By the way, Sasaki Kojiro and Nemo are also not purely literary characters 1) According to Kojiro's interlude, the basis of the Nameless Swordsman, who had the same skill to cut the wings of a swallow, and the phantom Kojiro were taken for his summoning 2)(Imp'd)Is the divine spirit Triton and the phantom of the captain Nemo, who became a servant only due to the merger of these two parts.
Ha. Didn't know about phantoms before.
In short, it turns out that any fictional character can become a Heroic Spirit… BUT only if he is merged with a spirit of a higher order(divine spirit, many, MANY others phantoms, heroic spirit, probably elemental or fairy, and etc).
By the way, Sasaki Kojiro and Nemo are also not purely literary characters 1) According to Kojiro's interlude, the basis of the Nameless Swordsman, who had the same skill to cut the wings of a swallow, and the phantom Kojiro were taken for his summoning 2)(Imp'd)Is the divine spirit Triton and the phantom of the captain Nemo, who became a servant only due to the merger of these two parts.
Ha. Didn't know about phantoms before.
In short, it turns out that any fictional character can become a Heroic Spirit… BUT only if he is merged with a spirit of a higher order(divine spirit, many, MANY others phantoms, heroic spirit, probably elemental or fairy, and etc).
In other words, fictional character can manifest as Servants, if they're exceptions. And in Fate, everyone is an exception, so the distinction is meaningless.
Fictional character can be Servants. Period. (plus there's that WoG that says they can be Heroic Spirits, so)
Also Heroic Spirit Nemo is explicitly a thing that exists -- Servant Nemo is supposed to be a fusion of the 'Heroic Spirit Nemo' and the Divine Spirit Triton -- so yeah, Nemo's on the Throne, even if he might not be able to manifest as a Servant normally (it's not like he's the only one like that, Zhuge Liang is supposed to be historical and he uses the same excuse)
Kojiro's situation probably tells us how it('s supposed to) work -- if a Heroic Spirit is fictional, the throne gets the closest possible match to fill in as the personality/soul, etc. Actually, just remembered the more or less the same thing happened to Benkei and Angry Matthew (though not necessarily for the same reasons).
In other words, fictional character can manifest as Servants, if they're exceptions. And in Fate, everyone is an exception, so the distinction is meaningless.
Fictional character can be Servants. Period. (plus there's that WoG that says they can be Heroic Spirits, so)
Phantom Spirits are said to be "cast-offs," beings that were forgotten by history and are devoid of any faith. They are made up of urban legends, fairy tales, and extinct beasts. Described as fictions whose concepts will never manifest beyond the status of urban legends, they are beings that will "wither and disappear," failing to attain the ranks of Hero or Anti-Hero. Like Heroic Spirits, Phantom Spirits possess the capacity to hold Noble Phantasms based upon their legends. The same characteristics of some Noble Phantasms being weakened or strengthened upon becoming Noble Phantasms applies the same way to Phantoms, but they are always greatly weakened as a matter of course if one is summoned.
Due to their poor Saint Graphs, Phantom Spirits are beings of low strength, weaker than author Casters whose fame come from writing stories. Appearing as Shadow Servants, they would not be worth summoning in a Holy Grail War. Attempting to summon one as a Servant under normal conditions, they would be unable to manifest with a body, and, without a body, would be unable to function as a Servant. They at most will appear in the form of ghosts, or they can be placed in something like a doll body. They lack the capacity to hold much magical energy, no matter how much is supplied, so they can store a minute amount. They are unable to actualize their Noble Phantasms.
Phantom Spirits normally lack utility as Servants, but Baal's machinations in the Shinjuku Singularity lead to the ability to fuse them with Heroic Spirits and other Phantom Spirits. While said to be impossible outside the Singularity, utilizing data gained from it proves enough for Sion Eltnam Sokaris to summon Captain Nemo. Akin to a Mystic Code for a magus, Phantoms can be transplanted into Heroic Spirits to enhance their abilities. Through fusion and manifestation under a Servant's Saint Graph, the Noble Phantasms possessed by Phantom Spirits can be actualized, granting new abilities to the Servant.
Phantoms are similar beings to Wraiths, but the exact differences have not been explained.
Phantom Spirits are said to be "cast-offs," beings that were forgotten by history and are devoid of any faith. They are made up of urban legends, fairy tales, and extinct beasts. Described as fictions whose concepts will never manifest beyond the status of urban legends, they are beings that will "wither and disappear," failing to attain the ranks of Hero or Anti-Hero. Like Heroic Spirits, Phantom Spirits possess the capacity to hold Noble Phantasms based upon their legends. The same characteristics of some Noble Phantasms being weakened or strengthened upon becoming Noble Phantasms applies the same way to Phantoms, but they are always greatly weakened as a matter of course if one is summoned.
Due to their poor Saint Graphs, Phantom Spirits are beings of low strength, weaker than author Casters whose fame come from writing stories. Appearing as Shadow Servants, they would not be worth summoning in a Holy Grail War. Attempting to summon one as a Servant under normal conditions, they would be unable to manifest with a body, and, without a body, would be unable to function as a Servant. They at most will appear in the form of ghosts, or they can be placed in something like a doll body. They lack the capacity to hold much magical energy, no matter how much is supplied, so they can store a minute amount. They are unable to actualize their Noble Phantasms.
Phantom Spirits normally lack utility as Servants, but Baal's machinations in the Shinjuku Singularity lead to the ability to fuse them with Heroic Spirits and other Phantom Spirits. While said to be impossible outside the Singularity, utilizing data gained from it proves enough for Sion Eltnam Sokaris to summon Captain Nemo. Akin to a Mystic Code for a magus, Phantoms can be transplanted into Heroic Spirits to enhance their abilities. Through fusion and manifestation under a Servant's Saint Graph, the Noble Phantasms possessed by Phantom Spirits can be actualized, granting new abilities to the Servant.
Phantoms are similar beings to Wraiths, but the exact differences have not been explained.
Again, it's not as if it's unusual for a Heroic Spirit not to be summonable 'under normal circunstances'. See: Zhuge Liang/other Pseudo-Servants, and Heroic Spirit that's also a Divine Spirit, any Grand Servant, etc, etc.
When 'normal circunstances' aren't a thing that exists, the distinction is less than useless. That's what people mean when they say the rules in the Nasuverse mean nothing.
