"Here's a bangin lil' tune about takin' on The Man!"
(Check out my Super Special Awesome Servant Compendium here)
So here's a new sheet from me. Be sure to look for collapse-text in his Class, personal information, personality and Skills to get the full story. As usual comments and critique would be welcome. Thanks for reading y'all!
Lancer of Inebriated Truth:
Appearance:
Source
Stage 3 Ascension Art
True Name: Eurypylus
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Alternate Classes: Berserker
Armament: A bronze spear with a small wine flask hanging from it.
Strength- C
Agility- B
Endurance- B
Mana- B
Luck- C
NP- B
Personality
Class Skills:
Magic Resistance- C
Confers protection against magical effects. At this rank spells with a chant below two verses are cancelled. Cannot cope against the likes of High Thaumaturgy or Greater Rituals.
Personal Skills:
Affection Of The Wine God- B
A Skill that denotes one being loved by the god of wine Dionysus, whom Lancer dedicated himself to after recovering from a bout of madness. Additionally to the paradigmatic rank-up of parameters save Luck and Mana Lancer is bestowed several boons to better spread his patron's gospel of revelry, that is, complete immunity to the negative effects of intoxication and a passive ability to convert any beverage he touches into an alcoholic one.
Dispeller Of Divine Wrath- B
According to legend, when cursed with madness Lancer received a prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi to seek out a city with strange offerings and settle there. His wanderings took him to the city of Athroe where he found the citizens sacrificing a maiden to the goddess Artemis to propitiate for the crime of Comaetheo and Melanippus, who'd polluted her shrine. Lancer ended the sacrifices and established worship of Dionysus in the city, whereupon he regained his sanity. Having called off the wrath of a goddess, Lancer is able to nullify around him offensive Skills and Noble Phantasms derived from Divinity at rank C or lower.
In The Trojan Horse- C
A Skill signifying Lancer as one of the Greek soldiers who hid inside the wooden horse to enter the gates of Troy. Other heroes who took part in the stratagem and subsequent sacking might not possess this due to having more particular martial or tactical feats that overshadowed it. Having both smuggled into the city to sabotage its defenses and participated in the crowded fight within this confers him access to Presence Concealment, Subversive Tactics and Knowledge Of Melee Combat at rank D.
...
Familiars (Dolphins)- B
Lancer is accompanied by dolphins that were depicted as the friends and servants of Dionysus. These dolphins are able to swim playfully through air as well as water and carry others on their backs.
Noble Phantasm
Last edited by RoydGolden; May 14th, 2023 at 11:52 PM. Reason: Forgot hidden Class collapse-tags
(CW: Entire Servant is themed around psychological abuse)
Faker of Narratives
"Master, you had better sit back and let your Servant handle this, for how much can you really do? No, I am no illusion crafter, you must've been seeing things."
True Name: Patrick Hamilton/'Gaslight Effect'
Alt. Classes: Caster, Avenger, Assassin?
Source: History
Region: England
Catalyst: A gas light one is unsure if it is dimming.
Armament: His own words.
Description: A 20th century British playwright and novelist known for his bleak and misanthropic neo-Dickensian stories. While not a household name, he has been acclaimed for his novel Hangover Square and his plays Rope and The Gas Light, the last his most enduring work in ways he couldn't have foreseen. Or maybe he could?
The Gas Light details about how an abusive husband manipulates and controls his wife by planting false narratives in her head, making her constantly question her own reality and sanity. The play and then film subsequently spawned the term 'Gaslighting' in popular psychology, describing how abusers do exactly that, and vastly eclipsing Hamilton himself in notoriety.
