Is it a spoiler if we know the other two servants we could have gotten instead of Archer?
Your choices were Rider Vrishasena for the "summer" choice, and Berserker Grendel for the winter choice. Vrishasena's character would have contrasted Ed's through his utter adoration of his father and family and his desire to be a hero that could live up to them, while Berserker Grendel would have been pretending to be Beowulf and would have ended up focused around their shared grudges and hatred for specific figures that they needed to work past together. I'm almost certainly not using them in the story going forward in the form that I had considered for choices of main Servant, but that's not to say they won't show up later.
If Niamh had been selected as the PC instead of Edward, would she still have been as...this...as the version we've met? Would we have an estranged brother who definitely wouldn't utterly loathe us we'd be so happy to be seeing again? Would he have had any notable divergences if not selected (other than obviously the flourishes of a different unreliable narrator)?
Things would have been exactly the same, yes. Ed and Niamh's shared backstory is set in stone, the challenge would have been seeing through Niamh's biased perspective at what Ed is actually doing and how he's actually reacting, and coming to realise that Niamh's own estimation of herself and their childhood is very heavily flawed. Edward would have similarly been exactly the same, but naturally harder to gauge his issues since you're not seeing his thoughts. Ed and Niamh are both established characters, they've both done some shit and it'll come up for both of them going forward.
Is the reason Niamh can't summon a Servant just because she lacks a "Gathering Place of Heroes" like Lord Canelot or the Argo?
Yes. The FATE system was designed to not need a gathering place of heroes, but the explosions were partially directed to damage the system. The fact that Ed
does possess a relic that can be used as a gathering place is the only reason he's able to summon Servants working on the remnants of the system, and without Lev's knowledge it's borderline impossible to repair it to its original functionality.
What's been your favourite scene to write so far?
Ed using Lord of Steel Chains for the first time. It was really fun to work out a personalized virtual phantasm for him that allowed for some good characterization for exactly
how he motivates himself to keep standing and keep fighting, and in general it was just real neat to put to paper one of the coolest scenes in early FGO and put my own spin on it.
Besides that, basically any scene with Circe or Matthew. Circe's a delight to write and I love getting to balance between her business mode and her playfulness when she's relaxed, and Matthew is just incredibly fun and it's great writing him and Ed being cute.