Plus, if a Phantom Spirit is summoned, they're still a Servant. Which is the whole point. Sasaki Kojiro also isn't technically a Heroic Spirit, but he's a Servant. It makes no difference if Davy Jones is a Wraith, a Phantom Spirit, a Counter Guardian, a Heroic Spirit, a Divine Spirit (not that farfetched considering the bottom of the sea is just "Davy Jones' locker") or even an Elemental or something. He can be a Servant and that's what matters for the situation at hand.
Da Vinci isn't just smart, she's pretty much the literal smartest person to have ever lived. She's also supposed to knowledgable.
And it's not that she's wrong about some things -- she's wrong about literally everything. Not a single deduction she ever makes on the limitations of anything is ever not disproven pretty much immediatelly.
It doesn't matter if she's the smartest person ever, she's still at the end of the day "Just Smart" and not "Literally Omnescient" and as such CAN still be wrong or just not have all the information or answers. Her intellect means she's wrong much less often than others, but it's still a possibility for her to be wrong.
And really? Name three times Da Vinci was just wrong about everything that aren't cases where she couldn't possibly have known the information ahead of time and is having to deduce things as they come from limited information.
It would be a complete asspull if she could just take a look at some random godbeast or space-magic sword from an alternate reality and immediately rattle off a complete and 100% detailed wiki page on what its powers and limitations are without any context or explanation before it ever even does anything just based on "I'm the smartest Genius to ever live." Where the hell would she have learned these things?
As I said, when you have a setting where you're bombarded with exposition on the 'rules' every other exchange between characters, but where any character who's not literally omniscient is completely, 100% wrong about anything they ever say about then, and every character that is almost never says anything one way or the other... you start to realise there's no rules. You have to draw a line somewhere.
It sure is a good thing that is literally never the case then. It's not like Lancer goes "My spear pierces the heart and then swings. It never misses." and is followed by it bursting into flames and teleporting into someone else entirely's head. Everything he says IS TRUE, it's just not COMPLETE. Because why the hell would he ever stop in the middle of a fight to go "Oh, except if you get out of range really fast. Or have the ability to defy fate, can't forget those. BTW how high is your Luck Stat? Just checking." Not only would that be unnatural as hell why on earth would you ever tell your opponents the weaknesses of your own trump card. That is exactly the kind of thing the enemies would have to exposit by finding out themselves.
Several problems with that: 1) the Luck thing was never even hinted at before it happens 2) Saber just says 'I dodged it thanks to my luck' and never adequately explains 3) Luck is never really explained unless you dig deep into WoG and even then it's inconsistent as all hell 4) it's arbitrary af 5) it's a direct contradiction of everything we knew about Gae Bolg beforehand -- it's not 'the spear always pierces the heart, UNLESS...' 6) it's hard to call the trait of high Luck stat being a way to avoid Gae Bolgs curse consistently true when it only exists for the sake of that one asspull and comes up nowhere else 7) somehow that trait never comes up in the stated rules 8) the whole deal with Fate rules being BS is that every single rule has more exceptions than anything else... so saying that the workings of Gae Bolg have an exception isn't really a defense
1) When would it have been between it being established and literally being used in the same scene? And by Who? Lancer himself? Why would he EVER do that? He literally doesn't ever explain it before he actually uses it on Saber. Because that would be stupid as hell.
2) Do you want Saber to read the wiki entry on it or something? The only reason she even knows it was her Luck is because of the Instinct skill, she isn't a mage.
3) Fate Stay Night was originally a game. Luck is explained within the game itself.
4) Sure is, so is the ability to "reverse causality" in the first place.
5) This limitation was established within the same scene its main ability was. Both of which BY SABER herself after it already missed. Hell it's technically the same sentence in the anime. It is LITERALLY exactly "The spear always pierces the heart, unless..."
6) and 7) It is literally coded into the mechanics of the weapon in some form in every game where it has any chance to instantly kill at all. And Lancer has only ever used that effect to completion ON SABER in any canon we've seen. All other instances he tries are either the thrown version or interrupted before he could use it.
8) It's just a power with limitations. A power that's literally B ranked on a scale that goes to EX and includes multiple modifiers. By your logic, what's Ea's bullshit limitation? Or Rule Breaker? Or Ionian Hetairoi? Or Excalibur? or Bellerophon? Or Zabaniya? or literally any other noble phantasm except for Gae Bolg? Which isn't even a case in actuality, itself.
People just take the meme of "Fate has no rules" and run with it even when a lot of their examples are really cases of "the rules are more detailed than one sentence." or "Character A was just wrong, or had incomplete info, because they couldn't possibly know ALL of the rules about Thing B."
They do though, even if they don't do it often. Most notably the splitting of fate and tsukihime worlds was explicitly a rather recent retcon that nasu had to throw some stuff out to do.
It doesn't matter if she's the smartest person ever, she's still at the end of the day "Just Smart" and not "Literally Omnescient" and as such CAN still be wrong or just not have all the information or answers. Her intellect means she's wrong much less often than others, but it's still a possibility for her to be wrong.
And really? Name three times Da Vinci was just wrong about everything that aren't cases where she couldn't possibly have known the information ahead of time and is having to deduce things as they come from limited information.
It would be a complete asspull if she could just take a look at some random godbeast or space-magic sword from an alternate reality and immediately rattle off a complete and 100% detailed wiki page on what its powers and limitations are without any context or explanation before it ever even does anything just based on "I'm the smartest Genius to ever live." Where the hell would she have learned these things?
It's not that Da Vince shouldn't ever be wrong, it's that she shouldn't always be wrong.
She and/or Romani are often the ones saying 'Divine Spirits shouldn't be able to exist in this era' and things like that -- if she's not the one who says it, she also doesn't correct Romani or Mash when they do.
Which shows that all those rules the Nasuverse loves breaking aren't just bullshit Rin was wrong about, but widely believed/accepted stuff. And they're all wrong. Again, it's okay for some of it to be wrong, but everything!?
Plus, more often than not those are the only rules we know about, so we know that the rules we know are bullshit. But there are no rules that aren't bullshit. Even when we get an amendment to the rules, the new rules are also usually disproven soon afterwards. So yeah.
Ex: It starts as "Divine Spirits can't be summoned as Servants.", then becomes "Divine Spirits can also be Servants but only if they hijack a Heroic Spirit's Saint Graph", later expanded to "...or if they are summoned into a human's body," but then "actually they don't need that, Divine Spirits can be Servants if they're weak enough", and also "actually strong Divine Spirits can still be still be summoned even if they're strong if they still consider themselves human or something", until there's so many exceptions and excuses the rule itself stops meaning anything and the series drops all pretenses and everyone just stops bothering.