Patrick Hamilton's actual personality is more a case of 'behind every cynic lies a broken idealist', someone completely let down by the world, knowing that things can better but unable to foresee them ever becoming so. At his most extreme, he sees the modern world as on an inevitable downward spiral. But with the rise of the Gaslight Effect, what Hamilton's personality actually is no longer matters…
The vessel Patrick Hamilton has had the idea that he's mistaken in thinking he could ever be a Servant enforced on him by his own corruption, for how could someone as recent, unnoteworthy, and honestly pathetic as him ever qualify? His corrupted self has become incapable of acting in any way that does not involve planting a false narrative into another, he does what the Gaslight Effect tells him because the Gaslight Effect, the true Servant really, knows which course of action is best.
Still, there's a risk that someone as critical as Patrick Hamilton could never stay completely silent…
Attribute: Beast
Alignment: Chaotic Good (normally), Lawful Evil (Innocent Monster)
Likes: Writing, dark comedy, identifying social ills, Listeners
Dislikes: The modern world, his parents, his alcoholism, Disobedience
Relationships
- Kafka: "Are you sure you're who you say who are? What if you don't look like the historical Kafka because you aren't, what if there's no such thing as an 'Inverted Foreigner'? Just something to think about."
- Chatelet: "Are you really a notable figure in your own right? A lot of what you 'accomplished' would've come from Newton, and especially Voltaire."
- Goethe: "You hate your book Werther? Because a lot of people seem to quite like it. How much can your single opinion really matter against a mass of contrasting voices?"
- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern: "Don't you think there's a legitimate reason your writer made you mere background characters? Of course, this is going by your insistence that your existence is in a play."
- Christina: "It seems like people had quite valid reasons to deny your queenship. You did spend all that money, you did betray the religion your father had fought so hard for, and of course, you're the reason Monaldeschi's dead."
Master: Preferably someone vulnerable and obedient, like Irisviel or Aoi Tohsaka. In terms of similarity to his own methods however, a comparison could be made to the 'Word of God' Kurogiri.
Natural Enemy: Kirei Kotomine, since lying is Faker's whole thing Any Servant with peak Mental Resistance, the average Berserker since Faker's mostly relies on communication and "You can't drive someone mad if they already are."
Wish: What any gaslighter wishes for, complete obedience.
Parameters
- Strength: ***** E
- Endurance: ***** D
- Agility: ***** D
- Magic: ***** E
- Luck: ***** E
- Noble Phantasm: ***** C
Class Skills
Camouflage
Allows a Servant to disguise their Class and Parameters.
- Rank C: Faker can make it appear as if he's any other Class he either qualifies for or may look like he qualifies for, such as Avenger, Caster, or Assassin. Upon analysis of him, he can make his parameters appear to be two Ranks higher or lower than they are. For imitating another Servant, Faker will usually stick with authors around his time that he has similarities to, like George Orwell (who also described gaslighting but on a mass level), Franz Kafka (especially since the actual Kafka's looking rather feminine these days), or Robert Bloch (another psychologically haunting author adapted by Hitchcock).
"I have always been this Class, why would you think I was ever anything else?"
Personal Skills
Human Observation
The ability to observe and understand people, a technique associated with character-centric authors.
- Rank B: Faker tends to specialise in analysing people's doubts and insecurities, quickly uncovering a person's own lack of faith in what they know and determining what sort of person they are most likely to trust. This allows Faker to negate Mental Resistance skills up to an equal Rank.
"Who else do you have to trust? You are simply not strong enough."
Information Erasure
The removal of information regarding the Servant's True Name, abilities, and appearance from the records and memories of all eyewitnesses, including the opponent, following the conclusion of an engagement.
- Rank B: Faker is well acquainted with methods of hiding or obfuscating info, effective enough to leave a target questioning what's real and what isn't. That said, so that a target may gradually grow dependent on him for info as is his strategy, so he would not go as far as to erase their memory of him completely. Can be especially mind-blogging in combination with Camouflage.
"We've never met? Au contraire, several times before. We have met? Really, I've never seen you in my life."
Innocent Monster
One whose existence has a Servant has become altered by their historical reputation and rumours.
