Next one! A Berserker, because those are always fun.
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CÚ ROÍ MAC DÁIRE
Servant: Berserker (Caster, Ruler?)
Gender: Male
Height: 242 cm
Weight: 190 kg
Alignment: Neutral Insane
Appearance: A giant of a man; this mountain of chiseled muscle and rough, squared features in no way gives the appearance of a legendary spellcaster. Messy, curly black hair barely caressed the back of his neck, some loose locks also cascading over his narrow, intensely bright green eyes that seem to be locked in a permanent glare. Wide and smooth spaulders frame the dark breastplate that adorns his torso over the body suit that covers his body from neck to wrists and ankles. A long cloak of animal fur covers his whole body, rendering only his head visible most of the time. Despite being a magus, he is proficient at physical combat with and without weapons, but he carries no offensive equipment as a Heroic Spirit, often relying on Gradation Air to create a weapon should he need it.
Strength B --> A
Endurance B --> A
Agility B --> A
Magic B --> A
Luck D --> C
Noble Phantasm B
Class Skills:
* Mad Enhancement: Raises basic parameters in exchange of hindering mental capacities.E – Due to being summoned by a woman, Cú Ruí refused the benefits of Mad Enhancement. In exchange, he retains a normal capacity to think and communicate. Specific stimuli—such as meeting his killer or the imposition of an unacceptable command—may force a Luck check. Failure triggers madness equivalent to Rank B—his normal rank if summoned by a male Master—with the parameter modifications shown above.
Personal Skills:
* Rune Magic: Knowledge about this type of Magecraft that originated in northern Europe.A – Cú Ruí can skillfully use multiple runic alphabets and even combine them harmoniously for intensified effects. His Elemental Affinities are Wind and Earth. . Complex spellcasting not possible while under the effect of Mad Enhancement above rank E.
* Shapeshift: Refers to both borrowing bodies and appearance change.A+ – Monstrous transformations that further enhance Cú Ruí’s physical prowess are possible. Furthermore, even one’s presence as a Servant can be concealed. Transformation into creatures of the Dragon Kind remains impossible. This Skill is unusable while under the effect of Mad Enhancement above rank C.
* Territory Creation: The skill to build a special terrain that is advantageous to oneself as a magus.A – Creation of a “Temple”, which is superior to a “Workshop”, becomes possible. Unusable while under Mad Enhancement above rank E.
Noble Phantasm:
* Fir Fer
The Hidden and Invariable Truth of Men
Type: Anti-Unit
Rank: B
Range: --
Maximum number of targets: 1 person
The nature of Cú Roí nigh-invincible body was not revealed in any of the tales including his name. It was a mystery even in his time, and all sorts of bizarre explanations for it were brought up for consideration. The one thing most people got right is that Cú Roí’s almost-complete invincibility is a result of Magecraft: Cú Roí’s pinnacle mystery achieved in his lifetime; a highly-specific application of the Second Magic born from years of dedicated development and expansion upon his works of teleportation, long-distance casting and reaching into different worlds. Even with all his knowledge, talent and dedication, this single, specific splinter of the Kaleidoscope was everything he could achieve. However, even the tiniest shard of this unreasonable mystery can prove unexpectedly and immensely powerful.
While the nature of the phenomenon is incomprehensible, the result is something that can be described as ‘Diffraction of Personal Destiny’. Cú Roí, at all times, can be considered not a single entity, but two parallel entities in anti-phase, bound to the same point in space-time by a highly constrained application of something resembling Multi-dimensional Diffraction Phenomenon. As a consequence, whenever a particular effect acts upon Cú Roí, it can only be considered to act upon one of the two co-located Cú Roís, let’s say Cú Roi-A. Furthermore, the moment there is a variation in one of the Cú Roís’ status, the automatic nature of this application of the Second Magic kicks in and acts to return the simultaneous existences to an identical state, virtually ‘copying’ and ‘pasting’ the form of the ‘unchanged’ Cú Roí-B upon the altered Cú Roi-A, drawing upon energy from parallel worlds to achieve this if necessary.
The consequences of this bizarre magic are extensive. Cú Roí cannot be harmed by any single, individual attack. He can only be distinguishably harmed by coordinated pairs of simultaneous attacks or supernatural area-of-effect attacks--which effectively can be seen as ‘multiple simultaneous attacks from multiple directions’. In the same manner, killing Cú Roí requires inflicting two simultaneous lethal strikes. No ‘instant-kill’ technique will work, either, unless it comes in a pair.
Fortunately, the Grail System can compensate for this so that a single Command Spell still works on Cú Roí, most likely because elements of the Second Magic were involved in its design.
Background
The legendary sorcerer-warrior of the Ulster Cycle, whose death at the hands of Cú Chulainn would lead in consequence to the Hound of Ulster’s own. He was known as a magus with a bizarre and extensive set of skills: an uncanny shapechanger capable of assuming the shape of all sorts of monstrous beasts; a demon possessing the mysterious and miraculous power to survive having his head chopped off; a tremendously powerful warrior capable of reinforcing his massive body to imbue himself with the strength to fling massive boulders as if they were mere pebbles; a wonder-worker capable of commanding his mutable magical tower of stone from anywhere in the world; a mysterious existence capable of stepping into the ephemeral Otherworld at will. Since the age of seven to his death he consumed no food or drink, sustaining his body merely with his massive prana. With his spells he shaped stone at will and swallowed his enemies in the darkest mist. In some legends, he makes himself unkillable by hiding his soul and its connection to his body in a separate container (an apple in the belly of a salmon, of all things). Regardless, in the Ulster Cycle, Cú Roí is an universally feared and respected warrior-mage, and aspects of his legend would reappear in Welsh folklore and Arthurian narrative.
In life he was a very proud man; his poise constantly reflected his absolute confidence in his magic and martial prowess. Proud as he was, though, he also possessed a profound sense of fairness and honor: he refused to fight an exhausted, badly wounded Cú Chulainn with the argument that killing Cú Chulainn like that would that not his, but Ferdiad’s victory. Despite having sent troops to the aid of Queen Medb of Connacht, he did not personally join the war until a warrior that his soldiers could not beat finally showed up to the aid of Cú Chulainn. He respected only true strength and bravery, and it is his most famous tale which branded him as am impartial and fair judge of heroes.
However, this stern ruler, wanderer and judge died with regrets. He does not particularly regret dying at the hands of the Hound of Ulster--he would certainly not mind a chance for a proper, one-on-one rematch, though. He does not even mind the dishonorable, conniving nature of the plot that led to his death--if anything, it is a point of pride that it took that to kill him. What he regrets above all things is that his death came as the consequence of something as inane and irrelevant to the grand scheme of things as his wife’s wish to ride another man’s loins. All his knowledge, all his power and all his potential for achieving great things were snuffed out of the world because the woman who was rightfully his lusted for a younger, wilder sort of man. It was no ridiculous “love-at-first-sight” that drew Cú Chulainn and Bláthnat together; it was nothing but the raw, physical attraction between a virile man and an impressionable woman. It is for this reason that, to the Heroic Spirit Cú Roí, women are no longer a ‘target of affection’, but merely a ‘tool for personal satisfaction’. He can acknowledge them and partake in the pleasures of the flesh, but the “weaker” gender will forever remain the half of humanity that can never be trusted.
Cú Roí’s wish is very simple: he wants the chance to live the life that was, to his eyes, unjustly interrupted. He asks not for immortality: he merely wants the full lifetime he believes he deserves. He only wants time.
Originally Posted by G-Man