Those aren't exceptions that prove the rule, the exceptions are the rule
1) When would it have been between it being established and literally being used in the same scene? And by Who? Lancer himself? Why would he EVER do that? He literally doesn't ever explain it before he actually uses it on Saber. Because that would be stupid as hell.
2) Do you want Saber to read the wiki entry on it or something? The only reason she even knows it was her Luck is because of the Instinct skill, she isn't a mage.
3) Fate Stay Night was originally a game. Luck is explained within the game itself.
4) Sure is, so is the ability to "reverse causality" in the first place.
5) This limitation was established within the same scene its main ability was. Both of which BY SABER herself after it already missed. Hell it's technically the same sentence in the anime. It is LITERALLY exactly "The spear always pierces the heart, unless..."
6) and 7) It is literally coded into the mechanics of the weapon in some form in every game where it has any chance to instantly kill at all. And Lancer has only ever used that effect to completion ON SABER in any canon we've seen. All other instances he tries are either the thrown version or interrupted before he could use it.
8) It's just a power with limitations. A power that's literally B ranked on a scale that goes to EX and includes multiple modifiers. By your logic, what's Ea's bullshit limitation? Or Rule Breaker? Or Ionian Hetairoi? Or Excalibur? or Bellerophon? Or Zabaniya? or literally any other noble phantasm except for Gae Bolg? Which isn't even a case in actuality, itself.
1) Fate Stay Night is a story. If it was the hard-magic setting it pretends to be, it's supposed to establish the way things work beforehand so the players/readers readers understand and can follow along with wth is going on. The way that scene is handled is just bad writing.
2) See above. The problem isn't just that Saber doesn't explain. It's that the story itself doesn't explain. Literally everything we get as an explanation about the whole thing is that one sentence of Saber going 'I dodged it because of my Luck.' Luck is never explained beyond that in any way shape or form, so it just falls flat all around
3) It's really not. Fate Stay Night is a Visual Novel. There's no game mechanics related to combat in the slightest. There is a menu with Saber's stats, sure. But it never, ever becomes relevant. Hell, I'm not sure a single stat becomes relevant even one other time in the whole vn.
4) Gae Bolg is presented and explained as an absolute ability. It's not suposed to be a it works unless the author says so thing, which is absolutely what it ends up being.
5) Honestly, I might be remembering it wrong, but the 'always pierces the heart' bit is explained just as Lancer's using it to artificially raise the stakes, and then Saber dodges and goes 'Luck, lol'. It's just bad writting that spetacularly misses the appeal of a hard magic system in every way imo.
6) and 7) Honestly, I don't know/care about game mechanics. And if the only time Lancer uses the causality reversal in-story is the one time it fails why have it even be a thing. It has a 100% failure rate in FSN so it just falls flat on every level. (IIRC it does work once in Hollow Ataraxia, which is IMO the only time it's ever done justice in the entire canon, but otherwise the 'rules' behind Gae Bolg are literally only there to be broken... just like every other rule in the Nasuverse.
8) When you give characters hax-style powers, you're supposed to treat their powers and limitations as conditions to be taken into consideration and worked around, because that's what makes them interesting. They made Gae Bolg's power is too strong to be B-Rank -- that's the writer's problem not the reader's. You could say B-rank just measures the striking power, not the hax/conceptual bullshit, or just change the rank. But ignoring/powering through the power is just missing the point.
Excalibur, Ea, Bellerophon, etc are just bigaton-style powers, so it makes sense for them to be overpowerable by something with bigger bigatons, but things like Gae Bolg, Rule Breaker or Ionian Hetairoi shouldn't just fail/do nothing because the writer wrote himself into a corner when defining them.
It comes down to same thing in the end: you can argue all day that, 'actually it makes complete sense for Gae Bolg to not work because so-and-so...' but it doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work. The workings of Gae Bolg, just like every other rule in the Nasuverse, only exist to be broken.
The whole reason conceptual powers and hax are fun and interesting is because they're supposed to go around raw stats and make fights about more than 'who can make the bigger kaboon'... you can't make interesting strategies around unreliable powers that only work when the author feels like it and that can just fail because of an arbritary unforeshadowed stat check. But Fate missed that memo I guess.
It's not like Nasu is unique in this problem -- see Bleach where supposedly absolute hax powers don't work on Aisen 'because he's just that powerful', so something like, idk, Jojo's where a rat's Stand can affect Jotaro the same as it can affect anything else.
Nasu tries to pretend it's the second, but really it's the first, and it's not even subtle. Things only work if the writers feel like it, otherwise, they don't and just make up a reason. Everything is like that.
It's not that Da Vince shouldn't ever be wrong, it's that she shouldn't always be wrong.
She and/or Romani are often the ones saying 'Divine Spirits shouldn't be able to exist in this era' and things like that -- if she's not the one who says it, she also doesn't correct Romani or Mash when they do.
Which shows that all those rules the Nasuverse loves breaking aren't just bullshit Rin was wrong about, but widely believed/accepted stuff. And they're all wrong. Again, it's okay for some of it to be wrong, but everything!?
Plus, more often than not those are the only rules we know about, so we know that the rules we know are bullshit. But there are no rules that aren't bullshit. Even when we get an amendment to the rules, the new rules are also usually disproven soon afterwards. So yeah.
Ex: It starts as "Divine Spirits can't be summoned as Servants.", then becomes "Divine Spirits can also be Servants but only if they hijack a Heroic Spirit's Saint Graph", later expanded to "...or if they are summoned into a human's body," but then "actually they don't need that, Divine Spirits can be Servants if they're weak enough", and also "actually strong Divine Spirits can still be still be summoned even if they're strong if they still consider themselves human or something", until there's so many exceptions and excuses the rule itself stops meaning anything and the series drops all pretenses and everyone just stops bothering.
Those aren't exceptions that prove the rule, the exceptions are the rule
Widely believed and accepted stuff by people who are canonically established to be less capable and knowledgeable about the subject than the people proving them wrong by default. Because the very nature of the world's decline in magic does not allow them to actually personally experience and research what they're assuming or possess the means to exploit it. Gods literally DON'T EXIST in a meaningful capacity anymore in the time when "Divine Spirits can't be Servants" was established to be an "accepted fact".
Medea even has a scene explicitly to drive that point home, where she outperforms a modern magus's life's work using a complex magitech device and multiple human sacrifices... with nothing more than barely a flick of her wrist. Several times over.
Further, Da Vinci isn't the one who says that in FGO, Romani is. And is immediately, within a sentence of him saying it, proven wrong by Stheno a whole singularity before Artemis/Orion show up. And then it's never brought up again after Stheno.