- Rank B: While Patrick Hamilton was respected as a writer by those who knew his work, his own identity has become largely eclipsed in the public conscience by the means of social control he identified and indirectly named: Gaslighting, controlling someone by making them question and disbelieve their own reality. As a Faker, Hamilton's own Saint Graph has become corrupted by and is now little but a shell for the Gaslight Effect.
"With the swirl of truth and perception, what may be 'real' to you matters little in the grand scheme."
Murderer on a Misty Night
A Skill associated with serial killers, permits a pre-emptive strike against all opponents.
- Rank E: Faker was no killer in life, however he was more than well acquainted with the psychology and methods of murder, as displayed in his other great play Rope. He can't manage a pre-emptive strike naturally but can definitely seem to appear all of a sudden, even though he'll say he was always there.
"One must be a great intellectual indeed to successfully perform murder."
Noble Phantasm
Gaslighter's Grand Narrative
Your Truth Is My Lie
Rank: C
Type: Anti-Unit
The culmination of the Gaslight Effect's psychological manipulation upon an individual, activated once that person is in complete thrall to Faker. It takes the form of the false narrative implanted in them that 'Faker will never hurt you', which of course then allows Faker to hurt his victim as much as possible with that victim rationalising that Faker isn't in fact hurting them, or if he is it's for their own good. Of course, given Faker's E-Rank Strength, this would take the form of a death of a thousand cuts if anything.
"You do this to yourself, really. I'm only here to help you."
However, even this is only a partial activation of this Noble Phantasm, the full effect only being attainable if the Target is also in possession of a Reality Marble. With his now total grasp over his victim's psyche and perception of themselves and the world, Faker becomes able to parasitically infest their Reality Marble and use his False Narratives to alter it to his liking. He can even get his victim to unleash it on his own command, not the victim's.
"I'll take it from here, for I'm the only one you can trust."
Last edited by NailsInYourFeet; September 1st, 2022 at 04:54 PM. Reason: This post was always formatted correctly, why wouldn't you think so?~
Patrick Hamilton: Well now that's an eerie sheet. You definitely depicted the horror of him basically being subsumed entirely by the concept he created to the point where his own voice is drowned out. Would Gaslighter's Grand Narrative go so far as bypassing defensive Skills and NPs since his attacks aren't recognized as such (sorta' like Vlad's bloodsucking)? Also any thoughts on my Eurypylus?
Hamilton/Gaslight:...Huh. Well I haven't felt such a visceral dislike towards a sheet before. Bravo.
Thanks for clarification and feedback. Eurypylus is pretty obscure yeah, I only even found him from a list jishara made of names for possible Trojan War Servants a while back. Incidentally I imagine in the Lancer Class he'd have a more stoical personality to humorously contrast being roped into serving as ambassador for the god of festivities (who would actually be Dionysus and not Gloon, tagging along in the form of a dolphin a la Artemis and Orion).
I must thank both Nails and Del (my eternal muse) for inadvertently giving me the idea of this Servant. A little more to Del for finding him after I started looking. Two musicians in a row. Unexpected.
The man lifts his hands from the ivories.
"Okay. Now, I would like you to play it yourself. Don't worry. I choose a simple piece for your first lesson."
Mostly melodic notes flow through the air, though, with every mistake, he begins to twitch slightly.
"Stop! Stop. I... Just... try it again. Slower if you need to."
She begins again, but she manages to somehow to get new notes wrong. He endures it for as long as he can until
"I think it's time we take a break! YOU CAN GO GET SOMETHING! BE BACK IN FIVE!"
The girl hurries out of the room, leaving him alone with the piano.
[Black Swan-Perfection]Creator Notes
Last edited by Morg van Destro; November 25th, 2024 at 05:26 AM.
Morg's delightful Servant comp.
IN COLOR
Finally
The Gordon Ramsay of Music
"Let's see the color of your coin, my friend."
Behold my vault of Heroes.
Where the Heavens and the Abyss breath the Music of Humanity.
Indulge with me in the accomplishments of our abode.
