Nasuverse

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The heroines of the three main works in the Nasuverse. From left to right: Arcueid Brunestud from Tsukihime, Saber from Fate, and Ryougi Shiki from Kara no Kyoukai.

The Nasuverse is a fictional universe created by Japanese author Kinoko Nasu. His partner in crime is Takeuchi Takashi, the character designer and artist. Together the two of them form media company Type-Moon, license-holder for that which follows and ruler of all waifus.

The Nasuverse is basically an urban fantasy setting. Mages, vampires, zombies, and the Holy Grail are all real. Mages spend most of their time fighting each other over petty arguments, circlejerking in the magic academy inside of Big Ben, and committing crimes against humanity in the name of progressing their research. They only stop once in a while to fight over the Holy Grail so they can gain complete knowledge of the universe and access to the Akasha, or whatever.

Overall, the Nasuverse is pretty much the intersection of /a/, /v/, and /tg/, and it's been around for a long time. While there are earlier works, Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night were the first major productions of Type-Moon. These two were eroge visual novels (the kind of VN that features sex scenes but makes sense with them censored, distinct from the nukige that exist purely as pornography), and while an interesting story where you get to bang a cute girl sells pretty well in Japan, that second part doesn't fly so well in the West. As time went on, Nasu and Takeuchi tried to distance themselves from their sordid roots by remaking F/SN with alternate scenes in place of the sex, and by generally avoiding the matter in future material. Or at least, not putting in appreciably more lengthy and graphic sex scenes than you'd see in a normal supernatural action plot.

Nasu himself is a fan of Dungeons and Dragons and plays it a lot. Enough that he and a bunch of other weeaboo authors got together and recorded some of their play sessions in that weird Japanese tradition of replay books. It's called Red Dragon, and the anime about it sucks, so if you're that much of a weeaboo you should just read the source material.

For the sake of expediency (and the fact that this page ended up longer than some actual /tg/-related pages in one iteration), this page is currently having some excess fat trimmed.

Setting Overview

Gaia and her Children

(The following contains a bunch of conjecture. Some of this stuff is strongly implied, but never stated. Take it as a somewhat romanticized retelling.)

Planets are not quite what they seem through a telescope. The Earth is a cosmos in and of itself, consisting of many layers that do not necessarily agree even on their physics or other fundamental laws. It may or may not be moving toward the model embodied by every other planet in the system (and the Moon), where they eventually become barren rocks inhabited by a single ultimate lifeform (presumably getting there by eliminating all others), known as a Type or an Ultimate One. Said lifeform is also considered the will of the planet it represents, because there's nothing else there that has a will. It also follows its own rules, notably not necessarily subscribing to Earth's idea of death. Aliens do exist but so little is known about them that they don't really show up.

That's all important, because, as it turns out, Earth doesn't have a Type, and its inhabitants are abnormally powerful compared to the others. In the Middle Ages, a wielder of True Magic named Zelretch fought Type-Moon one on one and barely won, mainly because his opponent did not know what True Magic was. In the apocalyptic universe of Notes, humanity survives a complete loss of fertility on Earth by genetically engineering itself and eliminates Type after Type, though at a great cost and while probably dying out before getting through them all. Perhaps humanity is a Type, Evangelion-style, or perhaps one just hasn't been born yet but will be terrifyingly powerful if it emerges.

In the ancient times, deep within the Age of Gods, Gaia tried to birth many children of all sizes and shapes. Today most of them are hiding on the Other Side of the World, but some are still around, moreso in the Tsuki timeline than Fate. Such beings have an innate link to Gaia, they are made whole, and perfect, fulfilling their duty. But while they are 'perfect' individually, they do not perfectly encompass what exactly Earth is.

The final experiment was a species that was perfectly imperfect – Humanity. As the ages went by, humanity's link with the earth waned, whether by design or not. All that was on the planet until then was governed by Gaia, the will of the planet, but humanity had its own will: Alaya. As Gaia corrected things that happened on Earth to protect itself and its children, it now had to accommodate for Alaya, which adjusted the world also, protecting humans at the expense of all else. In a bid to preserve the link between gods and humans, the former created the demigod Gilgamesh, who would serve as a bridge between the two groups, only for him to tell them to go fuck themselves, become the first hero of humanity, and eliminate any possibility of a reconciliation.

There were multiple Ages of Gods that we know of, though we don't have many further details about them. They were separated by periods such as the current one, where the more magical side of the planet retreated. However, the Age of Gods most prominently featured in the Nasuverse may have been the last, and it's all downhill from here. It should be noted here that an Age of Gods is an interesting time to live in due to reality's multilayered nature; the mythology formed during the time was mostly based on observable reality, and you could find the Underworld in Mesopotamia by just digging down. Gods were Gaia-made machines that personified their respective phenomena, and most stories of them acting human stem from them going insane as their colleagues die and they are forced to take on their roles, which they were not designed for. As all the gods died or left for the Other Side, the laws of physics filled their roles.

Long ago, the Human Order began to overtake the planet's influence for good. This is the end of the Age of Gods. By the time of King Arthur, its last vestiges were fading, and Gaia's older children have withdrawn from sight. They did so in no small part because ether, which is like air to them and forms the basis of magic, began disappearing from the atmosphere. A modern human would be unable to survive in the Age of Gods due to the heavy concentration of ether. To combat the growing problem of being unable to conjure spells from thin air by just speaking a few words, King Solomon created modern magic, which uses the body's (rather limited) reserves of ether instead. Hence, modern mages are much weaker than their Age of Gods counterparts, though those would be powerless in the modern world without some extensive preparations.

The Earth was concerned about the unusual situation and called upon Crimson Moon, the ultimate lifeform of Earth's satellite, to help return things to "normal". He made immensely powerful copies of himself known as True Ancestors, which were of Earthly origin and, therefore, accepted by the planet. Unfortunately, they inherited his bloodlust, going completely nuts unless they adhered to a strict ascetic lifestyle. The humans who were bit by True Ancestors and were strong enough to handle it became vampires in their own right, being called Dead Apostles and initially forced to serve the True Ancestors.

To eliminate their maddened brethren, the True Ancestors made a particularly powerful member of their kin, which doubled as a potential vessel for Crimson Moon in case he died. The plan went swimmingly until she, previously kept away from human blood, was made to taste some by a psychotic human and went mad herself, massacring almost every sane True Ancestor before coming to her senses and imprisoning herself, only leaving to hunt the asshole responsible (who extended the chase by body-hopping, which she could do nothing about). The Dead Apostles saw an opportunity to revolt, having become remarkably strong in their own right (to the point where one is also a potential Crimson Moon vessel), and finished the job. Meanwhile, as he'd expected, Crimson Moon died in one of his confrontations, though the potential for him to return still remains.

From there, depending on humanity's various actions, there are two options:

• A) Humanity embraces modernity, resulting in a strong Human Order. History will be able to manifest through such methods as servant summoning, but that same power becomes a danger to itself, and the world. This route leads to the Fate-side of the world.
• B) Humanity holds itself back, or loses a few fights, resulting in a healthier but much more dangerous world, where vampires and other nonhumans are much more prominent and threaten to overtake the world. This is colloquially known as the Tsuki-side of the setting.

Whichever the case, most of this stuff is not common knowledge. But unlike the various kinds of Masquerade in the World of Darkness, the masquerade in the Nasuverse isn't necessarily strictly maintained. It is more the result of magi being naturally secretive and organizations such as the Church preferring to keep their dealings under wraps, combined with a general waning of their influence and popular dismissal of old tales of magic and monsters as myth. Unethical as most magical dealings are (they get up to some really fucked up shit in Nasuverse works, like trapping an entire apartment complex in an endless cycle of degenerating into psychosis, murdering each other, and coming back to life with their memories reset just to gain an insight into death), members of that world naturally prefer to police each other to prevent publicity lest their own eugenics programs, homunculus abuse, and various highly lethal mishaps become known. The secrecy also makes it easier to kill each other for goodies and hidden knowledge (which is allowed and, as seen below, sometimes even encouraged), of course. With that said, there are continuities where mages come out into the open, most notably Fate/EXTRA, where magic embraces the internet and old mage families use their wealth and power to effectively rule the world.

The underground's main players are the Mage Association, split into three branches, and the Church, which instead seeks to eliminate Magecraft and the supernatural completely, going as far as they are allowed to get away with. Despite their natural enmity, the two have to constantly cooperate to deal with dangerous rogues. Besides them, there are plenty of others: hedge magi who were never taught properly, people who possess a highly specialized Magic Circuit with instinctive abilities, generally called 'psychics', and people descended from a supernatural being crossbred with a human, or 'mixed bloods'.

Important Names and Places

• The Root - As it sounds, the wellspring of creation, beyond gods, and even the planet. The intent of Magecraft users to return here is indicative of the regressive nature of Magecraft, with mages who abandon this goal shunned and called spellcasters instead. Each form of True Magic presents a different road to the Root of All Things. With that said, nobody knows what the Root actually is, and the people who have reached it aren't telling (in no small part because they disappear without a trace upon doing so). At least one wielder of True Magic came close to reaching the Root and nope'd out, suggesting that it may not be as desirable as mages think.
• Records of Akasha - A mass of data saved by the world, which exists outside of spacetime. May or may not be the Root itself, or at least part of it. When a human dies, their soul is returned here and stripped of all information other than the origin, later reincarnating anew. Hence, reincarnation is borderline impossible in Nasuverse if you actually die (as opposed to body-hopping), since the person that returns will only retain the barest skeleton of a soul. Within these data is also the Throne of Heroes, wherein humanity's greatest heroes and villains (and fictitious tales, and what have you) are recorded as Servants after being removed from the cycle others are subjected to.
• Counterforce - A power that protects the world. This typically refers to the human variant, but Gaia and Alaya both have a Counterforce of their own. It is the main reason why neither magic nor technology have yet ripped the planet in two: Wherever someone would come close to such an event, the Counterforce will manifest, either by strengthening whoever is trying to solve the problem, or as something as simple as a natural disaster, or it will use the data from the Throne of Heroes to summon a Counter Guardian: An immensely powerful spirit, that can balance things in person, with more finesse. Most of the time, that still means murdering everybody.
• Origin - A term that comes up a lot, so it should probably be noted here. As everything and everyone originates from Akasha, their nature is predetermined, giving them a particular 'Origin', which can typically be expressed in a few words. It will inform their actions in a subtle manner, acting as a sort of instinct that intensifies in crisis situations. For an extreme example, a guy with a "Consumption" origin chose to eat the body of the person he murdered whole after seeing no other way to dispose of it. For a more mundane situation, Emiya Kiritsugu can't repair things properly due to his "Severing and Binding" origin (think cutting a thread and making a knot to reconnect it; the result is not as good as a new thread) and uses bullets that contain his bones and fuck with the target's mana flow. Humanity can work against their origin, but is strengthened by acting in line with it. A being with an awakened Origin is an immense force, but basically ceases to have free will.