No one in story ever said "the rule is no, except in this one very specific case" that kept getting broken and modified. They just went "oh, guess I was wrong" and never brought that rule up again.
It's the FANS who decided to claim "Oh, the rule is now this" over and over after the rule was disproven.
1) Fate Stay Night is a story. If it was the hard-magic setting it pretends to be, it's supposed to establish the way things work beforehand so the players/readers readers understand and can follow along with wth is going on. The way that scene is handled is just bad writing.
2) See above. The problem isn't just that Saber doesn't explain. It's that the story itself doesn't explain. Literally everything we get as an explanation about the whole thing is that one sentence of Saber going 'I dodged it because of my Luck.' Luck is never explained beyond that in any way shape or form, so it just falls flat all around
Fate Stay Night is a Mystery Battle Story. One of the central conceits of the story is "You don't know what mythological person this is, or what their powers are, right away until they reveal them. That's the whole reason the characters go by Saber, Archer, and Lancer in the first place.
I really don't get what you want here because again, these things are generally always explained within the same scene they become established.
3) It's really not. Fate Stay Night is a Visual Novel. There's no game mechanics related to combat in the slightest. There is a menu with Saber's stats, sure. But it never, ever becomes relevant. Hell, I'm not sure a single stat becomes relevant even one other time in the whole vn.
4) Gae Bolg is presented and explained as an absolute ability. It's not suposed to be a it works unless the author says so thing, which is absolutely what it ends up being.
The stat pages aren't just dumped on you already fully filled out. One of the central mechanics of the game is that they get filled in as you LEARN more about a given character. Because that's part of the mystery element the story is telling.
And again, Gae Bolg is established WITH its limitations in the same scene. It's not like Lancer just goes "btw my spear bends fate lol" then fucks off for three hours and has saber go "but actually so do I lol" two days later. One directly leads to the other and it's not JUST a thing only Saber can do. It's a general limitation of the ablity.
5) Honestly, I might be remembering it wrong, but the 'always pierces the heart' bit is explained just as Lancer's using it to artificially raise the stakes, and then Saber dodges and goes 'Luck, lol'. It's just bad writting that spetacularly misses the appeal of a hard magic system in every way imo.
6) and 7) Honestly, I don't know/care about game mechanics. And if the only time Lancer uses the causality reversal in-story is the one time it fails why have it even be a thing. It has a 100% failure rate in FSN so it just falls flat on every level. (IIRC it does work once in Hollow Ataraxia, which is IMO the only time it's ever done justice in the entire canon, but otherwise the 'rules' behind Gae Bolg are literally only there to be broken... just like every other rule in the Nasuverse.
From what I recall, he lights it up like he's going to use it against Archer but doesn't explain or use it because they hear Shirou and he goes to chase him down. Then he uses it without explanation on Saber later and she's the one who deduces the causality reversal. A youtube search found me this video of the UBW anime that supports that.
And yeah, narratively when the antagonist has an instant kill ability that they use on the protagonist, you kinda HAVE to subvert it one way or another if you want to have a story. It kinda sucks for Lancer but narratively he's there to show how badass other people are and then die to raise the stakes.
It's fine to think that sucks or that the rules for his ability are kinda lame and get abused too much. But it's another thing entirely to say there are no rules.
8) When you give characters hax-style powers, you're supposed to treat their powers and limitations as conditions to be taken into consideration and worked around, because that's what makes them interesting. They made Gae Bolg's power is too strong to be B-Rank -- that's the writer's problem not the reader's. You could say B-rank just measures the striking power, not the hax/conceptual bullshit, or just change the rank. But ignoring/powering through the power is just missing the point.
Excalibur, Ea, Bellerophon, etc are just bigaton-style powers, so it makes sense for them to be overpowerable by something with bigger bigatons, but things like Gae Bolg, Rule Breaker or Ionian Hetairoi shouldn't just fail/do nothing because the writer wrote himself into a corner when defining them.
It comes down to same thing in the end: you can argue all day that, 'actually it makes complete sense for Gae Bolg to not work because so-and-so...' but it doesn't change the fact that it doesn't work. The workings of Gae Bolg, just like every other rule in the Nasuverse, only exist to be broken.
The whole reason conceptual powers and hax are fun and interesting is because they're supposed to go around raw stats and make fights about more than 'who can make the bigger kaboon'... you can't make interesting strategies around unreliable powers that only work when the author feels like it and that can just fail because of an arbritary unforeshadowed stat check. But Fate missed that memo I guess.
It's not like Nasu is unique in this problem -- see Bleach where supposedly absolute hax powers don't work on Aisen 'because he's just that powerful', so something like, idk, Jojo's where a rat's Stand can affect Jotaro the same as it can affect anything else.
Nasu tries to pretend it's the second, but really it's the first, and it's not even subtle. Things only work if the writers feel like it, otherwise, they don't and just make up a reason. Everything is like that.
That you think Gae Bolg is too strong for its ranking is your opinion. All we know is by Nasu's standards Gae Bolg, busted as it is, is middle of the pack by Noble Phantasm standards.
Rule Breaker never canonically fails when its actually used. Neither does Ionian Hetairoi. Just because they don't instantly cause a win doesn't mean they didn't do exactly what they were established to do. Ionian Hetairoi a Reality Marble and an army of servant tier soldiers inside it. Gil just nuked them all.
That's not a broken rule, it's just a response.
Likewise, Rule Breaker never fails to do what it's actually supposed to. It breaks spells. Caster taking over Saber's command spells is a seperate spell she herself casts. And Saber has Magic Resistance and doesn't wanna work for Caster. Again, not a broken rule.
And Gae Bolg stabs the heart, with some limits that can be exploited. Which is what it's introduced as. And it does exactly that. That it never gets a chance to actually go off unhindered is certainly a complaint one can have about the writing. Heck I have a few myself. But it's still not a "broken rule."
90% of the "rules that exist to be broken" in Fate are rules that the fans made up. Because they were never "hard rules" to begin with, or had those limitations from the start.
Yeah, there are some things that have been outright retconned as the series went from ONE visual novel to however many different properties there are now over the literal years. But not nearly as many as the memes would have you believe by a long shot.
Every time people have a Nasuverse lore argument, I imagine I've randomly stumbled across a mage forum Waver founded, and everyone is actually magi arguing about stuff.
Every time people have a Nasuverse lore argument, I imagine I've randomly stumbled across a mage forum Waver founded, and everyone is actually magi arguing about stuff.