University of Formatting | Gallery of Potential | Memorandum of the Extra Class Kings
Our Kingdom will grow. And we shall know each citizen.
Chamberlain of Create-a-Servant 4.
WATCHER
"Now I've seen your wings, O ███. So let me show you mine."
Fate\last call
night, dawn, and the birth of stars
╘══════════════════╕
Characters┤
Dictionary┤
Recent: 6.3┘
Dante Alighieri: Although I am quite new to Beast's Lair, before I created an account, I looked throughout the other Create-A-Servant threads, seeing many Dante sheets. Though, this is perhaps one of my favourites. One question: Is there a reason why certain bits of text are blanked out? Is it possible to reveal them?
There are... spoilers. Dante has some secrets that he's not entirely ready to spill just yet. But he will, in due time. Maybe with a bit of investigation, I've already given enough away in another sheet that you can figure out some more Lore™️.
By the way, I absolutely love Händel. His piano sword is so fucking funny I can't even handle it, and the fact that he can give it to someone else makes it even funnier.
Last edited by Random; September 1st, 2022 at 08:52 PM.
Fate\last call
night, dawn, and the birth of stars
╘══════════════════╕
Characters┤
Dictionary┤
Recent: 6.3┘
Almost reminds me of Guitar Hero for some reason.
Source: SUKI
Class: Rider
Other Classes: N/A
True Name: Ferdinand von Zeppelin
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Place of Origin: Germany (19th Century)
Parameters:
STR: D
END: B
AGI: D
MGI: D
LCK: C
NP: C
Height: 191cm
Weight: 110lbs
Likes: Flight (of imagination)
Dislikes: People who stay close to the ground
Talent: Creating airships
Natural Enemy: Kingprotea
Attribute: Man
Traits: Human, Male, Weak to Enuma Elish
Armament: A rifle
Catalyst: A zeppelin
Class Skills:
Magic Resistance E: He never encountered magic in life, so gains a bare minimum of this class skill.
Riding C+: He is fairly capable at riding steeds and vehicles, but with flying entities, this ranks up severely, allowing him to be able to pilot them very well.
Personal Skills:
Zeppelin Donation B: He gained "Zeppelin donations" every time his zeppelins failed which he used to work towards building the next zeppelin. As a skill, whenever he has a major failure, as long as he still maintains a chance of success, he will immediately gain a refund of some mana, increasing the closer he was to victory.
Reconeissance Ride B: He went up in reconeissance rides during the Civil War of the United States, as an observer sent by Germany. This grants him this skill, permitting him to cloak himself in concealment for a short time, making him hard to detect. However, this disappears the moment he attacks or gets attacked. But this is made harder because any attack that hits him during this time has to be able to hit at least thirty meters farther then he actually is.
Generalleutenant C-: He was granted the rank of Generalleutenant, a very high rank in the German army. However, he was forced to retire from the army due to catastrophic failures, though he kept the rank. This would normally grant him Military Tactics at the same rank and Charisma at a rank below, but due to his failures, military tactic has also dropped to D.
Noble Phantasm(s):
Zeppelin
Take Flight
Type: Anti-Army
Rank: C
Range: 30 meters
Max Targets: 100 Targets
The sublimation of his greatest invention, the Zeppelin, a type of airship which dominated the market almost immediately due to its ease of use and practicality. As a noble phantasm, this allows him to materialize a zeppelin, which can go through the sky at his command, though it is far slower when going against the wind. In addition, he can take many people with him onto the Zeppelin, soaring away and high....
Lore: Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin (1838-1917) was a German general who was most noted for inventing the Zeppelin. He also founded the company Luftshiffvau Zeppelin. During the american civil war, he was an official observer, and did reconeissance flights. After he was fired from the army, he worked on airships.
Personality: He is utterly obsessed with flight and aeronautical travel, both literally and also metaphorically, so he dislikes people who are "grounded", refusing to dream or soar. He is also constantly utilizing hsi Noble Phantasm as much as he can to stay away from the ground. His wish is to be able to never have to touch down.
