Servant/Project Idea Thread, "The Womb"

[Kabalisto Koga]

Soooooo... yeah. I got a lot. Let's go about this one at a time. Now, how to meander about this...

So I had this notion of creating a Chinese singularity or lostbelt -- let the chips fall, for once -- around an obscure personage who may have lived until the advent of the An Lushan rebellion and was a subject of a poem by Du Fu. Her name was Gongsun Daniang, and like Tamamo-no-Mae and Suzuka Gozen, she was a court dancer, her specialty being the so-called sword dance, the performance of which may or may not have included an actual sword.

Anyway, my immediate inspiration for this was an NSFW work by someone called Heiqing Langjun (who may or may not Japanese, but that aside), who worked on the premise of Daniang slowly but surely dancing her way to eternal life and youth, through sheer effort, dedication, and luck, centuries after the rebellion (and presumably after the end of the Tang dynasty itself). In any case, my aim was to show that the An Lushan rebellion was a quantum-timelocked event -- Daniang's sword dance and her polishing and perfecting it was inadvertently her way too close to the Root, Alaya clamped down hard, a certain future Foreigner who lived during the same time as she did may or may not been collateral damage, and boom, timelock.

My biggest problem crafting this was the sheer obscurity of Gongsun Daniang herself -- apart from that poem, a rather slim attribution of a famous calligrapher's characters to her dancing, and the NSFW work itself, I could find no mentions of the very same in English. She'd most likely be a Saber with a Noble Phantasm touching upon her sword dance, only I have no idea whatsoever what her Skills should be, or what her Noble Phantasm should be like, given the paucity of the sources I could find.

Perhaps someone who knows any of the relevant Chinese varieties and is well-read in even marginalia within its literature will be of any help at all? I don't know.

Hm from wiki what i could see would skill wise a chinese martial art skill fitt at at least Rank B ,then as Dancer and especially as court dancer would a beauty or seduction related skill be fitting ,as she apparently was able spend many years un noticed would either espionage also fitt and it gives room for some own assumption of skills she may have acquired through the years so class wise Saber or Assassin respectively Forreigner if you want to mirror Yang Guifen .

That are my thoughts for this one as that idea has interesting potencial.

[Tabris]

Thinking of making a Caster class Srinivasa Ramanujan. But I'm struggling with this idea because MATHS. Anyone with ideas? I'll take anything.

As someone, ah, stupefied by the phenomenon who is Ramanujan himself, thinking about his applicability as a Servant... he's rather sedate, isn't he?

Which, I suppose, is another way of inquiring: Why not Galois? At least there's more to chew on, in terms of the guy's life outside of MATHS.

[Tabris]

Hm from wiki what i could see would skill wise a chinese martial art skill fitt at at least Rank B ,then as Dancer and especially as court dancer would a beauty or seduction related skill be fitting ,as she apparently was able spend many years un noticed would either espionage also fitt and it gives room for some own assumption of skills she may have acquired through the years so class wise Saber or Assassin respectively Forreigner if you want to mirror Yang Guifen .

That are my thoughts for this one as that idea has interesting potencial.

I have a few issues with this:

1. I think you're mistaking Gongsun for a Mata Hari. She was never a spy or anything remotely similar in her life; she was a dancer who, at least in this Fateverse, might've tapped into something that threatened the Human Order and so provoked the An Lushan rebellion with her dancing.
2. While maybe she'd fit the qualifications necessary to have Chinese Martial Arts as a Skill, unlike, say, Li Shuwen, Gongsun's not primarily a fighter, but a dancer, and that in the highly specific context of a prosperous pre-An Lushan Tang Chinese society, where Chinese tolerance for ideas coming from other realms, including, yes, dances from western and central Asia, was at its height. I don't quite know what to make of it myself.

[doncosaco]

Thinking of making a Caster class Srinivasa Ramanujan. But I'm struggling with this idea because MATHS. Anyone with ideas? I'll take anything.

Like DelRey, he's on my list, too. I'd like to avoid a lot of the "math mysticism" that gets associated with him, since that kind of stuff really annoys me. I envision him as religious but not overly superstitious. Above all, he is a discoverer of knowledge, seeing this as the highest pursuit that brings one closer to God. Things like magecraft are incomprehensible to him, but the goal of reaching the root is something he can understand. His wish for the grail would be that all humans be given the chance to fulfill their potential. However, he does not show too much interest in the Holy Grail War, preferring to spend the precious extra time he has been given to uncover more knowledge and prove many of the conjectures he left unproven.