  

  Faculties of Clock Tower

• The Mage Association - A gathering of Magecraft users of various strength and lineage, going back thousands of years. The main goal of every Magus is to reach the 'Records of Akasha', or rather the 'Root', all of which are basically the same thing as explained above. Many ways of attempting this are demonstrated across the franchise, and they generally fail. This goal basically includes every Magus in the Association to some extent. The Association's purpose is just to ensure that while everyone comes up with their own way, that way does not involve too much collateral damage.
  • Clock Tower - The first of the three branches, situated in London. Nepotistic, making a big deal of lineage and one's inborn qualities as a Magus. If you discover something cool or gain a unique ability, the old fogeys will designate you as an assassination target, preserve the part of your body that they find interesting, and fight over who gets to have it rather than do anything productive. Pretty much the face of magecraft, though very focused on Europe and unable to exert much influence in countries such as Japan. Very obviously inspired by Harry Potter, though it's more of an university setting. They also have a smaller branch in Prague.
  • Atlas Institute - A vaguely Egyptian-themed underground bunker, staffed by alchemists, with less of a focus on lineage. Rather than practice through their own Magic Circuits, they specialize in the creation of tools and weapons. It is a general belief that they have too much dakka.
  • Sea of Astray - Only described as a wandering mountain range, the magi in here basically isolate themselves from the modern world, to preserve as much of the mystery as possible.
• The Church - Try to be for the magical world what the Catholic Church was for Medieval Europe. Use their magic circuits to produce supernatural phenomena that they swear are totally not just magic. The exact nature of Christian faith, especially in relation to something like paganism, is shuffled around carefully. The Church does not want it to be put into question, which is why they have:
  • Burial Agency - A subdivision of the Catholic Church, which deals with extermination of everything which does not belong into god's plan. They train Executors, who are badass dudes going around the world murdering vampires, natural spirits, and especially magecraft users who go out at night. Besides their base of operations in Vatican, they also employ the help of various chivalric orders around the world, in case they need to crack down on an infestation, or something. While they limit the use of Magecraft to the minimum, they also have a sub-division which is explicitly tasked with researching such techniques, even ones based on protestant faiths.
• Demon Hunter's Association - An entity dating back to the older times, breeding recessive traits through eugenics, in order to protect common humanity. Though this is a Japanese thing, it can be assumed more such groups exist elsewhere. They were various families of ordinary, if trained, humans in the past (four of them in Japan), who primarily hunted those of demonic heritage. However, over time, they gained different kinds of special powers themselves and set out to refine them. These powers are quite unique and rarely, if ever, seen elsewhere, and it's stated that the hunters pretty much just did a lot of self-selection for useful demon-hunting traits to obtain them rather than seek external sources of power. In the times past, they may have been ninjas and more traditional hunters, today they lean more towards assassination. Their children, knowing nothing but training from the day they can stand, wind up quite autistic, which is a perfect trait for a protagonist. With that said, the most capable hunter in history died and got his entire bloodline killed because he showed a moment of humanity at a single point in his life, sparing a chained-up half-oni child and only gouging out one of his eyes, so the autism is fairly justified.

Magic in the Nasuverse

Most of the works in the Nasuverse feature mages as pretty important people. These mages are an intersection of the study-hard-and-experiment wizard and the you-gotta-be-born-with-it sorcerer. Only people with Magic Circuits are capable of magecraft, and the number and quantity of your Magic Circuits stems from both eugenics the mages in your family tree and sheer luck of the draw. Mages from old, powerful families have more Magic Circuits of higher quality than those from less established families, leading Mage society towards snooty aristocracy and thumbing their noses at upstarts.

Mage families in the Nasuverse are distinguished by their Magic Crests, which are like a combination family crest, spellbook library, and tattoo. The family's Magic Crest designates the inheritor of their magic tradition, with each heir performing magical research in their lifetime to modify and extend the Crest before passing it on in turn.

As for the actual magic practiced, it's not called "magic." Most of the time. The majority of what you see in the Nasuverse is referred to as "magecraft." Magecraft is distinguished from magic by the notion of "how possible it is." If your wizardry is just a faster version of something technology or human effort can do, you are a mage and you are doing magecraft. To be a magician who does magic, also known as True Magic, you must do something by mechanics that no one understands, not even you. If humans eventually learn to replicate it through mundane means -- including magecraft, which is hermetic and can be replicated by anyone with the proper power/ingredients/magical affinities -- it stops being a True Magic.

This disqualification only applies if the formula for it can be properly understood, so blind replications of True Magic are not considered to limit their status as magic. For example, there are homunculi cloned to use Heaven's Feel, as well as a magical tool that uses Kaleidoscope in a limited capacity, but none of these understand how their magic works or can be deliberately adjusted in any way and keep working so they remain True Magic. The creation of the homunculus in question was a freak accident that drove those who achieved it to despair over centuries of trying and failing to understand it, and the tool was conceptually designed by Zelretch himself and still took many generations and a good deal of luck to actually produce. Even something as simple as starting a fire used to be True Magic, but as a result of humanity's progress, very few things are still so impossible as to qualify. It is considered the realm of miracles, and even meeting a Magician is an event worthy of legend.

There are five more or less known True Magics in the Nasuverse:

• Denial of Nothingness, the First Magic. A Magic that is still active in the world, but its users are long gone. It is suggested to be related to creation of Ether Clumps, which is to say, making magic energy out of nothing. The user of First True Magic was born the night before the calendar started, so he is most definitely not Jesus because it's off by a day.
• Kaleidoscope, the Second Magic. Also known as Zelretch, the name of the only wizard crazy enough to ever achieve it. Kaleidoscope grants access to an infinite number of parallel universes, enabling tricks like casting a spell over and over without exhausting yourself by tapping into the ambient mana of the parallel versions of the room you're currently in. Zeltrech disappeared into interdimensional hyperspace after discovering Kaleidoscope, and he remains there as a convenient plot hook dispenser and plot hole repairman. There's very little that he can do, because if he gives more than a slight bit of attention to a timeline, it becomes set in place. like how a scientist can only confirm whether the cat in Schroedinger's experiment is alive or dead if the scientist opens the box. There's enough evidence to see why timelines like Prisma Illya even exist was because he had a direct hand in the proceedings (in that case, providing the Kaleido Sticks to Rin and Luvia). Naturally he would like to avoid looking at timelines that would, oh, awaken a certain Ultimate One from its slumber in South America prematurely...
• Heaven's Feel, the Third Magic. Discovered by the Einzberns, one of the three great mage families, this is a magic that can materialize a human soul. The Holy Grail's ability to summon Servants for the ritual of the Grail War is an application of Third Magic. In the Fate/Extra continuity, humanity achieves the Third by learning how to digitize souls, so this is the only True Magic that ever loses its status in a Nasuverse work.
• Unknown Fourth Magic. All that's known is that it hid itself right after it appeared, but 'it definitely exists'. It might be related to the concealment itself, or not.
• Magic Blue, the Fifth Magic. Supposedly relevant to time travel, enabling the user to violate conservation of energy by borrowing energy from pasts with no future. One application of it we've seen is a freshly-minted user temporarily summoning herself from 10 years in the future onto her present self because the future self had the knowledge and training needed to use the Magic properly, and then the future self would summon her own past/future selves on top of herself to take hits and die for her. Yeah, True Magic is a bit weird. This is the least-understood of the known Magics, in no small part because it was invented in the 20th century and actually activated only in the late 80s (grandpa Aozaki invented the spell to achieve it but never used it himself, storing it in his Crest and passing it to his grand-daughter Aoko), and its acquisition may involve reaching the Root and choosing to go back in time.

Whether or not there could be more Magics after the Fifth is pure speculation (with the implication being that the number is 6).

While not True Magic, the Reality Marble is a technique that comes close in power. This is a magecraft that replaces the caster's surroundings with some other space like a temporary demiplane. Reality Marbles demonstrated in the Nasuverse range from Emiya Kiritsugu's Time Alter, a bubble that surrounds him with a faster or slower flow of time, all the way up to the legendary Unlimited Blade Works.

Kara no Kyoukai

An actual book.

Kara no Kyoukai is the oldest official entry in what would become the Nasuverse. The first chapters were published way back in 1998, so they're probably older than the people reading this right now. It's so old that most people know about it from the series of seven movies by anime studio Ufotable.

The main character is Ryougi Shiki, and she has the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. Yes, death, not depth. These are a form of magic vision that let her see the "implicit death" in all things. In less idiotically obtuse terms, she can see the lines of weakness in anything, and if she cuts them, that thing is destroyed beyond repair. Even people, ghosts, and magic phenomena have these lines, making her either an effective assassin or a supernatural problem solver.

On a narrative level, the story is told in varying degrees of out-of-chronological-order, revolving around Ryougi's experiences with the supernatural and discovery of the truth about her abilities and herself. The mechanics of the plot take a lot from Eastern mysticism's conceptions of personal identity and the soul, so the heavy reliance on Buddhist terminology makes it difficult to translate for Western minds. Expect to miss the nuance if you're unfamiliar with the terminology and the subtle implications that can be accomplished with the magic of kanji. The movies do a decent job explaining everything through visual cues, but a lot is lost in the translation. If you want to have a Zen Buddhist-themed villain Mage in WoD, though, KnK can be a great inspiration.

Anyone who calls it "The Garden of Sinners" is probably a fag. Anyone who calls it "Rakkyo" is probably a serious oldfag, a moon reader, or a hipster. The novels are officially localized, though again, they're a tough nut to properly translate, so a lot of fans aren't content with what's been put out. Official or not, you can read them, or watch the eight theatrical movies.

Tsukihime

The main cast of Tsukihime. From left to right: Yumidzuka Satsuki, Ciel, Tohno Akiha, Len, Arcueid Brunestud, Hisui, Kohaku. The redhead in the background is Aozaki Aoko, and the shadow at the top-right is Nrvnqsr Chaos (pronounced Nero).

As you shouldn't.

Tsukihime is a visual novel that's one part murder mystery, one part dating simulator, and one part gothic horror. Its main character, Tohno Shiki, survives a car crash as a child and is disowned by his wealthy parents for his frail constitution. In exchange for this near-death experience, he gains the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception introduced in Kara no Kyoukai, enabling him to cut through anything. The story begins when he's called back to his family manor upon the death of the family patriarch, where he gets embroiled in the 'vampire murders' occurring throughout town. The problem is that, when he sleeps, he sees the crimes being done... from the murderer's perspective. The various routes of the story either track down the culprit or ignore them in favor of digging up the Tohno family's shadowy history.