Relationships:
Kingprotea: "Poor soul, physically bound to the earth."
Abigail Williams: "Your soaring has turned into sinking, hasn't it?"
Sessyoin Kiara: "Your dreaming has been cut off before its time... how awful."
Artoria: "You needn't let go of your dream."
Astolfo: "It's so wonderful to fly, isn't it?"
Castor and Pollux: "You are able to fly on your own? How incredible."
Ooooh! Is this the long awaited sequel to the AMAZING [God] sheet?!? Does this mean we can expect a counterpart to that Beast anytime soon? I doubt it but just in case, does this sheet have any connection to the world of last call? If not it's cool cuz this is a great interpretation of Dante.
P.S. Incidentally, do you ever plan on making a compendium of all your non-last call Servants if you ever have the time? Took me way too long to to find [God] again.
Last edited by neokamui414; September 1st, 2022 at 11:17 PM.
Heime. This one was a really cool sheet. The only thing that kind of confused me was that he had Brisingamen, but you explained that already. Also, out of sheer curiosity, is there a reason why he wants to be called "Ludwig" specifically, or were you just going for a generic old-ish name.
Eurypylus. I really liked this sheet, my only small piece of criticism I have is that because I know pretty much nothing about Hippopotamus Lovecraft's Mythos I have no idea what or who Gloon is beyond big sea slug, so at least a small explanation would've been a bit nice.
Hamilton/Gaslight. An immediately unlikeable Servant, but that's a feature, not a bug. I think it's a really creative sheet, particularly the NP is one I absolutely haven't ever seen at all. Good job on this one!
Händel. An ironic name, considering what he consistently flies off of. I thought this sheet was quite funny, and his piano-sword is such an off the wall weapon that I can see it being a thing in Fate proper.
Zeppelin. "Und ve hav Zeppelins!"
A quite nice sheet that I really liked, though I think the NP is a bit short. That definitely seems like something that you could've gotten a lot more out of. Otherwise a really good job.
I did this on the train on my phone, which made it really difficult to read Dante. I swear I'll getto him when I get back home.
Avenger of the Orchestra
"I put everything into my music, my life, my love, my darkened heart. If you can't see its majesty, there's a seat in Hell's auditorium for you!"
(By Maekawa Suu)
Alt Image, large
True Name: Hector Berlioz
Alt. Classes: Caster, Berserker, Archer (Gunner), Assassin, Faker, Voyager (Alter Ego) as their character in Symphonie Fantastique
Source: History
Region: France
Catalyst: Original sheet music for Symphonie Fantastique’s Idee fixe.
Armament: Baton given to them by Felix Mendelssohn, guitar given by Paganini, personal pistol
Character: One of the most ground-breaking composers of the 19th century, up there with Liszt, Wagner, and Debussy, but also one of the most controversial. While attitudes towards them have softened recently, back in their day their music was either beloved or despised, with little if any judgment in between. A main point of contention even today is just how difficult Berlioz’s compositions are to even perform, with orchestras having an easier time with Wagner pieces no less.
Berlioz’s own personality doesn’t help matters, as they’ll often overhype their abilities and go for disproportionate retribution after being slighted. They’re convinced people just have it out for the name ‘Berlioz’, that if any other composer penned their music everyone would love it. Speaking of which, they can warm up significantly to anyone who is a fan of them, as they were close with the similarly extravagant Liszt, and surprisingly their total opposite Felix Mendelssohn, in life.
It can be difficult delving into Berlioz’s life story as they themselves did a great deal to obfuscate it by telling tall tales. Stand-out ones include them taking their gun and joining in the 1830 Revolution, quitting medical school on their first day, or the infamous incident where they tried to murder pianist Maria Moke and her suitor for being spurned, while Berlioz was dressed as a French maid. In a Grail War, this can develop into exaggeratedly claiming to be Servants and Classes they obviously aren’t even when not summoned as Faker, saying that Paganini also arranged them a contract with Lucifer, or even that they totally arranged to have people who disliked their music killed.