He would be a purely support servant, one zero combat ability, but who can enhance other servants or even his master to the point of being able to combat other servants. Some ideas for skills:

Rigorization: This skills allows Ramanujan to convert a situation into formal mathematical statements from which, using his intuition, he can prove new statements and therefore gain new information that no one else would be find out. This can come across as similar to Sherlock Holmes' ability to gain information from deductive reasoning.

Universality of Mathematics: Any area of mathematics, no matter how abstract or esoteric, will eventually see some application to understanding the physical world and therefore be used to manipulate the physical world. This manifests as a skill for Ramanujan which allows him to enhance anything, from magecraft to Noble Phantasms.

Blessing of the Goddess: Ramanujan possesses a unique connection to the goddess who holds all knowledge. She blesses him with a special access to knowledge, giving him a capacity for intuition far beyond any normal human.

Summation to Infinity: An infinite series of finite objects may sum to form a finite object or an infinite object. Ramanujan can apply this in either direction. He may take a finite object, such as a Noble Phantasm, and temporarily decompose it into infinitely many objects possessing only infinitesimal power (rendering each individual object harmless until summed back together). On the other hand, he can also sum together many finite things, such as the magical output his master will produce over their lifetime, into a single summation which contains vast power.

For his Noble Phantasm, my thought was Ramanujan's Lost Notebook (which was actually discovered decades after his death). It contains hundreds of conjectures and equations which are left unproved. It would also be his catalyst. Using the notebook, Ramanujan can create an immensely strong bounded field, powered directly from his patron goddess. Use of the notebook, and therefore the ability to enter or exit the bounded field, requires that one contribute some knowledge to the notebook. This could be providing a new conjecture, solving a partial fraction problem, or proving one of the unproven conjectures or equations already in the notebook. Even if one has only basic mathematical knowledge, reasoning, or intuition, they can still solve one of the problems by brute force... but this may take several hours or even longer to do. Another reason that Ramanujan spends so much time working out new mathematics is so that he can have a stable of knowledge, allowing him to make use of his notebook practically at will.



Any mathematician is going to pretty pretty tough to make a sheet for, and Ramanujan is on the tougher side since his mathematical work in number theory is very esoteric even for most mathematicians. I definitely hate when mathematics in this way gets reduced to kind a "spell that shoots math equations at people" if that makes sense. So, I've tried to think of skills/abilities that represent the mathematical concepts rather than specific equations or theorems or anything like that.

[Tabris]

Ramanujan's mathematical contributions were primarily arrived at through intuition and inspiration rather than through anything resembling Western concepts of logical rigor; he would only become seriously acquainted with it through his work with G. H. Hardy in what would turn out to be the last six or seven years of his life.

Also, Universality of Mathematics seems like an untenable assumption of Ramanujan's lifework -- he was definitely far more of a pure mathematician in life.

[doncosaco]

Ramanujan's mathematical contributions were primarily arrived at through intuition and inspiration rather than through anything resembling Western concepts of logical rigor; he would only become seriously acquainted with it through his work with G. H. Hardy in what would turn out to be the last six or seven years of his life.

Also, Universality of Mathematics seems like an untenable assumption of Ramanujan's lifework -- he was definitely far more of a pure mathematician in life.

He might have used intuition and inspiration to get to his results, but he also would have rigorously proved them to ensure that they were indeed true. We're also talking about Ramanujan at his peak moment, which would have been just before he died. The rigorization skill is just a way for him to convert a situation into a mathematical statement so that he can use his mathematical intuition to get a result. This skill could be better called "Mathematical Intuition."

The Universality of Mathematics is more of a generic skill for mathematician servants. A mathematician's work, like that of an artist, extends beyond their lifetime as people develop it further and discover new uses for it, but still associate the new discoveries with the original mathematician. Because of that, the servant is given a skill that embodies the legacy of their work. If we're just thinking about Ramanujan's lifetime, we could replace this with a similar skill, "Friend of Integers," based on him being able to find interesting properties for almost any positive integer, like 1729. The skill could give him an analogous ability to find and unlock extra capabilities or strengths for NPs, spells, etc.

[DelRey]

As someone, ah, stupefied by the phenomenon who is Ramanujan himself, thinking about his applicability as a Servant... he's rather sedate, isn't he?

Which, I suppose, is another way of inquiring: Why not Galois? At least there's more to chew on, in terms of the guy's life outside of MATHS.

sometimes you just want to create a servant because you like their story, despite "better options"

doncosaco:
damn, your skills slap, I really like what you did here. I think if you make his personality shine as someone who loves math for it's beauty, he can be a very interesting entry for this months contest! Tho I agree with Tabris, that his ways of doing math was strange and really difficult for his time, his equations are still studied today and find use in very high concept things like black hole physics and all that stuff. His worth as a math genius only grows over time.

pleasantly surprised what interesting ideas are brought forth for a guy that liked numbers.

