would meet his fate near the end game, when the big bad was revealed to have the ability to completely wipe the vessel of any Servant in the Bardsley grail war - destroying Hector's identity and will and rendering him a glass puppet of his former self, becoming an Alter-style minion of the Gamemaster.

LILLIAN EISEN

A spoiled German princess who specializes in barrier magecraft on the lines of Araya Souren or Sancraid Phan. Affectionally nicknamed "Lily" by Archer, who barely conceals her lust for her Master. Constantly protected by overlapping defensive shields, it is a matter of pride that not even the outside air reaches an Eisen magus without being filtered and obtaining their permission. While she has no offense, her defense is monstrous, letting her ignore most anything another magus can deliver. Exceptionally vain and min-maxed in defense and endurance. She's the blonde, busty, twin-tailed hime type and barges into the Grail War uninvited, without a catalyst, demanding Saber. The only reason she even gets Archer is Archer's self-professed attraction to that type of girl. Like Archer, a character born from a failed Fate RP whose stories I still regret not being able to see through to the end.

SERVANT ARCHER

http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...01#post1057801
God, did I unreasonably love playing this girl. Paris of Troy, a genderbent joke of a Servant who barely qualifies for one "heroic" sneak attack - Archer was a hopeless flirt, a shameless coward, and had no skill or competence with her weapon of choice, her only feat of archery being assisted by the spirit of Laomedon protecting Troy from Achilles. The rationale for her genderswap was that history was told by the victors - and no one wanted to shame the reason for their great war by admitting Helen had been stolen by a spirited, spoiled lesbian princess. Her Noble Phantasm allowed her to kill anyone, without exception, if she was able to hit them twice - but she had no accuracy with which to do so, and had to be helped by others or bolstered/forced by a Command Spell to give her a fighting chance in any encounter.

Spoiler:

In reality, her secret fear is that no one ever loved her, but were forced by her second Noble Phantasm - a blessing of the three goddesses that gave her A+ clairvoyance, A+ Instinct, or A+ bisexual Mystic Face - and she only ever used the Mystic Face due to her insecurity. She suspected but never confirmed that Hector and Helen didn't love her, and Hector's use of a Command Spell to override her Mystic Face only confirmed her suspicion and deepened her self-loathing.

She would grow from lusting for Lillian to actually loving the girl who reminded her of Helen - making her all the more afraid of ever abandoning her curse of charm and finding out Lillian's actual feelings. At the end, protecting the others against the Glass Hector, Lillian would confirm that Archer's Mystic Face never penetrated her barriers, and that her feelings were genuinely returned - giving Paris courage to actually fight, and die, against Hector, who devastatingly outmatched her even with the use of Lily's last two command spells. Archer only 'wins' because in the process of being run through by Hector, she is able to use one of her arrows by hand at melee range to inflict the instant death of her Noble Phantasm, a distance at which not even she could miss.

DAPHNE THESSALON

Yet another expat of a RP master i played. Hailing from an old but disreputable Greek family of magi, Daphne can trace her family's thaumaturgy lineage back generations to ancient Greek scholar Theodorus Gaza, the scholar and translator who introduced botany to European culture. While Gaza was responsible for translating and bringing attention to the art of ancient Greek botanists, the most treasured chapters were left out of his translation, as they dealt with the very plants grown in the Age of Gods, when magic was common and still retained much of its mystery and power.

Beginning with Gaza, her family began the work of generations, scouring the world to recover and then restore the lost plant-life that was so common in the ancient world.It was their belief that the path to Akasha was not by self-improvement, but by harvesting the deepest connection to the past. By the very nature of their work, the Thessalons are even more rooted in place and secluded than other magi families, as the growth and maintenance of magical plants in a scientific world was an incredibly demanding and time-consuming endeavor. They kept largely to themselves and worked in secret lest other magi families learn about the treasures they were growing and steal their treasures.

As a result, Daphne is largely sheltered from the outside world, well-educated but deeply naive.The idea for Daphne was essentially E-tier circuits, A+ tier items. She had never been outside the family greenhouse before and was only allowed to leave the safety of their land in order to win a chance to wish for the Fruit of Knowledge itself. Her biggest Mystic Code is a makeup compact with ground moly, the herb the gods gave Odysseus to deal with Circe, and it bestows A-rank MR on a wearer temporarily. Insert mental image of her applying blush to Berserker's or Musashi's face.She would be the first boss, with her strange but powerful Berserker, and once defeated would be the first member of Takuto's main character harem for sparing her and letting her see more of the world- an invaluable source of her remaining items to her unintentional hero.

SERVANT BERSERKER

A bizarre, inhuman Berserker crafted of mud and clay, Berserker had ME so high that it had no actual will of its own - it would sit immobile unless specifically ordered to perform a task by Daphne, which it did with immense power. Often this would be a running joke in which it would not even fight or react unless told to by an exasperated, forgetful Master - but once moving on an order, it was like a living mountain, freely changing its shape into various weapons, cudgels, tentacles, etc.

This one was a bit of an unfinished idea - I initially wrote it intending it to be Berserker Enkidu, with a disabled NP but Mad Enhancement increasing the stock of points available for Transfiguration to allocate its stats. ME also robbed it of the ability to intentionally distribute its stats, making it reactive instead of purposeful.It would have been unresponsive since it had no will or human desire yet - it was the beast of the forest, not the weapon of Gilgamesh.

However, no one really identified it as Enkidu in the prose, so my ace in the hole if needed was making it the Golem of Prague, which would also explain its robotic "insert orders" nature. It would have been the first boss, defeated by Saber at the end of Disc 1 to unveil his first NP, and making Daphne an ally instead of an enemy. Due to its immense strength and Daphne's non-existant prana reserves, its actual 'Master' was a prana-generating flower Daphne kept in her possession on her hat at all times, losing a petal or two every day of the grail war until it would eventually be running low near the end.