Berlioz was someone who on more than one occasion went out of their way to present as female, notably growing their hair out to pass as a woman in their teenage years, and later their plan to disguise themselves as a French maid. Their openness about this contrasts with other composers of the time who tried to keep their feminine tendencies a secret, like Wagner wearing lingerie or Tchaikovsky’s ‘Petronila’ identity. Hence Avenger is very keen to spend their new lease on life experimenting with gender by donning female attire, such as maid outfits again but also as witches and demonesses, given the content of Symphonie Fantastique. If pressed they may say their gender is male on reflex, but it’s unclear is if their final answer, hence them going by they/them for now.
On having to pick a female name to ‘complete the disguise’ as it were, Avenger would probably go with an appropriately musical name like ‘Viola’ or even ‘Symphonia’, as ‘Louise’ is too obvious, and they wouldn’t even know the female version of Hector (Hecate?) With a maid being one of their go-to costumes, they’ll even act out a maid role by offering to cook and clean, though don’t expect their ideas of ‘fine dining’ or a ‘clean room’ to be remotely normal.
Them being a composer and conductor, one would assume that their magecraft or magecraft-like effects come from their music, but one would assume wrong. As intense a musician as they are, their actual magic-like specialty lies in illusions, with the likes of Debussy even saying that Avenger composed ‘only the illusion of music’. With Symphonie Fantastique being their most famous work, the most powerful illusions Avenger can conjure are those related to Hell and execution, though they’ll go back and forth on claiming whether these are just ‘illusions’ or not.
Attribute: Beast
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Likes: Conducting, crossdressing (particularly as maids and witches), massive orchestras of at least 200, tall tales, guitar and flute
Dislikes: Pianos, surgery, Rome, other people conducting their works, criticism given and received
Relationships:
- Jeanne: “People in your time feared you being a witch, but when I call myself a witch today, people just laugh!”
- Brynhildr: “Oh I can show you far more than just killing your beloved.”
- Mozart: “Sorry, afraid Beethoven’s made you obsolete.”
- Catherine Morland: “It may be just an illusion, but who cares? The best illusions are indistinguishable from reality.”
- Goethe: “Oh my, you’re here too? This is such an honour, you don’t how much of your work I’ve read! Please, let me shake your hand, huh?”
- C.S. Lewis: “What a waste of illusion, using them to see almost exclusively God.”
- Baudelaire: “It’s not like Paris has fallen, when was that city any good to begin with?”
- Amedee Mereaux: “Why write difficult works for solo piano when there are whole orchestras to push the limits of?”
- Patrick Hamilton: “S-shut up! I’ll be in charge of what’s real or not around here!”
Master: Anyone who feels underappreciated like Waver, or lovestruck over someone incompatible with them like Kariya, or appropriately witchy like Alice Kuonji.
Natural Enemy: George Templeton Strong. Music traditionalists like Brahms or Clara Schumann, the latter may additionally be to Avenger’s jealousy of Clara’s womanhood. Even fellow radicals like Debussy.
Wish: For any of their music to be performed by the world’s biggest orchestra to the world’s most adoring audience.
Parameters
- Strength: ***** E
- Endurance: ***** D
- Agility: ***** C
- Magic: ***** C
- Luck: ****** D
- NP: ***** B
Class Skills
Avenger
Capacity to generate resentment in oneself and others, allowing for Mana recovery while attacking and being attacked.
- Rank B: Berlioz was one of the most scorned and despised musicians of his lifetime, though still had notable defenders. Likewise, they had little patience for their own detractors and often wrote scornfully about others, and especially despised other conductors performing their works.
Oblivion Correction
Ability of an Avenger to never forget and never forgive. Critical hits are strengthened.