Widely believed and accepted stuff by people who are canonically established to be less capable and knowledgeable about the subject than the people proving them wrong by default. Because the very nature of the world's decline in magic does not allow them to actually personally experience and research what they're assuming or possess the means to exploit it. Gods literally DON'T EXIST in a meaningful capacity anymore in the time when "Divine Spirits can't be Servants" was established to be an "accepted fact".
Medea even has a scene explicitly to drive that point home, where she outperforms a modern magus's life's work using a complex magitech device and multiple human sacrifices... with nothing more than barely a flick of her wrist. Several times over.
Further, Da Vinci isn't the one who says that in FGO, Romani is. And is immediately, within a sentence of him saying it, proven wrong by Stheno a whole singularity before Artemis/Orion show up. And then it's never brought up again after Stheno.
No one in story ever said "the rule is no, except in this one very specific case" that kept getting broken and modified. They just went "oh, guess I was wrong" and never brought that rule up again.
It's the FANS who decided to claim "Oh, the rule is now this" over and over after the rule was disproven.
Look, what you're saying is:
1)Any exposition given by a non-omniscient character is just conjecture and thus was never a rule
2)Any character that's omniscient is cryptic af and more or less never says anything about any rules
Which part of that is supposed to convince me that there are rules?
Remember that this whole argument started because in this chap Olga confidently and vehemently says that Davy Jones can't be a Servant and that something like the PotC movies can't affect a Servant's manifestation. And I said, those rules are bullshit and there are no actual hard rules as to what can and can't happen in these contexts. Davy Jones totally can be a Servant and modern ideas can affect Servants. The key word being can.
I have a lot more to say on the rest of your post, but it's true that the discussion on Gae Bolg is pretty off-topic, so I'll see about responding in the general lore thread.
BANG was the sound of someone firing a shot, but the round flew wide, passing through ship and crew alike as though they weren't even there. The silent captain remained unfazed and unbothered, and then, at last, he turned away, and his ghostly ship sailed off back into the fog. Between one heartbeat and the next, it was gone, disappeared, as though it had never been there in the first place.
Fairly sure Ygg's homonculi stuff was mostly Einzbern-sourced, and they had that running before Fiore got her hands on the blueprints- it was a fairly late purchase, with Caules being intended as a Fiore substitute up until he got his Seals (by which time Ygg should have been well established given how long Darnic had had to set things up).
You guys, have you forgotten that we actually see her — and Victor's ransacked apartment, which makes it clear that he himself is dead — in the London Singularity?
I figure the ghost would react more if it had been Drake herself shooting, because her shot works be Grail backed and actually affect the ghost ship. Just a twitchy crew member.
You know on this whole fictional servant thing there's also Jack The Ripper as a Berserker from strange/Fake who is the literal manifestation of the legend "Who is Jack the Ripper". Which was summoned through the use of Flat having a fake Jack The Ripper knife. Though honestly I don't know if that can be considered fictional or not considering assassin Jack exists.
Also the easy solution to this sort of argument is the rule of cool. If it's cool, Nasu likes it, and people enjoy it than it doesn't matter. Who cares if the 'rules' aren't exactly completely written, change with new knowledge, are something the fans made up in their head, or even don't exist. You just gotta stop thinking about it too hard and simply enjoy the bullshit. Nasu certainly does.
You guys, have you forgotten that we actually see her — and Victor's ransacked apartment, which makes it clear that he himself is dead — in the London Singularity?
I figure the ghost would react more if it had been Drake herself shooting, because her shot works be Grail backed and actually affect the ghost ship. Just a twitchy crew member.
Now that you called attention to it, it's kinda weird to think about that the Golden Hind doesn't have Mystery to it right now (or at least not enough to affect purely spiritual entities) despite it being Drake's most iconic Noble Phantasm
Also the easy solution to this sort of argument is the rule of cool. If it's cool, Nasu likes it, and people enjoy it than it doesn't matter. Who cares if the 'rules' aren't exactly completely written, change with new knowledge, are something the fans made up in their head, or even don't exist. You just gotta stop thinking about it too hard and simply enjoy the bullshit. Nasu certainly does.
"Heed my words. My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny."
Another day, another summon.
"If thou accedes to my will and reason, then answer me. I hereby swear that I will embody all the good in this world and punish all evils!"
Unlike with Jeanne Alter, absolutely nothing seemed like it was going wrong. According to Da Vinci, all readings were within standard tolerances. The rainbow light shining from the center of the room was the same as it had been all the previous summons.
"Thou the Seventh Heaven, clad in the three great words of power!"
"I'm getting a lock on the Saint Graph!" Da Vinci announced, smiling. "It's an Archer-class Servant!"
"Come forth from the Ring of Deterrence, Guardian of the Heavenly Scales!"
I should've known better than to expect an unambiguously positive result.
A set of deeply familiar smells rushed past me Charred flesh. Blood. Burned rubble.
Gunsmoke.
The light from the summon collected in the center of the room, filling out a shape. Thin, armored in white and gray, with curly black hair. Glasses. A holstered sidearm at her belt, beneath the space with her missing arm would have filled. Open brown eyes, with blood trickling down their--her, the shape was clear enough to make that out now--her face.
"What? But she said--" Olga Marie's shrill voice seemed like it was coming from very far away. Gasps came from the twins. I couldn't pay any attention to them, too busy suppressing my bugs from immediately swarming the entire room, the intimately familiar figure. The image I saw in the mirror, in my nightmares.
Khepri opened her mouth, and spoke, sounding far too normal and far too tired.
"Servant Archer. I suppose I'm at your disposal... and it seems you already know who I am, assuming my... alternate self? Still-living self?"
She seemed perturbed for a moment, before shrugging and continuing. "Assuming she's filled you in on our history. I'll be of use, I'm sure."
It took everything I had to stay calm, to not show any emotion. I looked at the Servant--my Servant, I had to remember that--with my Master's Clairvoyance.
Magic Resistance E and Independent Action A. She could kill me, easily, and still have more than enough mana left to destroy the entire facility.
Clairvoyance A. As close to all-seeing as was humanly possible, the same rank as Arash's. Was it through her version of insect control or through... the Clairvoyant? I didn't feel any disruption to the insects already under my command, so it had to be the latt-
"There's TWO Senpais? What is this, Star Wars?"
Count on Rika to break a tense silence with a stupid joke.
"What do you know?" I eventually asked.
"I'm going to need you to be a little more specific," Khepri replied, without a hint of sarcasm or irony.
After weathering a couple more tension-diffusing questions from Rika and Ritsuka, Da Vinci and Director Marie had finally stepped in, insisting that they wanted to 'give the newly summoned Servant some personal space, some time to talk'. I heard the unspoken demand in those lines: they wanted to ask questions, wanted to give me the chance to ask questions.
