Editing Nasuverse (section)

=== 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 [[What|''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... [[Shield]]s. Is the servant class of one <s>[[Skub|Mashu Martha Matthew]] [[Lulz|Mashpotatoes Eggplant]]</s> 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]], [[Possessed|granting access to the powers of]] [[Daemonhost|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 [[Chaos Gods|a few other entities]] from [[Warhammer 40,000|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.