Saber - Lityerses
Appearance
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/861806078681118171/ Image Source
https://www.pinterest.com/silentfalcon2413/_saved/ Image Author
Equipment
https://www.reddit.com/r/Blacksmith/...ed_getodacian/ Image Source
https://www.reddit.com/user/BrungardtBlade-Tool/ Image Author
Characteristics
Other Qualified Classes: Lancer, Assassin
Gender: Male
Height / Weight: 165 cm / 59 kg
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Home: Ancient Greece
Origin: The Legend of Heracles
Equipment: His sword
Personal Information
Attribute: Earth
Likes: Fishing, The Laws of Nature, a moment of quiet
Dislikes: Excessive noise, The consumption based nature of modern world, Wasting time
Talents: Farming
Natural Enemy: Nikola Tesla, Benjamin Holt
Lore
The illegitimate son of Midas to Demeter, he was renowned as a capable swordsman. Yet he had developed from a young age a mindset unfitting for a human and thus was cast out by his father and would work fields he had been given by Midas. He would regularly challenge anyone who passed by his fields, like an animal defending its territory to a competition to see who could harvest a square of his land faster. Those he would kill would have their heads cut off with his sword and their bodies stored in the crops. He would then later go back to use their bodies as fertilizer to feed his fields.
One day he saw a particularly powerful traveler and challenged him, but with a few sweeps of his sword he cut the entire field and in return he slayed the brutal swordsman and then cast his body into the nearby river. To lityerses this day was the end of his life, to Heracles it was just any other afternoon. However even after his death if in some form of mockery or begrudging respect farmers in Phygiria would sing a song of harvest. Perhaps the song was sung in the hopes for a good harvest which Lityerses' field, soaked with the blood of men enjoyed, or perhaps in prayer to be granted his speed to ease their burden of the harvest season.
Personality
A man seemingly with no care for morals or rules, and has only any obligation for the laws and rules of the world. Those who survive are strong, the strong feed off the weak as is their right, the weak serve the strong and feed off those weaker than them, the weakest meek out whatever existence they can. When the strong die their blood feeds the soil and the other, both weak and strong. That which belongs to Saber is his, and those who would challenge that he must fight, those that lose those fights are to be killed. That is merely the matter of things and the rule of the world.
In this way it may be this inhuman way of thinking that saw King Midas cast his illegitimate son out. To his master Saber does not object to anything, he was weak and summoned by them, they were strong and possess the proof of that strength over him (their command seals), he is their to use to their will and content. If questioned about his life Saber will not hesitate to claim he would have no will to redo or change anything, those he challenged and crossed his paths, his land challenged his territory and when found weak paid the price. When Heracles did the same and won, he was proven weak and thus paid the price, to him these things are only natural and he has little reason to protest or complain.
If attempted to be lectured about human society, morals, laws conduct and such while he may listen it is very hard to say if Saber will understand any of it (he is more likely to just be confused), or care enough to put effort into changing his behavior unless ordered. Even if this were ordered the only reason he would do so is because it was ordered and not for any reasons related to belief in what was taught or told.To him civilizations grow and perish like barley before the eyes of the harvest star (a being he refers to as “that which would cull the gods), and as such their rules are but formality, the only true laws are those of the land which have existed and shall exist until the world’s demise. In this regard his own life and the very existence of heroic spirits is confusing to Saber, the harvest star proclaims the truth of the fleeting nature of life, a truth his own mother reinforces as a mother earth goddess.
Thus the existence of a place where the lives of former beings would be recorded is strange, and just as equally odd as the idea of history or honoring those in the past. Life in Saber’s minds isn’t special. Life comes and goes so frequently and there are so many different gods, goddesses, and humans that really they are all interchangeable to Saber. Why bother to care for any of them or remember any of them when they all are doomed to die in the end? Is it truly wise to care about what these people have done with their lives over what you are going to do with your own?
Relationships/Topics
Heracles: You won, I lost; You lived, I died. That’s all there is to it.
Benjamin Holt: Lazy Sod.
Elizabeth Bathory: Please shut up.
The Fall of the Roman Empire: So that’s how it all ended? Was bound to happen sooner or later.
The Grand Order: Why bother? It's all going to end sooner or later.
Then why the heck did you let yourself be summoned to save the world!?: I was bored. By the way, from now on stupid questions cost a gold peice, or whatever your equivalent is.
Parameters:
Strength – B+
Endurance – C
Agility – B
Mana – C
Luck – D
Noble Phantasm – C+
Class Skills
Magic Resistance [C]- As a warrior active in the age of the gods and the child of a divine spirit Saber has magic resistance of an average rank. At this rank Saber is able to negate spells of up to below 2 verse, at this level this skill offers no protection from greater rituals.
Riding [D]- Due to having rarely if ever ridden beasts Saber only has this skill at an exceptionally low rank. In practice compared to modern humans his skill with riding an animal would be average at best.
Personal Skills
Manslayer [B]- As one who routinely fought and killed men with the same ease that he would plow or harvest field it is only logical that Saber would possess this skill. In effect the damage dealt against human or humanoid foes is increased and Saber has an advantage in checks against them during combat.
Divinity [C+]- Proof of Saber’s status as the child of Demeter, he enjoys a moderate amount of favour among spirits including divine spirits, although this is higher than normal when it comes to mother earth goddesses and deities of war.
Bounty of the Earth [B]- A skill denoting Saber’s status as a child of Demeter and his connection with the earth in both the sense of his lifestyle, actions, and way of thinking. Due to this connection with the earth at a fundamental level and due to the abilities of his mother Saber is remarkable at recycling and making the most of mana, he is able to recharge himself with the earth’s mana and able to effectively get more use out of his mana than normal. If he were compared to a car then, Saber would have only average fuel capacity, but remarkable fuel efficiency, effectively making it so that his Mana ranking is remarkably deceptive.