- Rank D: As resentful and resented as Avenger could be, they did possess a capacity to let go of their grudges and obsessions, like getting over Harriet or cutting short their assassination plans. Given their low Rank, Avenger often utilises Mendelssohn’s baton as a ‘memory aid’ to activate this skill. Critical sonic blasts deal x1.75 damage up from x1.5.
Self-Replenishment (Mana)
Replenishes mana while one’s revenge remains unfulfilled.
- Rank D: Avenger claim their ‘revenge’ would be forcing people listen to their compositions until coming to enjoy it. The less Avenger’s music is appreciated, the faster their mana regenerates, with them using any spare mana to fuel their Familiars Skill.
Personal Skills
Enchant (Instruments)
Endowment of concepts to items, in this case to musical instruments.
- Rank A: Avenger was known for repeatedly taking overlooked instruments and giving them a place in the orchestra. Such as having the viola take centre stage in Harold in Italy, the English horn in Symphonie Fantastique, or taking the popular but non-orchestral piano and adding it to the orchestra in Lelio. This can increase a viola’s Rank by making it a ‘lead instrument’, boost the earshot range of an English horn, and increase a piano’s sync with other instruments.
Familiars (Infernal)
Summoning and control of familiars from Hell.
- Rank A: Like they’re the leader of a coven, Avenger can call up wraiths, demons, and witches to have them all act as members of an orchestra. If it weren’t for Mana constraints, Avenger would eagerly summon up to a thousand orchestra members. Of course, given Avenger’s nature, there’s the questions of whether these are actual infernal denizens playing real music, or just illusions playing illusionary music?
Innocent Monster (Self)
One whose existence has a Servant has become altered by their reputation and rumours… that they engineered themselves.
- Rank C: Avenger can alter their legend and therefore Saint Graph with wild claims like having been a revolutionary, planned an assassination, or going into the supernatural, being the grand witch of an infernal coven and having been to Hell. Like Imperial privilege, this allows them to gain skills they normally wouldn’t have but may not convince anyone who knows their True Name.
Single-Mindedness (Love)
Ability to superfocus on a goal when the main motivator is affection and yearning.
- Rank C: In their youth, they had a nigh total obsession with the opera singer Harriet Smithson, inspiring them to compose Symphonie Fantastique and then holding on seven years till she agreed to their marriage. However, their relationship eventually began to break apart, and Avenger wrote Lelio as a sign of getting over her. Another affair also inspired them to plan a murder, but this was cut short if even true.
(A/N: Skills that didn’t make the cut were Appreciation of the Arts, Illusion Arts as their NP covers it, Protection of the Music God since it may be redundant, and Camouflage.)
Noble Phantasms
Symphonie Fantastique
Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath
Rank: B
Type: Anti-Army
Range: Earshot
Max. Targets: As many as can fit into a standard concert hall
While Berlioz had multiple great compositions, like the viola spotlight Harold of Italy or the gargantuan Aeneid-based opera Les Troyens, by far the single best known of their compositions is the Symphonie Fantastique: a five-part programmatic symphony revolving around the hallucination of killing your beloved, watching yourself be executed, then being tortured in Hell.
This Noble Phantasm requires Avenger to have learned the identity of their Target’s most beloved person beforehand, which tends to involve learning the Target’s True Name first, though the Phantasm can just as easily be used on Masters. As it is an Anti-Army Phantasm being performed by an orchestra, it can be used on multiple Targets if Avengers knows each of their beloveds.
Knowing the Target’s beloved, Avenger’s symphony can create a three-part illusion where the Target sees their beloved’s corpse, witnesses their own death on account of having killed them, then waking up in Hell (or, if Avenger is aware of the Target’s homeland, Hades, Naraka, Jigoku, etc.) This final part of the illusion sees the beloved summoned as a more powerful form of Avenger’s Familiars, now corrupted by Hell and there to attack the Target. As examples, this could force Lancelot to fight Guinevere, Diarmuid to fight Grainne, or Gilgamesh to fight Enkidu.
