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Fate\last call
night, dawn, and the birth of stars


The following is a table of contents for documentation of specific terminology relevant to the events and background of the Sixth Holy Grail War of Fuyuki City.

Included with these entries is a chapter designation that indicates the point at which these terms become relevant. To avoid spoilers, refrain from opening entries for chapters that have yet to be read.

Additional terms will be included by request below.

Aescanbana	〔5.4〕Thorn Against Arms. An original Noble Phantasm that Key commissioned (and subsequently helped with) from her Servant. Wasn't she already unfair enough? [more...]
Hétú Diagram	〔2.4〕Also referred to as the Yellow River Map. An ancient Chinese magic square essential to many branches of the Philosophy Magecraft of the continental Orient. It is an abstraction that connects the heavens and the earth using the Yellow River system as a framework, and it is associated with the Chinese myth of the Great Flood that was contained by Yu the Great. As such, its structure contains a multitude of secrets that prove valuable even to the Xian of the Summit Court. At her teacher's urging, Sofie Huangjing Le-Mei has taken to the study of the diagram, and has already developed a number of numerological techniques from her analysis and attempts to recreate the original that existed in the Age of Gods. However, she openly admits that she will not finish constructing her replica of the original in the span of a mere human lifetime.
karma	〔4.1〕Fluctuations on the spiritual axis of fate. Biases towards certain events develop through the accumulation of specific types of karma, which may be positive and negative based on circumstances rather than in any absolute sense. Karma is heritable, and will be shared with entities related to oneself, such as offspring or Heroic Spirits.
Matter	〔4.4〕A word meaning "substance", used to describe the products of the von Drang clan's alchemy. Connected to the name of their thaumaturgical attribute, Materialisation, which causes spaces with a high density of the caster's magical energy to act as though it contains the corresponding element in a physical capacity. It is incredibly difficult to sustain without proper material as a basis. Because Sigmund's elemental affinity is Earth, he generally materialises his Matters through in a solid, saltlike state. The liquid Green Matter he administers is created through dissolving this salt into a fluid, such as water or blood. Other elemental affinities exist in his family, and his younger sister has caused multiple disasters with her own Dark Chaos Blaze Black Matter 's unorthodox form. Similar to the Elemental Masses of Paracelsus, the Matters are ambiguous substances produced by the Marian Great Work. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, the Mystery of the Matters fluctuated substantially, as it was an era of great discovery in the field of chemistry that included the establishment of the periodic table and the discovery of the molecule. It simultaneously opened up countless possibilities while attacking the fundamental axioms of the Magecraft itself on all sides. It has survived into the modern era despite the widespread proofs of atomic theory due to the clear theoretical evidences that "there are more elements that exist but have yet to be created by natural or artificial means" combined with the difficulty in actually creating them. The von Drang family anxiously keeps tabs on the development of particle accelerators around the globe.
Metanovae Astrae	〔2.3〕The unique Magic Crest of the Metanovae clan, constructed out of the holder's nervous system. Its bizarre structure is directly related to their Astral Logic Magecraft, which forcibly inserts concepts and information into targets through the flow of spiritrons. [more...]
Rulemaster	〔5.4〕A role created specifically for the Sixth Holy Grail War. Possessing a special authority over the Holy Grail and the Servants, they are effectively given the duties and powers of a Ruler-class Servant without actually being one. In particular, they possess a special Command Spell that is many times stronger than an ordinary one, which can be used an unlimited number of times on any Servant due to being connected to the Holy Grail itself.
Tiānmìng Fulminata	〔5.4〕Thunderbolt Mandate Cleaving Heaven and Earth. A combination Magecraft improvised by Oliphiaelé Wodime and Sofie Huangjing Le-Mei, so named due to the final parts of its dual incantations. Although collaboration between such radically different systems is essentially unheard of, such a ritual was only able to be assembled because of the specific circumstances of its construction. Wodime had recently had to revamp significant parts of her family's Magecraft to be more in line with modern techniques due to substantial damage to the Magic Crest she had inherited. She did this using various metals - Sofie's elemental alignment - in order to perform astrological Magecraft using connections to Roman deities. As Roman culture - and thus Magecraft - was highly syncretic due to its imperialism, it was uniquely suited to connect to the underpinning structures of Philosophy Magecraft, which in itself is more collaborative to begin with. At the same time, Sofie herself had spent a great deal of time building a framework to combine eastern and western traditions through modern thought - the globalistic paradigm that includes such scientific facts as the heliocentrism of Wodime's new Magecraft - using the logic of modern technology that works on a numerical/numerological basis, including the binary counting system ascribed to it by the western mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. These two were uniquely positioned to work in tandem, it seems. The spell itself invokes Jupiter, god of lightning, using Wǔxíng to transmute the earth into tin. In doing so, a shrine declaring the presence of the god is created, which is used to generate a lightning bolt by manipulating electric charge differentials in the surrounding space with feng shui, and the shrine-space in turn massively strengthens the lightning in proportion to the scale of the transmuted earth. This feng shui is also used to confirm the proper flow of energy in order to guarantee that it strikes the target, and lead - the metal of Saturn, god of seasons - is used in tandem with this to affix the proper flow of time, nullifying any attempts to evade that would work on the basis of defying the logic of lightning as faster than humans. Its destructive power is on par with a Noble Phantasm of Rank D+, but its fearsomeness as an attack primarily stems from how absolute its ability to connect to its target is, sealing them away from any physical means or possible future that would allow them to avoid it so long as they are slower than lightning. Even a Servant would have serious trouble with a cheat spell like this. Unfortunately, as Keystine's Animapsyche casts spells as ordered using photonic swarm computing, she was able to complete her counterspell of exchanging herself with a single Anima at the speed of light. It's one thing to assemble a perfect countermeasure so quickly, but the fact that she was able to actualise it in time shows that she was able to determine the functions of the spell as it was still being constructed, accurately seeing through its weaknesses, and come up with that perfect countermeasure immediately. Even though this spell was created specifically to defeat her, Sofie and Oliphiaelé also happened to be up against one of the only geniuses in the world with the sheer ability necessary to beat it regardless. Life is unfair.