The five choices of waifu, and therefore of routes in the story, are:

• Arcueid Brunestud, vampire-hunting vampire and the last one who was born this way, which makes her a kind of nature spirit. Technically the strongest thing on Earth bar maybe a certain temporally confused alien spider.
• Ciel, ninja-nun and vampire hunter working for the Church. Can't be killed because of a glitch in the world. Finds out that Shiki's eyes can fix glitches in one bad ending (or maybe she just stays a living head, who knows). She has a strange fascination with curry.
• Tohno Akiha, Shiki's younger sister and, after Shiki was disowned for being too sickly, heiress to the Tohno family fortune. She's used to acting the part of a financial conglomerate ojou.
• Hisui, Maid One of the pair remaining at the Tohno family mansion. She's quiet and keeps things formal. A poor cook, but excellent around the house.
• Kohaku, Maid Two at the Tohno mansion. She's the cheery big sister type to contrast Hisui's cool exterior. Her cleaning skills are horrendous, but she's the best in the kitchen and the garden.

Other waifus featured are Aozaki Aoko, a mentor figure Shiki met when he was still recovering from his accident, and Yumidzuka Satsuki, the designated classmate love interest. They don't get routes, so they don't count, and Satsuki not having a route is a common subject of memes among Nasuverse fans.

Picking a waifu from the five above sets you on one of the story's routes, which are organized into the Near Side (Arcueid, Ciel) or Far Side (Akiha, Hisui, Kohaku). The Near Side routes focus on investigating the vampire murders in town and explains a lot of the mechanics of vampires in the Nasuverse, while the Far Side investigates the mysteries of the Tohno family. It's strongly recommended that you read the novel in the recommended order above, because the entire teenage vampire romance thing is just a bait on the hook trying to get nerds to read about something VERY different.

Overall, Tsukihime is a respectable visual novel and interesting if only so you can see how far Type-Moon has come from their beginnings hucking demos at Comiket. Its contained and minimalist nature helps it work out a lot, making it a lot more subtle than the loud idealist speeches and overexplaining everything you may be used to from Fate. On the other hand, there isn't exactly enough content to fill up five entire routes of story (80% of the Kohaku route is nigh-identical to the Hisui route), so going from one route on the same Side to the other(s) will involve judicious use of the fast-forward button.

If all you care about is shitposting, "Can Shiki kill Servants" is one of the fastest ways to start fights among Nasuverse geeks, and any relevant discussion quickly devolves into a total clownshow of powerlevel arguments.

Near Side

The Near Side routes focus on the vampiric threat in the city and the hunters dealing with it. The antagonist is Michael Roa Valdamjong, a vampire and one of the few in the Nasuverse to achieve immortality (kinda; a recurring theme in the Nasuverse is that immortality is not a thing, and even if your body doesn't decay, your soul always rots eventually). Roa's immortality allows him to continue his life by reincarnating into the body of a specially prepared host, usually a child so people ask fewer questions. He has a hateboner for Arcueid, who has sworn to hunt him down each time he reincarnates, and their conflict goes back centuries. Meanwhile, Ciel is investigating the vampire murders on orders of the holy Church and trying to rope Shiki into being her partner.

Highlights of the Near Side include mercy-killing a recently turned vampire as she confesses her love to you, death by shark attack on the upper floors of a hotel with no aquarium, the use of anal sex to slow down a progressing vampiric possession, and a real eyesore of a chair.

Far Side

Roa does not make an appearance in these routes (let alone Gary Larson). Instead, it's revealed he attempted to reincarnate into the most magically gifted child of the Tohno family, a bloodline that's already exceptional due to mingling with oni. Unlike the Near Side, where he succeedeed in extinguishing the kid's soul, the Far Side allows the Tohno scion to leverage his demon blood to resist the vampire and expel him. Unfortunately, half-oni seriously struggle with controlling their violently psychotic impulses for the rest of their lives once they embrace their nature. The entire Tohno bloodline is half-oni and quite open to using their powers. You do the math.

These routes explore the dark history of the household, shed light on Shiki's origins, let you sleep with the maids (sometimes questionably), chill and talk things out with your mortal enemy while under an unholy amount of drugs, and are generally a beautiful trip down "going batshit insane" lane.

Kagetsu Tohya

A proper sequel of sorts to Tsukihime, with quite a bit more art, music, and less dour atmosphere. It could be considered a fanservice disc, if not for the fact that it is quite a bit more intimately tied to Tsukihime's cast than Hollow Ataraxia is to Fate, going into their backgrounds more than Tsukihime could, and even tying up some legitimate loose ends, such as a short story set after Akiha's True Ending. Tsukihime was horror, and less is more in horror, so we instead get Kagetsu Tohya, which explores the world of Tsukihime in a way that the work itself couldn't afford to.

Kagetsu Tohya is generally split into two parts:

• Ten Nights of a Dream: Isolated stories to be read, some of them fanfiction made canon, but often pretty sizeable. They are unlocked as the player chews through the main story.
• Twilight Grass Moon, Fairy Tale Princess: The main story focuses on our protagonist, Tohno Shiki, who, half a year after the events of Tsukihime, finds himself endlessly reliving a single day of his daily life. Rather than a normal Groundhog Day scenario, though, he is caught in a dream, and the other characters with him. A dream somebody has trapped them in, for some reason. This is a problem, since Shiki's subconscious is a dark place, and he won't be allowed to leave until he confronts some of those repressed inner demons.

Tsukihime 2: The Dark Six

Things that may never happen, but have been teased before.

Kagetsu Tohya included a teaser for Tsukihime 2, which would never be made. Tsukihime Plus Period, the data-book akin to Character Material for other titles, included the prologue to Tsukihime 2, 'Talk'. Overall, not only is there a surprisingly high amount of information available, but it seems that the nonexistent story of Tsukihime 2 is referenced and even bleeds into the other works, which actually exist.

The story of Tsukihime 2 revolves around the Aylesbury Ritual, wherin several powerful Dead Apostles gather to summon The Dark Six, an entity that would bring salvation to the Dead Apostles. This ritual has incidentally been carried out and apparently botched in Fate/Extra, resulting in a polar shift and draining of all of the world's prana.

Tsukihime 2 has two protagonists, of which the first is Enhance, who is quite literally Vampire Dante From the Devil May Cry Series. He is a vampire that goes around with a sword and a shotgun killing other vampires. The other protagonist might be Shiki, or somebody else, since Shiki by the time of Tsukihime 2 is so overpowered his glasses no longer work and he has to blind himself with magic bandages to suppress his eyes. Two heroines we know of are Bartholomeloi Lorelei, basically the purest blood magus in the world, and Altrogue Brunestud, Arcueid's sister, and the second in line to become Crimson Moon. From the Prologue it also seems that Ciel has a fairly large role in the story, possibly being the other protagonist herself.

Melty Blood

Neither of these will be mentioned again.

A sequel-spinoff series that continues where one of the routes left off. Which one? The Satsuki route, which doesn't exist. It started as a VN with a janky fighting game stapled to it, but later releases smoothed the gameplay until it was more like the Tsukihime Fighting Game than it was a VN you had to do fights to get through. Now there's a Melty Blood manga that goes over the original stuff, so you can just read that instead of playing badly made fighting games.

The main story is famous for a few things, among which is invoking several fresh new words and ideas which would never be brought up again, and many of which would be contradicted by Fate, as the Tsuki-side seems to have been abandoned by Type-Moon for FGO bucks. In Melty, the town of Misaki where both Tsukihime and Mahoyo are set is visited by an alchemist, Sion Eltnam Atlasia. It turns out that the town has been chosen as a spot for the next manifestation of Night of Wallachia - a powerful vampire who takes the form of people's greatest fears. This is likely because certain people in Misaki have dangerous amounts of knowledge of the truly terrifying parts of the setting, and he hopes to use those fears to acquire some overpowered ability that would let him progress his research.

Wallachia, or Zepia Eltnam Oberon, you see, used to be a magus, an alchemist, and a scientist. With the infinite power of math, he has calculated the inevitability of the apocalypse, in Tsuki-side called The Sixth, and sought immortality by means of vampirism to help avert it. The Night of Wallachia is a roulette of sorts like that, meant to collect data, except that the guy running has long since gone batshit insane.
Resolving this situation, however, is just the Story Mode of the first title, and nowhere near where the entire storyline ends. What follows after this one is spread across the individual Arcade Modes and victory quotes (that's not a joke) of fifteen to thirty one characters across three different games, and no one can be expected to remember all of it, including the makers. As such, Melty lore contains some of the most obscure stuff in the setting. Not the deepest lore mind you, just the stuff no one could be bothered to remember. File:Neco arc devil monster.mp4 Melty Blood is notable for its long, seemingly nonsensical titles, and was supposed to get a new title in the 2010s. The first catch is that Type-Moon wanted the characters in the new Melty to have the Remake designs, which would be easy. The other catch is that they wanted it to adhere to the Remake lore, which was impossible, because there was no Remake for the longest time. When the Remake finally came out, so did the new Melty Blood title, set as a what-if before Tsukihime. The new title, Melty Blood: Type Lumina, has recently brought the Daemon known as Neco-Arc back into the public consciousness. Expect gremlin cats to scour through 4chan for the next ̶𝚖̶𝚘̶𝚗̶𝚝̶𝚑̶ year(s?) or so.

The Tsukihime Remake

Click to die instantly.

A remake of Tsukihime was announced. In 2008. The massive success of the Fate side of the franchise put it on ice for over a decade before finally being released in Summer 2021, albeit in parts.

Updated character designs were revealed in 2013 and earned a lot of flak for changing things that didn't really need to be changed. Later announcements included entirely new characters and the news that some old Tsukihime lore would be discarded -- namely replacing some of the lamer Dead Apostle Ancestors with cooler ones.

The Summer 2021 release, "Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon" remade the Near Side (Arc and Ciel) routes. It happened. The Arc route has since been fan-translated by Tsukihimates, with Ciel's apparently soon to follow. Revealed in a trailer after the game finishes, The Far Side routes will be in their own release, but there's no date on that yet. Also, Satsuki's getting her route.

Fate

Fate is the biggest part of the Nasuverse and the one most people know. It started as a visual novel all the way back into 2004, and has since ballooned out into a money-printing machine with an uncountable number of spinoff series. Entries in the Fate series are distinguished from one another by the text after the slash (/). You have Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, Fate/Extra, Fate/Hollow Ataraxia... and most infamously, Fate/Grand Order. So no, it's not Fate Stay/Night. The series is called Fate.