If the symphony is successfully performed and the illusion successfully cast, then if the target walks away, they’ll do so with their own legend rewritten so that they really did kill their beloved, get executed, then go to Hell for it, like an inflicted form of Innocent Monster. Of course, this is much less effective on Servants who did any of these things in their legend, not that this Phantasm won’t serve as a searing traumatic reminder of that.
A specific reason why Symphonie Fantastique has risen to become Avenger’s Phantasm may be not just due to the piece’s fame in general, but its premiere. While not to Berlioz’s ideal, having to work with around ninety less musicians than they envisioned, it was still one of the most successful premieres their music ever had, a rare time when their music was unanimously loved.
Incidentally, the similarities this Phantasm has to Shakespeare’s First Folio may be intentional on Avenger’s part, given even though Berlioz could barely read Shakespeare’s original English, they were a massive fan of the bard nevertheless.
Sources: Wiki page - Symphonie Fantastique wiki page - Classical Nerd - Berlioz's memoir at Goodreads
Last edited by NailsInYourFeet; September 3rd, 2022 at 08:04 PM. Reason: Another image
"Here's a bangin lil' tune about takin' on The Man!"
(Check out my Super Special Awesome Servant Compendium here)
When the cloud of dust clears in the summoning circle, a young girl stands before you shyly holding out a notepad over her face. [I'm Servant Caster. I likes riddles a lot and I'd love to be of service to you but... I have trouble speaking with new people so... please be gentle with me.]
Caster of Riddles:
Appearance:
Source
Alignment: Neutral Good
Strength- E
Agility- D
Endurance- E
Mana- B
Luck- C
NP- B
Personality
Class Skills:
Territory Creation- B
The ability to formulate a territory advantageous to oneself as a Magus. At this rank, creation of a "Symposium Hall" akin to the one she attended in life becomes possible.
Item Construction- E
A talent to craft items tinted in magical energy. The only things Caster "created" were her riddles, not physical items so she only has the lowest rank in this Skill by virtue of her Class Container.
Personal Skills:
Attendant Of The Sage- B
Legend tells that Caster travelled alongside one of the seven sages of Greece Thales in her girlhood. Her experience as companion to the great philosopher has lead to Caster picking up an affinity for some of his Magecraft. As Thales taught that water was the underlyingof all things she specializes in spells evoking elements of flow and fluidity.Archēprinciple
Caster can impart other materials the properties of water such as diving through solid stone like mud, conjure a "primordial tide" that decomposes matter and in her strongest spell briefly liquify herself into "living water" that's able to phase through attacks and slip through the tiniest cracks before reforming. Incidentally the quality of water that perpetually flows and changes shape can be seen as alluding to the polysemous nature of her riddles which take on different meanings depending on how one interprets them.
Furthermore this Skill allows Caster to sense individuals of great wisdom in her vicinity and gain a rank-up to Agility and Endurance while accompanying them.
Riddle Master- A+
A talent for spinning up riddles and word-games. At A+ rank Caster can easily compose a fiendish riddle to describe any situation she finds herself in. As the Classical world's most legendary riddler Caster boasts a high proficiency in this Skill. She's sometimes suspected to have been invented as a personification of a female riddler rather than a historical figure. While normally useless in combat this becomes a primary means of attack through her Noble Phantasm.
Silent Symposium- B
A Skill Caster obtains not from her own feats but rather the writings of people after her, akin to Innocent Monster. She was described by Plutarch as remaining silent at the banquet attended by her father's guests and when Cleodorus derided the worth of her riddles as a literary genre it was the fabulist Aesop who spoke up to defend her by quoting one she'd posed earlier that day. This Skill enforces a curse that keeps Caster from speaking a word from the moment she's summoned. In turn she exerts an aura that inspires others to think favorably about her and act on her behalf.
Noble Phantasm
So here's the Cleobulina sheet I'd teased yesterday. As usual comments and critiques would be welcome. Thanks for reading y'all!
Last edited by RoydGolden; April 25th, 2023 at 11:20 PM.