I was grateful for that, though I suspected theirs would be quite different from mine. Olga would want to know whether Khepri was similar at all to me, whether she was an alternate version like Jeanne Alter, or simply summoned from the future like we suspected Emiya was.
I... On one hand, I agreed with the sentiment, and had some curiosities of my own regarding the topic. I recognized exactly when this Heroic Spirit had been summoned, even if my memory of it was a tiny bit fuzzy. The bullet holes in her forehead had technically healed, not gaping wounds, but I could tell that they were still 'fresh', somehow. The stump of an arm, burned by Lung's fire, the armor, identical to what I had worn. This was me from the very end of Gold Morning, no doubt about it.
Which made me all the more curious as to how she was retaining her faculties. I had... not been myself, at that point in time. More my passenger than 'Taylor'. I didn't feel any pull on the bugs around me, so it was possible that she didn't have it at all, but that opened its own can of 'how the fuck?'. As a living human, I still had my passenger, apparently, though I thought it had been sealed away. Originally, I was worried that the Servant that we had summoned was my passenger, no matter how impossible that might have been. But she seemed far too lucid for that to be the case. Still, a mystery for now.
On the other hand, on the topic of trust... I'd not given Olga and Da Vinci the best impression of my past. The opposite, in fact. It was entirely possible that they harbored doubts that this 'villainous' version of myself might do something to sabotage Chaldea for some nefarious purpose. Frankly? I didn't. Even at my worst, I felt like I'd acted with good intentions. I couldn't imagine any version of 'me' that would intentionally act to doom the world.
At the same time, though, it was those same good intentions I was worried about. I knew I could get up to some nasty shit if I felt like I was in the right.
"Our mission here, to start. And don't you dare lie to me!" Olga said.
"I think I get the gist. Time travelling to save humanity. Summoning spirits of heroes and monsters, apparently, to do it." Khepri looked at my face, something akin to realization flashing across her face.
"So that's what that looks like. You're doing the insect thing. Pushing your emotions into your bugs. I see why people found it eerie now."
I was. I didn't deny it. More importantly, I realized what that meant: she wasn't. Possibly even couldn't, if her reaction in the summoning chamber was any indication. Her face had been as expressive as a regular person's.
...If that was the case, then just what could she even do? What made her an Archer? Bugs, maybe, could be interpreted as projectiles. It was no more outlandish than Emiya's swords, Anne and Mary's rifles, even David's sling. But if she didn't even have those...
I looked at her with my Master's Clairvoyance again, at her Noble Phantasm--Noble Phantasms. Two of them. One of them was E-Ranked. The other couldn't seem to settle on a rank, shifting from E to C to A and back again. No further detail was provided. It put me on edge.
"What are your capabilities? Your Noble Phantasms?" I asked, ignoring her statement.
She sighed, as if I was being unreasonable somehow. "So we're doing this. Fine. First. There's this."
She drew her pistol. It was easily identifiable as the one I used to carry as Weaver.
"This gun is just a formality, in all honesty. I'd say more, but I don't know how much you've told the rest of your... coworkers. I guess. Only thing it could probably kill is the kids in the other room. Useless against Servants."
Kids... why would she mention children? Then it hit me. This wasn't just any pistol. It was the one I'd used to shoot Hatchet Face clone. I'd used it to briefly incapacitate Gray Boy. And I'd used it to murder Aster.
...She had that as a Noble Phantasm. A weapon specifically designed to murder children.
Khepri continued, "If you were any other Master, I'd probably keep it to that. And you'd probably believe me. Heroic Spirit of the modern era, probably doesn't have much in terms of power. But since you're... well, me. I don't think you'd believe it. So..."
She closed her eyes, let out another long-suffering sigh. A sense of power coalesced around her, silhouettes dancing around her legs. Olga tensed, sensing that something big was about to happen.
"Doormaker."
And with but that word, a wall of gold-rimmed hexagons appeared behind her, almost resembling a honeycomb. Inside each one was a glowing golden light, the same light that radiated off of Scion. And within each softly glowing light emerged a different projectile, half-peeking out. I recognized them. The heat of Sundancer's sun. A steel beam enhanced with Foil's rainbow-colored power. The tip of a gun that might've been one of String Theory's Drivers. And dozens more.
"Parahumans. If you were wondering what made me an Archer. It's parahumans."
Independent Action: A
A class skill of the Archer class. Archer requires little mana upkeep to continue existing, both due to her low stats and mana-efficient Noble Phantasms. At her rank, she can exist for up to a week without a Master.
Magic Resistance: E
A class skill of the Archer class. Archer had few to no encounters with magic or magecraft during her life, and even if she had, she would have been largely helpless against them. Thus, her rank is as low as can be.
Clairvoyance: A
The power of the parahuman known as the Clairvoyant. Archer only originally possessed a fair degree of localized clairvoyance through insectokinesis. But not long after jailbreaking her Passenger, she also gained an impossibly powerful upgrade through Cauldron's omniscient cape, able to see nearly everything across every reality. Observational power enough to burn out his eye sockets. While it has been decreased in power from what it originally was, her current rank still grants her the ability to perceive nearly everything in her current world, tying directly into her primary Noble Phantasm. Sufficiently powerful anti-Scrying abilities can block this skill, however.
God-Slayer: C-
Archer's greatest foe was a false deity, though still referred to as a golden god. It took everything her entire reality possessed working in conjunction to bring him down. And in her eventual success, gained a mediocre rank in this skill, tempered by the falseness of the god she slew. Archer gains a positive modifier to all attacks made against Divine Spirits, wraiths, and Servants possessing the "Divinity" skill.
Secret Identity: D-
A skill near-universally found in Servants originating from Earth Bet. It is supposed to allow Servants with an adequate rank in it to operate without detection as long as they are not broadcasting their identity, allowing them to pass as a civilian. A sort of downgrade compared to an Assassin's Presence Concealment. However, Archer's rank in this skill is especially low due to the fact that her own masked persona's identity was blown wide open. Thusly, it barely does anything at all, only shielding her power from the most obtuse and unobservant of foes.
Doormaker ~Army United Against The Golden God~
Rank: E-A+
Type: Anti-Unit
An ultimate Noble Phantasm, embodying an entire reality's final stand against an invincible foe, an all-encompassing army with Archer at the helm. The deed was done through three individuals: Archer's unrestrained passenger, allowing her control of every living thing within sixteen feet of her. The Clairvoyant, granting her perception of every location on every parallel world. And Doormaker, allowing her to extend her reach and take control of every parahuman and every weapon on all of the earths. While this army ultimately almost amounted to naught, it is her most famous deed. The heroic trial imprinted unto the mind of every single parahuman across every Earth.