The big focus of the Fate series is the Holy Grail War, in which seven mages get together in a not-that-big city in Japan and summon legendary heroes as their bodyguards and warriors. All of them duke it out for the right to touch the Holy Grail. Last man standing gets to wish for whatever they want. The whole thing was put together a couple hundred years ago by three of the great mage families in an effort to reach the deepest truth of the universe, known as the Root. The War part got involved when they got close to the finish line and started fighting to be the ones who actually got to cross it.

Due to the Fate being the most lucrative well-developed side of the Nasuverse, there's a lot of stories and spinoffs set in it. To keep the page to a manageable size, we'll just list down the original Fate trilogy (Zero, Stay Night and Hollow Ataraxia) and any Fate stories that expand on Servants.

All About Servants and the Grail War

A total of seven mages are selected to fight in the Grail War. Each one summons one hero, known as a Servant, and acts as their Master. It's the Master's job to strategize during the war, and the Servant's job to actually engage in combat. All Masters are given a set of three Command Spells, usually taking the form of tattoo-like symbols on their arm/hand by the Holy Grail upon selection. These Command Spells have several functions. The first and most important function is that it is effectively the contract between Servant and Master (and identifies Masters as such to others). Any individual with at least one Command Spell may create new contracts with other Master-less Servants provided both parties consent (which is why enemy Masters are usually targeted over their Servants). The second major function is that an individual Command Spell can be spent to issue an absolute order to their Servants. An order issued this way will force a Servant, willing or otherwise, to follow through on the command given. If it's against their desires, a Servant can attempt to resist the order, but ultimately they will be compelled to carry it out until it has either been accomplished or the command redacted by the Master. Lastly, as Command Spells are made of magical energies provided by the Holy Grail, a Master can expend them to supplement their own magecraft or their Servant's strength for a significant, albeit temporary, power boost.

Every Servant gets a Noble Phantasm, their greatest attack or ability. Revealing your Servant's Noble Phantasm is pretty much a dead giveaway as to their identity, because by definition an NP is something that most defined the Servant when they were alive. Most Masters keep this close to their chest for as long as they can, because all of a Servant's weaknesses from their old legend still apply.

Traditionally, Servants summoned in a standard Holy Grail War belong to one of seven classes. Fate/Grand Order split them up into subcategories for the sake of implementing some gameplay balance ala Rock-Paper-Scissors, which will be reflected here:

The seven classes of Servant. From top-center going clockwise, they're Saber, Lancer, Rider, Assassin, Berserker, and Caster, with Archer in the center.

The Knight Classes

• Saber, for swordsmen. "Saber" is a class and not a weapon because Nasu probably did an Engrish and thought the -er ending meant it was a name for someone trained in swordplay the same way archer is a name for someone who does archery. Considered the "strongest" class, mostly because it's well-rounded and heroes who qualify tend to be pretty strong and well-known, or the strongest incarnations of themselves. Among the most bloated of the classes, but some notable examples include Sigurd, Gawain, Rama, Julius Caesar and Lancelot. In FGO, Sabers beat Lancers and are in turn beaten by Archers, and focus on sudden burst damage through critical hits.
• Lancer, a class for fast guys with long poking sticks. Lancers are commonly drawn from Gaelic myth. Their being Irish is something fans take the piss out of really often, because most of them have absolutely horrible luck. Despite the name, most, if not all, of the servants summoned as this class technically use Spears and Polearms rather than proper jousting lances (hell, out of the 40 or so Lancers available in F/GO, only two of them use actual lances, horseback and all, and they're technically the same (wo)man). Some other potential Lancers include Percival, Romulus, Hektor and Leonidas. Strong against Archers and weak against Sabers.
• Archer, the biggest meme of a class. The Archer from the first entry in the series spends most of his fights dual-wielding swords, and the Archer in the prequel doesn't even use a bow, preferring to fire swords as projectiles with magic. To Nasu's credit, Archers introduced in later titles would actually use bows (and in a couple of cases, a sling or a crossbow) as per their class title, and lore introduced in F/GO would acknowledge the growing prevalence of firearms. Still, the meme persists as it also includes the likes of jewelry-throwers, dolpin trainers, and Nerf Gatling Guns. Their signature class skill is Independent Action, making them less-reliant on their Master sugar momma/daddies for magical energy and better able to operate off on their own. The only catch is that this makes Archers more likely to work on their own agendas with or without their master's blessing. Aside Gilgamesh, some other noteworthy Archers are Tristan, Arjuna, Robin Hood and even Billy the Kid. F/GO sees Archers beat Sabers and get beaten by Lancers, and their abilities mean that their crits hit harder compared to other classes.

The Cavalry Classes

• Rider, for pretty much anyone who's associated with a vehicle or mount. World-conquering leaders, famous pirates... Even being an infamous slut (i.e. "riding" people) is enough to qualify a hero for this class. The actual most well-rounded class, tending towards balanced stats, good mixtures of class skills, and more Noble Phantasms on average than anyone else. As one might expect, their signature class skill is Riding, which gives them innate know-how on commandeering any sort of vehicle. Prominent Riders include Captain Nemo, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Saint Georgios and Odysseus. Riders beat Casters and have a disadvantage against Assassins, and true to form their stats and abilities tend to be the most balanced of the lot.
• Assassin, for the most legendarily dick-assed of dick-ass thieves. Per the "rules" of the original Grail War, an Assassin-class Servant is always one of the leaders of Hashshashin, all of whom took the name and identity of Hassan-i Sabbah. Because this would've meant an entire class would have a stupidly low pool compared to everyone else and lock out neat ideas (early information suggested Herakles would qualify), later entries retconned this to a unique feature of the Fuyuki Grail, with later entries introducing a wide variety of professional killers, martial arts masters, sneaks, and general murderers. Their signature class skill is Presence Concealment, which lets them turn invisible and not trip alarms, though actually attacking tends to break concealment... also rather like D&D. They'd lose against most Servants in a straight-up fight, which is why they prioritize attacking Masters instead: even the highest ranks of Independent Action above only give a Servant a day at best if their Master croaks. Some examples of non-Hassan assassins include the Phantom of the Opera, Cleopatra, Mata Hari and Carmilla. Assassins have an advantage against Riders and are beaten by Casters, and their attacks and abilities make their team more likely to crit.
• Caster, for anyone actually good at magic. Artists, scientists and writers get to come too; the class is technically the broadest in terms of qualifications, though if you didn't actually know magic you're probably going to have weaker class skills in exchange for whatever weird thing you can do. Mocked for being fucked in the meta, since four of the seven core classes get free Magic Resistance as part of the deal, but they tend to have the ability to really turtle up in exchange, making a fortress-hideout and magical items with their Territory Creation and Item Construction skills... not unlike 3.5 wizards, really. A couple random examples include Merlin, Mozart, Asclepius, Hans Christian Andersen and even a weird incarnation of Thomas Edison. F/GO Casters beat Assassins while being beaten by Riders, and usually trade out offensive power over buffing their teammates (Hell, most of the highest-tier servants tend to be Casters because of their buffs).

The Berserker Class

• Berserker, a class for heroes with varying levels of RAGE and/or general insanity. Berserkers range from incoherent roaring monster-men to "coherent every now and then," quantified by their Mad Enhancement class skill's rating. High Mad Enhancement strengthens them more, but makes them more difficult to control and harder to understand (either because they can only roar/growl or their speech generally focuses on whatever they're obsessed with). Originally a template that could be applied to any heroic spirit, trading sanity for increased performance, later stories instead focus on heroic spirits whose legends involves rage and madness (not to mention that constant roaring made for poor characterization). They also have a reputation for killing their summoners, either directly or by being mana hogs who suck their magical energy dry, whether accidentally or intentionally. Such angry boys and girls can include Beowulf, Darius III, Caligula and a very loose interpretation of Paul Bunyan. Berserkers have a Glass Cannon relationship with most of the other classes of F/GO, dealing extra damage to them in exchange for receiving extra damage from them as well. Berserkers make up for it by killing the enemy on the first turn, or simply not staying dead.

Fate is the most directly /tg/ subset of the Nasuverse, since Servants are traditionally given character sheets with ability scores, skills, and even alignments. These sheets aren't constructed according to the rules of any known RPG (while the base alignments are pretty standard D&D, one Berserker has the alignment Lawful Mad), but it's fun to speculate about what kind of abilities these would actually correspond to within a real game.

Fate/Stay Night

Say what you will about Takeuchi's intense sameface, he's got good character design.

Fate/Stay Night was the original work in the Fate series, released as a visual novel in 2004. It's where you get ancient memes like "People die when they are killed," and "I am the bone of my sword." The Holy Grail War depicted in F/SN is the Fifth Grail War, and it features the following heroes:

• Saber - King Arthur, but a girl. Her Noble Phantasm is Excalibur, which manifests its power in a slash that "cuts through everything." The actual attack is a gigantic laser beam that vaporizes whatever she points it at, leading to F/GO's running gag where you're only a real Saber if you fire sword beams of any sort. Saber is unique as a Servant (but only in this work) because she's neither a spirit (and therefore unable to dematerialize) nor even dead and instead sits around in Avalon answering calls to hunt the Grail. Heroine of the first story route, and one of the most popular (and lazily copied) characters in modern Japanese pop culture, Saber is an endearingly-earnest knightly woman type.
• Archer - [REDACTED]. An Archer who prefers to fight up close even though he's not very good at it, he actually isn't a legendary hero at all. At least, he's not a legend in the time Fate/Stay Night takes place. Impossible to discuss without getting too deep into spoiler territory, the original Archer is a complicated figure who varies widely between story arcs.
• Lancer - Cu Chulainn. His Noble Phantasm is the spear Gay Bulge Gae Bolg. The one who began the trend of Lancers having E-Rank Luck, but goes out like a man in every major route, earning much fan respect.
• Rider - Medusa. Isn't actually blind, despite the blindfold. Pegasus was born from her blood, so she gets to use it as her Noble Phantasm even though she isn't Perseus. Draws on a wider variety of sources than the prevalent Athenian version, ultimately cobbling them together into a coherent story of a fallen heroine who gradually turned into a monster, which is also why she's not got the snake-hair yet (she can become her monster form, but she would rather die). The sexy one, she unfortunately can't quite stand up to the sheer power the other Servants bring.
• Caster - Medea. Always wears a hood, but has pointy ears and is canonically the most beautiful woman in the entire game. She's still bitter about Jason cucking her, so she maintains a sadistic streak. Reenacting her legend in a way, she murdered her original Master, who was a real asshole to her, and fell madly in love with a random passerby who helped her as she was fading away. This one's completely loyal, though, leading to some touching scenes. Supplies herself with mana by sapping a little bit of life from everyone in the city. Her Noble Phantasm lets her sever magical contracts, most notably those between Servants and Masters. Like Rider, she serves as a surprisingly dangerous miniboss, but unlike Rider, she never gets to ally with the protagonists.
• Assassin - Sasaki Kojirou, autistic samurai. The original example of a popular fictional tale come to life, Kojirou has never actually existed. Instead, the Grail brought in some nameless peasant of no note who trained on his own and eventually became able to bend spacetime through sheer skill because he really wanted to kill a swallow. Has shit stats, only got a katana from his namesake (which bends upon exchanging blows with a proper European longsword), and lacks a Noble Phantasm, but his ridiculous sword skills compensate for it as long as he can get close. Pretty chill guy who just loves to fight, but Caster used the vacant Assassin slot to summon him herself and bind him to her base's front door, so he doesn't get to do much besides serve as the odd boss fight.
• Berserker - Herakles. Monstrously strong as is, he gets a shitload of extra lives and resistance to things that kill him based on his Twelve Tasks. Theoretically unstoppable, he dies to let another character show off in every story route. Turns out Berserker is one of his worst classes, which is ironic because he was summoned by a "family" that participated in every Grail War, brought powerful non-Berserker heroes, still lost and finally decided "fuck it, why don't we just summon an extremely powerful hero with a passive NP and give them even more stats as a Berserker?". To drive the point home, in one route he dies to a weaker copy of his other Noble Phantasm, which he has access to but can't use himself due to his mental degeneration. Still a cool guy despite the frothing rage, he's completely loyal to and fiercely protective of his Master, managing to break out of chains designed to hold Gods when he sees her get hurt.
• Archer 2 - Yes, there are more than seven servants. This guy survived the disaster that was the Fourth Grail War and managed to hang around afterwards. He is Gilgamesh. As pretty much the first hero ever recorded and a king, he's "King of Heroes". All other legends are derived from him, and in his lifetime he ignored his subjects and went around collecting everything there was to collect, which means he has the original (and strongest) version of every artifact and can manifest them at will. This applies to pretty much anything humanity's ever produced, so it's no problem for him to summon the best car ever, or jet, or fishing rod, or, if summoned in the future, spaceship... However, swinging swords is for losers, so he earns Archer status by launching them at his enemies. And, of course, when that doesn't work, he can just break out the world-rending sword drill thing that even he respects. Gilgamesh being the strongest Servant, period, is very canon, with Nasu making sure to give him new powers whenever he's mentioned. However, while his ego is large enough to nullify any mental attack through sheer will, it also eventually brings him down without fail.
• True Assassin - An assassin summoned out of Kojirou's body during one of the routes. He actually is one of the leaders of the Hashashin. Showcasing what a real Assassin is like, he manages to bring down both Lancer and Saber by leading them to a stronger threat and helping it out. His proper title is Hassan of the Cursed Arm, whose Noble Phantasm manifests as an extra-long right arm that allows him to crush your heart if he so much as touches you with it. F/GO reveals that he's actually quite an affable, honorable guy when you're not on his hitlist.

There are also a whole fuckload of additional Servant classes (called Extra Classes) but they don't show up in F/SN.

Yes, that girl with the platemail-dress combo is King Arthur. The original novel actually puts a great deal of thought into this, with her whole character and backstory being deeply informed by having been a woman in a traditionally-masculine role who hid her gender from all but her closest confidants her entire life, though later titles were much more cavalier about it. She did spend some time transformed into a man to beget an heir with a wife, however, leading to one of the cheesier lines in Nasu's already legendarily cheesy sex scenes. It's still a sticking point for a lot of people only tangentially aware of the franchise though, and the fact that Artoria is a beloved company mascot (and Type/MOON artist Takeuchi's favorite character ever) does her no favors. For instance, that they were lazily coming up with excuses to clone her and reuse her character design was an old hat joke as early as 2015, but they keep on doing it anyway. Here in 2022, Artoria now has at least one variant/version of herself summonable in F/GO as every standard Servant class and has numerous other "Saber-face" clone characters who, while they aren't specifically her character, look borderline identical to her, bar personality differences. Almost every Fate series has at least one character that either is her or looks like her. They print out copies of her out like she's a goddamn currency at this point (not entirely exaggeration either; one event in F/GO even had her cowlicks as the event-only currency).

This also started the Fate franchise's long love-affair with gender-flipping other historical characters. While in later titles, this was done in a mixture of cynical sex appeal-adding and the high-minded goal of making human history and mythology less of a goddamn sausage-fest, here it was done during the retool from their original plans as part of trying to make the title more marketable. Nasu's original plan was actually to have the main character be a girl and keep King Arthur as an actual king, but his artist and comrade Takeuchi convinced him they would do much better in the VN market if the protagonist was a male the audience could project on, and King Arthur was a girl. And thus, history was made.

All that aside, the actual plot of Fate/Stay Night follows Emiya Shirou, a boy who was adopted by Emiya Kiritsugu when the fallout from the Fourth Grail War turned Shirou's neighborhood into a burning hellscape. Ten years later, he gets wrapped up in the aforementioned Fifth Grail War when he unwittingly summons Saber. Oh, and that Archer has a burning hatred of him for some reason...

Almost all the characters are popular in their own right and frequently show up in spin-off material.

Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

A loose sequel to Fate/Stay Night, released not long after, and probably required reading if you liked the above. A fanservice disc in one part, and a backside of the original story in the other. Long after the Holy Grail War, Emiya Shirou is caught in a looping world of four days, which appears to be a mesh of every route, including ones which don't exist, all due to what seems to be a catastrophic miscast on Rin's part, and everyone gets into wacky hijinks.

In truth, the situation is much more complicated. The real story follows Bazett Fraga McRemitz, Lancer's original master, who should have been dead. In Hollow Ataraxia, she is brought back to life by what seems to be a mysterious, irregular, weak, and very angry Servant calling himself Avenger Together they go on a journey through the Holy Grail War's history in an attempt to untangle the mess of the ritual properly.

Hollow Ataraxia has a full translation patch, you can play it. Voice acting was absent until the Vita rerelease, but patches have been made backporting it to the PC. The game would retroactively introduce the "eighth" servant class, and the one ultimately responsible for screwing up the Grail Wars in the Fate timeline:

• Avenger: Don't think this is about superheroes, servants summoned as this class desire nothing but revenge, no matter how high the cost. They're so obsessed with getting even that the Grail War forbids anyone from summoning them as they're near-impossible to control... which is exactly what happened in the Third Grail War. The Avenger summoned in that case was Angra Mainyu (or Angry ManjewAŋra Mainiiu if you want to be pedantic), the big evil cheese of Zoroastrianism. The people who summoned him expected a "god of evil", but all they got was some no-name villager that was once used as a scapegoat for "all the world's evil" and was promptly krumped... but the Grail viewed him as a mortal and granted the wish for all the world's evil, dooming the later Grail wars until he was dealt with. F/GO would at least poke fun at their inherent edginess by making them utter dorks when off the clock, and genuinely viewing you as their friend if their affection was high enough. Their revenge ultimately trumps all else, though they'll at least make your death quick and/or painless. Aside Hollow Ataraxia's namesake Avenger, other notable Avengers include Edmond Dantes and Antonio Salieri. Avengers deal extra Damage against Rulers while being countered by Moon Cancers, and reduce their team's debuff resistance in exchange for activating their Noble Phantasms sooner, typically by gaining more energy from getting hit.

No adaptations of Hollow Ataraxia exist. Read the real thing.

Fate/Zero

Kiritsugu deals with mages, Shadowrun style.

Fate/Zero is the prequel to Fate/Stay Night dedicated to exploring the backstory of Shirou's adoptive dad Kiritsugu. Originally released as a light novel in 2006, it got an anime in 2011. This was the first serious try at adapting Fate to anime since the disastrous 2004 adaptation of Fate/Stay Night. This has earned a position of major skubbery among Fate fans, since it brought in huge numbers of newfags. This entry in the Nasuverse tends to start arguments about what amount of edge is acceptable in the Nasuverse and whether or not Fate/Zero has too much of it. This owes to Zero's actual writing being done not by Nasu, but by Gen "The Urobutcher" Urobuchi. Yes, the Madoka guy. The one infamous for killing characters to generate easy drama because he can't figure out any other way to move the plot forward. Zero is still like that.

Anyway, Zero is about the Grail War that Kiritsugu participated in and that ended up with him adopting Shirou. Kiritsugu is a hardass who doesn't play by hoity-toity mage rules. Of the seven mages fighting in the Grail War, he's the only one using guns, and spends most of the time with his servant on the Sidelines while he handles things with firepower. He's pretty much playing Shadowrun while the rest of them are pretending to be Harry Potter villains.

Zero's cast of Servants is as follows:

• Saber - King Arthur. This is where we first hear of her as the "King of Knights." A lot of her relationship with Kiritsugu is post-facto foreshadowing and ironic reversals of her relationship with Shirou in Stay Night.
• Archer - Gilgamesh. This is the same arrogant dick from Stay Night. He summoned by a Master hoping for an easy victory, but barely lifts a finger to help him. Gradually develops an evil friendship with his buddy Kirei Kotomine.
• Lancer - Diarmuid ua Duibhne. If you thought Cu got it bad in Stay Night, very few suffer more than ol' Deermud. His Noble Phantasm is basic, but pretty useful: a pair of spears, one of which prevents any wound it makes from healing, and another that renders magical defenses powerless with a touch.
• Rider - Iskandar. This is Alexander the Great at the height of his empire, so he goes by the name the Persians called him. He rounds out the trio of kings in Zero as "King of Conquerors." His Noble Phantasm is a Reality Marble that lets him call up everybody that's ever fought by his side in the past for a good old-fashioned gang beating.
• Caster - Gilles de Rais. The famous murder-rapist of children maintains his fetish for Joan of Arc. When he crosses paths with Saber, he mistakes her for his beloved Jeanne. He gets command of lots of tentacles via the actual Necronomicon and continues to spend most of his time murdering children, but since he's not a proper fit for the Caster class... he's effectively a one-trick pony with that book.
• Assassin - Hassan of the Many Faces. Instead of one assassin, this Servant gives the Master access to a whole mess of Assassins that lack the superhuman abilities of a Servant. Their disposability makes them useful as scouts.
• Berserker - Lancelot. He spends most of the series incognito, only revealing his identity for a final duel against Saber. Notable for using his Noble Phantasm to hijack an F-15 fighter jet, dogfight with it against Gilgamesh, then turn it against Saber.

Fate/Extra

An alternate timeline spin-off for the PSP set in the Moon Cell, a supercomputer that is also the Moon. Rather than a free-for-all between seven Master/Servant pairs, this Holy Grail War is set up as a single-elimination tournament. Each week, one Master is paired up with one opponent, and so every week the number of Masters halves after the life-or-death duels.