[Frigix]

Wow, everyone has such good ideas. I feel bad now, I'm in no way worthy of making Ramanujan. I thought a little bit about it and came with some ideas:

Adding some good old nasuverse lore juice in the sheet: making Ramanujan someone connected to the Root and as such he has special mystic eyes which enable him to see the world as MATHS. And because the truth (akasha) is linked to him, he instinctively knows the way to solve things. Even a random number can be used to solve/create things. His NP would be his ability to prove and reveal the truths about something, and as such he can solve "mysteries" and nullify them (employing it on Siegfried armor would destroy its mystery and make it unusable). I don't know if I'm using the nasuverse correctly but hey, I think it sounds pretty cool.

Also maybe a skill "Appreciation of Beauty (Numbers)" which makes Ramanujan someone who perceives the beauty of numbers. And because he sees the world as numbers, he can arrange the world to make the numbers "harmonious" and as such enhance their concepts. A sort of enhancing skill for support. I'm a bit unsure about this one.

But yeah, Ramanujan would really be a support servant that can't do much on its own.

[RoydGolden]

Wow, everyone has such good ideas. I feel bad now, I'm in no way worthy of making Ramanujan. I thought a little bit about it and came with some ideas:

Adding some good old nasuverse lore juice in the sheet: making Ramanujan someone connected to the Root and as such he has special mystic eyes which enable him to see the world as MATHS. And because the truth (akasha) is linked to him, he instinctively knows the way to solve things. Even a random number can be used to solve/create things. His NP would be his ability to prove and reveal the truths about something, and as such he can solve "mysteries" and nullify them (employing it on Siegfried armor would destroy its mystery and make it unusable). I don't know if I'm using the nasuverse correctly but hey, I think it sounds pretty cool.

Also maybe a skill "Appreciation of Beauty (Numbers)" which makes Ramanujan someone who perceives the beauty of numbers. And because he sees the world as numbers, he can arrange the world to make the numbers "harmonious" and as such enhance their concepts. A sort of enhancing skill for support. I'm a bit unsure about this one.

But yeah, Ramanujan would really be a support servant that can't do much on its own.

Those Mystic Eyes remind me of an idea I had for an OC once. Maybe he could even mess with Magecraft by perceiving spells as mathematical variables and "reprograming" them (to do things like make a lightning-bolt spell veer off randomly in midair). Though that might make him too OP.

[doncosaco]

I really like the idea of Ramanujan having mystic eyes. Maybe mystic eyes of intuition? I’d imagine the ability as something similar to the mathematical intuition skill I gave. He can see reality or situations as mathematical statements or equations use them to come up with new statements or equations. This doesn’t allow him to alter or affect reality, but gives him an ability beyond deductive reasoning to uncover new tactically important information or knowledge that would otherwise be impossible to ascertain.

[Tabris]

I really like the idea of Ramanujan having mystic eyes. Maybe mystic eyes of intuition? I’d imagine the ability as something similar to the mathematical intuition skill I gave. He can see reality or situations as mathematical statements or equations use them to come up with new statements or equations. This doesn’t allow him to alter or affect reality, but gives him an ability beyond deductive reasoning to uncover new tactically important information or knowledge that would otherwise be impossible to ascertain.

Let it be totally useless for combat unless he concentrates real hard or sacrifices most of his lifespan from overuse or something. Something like he wasn't a trained magus in life, but a devout Brahmin blah blah blah.

[Valfodr]

So, here is a concept I just had for a Lostbelt. The idea is that this particular Lostbelt takes place in the Prototype timeline during Arthurian times. The divergence point was the "Sir Balin" incident, where a maiden claiming to have been sent by Lady Lily of Avalon brought the cursed sword Tyrfing to Camelot. Now, while the stories say that the Damsel's goal was to kill Sir Balan via his brother Balin, that's not actually the truth. In truth, the goal was for King Arthur to die via Tyrfing's curse so that the line of Constantine could claim the throne of Camelot that they felt was their right. In Pan-Human History, this plot failed when Sir Balin recognized the sword and claimed Tyrfing instead, killing the Damsel and getting himself exiled to avoid the curse killing the King. In this Lostbelt, the Damsel arrived a day early and successfully delivered the sword, resulting in Arthur dying to Tyrfing's curse and igniting a massive civil war with Queen Guinevere one one side and King Constantine II on the other.

What sets this particular Lostbelt apart is that there is no actual Lostbelt King, with the two Monarchs fighting viscously over the Fantasy Tree Lambton, which sprouted up in Camelot's ruins, in order to claim the power of the Lostbelt King for their own purposes, while a smaller third faction lead by Morgan le Fay seeks to destroy the Tree. The group ends up allying with Morgan, who's primary companions are her children(sans Mordred) as they seek Merlin, who disappeared after Arthur's death, while dodging the forces of both Guinevere and Constantine.