The first has been sealed, as it is unfitting of an Archer-class Servant. If she were summoned as a Berserker, Foreigner, or Alter Ego, this would have great ramifications on her mental state, likely warranting its own personal skill. The second has been represented as a personal skill. And the third is her armament as an Archer: portals, placable anywhere she can perceive and able to fire every single parahuman projectile in existence. From laser beams to supersonic dumpsters, miniature suns to tinker superweapons, any ranged attack is at her disposal with a mere thought. Enough firepower to level a city a thousand times over, with projectiles that can shatter any shield and kill in an instant. Many of these projectiles qualify as Noble Phantasms in their own right, from String Theory's G-Driver to Legend's vast array of lasers.
Since the only associated mana cost is opening the portal, as the weapons themselves originate from parahumans, her mana cost for utilizing this Noble Phantasm is very low. And given her Clairvoyance skill, she can truly place portals anywhere within her reality. If she so chose, she could likely end a Holy Grail War within a mere moment after being summoned.
Gate of Babylon ~Final Deicide Battery~
Rank: EX
Type: Anti-Continent
While technically covered under the previous entry, the sheer power of this Noble Phantasm deserves its own. In appearance, it is innocuous: a simple portal opening, no different than any other. But the scope is incomparable. The culmination of the work of every tinker, innumerable specializations and impossible technology combined into one devastating creation. The beam it fires is simple, nondescript. But the sheer damage potential certainly qualifies it as an Anti-Continent Noble Phantasm. Scion's true body is a continent-spanning mass of crystalline flesh, durable and vast in scope. Much like the armies of Babylon, this interdimensional battering-ram-turned-cannon brought forth the fall of Zion, hence its name.
In practice, this Noble Phantasm is too destructive to use. But give Archer a space to use it where she does not have to worry about collateral damage...
Infanticide ~Pistol of Regrets~
Rank: E
Type: Anti-Unit
A symbolic representation of Archer's lifetime of regrets, in the form of an ordinary pistol. Guilt and shame, upon reflection, turned into a mediocre weapon. The death of the stone-cold hero, the vicious general… even the mastermind. All those that died under her command. All those sacrificed for the greater good. And, of course, an innocent child.
This Noble Phantasm increases in rank by one when targeting any opponent under her current location's minimum lawful drinking age.
History:
Taylor Hebert began her career as a second-string undercover-superhero. Idealistic and determined, yet lonely and depressed. And easily persuaded. She ended up joining a supervillain team under the guise of infiltration, only to join them in earnest when push came to shove. Within six months, after weathering a number of catastrophes that drove out all of the competition, she, along with her team, the Undersiders, took over the entire criminal element of a major east-coast city. However, revelations regarding the end of the world led her to turn her coat, joining the superhero organization known as the Protectorate and serving two years as a scarily effective superheroine. Then the end of the world came around, during which Archer traded her mind away in exchange for the power she needed to stop the apocalypse, caused by the world's strongest hero: Scion.
Doormaker and the Clairvoyant aligned, and while her efforts were futile at first, she eventually found Scion's weak point: his emotions. By reminding him constantly of his dead partner and forcing him to confront his grief, she forced him to give up the fight. All of his nigh-infinite power and processing power turned away, allowing Taylor to strike a killing blow.
Afterwards, her mind collapsing in on itself, she was given a second chance to live out her life in peace on Earth Aleph with her father. Unfortunately, her regrets followed her to that new world, all the way to the Throne of Heroes.
""I… know I'm supposed to say yes. But no. Some-somewhere along way, it became no."
In life, Archer was defined by determination and sacrifice, her unending struggle towards greater and greater goals, everything she gave up to achieve them. In death, all Archer remembers are her regrets. Things she should have done better, things she shouldn't have done at all. Hesitant, second-guessing herself, Archer both wishes she could make things better and believes she doesn't deserve to. Is it even possible for her to find solace?
She fights with no killing intent, almost lackadaisical given the sheer power at her disposal. She questions her own instincts, always wondering if it will lead to more outcomes she'll regret down the line. She follows orders to the letter, unwilling ot trust her own judgement. She has been granted a miracle of a second chance. And some might say she is wasting it. Her Master will likely find her uncooperative and difficult, especially if they intend to win the War, though they will likely have to simply put up with it given the sheer power at her disposal. And a sufficiently evil Master will likely meet a blazing end.
Dragon: "Ah. Hey, Dragon. I'm sorry for what I did to you, at the end there. You didn't deserve any of that. You were really good to me, even though I didn't deserve it."
Alexandria: "Rebecca Costa-Brown. In hindsight, she was looking out for the greater good, just as I was trying to. Only she had the big picture in mind, and a solid plan. I can't fault her. Doesn't mean I have to like her."
Jack Slash: "I've got a lot of regrets. Getting that guy trapped in a Gray Boy bubble for the rest of eternity is not one of them. I'd be careful about him if I were you, Master. A monster through and through."
Taylor Lily (Assassin): "Ah. You should probably figure your own shit out before you start moralizing at me, Skitter. Power comes with responsibility, and you are making some questionable decisions with yours. I'd know."
Gilgamesh:"He's a bully in gold. Phenomenal cosmic power, absolute bullshit moral compass. Not exactly what I was expecting from world's first hero. I'm almost ashamed to share a Noble Phantasm name with him."
EMIYA (Assassin):"...Reminds me of me. Not in a good way. Even more uncompromising, but even less human. And infinitely more experienced."
Battle Start 1: "Here we go again."
Battle Start 2: "Am I doing the right thing?"
Battle Start 3: "Brings back memories."
Skill 1: "Sure?"
Skill 2: "I don't know about this."
Attack Select 1: "I'll try to hold back."
Attack Select 2: "Should be nonlethal."
Attack Select 3: "What to choose?"
Attack 1: "Sorry."
Attack 2: "This will hurt."
Attack 3: "Forgive me for this."
Extra Attack 1: "A little extra, maybe."
Extra Attack 2: "Behind you."
Noble Phantasm Selected 1: "This is going to get a little dangerous."
Noble Phantasm Selected 2: "If you say so..."
Noble Phantasm 1: "The strongest weapon on all the Earths. But you're no Scion. Gate of Babylon."
Noble Phantasm 1: "Overkill. But I've got no choice. Gate of Babylon."