Noble Phantasm
Song of the Harvest, May the fields be stained red with Blood - C+
A noble phantasm replicating Saber’s role in myth, be it man or beast those who find themselves before Lityerses are put before the sword. Saber launches a horizontal slash which in spite of appearances (as it is very hard to see) extends far forward cutting down anything before him (effectively a thin trail of blade-like mana extending from his sword across the entire range of his attack), with a single slash at their necks (or really anywhere he wants, but he prefers necks as decapitations tend to be instant kills).
This technique is noted to be a little strange as it is an ability which straddles the line of anti-unit to anti-army dependent on Saber’s choices. It is an attack which could be used against a fair number of foes at once, however as the range is variable to the length of the mana trail from the sword (plus the base length of the sword) it can have a range which would be normal of an anti-unit technique. Saber himself prefers to keep this technique toned down to the levels of an anti-unit technique as that costs less mana and while the range is far less than max (at max he can cut down an half acre square at once) *.
* .25 acres = 10890 square feet = a square with 104.355 feet on each side; Given the assumption that a horizontal slash can be at most 180 degrees (a semicircle [maybe a little more is possible, but this is the assumption I’m using here]) and r = 104.355, then the area he can cut down at once with a full horizontal slash is 17105.972 sq. feet
However striking such a large area would totally exhaust his mana, in preference he likes doubling the length of his sword and using this as either an opening move in combat or after having kicked an opponent onto their backs and at a slight range. Of note is that while this ability does deal more damage against humanoid foes, it is more useful for its speed and difficulty to detect (the blade is only 2 or 3 mm wide total), rather than raw damage potential. As such it would be best used as either a strike on a weak point, or a technique for dealing with foes with low endurance, that are already weakened, or as an assassination technique against humans or weak foes. This is not the technique of a master swordsman who would seek to slay beasts, it is the ability of a butcherer, one who excels at killing men.
Anti-Unit to Anti-Army
1 to 250 people
Dev Notes
The design of Saber was partially taken from Percy jackson where that was the reason I gave him swordsmanship. However, in lore I think it makes a bit of sense IRL ancient greece wasn’t always great and a fair few people may have gone hungry at times. As a result between animals and thieves I figure it would make sense for a farmer to know how to defend himself. Plus when you take into account the lore that was a “talented swordsman” and would specifically behead people, it makes sense that he would have to know how to use a sword (I don’t think it would be easy to behead a person with a scythe). I elected to give him a weapon based on a Falx as it could conceivably also be used as a farming tool (a smaller scythe for crops that grow lower to the ground (hold the top of the plant then cut near the base with the curved bit).
I considered giving him a Harpe sword (a normal gladius with a hook/sickle like protrusion on one side (which depending on the source it was either this or a scythe which Kronos used to cut up his dad [which he was also sometimes associated with the harvest and evil])), but I felt all of the images I saw made it look like the hook part would be a bit too small for practical use harvesting a field compared to a scythe or hooked blade and I wanted to give the iconography of a “deadly farming tool” kind of feel to his weapon. As a result, I leaned a bit towards the design of Harpe as seen from the Gate of Babylon which resembles a hook on a pole (like a Chinese hook sword, but with a pole-arm). However at this point I had already designed Saber’s NP and didn’t want to do it again, so I elected to want something a bit less hook-like for it to make sense. I then considered a combat scythe and reached a compromise with the idea of a curved sword, not quite a scythe or pole-arm that lancer would use, but definitely the kind of object a Saber class servant and a farmer might use.
As for the rest I leaned into the factor of the idea of the connection of the mother earth goddess to the cycle of life and death, which would partly explain his behavior (and the whole idea of using the dead as harvest was an idea sprung from me remembering how Native Americans would place bits of dead fish and their bones near where they would grow the crops of beans, squash and maize to help give the soil nutrients (although it does also have biblical parallels with the whole 30 silver pieces used to buy a potter field to bury foreigners)). After that I gave Saber a bit of a sense predator and prey mentality about life and the world and threw in a bit of touches of him being aware of the Sefar (at least passively) and due to being connected with the earth, fully aware of the fact that his era was dying and likely eventually the very gods and one day the very planet would pass away. This makes him someone who very much would live his own life outside of the care of what others think, I gave him a bit of snark and selfless, the kind of bluntness I would expect out of a gruff loner.
In terms of abilities Lityerses is really nothing special as a Saber (or a lancer for that matter) particularly for his era, but he does have a fairly good energy cost and efficiency for what he is. As an Assassin class servant Lityerses would be unusually competent in fighting servants (kinda like Assassin from Red Line) and despite being rather bad at actually concealing himself his NP and fighting skills would make him an above average member of their ranks if used properly.
Author’s Notes
Not much to say with this guy, he’s a bit of an obscure figure, serving as another footnote in the stories involving Heracles. I originally remember learning about the guy from reading one of the Percy Jackson books when I was younger and as I was browsing through that wiki for any ideas on monsters or characters for making the singularity came across him again. That was what inspired the idea of making him as a servant and before I took a short break to work on other stuff, publish the magus idea and singularity, refine and fix everything I ever wrote and such (grammer, formatting, cutting out one or two bits that I felt didn’t fit or was me projecting, etc.), and such. Then college started to kick up a storm as the end of semester approaches and between that and burnout writing servants I really couldn’t find the time or strength to finish him.
Either way let me know what you think about Saber (and as I mentioned before all of my posts (be they servants, magi, or the singularity) have been spell checked, formatted, and edited, so hopefully they are a little better now). If you have any questions or inquiries about Saber or anything in general shoot me a reply or a message and I will get back to you when I can.