[Tabris]

Hm. But why would Morgan's faction want to destroy the Tree to begin with?

Also, no Mordred as there would be no reason for Morgan to make her?

[DelRey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax

I leave that one here, because there are so many shenanigans one can do with this story. Foreigner/Faker stuff and so on.

[BnEl15]

Something something Moon Cell, something something Extraverse, something something Pretender-who-masquerades-as-MoonCancer
Idk, not that deep in Extraverse lore myself.

Edit:
Reading his Wikipedia entry, this John Herschel guy would probably be pretty pissed at people for turning his pure pursuit of knowledge into glorified clickbait. That's some Avenger/Pretender justification there.

[Tabris]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax

I leave that one here, because there are so many shenanigans one can do with this story. Foreigner/Faker stuff and so on.

Weaksauce genesis material, tbh -- more like that War of the Worlds broadcast a century later that people also took a little bit too seriously.

There's a lot of hoaxes out there that have better (or more straightforward or less convoluted, take your pick) Servant sheet or even singularity/lostbelt potential -- say, for instance, those of Iolo Morganwg, Thomas Chatterton, or the Humberts (I mention them, as they were among the failures I once worked upon and then had to abandon).

[Valfodr]

Hm. But why would Morgan's faction want to destroy the Tree to begin with?

Also, no Mordred as there would be no reason for Morgan to make her?

I'm going to answer your questions in reverse. Mordred's lack of existence is indeed due to Him(Remember, this is the Prototype timeline, so Mordred was Male) not having a chance to be made, as well as another reason I'll get into with the other question, which is much trickier to answer and requires a bit of my own Headcanon for the lore of Fate/Prototype's Arthur.

Simply put, Morgan seeks to destroy the tree because, as she is part Fairy, she recognizes it as an unnatural existence that is anathema to the world. As to why she is helping you so readily, it comes down to the fact that this Morgan is very different than the mainline Morgan. See, in this timeline, Arthur being male meant that Morgan's jealousy towards Arthur regarding the throne was non-existent. After all, Arthur is male and only men can inherit the throne, at least as far as Mundanes are concerned. As a result, Morgan had no grudge against Arthur for that, and would've been content simply working alongside her brother and studying her magecraft. However, in the PHH timeline, after the incident with Sir Balin, Morgan threatened their cousins, the line of Constantine, because she was keenly aware of who the Damsel actually served. As a result, the other line of Pendragon began whispering in Guinevere's ear, inflaming her jealousy regarding how close Morgan was to Arthur, resulting in Morgan being driven from Camelot and leading into all the later events that resulted in Arthur's downfall. In this Lostbelt, however, that hasn't happened, as such we see a lighter, kinder side of Morgan who seeks to avenge her brother's death and prevent Fantasy Tree Lambton's power from falling into the hands of the warring monarchs.

[Tabris]

Hm, speaking of failures, might as well unload some of them, and see what people can spin from my dreidel. By chronology:

* Foreigner Antoku/Basatan/Owatatsumi, who was to be the main antagonist of a Pacific Ocean singularity, and who I had to subsequently abandon for being too similar to RoydGolden's sheet;
* Saber Go-Toba, mainly on the premise that he was so prodigious a swordsmith that he could attempt to replicate the Mystery of the Kusanagi, lost with his predecessor to the waves of Dan-no-ura, by the forging of seven swords with the aid of seven different bladesmiths, for both short-term imperial prestige and the protection of his homeland;
* Berserker Go-Daigo, who I had, say, unique difficulties designing a Reality Marble with, given that his Madness Enhancement would've been too high to properly manifest it, and due to the added spice of how do Reality-Marbles-as-Broken-Phantasms work?
* Saber/Rider Emperor Keiko, riffing off the Nihon Shoki's take that he and not his offspring Yamato Takeru did the conquering both it and the Kojiki agreed happened during his reign, only there wasn't enough difference between him and Takeru for me to wing it, and in any case I really wanted to tie him to the next person in this list, only to find out that I couldn't;
* and finally, Gatekeeper Yamatohime, founder of Ise Jingu and bearer of the Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, whose sheet I ultimately abandoned along with Keiko's due to DelightWorks giving us Saber Ibuki-doji, to my absolute chagrin.

[Kabalisto Koga]

Here is a baddass Western Veteran pictures if anyone could need that .

[DelRey]

well, what a time to be alive. Apparently the infamous Zodiac Killer was identified
https://www.tmz.com/2021/10/06/zodia...did=social-twa

thought I share this here because iirc two people here mentioned that he is on their list