Damaged (Noble Phantasm): "Ah, fuck."
Defeated 1: "Yeah, I probably deserve this..."
Defeated 2: "Sorry, guys, but you're gonna have to finish this on your own."
Battle End 1: "Great. We won."
Battle End 2: "I hope this was worth it."
Summoned:"Servant Archer. I suppose I'm at your disposal, but I'd prefer if you kept me on the backlines."
Bond 1:"Yeah, thought not. Back to doing the only thing I'm good at: ceaseless and senseless violence. I hope you can choose good targets, Master. "
Bond 2:"Been seeing a lot of combat, lately. Even when holding back, mooks, enemy Servants... they all die so easily. Could blame you, say you're the one culpable. But that doesn't sit right. Not great for my conscience. I hope it weighs on yours too."
Bond 3:"These Lostbelts... It's been going on for awhile, now. Condemning thousands of innocents to die, simply because they were born in the wrong space and time. What gives you the right to decide which reality lives or dies? God knows mine was a shithole. What happens when we come across a world genuinely better than our own? Not that I'm judging, of course. Just posing the question."
Bond 4: "Huh... You have put thought into this. I still can't say I'm happy with the situation. But I haven't been happy much, lately. I appreciate that you admit you're not infallible, that you don't know what you're doing. But you're still trying, pushing ahead despite your doubts. Mostly I feel like I've been consumed by mine. Watching you is refreshing."
Bond 5:"I still don't like combat. Fighting and killing. Even just beating the shit out of foes with dumpsters, destroying automata. But I'll take responsibility for my actions, acknowledge my mistakes. And I'll try to trust your judgement, your commands. Let's both try to make good ones, shall we?"
Wish for the Holy Grail:"I dunno. I can't really think of one that wouldn't backfire on me. Wishes like mine always tend to."
Likes: "I like books. Classic literature, but also Maggie Holt and the like, here and there. Doesn't exist in this reality, though."
Dislikes:"Bullies. People with power, lording it over others. Also, mannequins. It's an annoying phobia."
Class: Archer
Rarity: 5*
Name: Taylor Hebert
Attribute: Human
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Increases own crit star generation rate for 3 turns by 40%
Khepri's Gaze^
Increases own crit star generation rate for 3 turns by 90% ^
Increases own crit star absorption rate for 3 turns by 500% ^
Increases own critical damage for 3 turns by 90% ^
God-Slayer
Increases own damage against Divine enemies for 1 turn by 90%
Increases own damage against enemies with the 'Threat to Humanity' trait for 1 turn by 90%
Apply Ignore Invincible to self for 1 turn.
Secret Identity
Apply Target Focus to all other allies (1 turn)
Grants self Evasion for 1 attack.
Decrease own DEF by 20% (Demerit) (3 turns)
Noble Phantasm
Gate of Babylon
Increase own NP damage by 30% for one turn.
Deal massive damage to a single enemy.
Deals extra damage to all Servant enemies except Enuma Elish Nullification enemies (effect boosted by Overcharge).
I don't know how cohesive Taylor's kit is. I didn't want to give her a battery, due to her reluctance to use her Noble Phantasm, so I went all-out with the critstick build. Khepri's Gaze is, by my understanding, stronger than the strongest Critical buff in base F/GO, being both more cohesive than EMIYA's Hawkeye and with a higher magnitude than Lancelot's Knight of Owner. Kinda nuts. Probably has a long cooldown. God-Slayer is ripped off of Scathach, though with a Threat to Humanity focus rather than an Undead one. Magnitude of the buff is slightly lower, too. Finally, Secret Identity is... probably flat-out bad. It's Accel Turn, but with no crit damage buff, focusing slightly more on defense instead. I don't think it works. On a different Worm Servant, it would probably be stronger.
Gate of Babylon is... bit for bit a rip-off of Gilgamesh's Enuma Elish, save for that it's single-target instead of AoE. The Overcharge modifier remains the same, however, and I presume that this makes Taylor's Noble Phantasm absolutely ridiculous against Divine and Threat to Humanity Servant bosses. With a single-target modifier, 150% * 30% * 90% * <whatever card effectiveness and attack buffs you can toss on her>... she'd clean up house. No easy way to charge it, sadly, which I guess is the drawback.
This probably makes her clunkier than Karna in practice. At least she's also a decent critstick?
Note: This sheet is less an actual representation of what Taylor would be as a Servant, more of what I thought to be an intriguing Taylor to put into a fic, actually Fate-style. She's obviously modelled after Gilgamesh, though frankly she has a better claim to the Archer class title than he does; her 'legend' actually involves her using projectiles.
Also, her third NP is literally a meme.
If there's anything blatantly wrong, I'm more than willing to change it.
This is a revamp of an earlier Taylor Archer sheet I made, awhile ago. Most of the mechanics explanations are the same, minus some grammar edits and fix-ups, but dialogue, bond lines, etc. have been added. I still maintain that she qualifies for this class. Characterization might be a bit off-point, but I can see no other way to throw her in any situation and have her not immediately blow it wide open. The likes of Foil's and Sundancer's powers are enough to kill most Servants, and given how her Clairvoyance works, there is nothing other than her own reluctance stopping her from simply blasting every single Master in the War, save for Skills or Magecraft that obscure scrying.
Gilgamesh:"He's a bully in gold. Phenomenal cosmic power, absolute bullshit moral compass. Not exactly what I was expecting from world's first hero. I'm almost ashamed to share a Noble Phantasm name with him."
In practice, this Noble Phantasm is too destructive to use. But give Archer a space to use it where she does not have to worry about collateral damage...
Now that you called attention to it, it's kinda weird to think about that the Golden Hind doesn't have Mystery to it right now (or at least not enough to affect purely spiritual entities) despite it being Drake's most iconic Noble Phantasm
Considering it literally is her NP, at least in the game, a shot from one of the cannons would probably have done something. A shot from the pistol of a nameless crewman, not so much.
Now that you called attention to it, it's kinda weird to think about that the Golden Hind doesn't have Mystery to it right now (or at least not enough to affect purely spiritual entities) despite it being Drake's most iconic Noble Phantasm
I don't know, while I wouldn't be surprised if there was some mystery behind the Golden Hind thanks to the grail and stuff, remember it's not a NP yet or until she becomes a heroic spirit. It's not like a lot of things that eventually became Noble Phantasms had special abilities when they actually existed; in fact, most non-ancient Heroes used ordinary tools in life that became more when they became a Heroic Spirit. This is a Drake who is a living person after all, it's only to be expected that her Noble Phantasms are not Noble Phantasms yet.