The gameplay is sort of crap, involving a lot of grind in not-very-interesting geometric environments, but people like it because it's one of the very, very few games in the Nasuverse with an official English translation. Arcueid and Ryougi make cameo appearances, with Arcueid featured as a Berserker in one of the routes and Ryougi as a secret boss in the otherwise-unexplained Monster class. This was the first entry in the series to explore the backstory of Stay Night's Archer.

Fate/Extra has a sequel, Fate/Extra CCC, which was not and still isn't in English. The best you get is playthroughs on Youtube with subtitles superimposed on the game text. Most have added the CCC fan translation to the "never ever" pile alongside the Tsukihime Remake. This is kind of a shame, because the opinion among grognards is that CCC constitutes Nasu's last great work, retroactively making all the grind in the first Extra game worth it.

CCC is followed by Fate/Extella Link: Umbral Star, a musou-type game that takes place after Extra and CCC, and Fate/Extella Link, a true sequel that deals with the aftermath of CCC, and introduces, among other things two versions of Charlemagne.

A remake of the first game as Fate/Extra Record has been announced, with an English release more or less confirmed from announcement (no official statement, but the official website has an English option). Unfortunately, a CCC remake is in doubt because it would be too lewd. Blame Sony.

The EXTRA series, aside from introducing now series-standbys like Emperor Nero and Altera/Atilla The Hun, introduces two unusual Servant classes to serve as its antagonists:

• Moon Cancer: A glitch in the matrix, so to speak, the Moon Cancer is a servant class representing a hostile entity trying to take over the functions of the Moon Cell supercomputer. In the EXTRA games, this is a boss-only class held by both BB and Kiara Seshyoin, and for the longest time was considered one of the rarest of Servant classes in Fate/GO. In the latter game, for some reason, it is strong against the Avenger class, but is weak to Rulers (though this makes sense at least knowing that Rulers are meant to deal with Grail War aberrations).
• Alter-Ego: The Alter-Ego is what happens when a splice happens between multiple Spirit Origins, some of them divine in nature, to create a brand-new personality, and are Min-maxed up the wazoo. In the EXTRA games, various aspects of BB's persona (her Lust, her Greed, etc.) get mashed together with bits and pieces of goddesses from varying pantheons to create the Sakura Five (Meltylyris, Passionlip, etc.), while in Fate/Grand Order, this class includes beings who've subsumed divine origins through different means (see Ashiya Douman literally eating Aztec God Itzpapalotl and Slavic God Chernobog). In Fate/GO, Alter-Egos are strong against the three Cavalry classes, but are weak to the three Knight classes.

Fate/Apocrypha

An alternate timeline spinoff where a mage from the Yggdmillennia family worked with the Nazis to steal the Greater Grail in Fuyuki during WW2, resulting in the 4th and 5th Grail Wars never occurring. Instead, when it came time for a new Holy Grail War, this mage arranged it so that all seven servants would be summoned by fellow mages from the Yggdmillennia family as a single united force and dared the Mage's Association to try to stop them (Black Faction). The grail, noticing that all the summoned servants had banded together in a breach of protocol, triggered a failsafe that allowed seven more servants to be summoned in opposition of the originals (Red Faction, no relation), with the intent for the war to dissolve into a fairly standard "last-man standing" grail war once the factions were broken up, to be overseen by an impartial Grail-aligned Ruler-class servant. Notable in that it featured two teams of seven Master-Servant pairs (one in each of the Seven classes to a side) and the new Ruler class.

Though a potentially interesting take on the more "traditional" Grail War concept, this entry was generally panned by the community for the mediocre writing and is most notable for its introduction of more high-powerlevel Servants, as well as an outpouring of weeaboo RAGE when Jeanne D'Arc, one of Fate's poster girls and a fan favorite, hooked up with a random Mary Sue homunculus named Sieg that nobody even liked in the first place.

Because there are fourteen Servants involved in this spinoff (not counting Jeanne, as she's supposed to be neutral), we had to cut this part down to a few of Servants of note, either because of oddities or memetic contributions;

• Saber of Red - Mordred. Just like her "father", Mordred is a genderbent version of her traditional interpretation. She and her master (a bounty hunting necromancer who uses a shotgun that shoots fingers as slugshots) operate independently from the rest of the Red Faction and serve as the protagonists from their faction. She was supposed to remain male during development, but since she would have debuted alongside Astolfo below and putting one femboy too many, something had to give. F/GO finally lets her meet with dear old "dad" (multiple versions of her no less), to Artoria's disdain whether it was due to the whole shebang at Camlann or Mordred stealing things from the treasury again.
• Rider of Black - Astolfo. One of Charlemagne's Paladins and a complete trap. His master really likes to force herself on him, to his chagrin. Takes a liking to Sieg and helps him escape the Yggdmillenia manor. Astolfo's popularity is such that not only is he now the effective face for the term "femboy", he has all but erased the traditional character from the Matter of France from the face of the internet.
• Assassin of Red - Semiramis, The Wise Queen of Assyria. Is the loyal second in command of the Red Faction, having been summoned by Shirou Kotomine as his personal Servant. Her Noble Phantasm, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, is a literal flying fortress that functions as the Red Faction's base of operations. While Servants can be summoned in other Classes if their legends allow it, Semiramis is unique in that she's one of the few Servants who can genuinely Multiclass as is, both as an Assassin and a Caster in her case, which is a good thing for the Red Faction as their actual Caster, William Shakespeare himself, is completely useless both due to bad storywriting and personal choice.

Other Characters:

• Sieg - A formerly nameless homunculus from the Black Faction who managed to escape from his stasis tube before being harvested. When attempting to stumble out of the complex, Astolfo takes pity on him and helps him escape. Ultimately, one of the masters from Yggdmillenia finds him and accidentally destroys his heart with a magically charged punch, prompting Saber of Black/Siegfried to transplant his own heart into the dying homunculus. This, naturally, grants him immediate strength and revitalizes Sieg, altering his projected standard lifespan of 3 years to just under 100 and giving him the ability to transform into Siegfried for 3 minutes at the cost of a Command Spell. This character receives a fair amount of (justifiable) hate due to his non-existent personality and the sheer number of abilities and skills just piled on him simply from the virtue of being in the right place at the right time. Jeanne also inexplicably develops a crush on him halfway through the series.
• Jeanne d'Arc - Token Saber-face of the show (alongside Mordred), Jeanne is the Ruler-class servant summoned by the Grail to oversee the Great Grail War and as it's impartial judge which she... only kind of does. For the first half of the story she attempts to remain impartial and she does (temporarily) unite servants from both factions against a greater threat. But, between her growing attachment for Sieg and revelations about Shirou Kotomine's true nature result in her effectively siding with the Black Faction.
• Shirou Kotomine - Despite his stage name, Shirou is not related to the Fate/Stay Night Shirou or Kotomine in any way. A representative of the Church and commander of the Red Faction, Shirou usurps control of all the Red Faction servants from their respective masters (except Mordred and her Master, due to them wisely suspecting Shirou having ulterior motives). Is effectively the main antagonist of Apocrypha. His true identity is Ruler Amakusa Shirou, rebel leader and the apocryphal patron saint of Japanese Catholics, summoned in lieu of Avenger during the third Grail War and managed to persist after it. That Shirou was summoned "first" also results in Jeanne's power taking a hit.

Fate/Apocrypha only "introduced" one new Servant Class, but since it was hinted at in previous entries, it is no less important;

• Ruler: Rulers are an unusual class of servant that are typically supposed to serve as unbiased mediators on the Grail's behalf. Servants of this class tend to be extraordinarily strong willed or have particularly divine providence, usually from God Himself. As avatars of the Grail's authority, Ruler servants are granted full autonomy and their own selection of Command Spells in order to compel any and all Servants summoned by the Grail when they deem it necessary. In F/GO, their authority over the standard servant classes is represented by a near universal defensive advantage against all non-Extra or Berserker classes. They are also vulnerable to Avengers and have full advantage over Moon Cancer servants. This is generally balanced out by the relative Ruler servants not being particularly offensive in nature, but that doesn't stop some of them from becoming Critical-Hit monsters. Aside from Jeanne and Amakusa above, notable Ruler class servants include Saint Martha and Sherlock Holmes.

Fate/Prototype

As the name sort of implies, this was the "rough draft" of what eventually evolved into Fate/Stay Night. Though his more popular female incarnation is the face of the franchise as a whole, King Arthur is still very much a guy in the Prototype timeline, having been summoned in that timeline's second Holy Grail War by a young female mage (who was replaced by Shirou). Many of the characters are either earlier versions of the servants who appear in Fate/Stay Night or fill the same roles as the ones who were made to replace them, but there are some relatively prominent exceptions in both the plot and cast. No complete version of Prototype has been created, as Nasu doesn't feel particularly interested in revitalizing the original story himself.

Beyond personality differences, the only real changes to the servants involved are Gilgamesh becoming Prototype's Archer and Perseus replacing Medusa as Rider.

Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Sky Silver

A prequel series to Fate/Prototype (you know, despite Prototype itself being incomplete) written by Hikaru Sakurai, Fragments of Sky Silver is a collection of volumes, each focusing on various characters during the events of the First Holy Grail War (of Prototype's timeline). In a parallel to Fate/Zero and Fate/Stay Night, King Arthur is also present as the summoned Saber in the prequel as well. Fragments of Sky Silver is notable in that Nasu has virtually no involvement with the story, only offering minor story elements and input on the servants (who, unlike Prototype's relationship with Stay Night, vary much more aside from Arthur/Artoria and a Hassan being involved).

Fate/Grand Order

Much like Fate/Apocrypha, Grand Order takes place in a timeline that diverged from the one showed in Stay Night. where Marisbury Animusphere wins the 2004 Grail War, thanks to him summoning a Grand Caster. Instead of pursuing the Root as other Mages would, Marisbury would instead wish for the influence, prestige, and most importantly, the money to found the means to secure Mankind's future. By 2018, this would become the Chaldea Security Organization, a gathering of the best of scientific and magical minds, which would go on to create a much more practical Servant summoning system, as well as the Rayshift, a means of time-traveling that would allow Chaldea to investigate temporal anomalies that could possibly negatively influence the present.

Which is a good thing, as things soon go to Hell in a handbasket, and Chaldea has to scramble against an unknown attacker that seems hell-bent on making sure Humanity's history literally gets burnt to a cinder, all related to an obtuse prophecy that the world would end by 2016.

The series is infamous for the sheer amount of Skub it engenders, primarily due to its Gacha nature (in itself already infuriating, as randomness mixed with real money is never a good mix), as well as the fact that, since Nasu himself is writing the scenarios, everything else in the Nasuverse -- especially the promised Tsukihime remake -- have been on the backburners for an extensive period of time. With the recent Tsukihime remake finally being officially revealed/announced, it seems he's finally freed up enough to get some progress done.

