Pequod
Why Dost Thou Not Go Mad?
Rank: C+
Classification: Anti-Army
Range: 1-20
Maximum Number of Targets: 300
Outer madness, expanded.
The ship of Rider, a whaling vessel containing all manner of trophies and records of past accomplishments.
In Rider’s case, the Pequod exists as something asymptotically similar to a reflection of Rider’s own internal world. At the time of summoning, this Noble Phantasm takes the form of a testament to Rider’s accomplishments and a locus for his heroic nature. His grandeur, his delusions, and his desires are made manifest upon it.
While standing upon the vessel, his fame is treated as rising to the highest class, and the magical energy cost of his abilities are heavily reduced. So long as he stands upon his domain, it should be possible to hold his own against even a first-rate Servant.
With the activation of the second Noble Phantasm, however, Rider's nature is irreparably changed, and so too is this premise altered. From the Pequod’s prime, it takes the form of its last voyage, a doubloon attached to its mast. Its previous abilities are sealed, and rather than a locus of glory, it becomes a wooden hearse.
While aboard the altered Noble Phantasm, the Charisma of ‘Voyager of the Storm’ is amplified as though within an echo chamber- all those present on the vessel must make compounding checks to not fall under the sway of Rider’s madness. However, an ‘opposite’ madness of equal weight to Rider’s is capable of negating these effects.
If asked, Rider does not seem to realize that such a change exists.
Moby Dick
All That Most Maddens and Torments
Rank: EX
Classification: Anti-Principle
Range: -
Maximum Number of Targets: 1
Outer madness, deified.
If Rider is a counterfeit god, one might call this a counterfeit Authority- of course, this in itself means that it is something 'impossible', and that such a Noble Phantasm would never be usable in the ordinary forum of a Holy Grail War.
In this world, the Phantasmal Species are magical beasts beyond humans, who draw power from their lifespan. The strongest beings of this nature are hallmarks from the Age of Gods. Gugalanna, the divine bull who was felled by the first Heroic Spirit. Typhon, the father of monsters who defeated a pantheon of gods in their heyday.
Among these titans, however, there is one outlier. Moby Dick, a Phantasmal Species of no more than two centuries of age, and yet a peer to these living superweapons. The reason for this can be nothing other than Rider.
When Rider lost his leg, rather than the destruction of identity that would logically follow, he turned to revenge. That which had taken his leg, he declared as the incarnation of all those malicious agencies of man, the malignity that has existed within and beside humanity since its inception.
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down.
The white whale is not a slayer of gods or a ruiner of nations, it is merely a blank canvas, painted with the brush of All the World’s Evil. In his madness, his rage, his vindictiveness, his own delusion accomplished something impossible, and made a mere beast into among the strongest of the Phantasmal Species. One could consider this the ultimate usage of Rider’s counterfeit Divinity, reflected not upon himself, but the whale.
This is not a Noble Phantasm that Rider controls, but rather, it is inherently activated at the time when an enemy ‘undoubtedly defeats Rider, without killing him’. In that sense, it is a Noble Phantasm with drastically low chance of relevance.
At the moment of activation, that madness takes form, and the enemy is cast with the mold of All the World’s Evil. Deploying his nature as a false god to the foremost, he declares that which bested him as an evil god in its own right. A focusing array of the Human Order, a delusion that grows to the extent where a monster beyond monsters can be formed. The spiritual foundation of the target is enriched, eroded, and overpowered by that declaration, and so they ascend far beyond their own limits.
Strictly speaking, this Noble Phantasm should be merely detrimental to Rider, as he merely grants his enemy strength beyond words. However, if the impossible is accomplished, the legend is surpassed, and the ‘white whale’ is killed, then perhaps...