Verse of the Twelve Children
Juu ni no Kodomo
"All right, class is in session. Writing, as with other means of communication, is filled with intent, be it to heal or to hurt. That said, the thing about writing is that there are countless ways to interpret them. A single stroke of the brush creates a thousand meanings, and that doesn't account for differences in culture, language, context, and more. Allow me to give you a demonstration... Verse of the Twelve Children; 'the child of a cat is a kitten, the child of a lion a cub''"
Type: Anti-Unit, Anti-Army
Rank: A
Range: 1-100
Max Targets: -
As a Councillor for the esteemed Emperor Saga, Caster made a number of powerful enemies within the royal court. One of them managed to trap him into committing a certain offense that turned the Emperor against him. Threatened with the death penalty, Caster begged the Emperor for a chance to prove his innocence. After much consideration, the Emperor came up with a challenge for the Councillor, drawing upon the latter's reputation as a poet and linguist. He asked the Councillor to read a row of twelve characters for "child" ("子子子子子子子子子子"), thinking that such a nonsensical string of characters could not be interpreted as a proper sentence. After some thought, Caster responded with "
neko no ko koneko, shishi no ko kojishi" ("
The child of a cat is a kitten, the child of a lion a cub"), using different variant readings of the singular character. The Emperor was so amused by this display that he declared Caster innocent and instead punished his enemy for raising false charges.
This Noble Phantasm represents Caster's conceptual ability to "reinterpret" and "redirect" things. In the originating incident, he reinterpreted each character to form a different meaning, and redirected the Emperor's hatred away from himself and into his enemy. Passively, this Noble Phantasm is integrated into Caster's magecraft, with arcane characters he wrote in his book physically manifesting in reality. Caster could manipulate these character strings freely, forming chains, projectiles, barriers, and more. Furthermore, barriers erected using these characters possess reflective properties, causing most long-range beams and projectiles to be reflected back to the attacker, or harmlessly slide off said barriers.
There are two additional effects usable by activating this Noble Phantasm's True Name. First of all, activating it simultaneously when another incantation (be it a simple spell or a Noble Phantasm activation chant) is being uttered immediately scrambles said incantation, as each character is reinterpreted, creating a whole different meaning. This naturally cancels the spell or Noble Phantasm performed, or in certain cases, causes them to horrifically backfire upon the caster. The caveat is that these incantations must be verbally and audibly uttered for this scrambling effect to work. It does not work on written text, nor does it work on spells or Noble Phantasms that does not require incantations to activate.
The second effect of this Noble Phantasm's True Name release allows Caster to take things one step further and distort "intent", and by extension "effect", similar to how he distorted a sentence containing a powerful intent for his death into a display of his skills. Simply put, it allows him to "focus" or "disperse" the target of other Skills and Noble Phantasms. For example, an Anti-Unit Noble Phantasm performed with the singular intent to kill him would have the intent behind it distorted (as simple as changing the meaning behind characters), dispersing its focus into a greater area of effect, and reducing the overall damage he receives. Conversely, by inverting the process, he could focus the intent behind an Anti-Army Noble Phantasm to hit a single target, considerably increasing its power. The mana cost to perform this effect depends on the Noble Phantasm in question, with the most powerful ones potentially draining him out of mana as he attempts to distort them.
The same effects can be applied for Skills, with him turning a crippling debuff into a much more tolerable inconvenience by dispersing it into a large area of effect, or allowing one individual to absorb a buff originally aimed at a single individual, greatly increasing the effectiveness of said buff.
In game terms, it turns AOE effects into single-target, and vice-verse.
Lord Enma's Book of Transgressions
Tsumi no Sho
"Sheesh, can't believe I have to take this out while I'm off-duty... Fine, hopefully Lord Enma wouldn't be too mad about this. Let's see if your name is in here somewhere..."
Type: Anti-Unit
Rank: D
Range: -
Max Targets: 1
A book belonging to the Hell-King Enma Daio, containing a list of sins of everyone who had ever died, used to help render his judgment. As one of Enma's closest helpers, who frequently helped him with rulings, Caster possesses a copy of this book as a Noble Phantasm. Normally, the book functions in a similar manner to
True Name Discernment, allowing Caster to deduce the identity of an enemy Servant through the "sins" that they have committed, or vice-versa (looking through these "sins" for a weakness to exploit upon finding out the opponent's True Name. Unsurprisingly, the one drawback of this Noble Phantasm is the sheer thickness of the book. Containing billions of names of everyone who had ever died, it could take hours for Caster to find one specific name, despite there being a certain categorizing system in place within the book. That said, he does have an easier time finding Japanese names compared to any other, as they are directly under Lord Enma- and by extension his- jurisdiction.
A second application of this Noble Phantasm allows Caster to "edit" these list of sins, to a certain extent. By highlighting certain sins over others, he could bestow affected individuals with new conceptual weaknesses, or further exploit existing ones. Lacking the full extent of Enma's authority, its effectiveness is limited. Furthermore, the more he utilizes this "editing" effect, the more he risks alerting Lord Enma, who would charge him with "
abuse of power perpetrated by an off-duty officer", temporarily decreasing his parameters by a significant amount.
"
See, it wouldn't be funny if I'm the one who ends up on the defendant's chair after everything that's happened! So let's use this sparingly, shall we?"
Originally Posted by Petrikow
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