On the flipside, it also fleshes out many aspects of the Nasuverse cosmology that would otherwise not been given focus outside of obscure background material. These can be pretty low-key revelations, to outright gonzo additions to the lore (the Greek Pantheon? Terraforming spaceships from another reality trying to recreate their makers' culture; the Aztec Gods? Space alien bacteria symbiotes leaping from host to host the Mezo-Americans started to worship).

The game has also shown just what could be done with the Servant summoning system, pushing things to the absolute limit on just what kind of "Hero" can be summoned (up to and including theoretical existences like fictional characters such as the Count of Monte Cristo), as well as introducing all sorts of summoning-related shenanigans like "twin summoning" (summon a Hero? You also get a chance at summoning their arch-nemesis for free!), "chain summoning" (summon Altera the Hun? If you have the mana to spare, you can THEN use her sword to summon Mars as a gigantic Mecha as well!), and the infamous self-summon (a dying Gilgamesh summons his Archer self using his body as a catalyst).

Currently, there are two main parts of the story (with a third currently in development), with two aside/interlude components.

Part 1: CHALDEAS determines, with absolute certainty, that a series of singularities that have appeared throughout human history will cause the complete destruction of humanity by the end of the year 2016. Though they had dozens of highly skilled masters set to counter these singularities, nearly all of them were slain due to sabotage on part of Lev; an agent who had been working from within CHALDEAS on behalf of the big bad responsible for the singularities. This left Ritsuka Fujimaru (Player) as the only remaining Master able to form contracts with and summon servants to combat the singularities. After forming a contract with Mash, the two embark to eradicate Solomon's (a Grand Caster and the architect behind the) Singularities to restore human history.

Part 1.5: This is an optional series of "Pseudo-Singularities" and can be skipped. Following the defeat of Solomon, a wide variety of organizations, such as the Mages' Association and the U.N. intend to investigate CHALDEAS due to their rayshifting technology and having tampered with the timeline (despite the fact that it, you know, saved humanity). During this process, a series of Sub-Singularities crop up. Though these singularities don't run the risk of annihilating the human race if left unchecked, CHALDEAS still dispatches Ritsuka to them to prevent them from causing lasting harm.

Part 2: Due to the untimely loss of director(s) Marisbury and Olga Animusphere as well as acting director Romani Archaman during the course of Part 1, Goredolf Musik is dispatched by the Mages' Association to take over as CHALDEAS' new director. However, various agents accompanying him used his takeover as cover to infiltrate and destroy CHALDEAS from within, paving the way for the Alien God (the new big-bad) and it's seven Crypters to descend upon the earth and utterly bleach it of all life. Ritsuka, Mash, Goredolf and a select rag-tag group of CHALDEAS survivors manage to avoid the bleaching by diving into "Imaginary Space" (functionally the Warp). When they return, they discover not only has the Earth been reduced to a white marble, but seven new singularity-like phenomena have taken root on the surface. Known as Lostbelts, each of these singularities alternate realities; specifically historically dead-end realities where humanity has ceased to develop or advance. Guarded by a Crypter, formerly members of CHALDEAS' elite team of masters who anti-climactically died during the very first attack on CHALDEAS, each Lostbelt risks supplanting Proper-Human history if allowed to grow strong enough. Thus, Ritsuka and the remaining members of CHALDEAS, now dubbed Chaldea (this is important, apparently) set out to prevent the erasure of humanities "true" timeline.

Part 2.5: Having finally collapsed the final Lostbelt, the remaining members of Chaldea are guided to return to the original CHALDEAS base in the Antarctic. Only to find they cannot enter it. As it turns out, Proper-Human History itself now identifies the crew of Chaldea as foreigners and is barring their access to "ground zero" of the bleaching. This is, in no small part, due to all the various foreign-sourced upgrades the crew made to their ship and the judicious use of extra-class servants Ritsuka had been summoning/commanding. Due to this, Chaldea must travel to a few focal points to, for lack of a better word (for now), recalibrate themselves so that Proper-Human History can recognize them once more. This part is currently ongoing.

Though the earlier works had rather basic storylines and characters, as F/GO began gathering traction, the writing has generally improved for much of the story and a notable jump in character design and animation quality has been implemented as time has gone on. It's good they're reinvesting their ludicrous profits, at least.

It's a very Love It or Hate It type of game, made worse by the fact that it's the most lucrative entry of the franchise, raking in billions per year. Yikes. Has produced two TV anime so far, as well as a movie. It also introduced the latest three servant classes to the franchise thus far;

• Shielder: For Heroic Spirits known for their well... Shields. Is the servant class of one Mashu Martha Matthew Mashpotatoes Eggplant Mash Kyrielight, a human merged with the spirit of one such Servant, gaining access to their powers and becoming a demi-servant in the process. She serves as your number two throughout the game. As far as her gameplay mechanics go, she is the only servant who takes/deals neutral damage to all other servant classes across the board. Befitting her class title, she's also only particularly adept at defense, using her skills to reduce, negate or redirect incoming damage.
• Foreigner: Move over Gilles, this is for servants with actual (in-universe) contacts to the Cthulhu Mythos, granting access to the powers of whatever entity they contacted, or they're literally out of this world (as with the case of the Voyager probe). Contrary to what you'd expect, servants in this category are quite sane, either by consuming the madness that would normally follow or overcoming it entirely, giving them a proper advantage against the normally-insane Berserkers. A rather interesting handful of characters have fallen into this category, including Abigail Williams and a rather... loose interpretation of Van Gogh.
• Pretender: One of the rarest servant classes. Pretender class servants are individuals who achieved fame and glory for the heroics they performed while posing as a completely different individual. Not to be confused with masked, disguised or anonymous individuals, these are people who quite literally assumed a completely different identity to perform their deeds under. There are extraordinarily few members of this class, nominally Oberon-Vortigern (Vortigern of Arthurian fame assuming Oberon of A Midsummer Night's Dream's identity in a faerie-infested Britain) and Hephaestion-Mnemosyne (fictitious twin sister of the real Hephaestion, corrupted with a program Chaldea whipped up). Fate/Prototype's Merlin (here the one who got genderswapped instead of Arthur) also artificially changed her Spirit Origin into that of a Pretender and went by the alias of Lady Avalon. Mechanically, these guys function as the inverse of Alter-Egos; they deal bonus damage to the knight classes and less damage against the cavalry classes. They also complete a new advantage triangle; they gain full advantage over Alter-Egos and are fully weak against Foreigners.
• Beast: A surprise, to be sure, but now a genuinely summon-able class. These are extraordinarily powerful calamities that threaten total extinction upon the human race, if not just the complete destruction of the world. Beasts are the "Evils of Humanity" and as such are all formed from aspects of humanities vices (not too dissimilarly from a few other entities from a certain other universe). Usually, in an ironic twist, Beast candidates can only truly manifest as the genuine article out of a place of "love for humanity", though their interpretation is usually... extremely skewed, obsessive or blatantly delusional. In fairly typical Nasuverse fashion, though there are only seven catagories of Beast, there can be numerous entities within the same category (For example, there are two Beast III's, III/L and III/R, and at least four Beast VI's, VI/L, VI/R, VI/S and VI/G). Most of the Beasts or Beast Candidates are unknown, but notable known examples include Goetia (responsible for the entirety of Part I of F/GO), Cath Palug (Also known as Fou, F/GO's squirrel-dog mascot), Tiamat and the Alien God. For the one example (currently) available, summonable Beasts have true advantage against all of the standard servant classes, though they are ineffective against all extra class servants.

Grand-Class Servants: You might've noticed near the top of this entry that Marisbury Animusphere summoned a Grand Caster and might ask yourself "what the fuck is that?" As it turns out, the Holy Grail Wars use a dollar-store knockoff of a summoning ritual used by Alaya in order to summon Grand servants; Servants who represent the best of the best that Humanity has to offer summoned forth to fight against threats to the entire human race (Beasts). There are only ever seven Grand Class Servants at any given time, one for each of the standard servant classes. Due to them functioning as the ultimate pinnacle of their class, their stats are jacked up so high that normal Servants are considered "cheap imitations" and are basically what normal humans would be to a regular Servant. Under normal circumstances, it's impossible to summon Grand Servants; the sheer mana required alone is far and above what even the most skilled mages can ever bring to bear. In most cases, if one does manage to summon a Grand Servant outside the normal requirements, they're usually massively nerfed or otherwise handicapped to compensate. Said revalation also explains why Casters and Assassins get the short end of the stick in a Grail War; it's effectively a PvE system that has been poorly butchered to fit PvP, and Casters and Assassins are supposed to be running support or hitting priority targets while the other frontline classes wreck face.

Grand Servants are fully intended to be impartial defenders of mankind and while they fill that role, they stand truly beyond compare. However, should a Grand Servant decide to aid a particular individual or organization, they must forfeit their rank as a Grand Servant. Upon doing so, they can temporarily bring their full, Grand-Ranked might to bear against a foe, though they will thereafter degrade into a "normal" servant. If they do this, they also seem to permanently forfeit their right to the title and the position will be left open for a new candidate.

Grand Saber: Unknown

Grand Archer: Open, formerly held by Orion of Greek mythology. Gave up his rank to help Chaldea shoot down a massive mech version of Artemis from orbit.

Grand Lancer: Open, formerly held by Romulus-Quirinus. Gave up his rank to help Chaldea defeat a mech version of Zeus and to stop a planet-sized version of Chaos (from Greek Mythology) from transporting to the LostBelt they were in.

Grand Caster: Held by Merlin. Formerly held by Solomon, who effectively deleted himself from existence to stop Goetia from incinerating humanity. Notable other candidates include Gilgamesh and Merlin (the female Fate/Prototype version).

Grand Rider: Held by Noah, of biblical fame.

Grand Assassin: Held by Tezcatlipoca. Formerly held by Hassan-i Sabbah (the first one). Gave up his rank to instill the concept of death into the goddess Tiamat so that Chaldea could defeat her.

Grand Berserker: Would have been occupied by Tezcatlipoca if he didn't end up occupying the open position to Grand Assassin.

Other Works

Mahoyo

An example of a still from Mahoyo. Pretty, right? Now think about how long it would take to make an entire visual novel where all the art is stills of this quality.

"Witch on the Holy Night," abbreviated Mahoyo from the Japanese title Mahoutsukai no Yoru, is unofficially the first Nasuverse work (unreleased due to various reasons) and one of the last visual novels written by Nasu with art by Takeuchi. It follows Aozaki Aoko's life as a magician before Shiki met her in Tsukihime.

It's notable for eschewing traditional VN practice of depicting characters with slightly-animated portraits, preferring to show everything with individually drawn stills. This makes it very pretty, but virtually nothing can be reused, so it's a big expense in both time and money, leading to infamous delays in its production, enormous art costs, zero voiced dialogue (suicide for a VN released in 2012), and the decision to split it into three parts. The first of these three is all we had, as its financial failure most likely convinced TYPE-MOON to focus on the safe bet of licensing Fate for the foreseeable future, and probably why it took until 2022 for an official English translation (among other languages) to be announced, finally seeing the light of day in December 2022. Whether the trilogy will continue as originally planned is anyone's guess.

Angel Notes

Notes humanity is pretty out there.

Also known as Angel Notes, it is the second-oldest official Nasuverse work but is set in the far future. Earth/Gaia is suffering a spiritual death at the hands of human war and pollution. Humanity itself only survived by bioengineering to survive in the hostile environment. Enraged that the beings that killed her continue to live on her soon-to-be corpse, Gaia released into what was left of the atmosphere a lethal discharge of Mana, killing large swathes of humanity and mutating the flora and fauna into aberrations that would make a Death World proud. The surviving humans responded by bioengineering themselves AGAIN into monsters beyond Gaia's monsters. In response, Gaia's dying breath was a call to the Ultimate Ones to finish the job. The main story follows the last days of the last unmodified human (and thus the only one capable of wielding a God-Killing Gun), where he finds himself sharing an apartment with an incarnation of Type Venus that he 'killed' five years ago.

Many other Nasu works, particularly Prisma Illya, reference Notes as a possible bad end for their future. The infamous God-killing gun, the Black Barrel itself, was alluded multiple times in other works, but only returns to mainstream consciousness almost twenty years later in Fate/Grand Order, as an upgrade to Mash Kyrielight's Ortinax shield.

The idea of the Ultimate Ones, particularly Type-ORT, being considered as impossibly-powerful and looming threats across the franchise, also originate in Notes, but much like the Black Barrel mentioned above, the true scale of just how unbelievably BROKEN they were came into play in Fate/Grand Order, where players were finally able to come face-to-face against ORT (or a version of ORT anyway)... And let's just say that the reputation is merited. Do note, however, that ORT itself isn't mentioned in Notes, presumably because he was so weak in comparison to the others that his defeat wasn't even noteworthy.

Carnival Phantasm

Carnival Phantasm is the obligatory comedy cross-over that all long-running Japanese series have to do at least once. It is very silly and is regarded with more or less universal praise.

That is to say, this is a 12 episodes anime worth of jokes. For the initial episodes it takes from the Take-Moon manga, but later episodes have the show's official content, with somewhat different tone and humour. Whether you like the simple gags at the start or the complicated ones later, you'll probably enjoy Carnival Phantasm more the more of the other stuff you've read.

Sort of received a sequel series named Fate/Grand Carnival which, as you can guess, focuses mainly on Fate/Grand Order what with both Tsukihime and Kara no Kyoukai fading from public consciousness.

Nasuverse and /tg/

Lies.

This article is largely here, because the entire setting has something of a tabletop game logic to it. Characters have their strengths expressed with stats, which almost sound like they make sense to somebody somewhere. Magi have Magic Circuits and lineage. Servants in Fate have an entire statted out character sheet, parts of which unlock as you read the novel. Indeed a week does not pass on /tg/ without some genius starting a thread about his 21 player transdimensional Holy Grail War played by post on Furaffinity.

The problem with such prospects is primarily the author's writing style, which is, for lack of a better term, very self-subversive. Nasu likes to create expectations within the reader and then go against them by introducing exceptions to the rules in the middle of action to have the underdog win. The character sheets are a part of this, meant to hype up a character by making them do something that the 'rules' previously said was impossible. While there is really nothing wrong with this, and it actually works pretty well and isn't done constantly, it happens often enough to make the whole system part of it laughable. It is also the root of many powerlevel discussions, as the exact dimensions of what a weapon or ability are capable of doing are put into question.

But how DO I run a game in the Nasuverse?
- Exalted, if you're just doing servants.
- Mutants & Masterminds (the brokenness is a part of the charm).
- Something very universal, like GURPS, if you insist on balance, a ridiculous notion in the setting.
- Heavily modified WoD, especially for Tsuki-Side. Kara no Kyoukai is really just a game of Mage.
- The FATE System's heavily narrative slant actually works pretty damn well, and the Dresden Files RPG has a similar urban fantasy flavor.
- Or, you know, homebrew something. There have been a few attempts at making a system, but scarcely presentable enough to share officially.

Keep in mind that a Holy Grail War means two characters for every Servant and their Master, meaning that a game that's merely of FSN scope would consist of 14 characters that all have to be statted out. Even if every player controls two characters, a 7-player battle royale is something most GMs will find near impossible to run. You may want to consider the players instead being an alliance of two masters and their servants, and NPCing the rest. Which is what most of the well-received installments of the series do anyway.

So, Statistics

Much like on a D&D character sheet, each Servant will have a recognizable stat array, with a rank going from E to Ex. Do not let this fool you, as they only relate how a Servant measures up in that stat against other Servants, and not when matched up against mere mortals. Its pointed out through all settings that a Servant can have a Strength score of D, and yet still be ten times more powerful than a master-level martial artist.

Having a score of E however means that, barring the supernatural shenanigans that a Servant can do (like going invisible via their Spirit Form), they're no stronger than a regular human. Alexandre Dumas the Elder (summoned as a Caster in Strange/Fake) has gone to say that his own master could flatten him in a straight brawl.

There is an obvious pattern as far as Stats go, in that the further back in history a hero originates, the higher their stats will be, with heroes originating from the time of Myth and the Gods pretty much being broken compared to more "modern" heroes. Hence while heroes like Gilgamesh or Heracles will always be much more impressive, both in stats AND abilities, compared to, say, William Tell and Spartacus.

Another obvious pattern is that stats are kinda bullshit. Fate/stay night's Saber has excellent stats and yet is defeated by an ordinary human whose fists were magically strengthened (like D&D ghosts, Servants tend to disregard nonmagical attacks) with a fancy fighting style. Heracles's passive Noble Phantasm nullifies all attacks that are "below A-rank", but you can just compensate for B-rank strength with superior skill or a fancy weapon. In general, stats are more akin to fluff that takes a backseat to the story the writer wants to tell, especially considering the nigh-omnipresence of Noble Phantasms that are true trump cards with wacky effects capable of bypassing whatever advantages the other side might have on paper.

A Special Note about Alignment in Nasuverse entries

Being influenced by tabletop gaming as it is, Alignments also exist in the Nasuverse, though literally in this case for FATE as often this appears in the summoned Servants' actual stats. Objectively, it's similar to the Alignment array one would find in D&D, and at first glance represents the Servant's personality and motivations. Hence we have canonically-statted Lawful Good and Chaotic Evil Servants.

In practice however, as shown by Archer Gilgamesh, who was listed as Neutral Good despite being such a prideful and selfish asshole (to be put mildly), it has rightfully caused all amount of Skub especially among Western Neckbeards. This is because, while Alignments seem to have been ported whole-sale from D&D, they're not treated the same way. Some Alignments may persist even if a Servant gets extra characterization that runs against it.

It would be best to consider a Servant's alignment entry as a combination of two traits rather than the single entry that D&D players are used to. So if someone is Lawful Good, they're actually Lawful PLUS Good, and even then these are tendencies rather than rigid guidelines.

This is the reason, for example, why we have a very personable and downright goofy Edward Teach/Blackbeard -- he has little respect for traditional societal structures (Chaotic), and in many circumstances can be downright violent and ruthless in his methods in getting things done (Evil), he wouldn't go out of his way to cause a ruckus as expected of a "traditional" Chaotic Evil badguy for shits and giggles as per the Western alignment definition, and in actuality is a chill and cordial goof who would rather spend his free time either gawking at under-aged girls or building gunpla.

Mind you, there are still. characters that play this absolutely straight (like Artoria/Altria and her Knights of the Round Table), however as one Singularity in FGO demonstrates this doesn't necessarily mean that they're NICE about it.

Some argue that the easiest way of squaring this circle is to take the alignments as less an objective description, and more "how the Servant describes themselves". Further, it doesn't take into account assholery. So, Gilgamesh is "Good" because he defines himself as good, while Blackbeard is "Evil" because he's a criminal through and through, but he's a fairly low-key person as long as money or things he needs aren't involved. Whether this is an accurate method of handling Nasu's alignments is a matter of debate, obviously.

Of course, the franchise also makes fun of the concept, especially during in-game seasonal events (hence the appearance of joke alignments like Chaotic Summer or Neutral Balanced)

So, This is Basically World of Darkness, Right?

Maybe. Nasu has confessed to being inspired by tabletops, but never directly by WoD. However, consider the following line of thought:
- The number six has deep eschatological implications in the nasuverse. There's the Dark Six in Tsukihime 2, the totally entirely unrelated Six Sisters in Notes, the Beast VI being literal biblical Beast of Revelation in Fate/Prototype, The Sixth (which is most likely just the time of Crimson Moon's return) in Tsukihime, and finally the Six True Magics. But wait, you say, we have never heard of a Sixth True Magic, right?
- Mahoyo says that theoretically this is possible, if one more person would just reach the Root and manage to come back, it's just never happened. Furthermore, it says that magi in general like them up to the Third, the Fourth is weird, and the appearance of the Fifth is bad.
- In Notes, The Six Sisters are each a wielder of True Magic. Since there can only be a single owner of a True Magic at a time, it follows that in the world of Notes, there are six. Furthermore, the sisters are distinct from each other - the youngest has died fighting the Types.
- The youngest sister's name is stated to be Judgement.
- In Mage: the Ascension, Judgement is the name of the theoretical Tenth Sphere, which...
- Sound familiar?

Gallery

• 

  The cast of Heroic Spirits from Fate/Stay Night. From left to right: Archer, Berserker, Saber, True Assassin, Assassin, Rider, Lancer, and the Archer from the previous Grail War.

• 

  Zero's Heroic Spirits. From top to bottom, left to right: Assassin, Archer, Lancer, Caster, Rider, Saber, and Berserker.

• 

  The new design for Arcueid from a Tsukihime Remake promo. The least popular of the designs due to the changes to her hair and skirt.

• 

  New designs for Ciel and Akiha. Opinions are mixed about these.

• 

  New designs for the maids, Hisui and Kohaku. They got changed the least.

Further Reading

One article can't remotely begin to cover everything Nasuverse related. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your opinion), there's a whole nother wiki [[1]] for you to wade through if you care to (including the stuff we had to excise). Spoilers abound, so be cautious.