ARCHER ♤ an unknown hero. ♤ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
swordedpast) wrote2012-10-08 12:19 am
swordedpast) wrote2012-10-08 12:19 am
the fifth holy grail war, version 0
Note: Most of the post below is headcanon. What Word-of-God information we do have about how EMIYA's experience in the Fifth Holy Grail War went is vague and sparse; the most important of it is that it was similar to Fate route, but without a romance with Saber that led to her being saved from her self-destructive wish. I'm laying this out here so that I can have a consistent foundation if I need to refer back to it in roleplay.
The only initial difference in this version of Shirou Emiya's experience of the Fifth Holy Grail War is the obvious one: Rin Tohsaka had a different heroic spirit as her Archer. Everything else spirals out from there. When Rin raced to the Emiya house to save him from Lancer again, her Archer did not freeze up at the sight of Saber and was able to defend against her blows until Shirou could call her off. I'm not going to assign a heroic spirit to Rin's original Archer, but I am going to say that Shirou admired his strength and wanted to become someone like him.
After this, things proceeded somewhat similarly to Fate, with a dash of the beginning of Unlimited Blade Works as well. When Rin and Shirou first ran into Ilya and Berserker, Saber and the first Archer were able to fend them off without further damage to Saber. After that, Rin and Shirou went their separate ways until learning about the trouble at the high school and deciding to team up to deal with it (although without the battle between them that led to this in Unlimited Blade Works). From there on, it went very similarly to Fate, right up to Saber finally exposing her Noble Phantasm on the rooftop against Rider and nearly disappearing because of the magic expenditure.
After that is where it starts to change. Shirou was not kidnapped by Ilya, and therefore the emergency, uh, mana restoration of Saber out in the ruins in the middle of the forest never had to happen. Instead, Rin's first Archer managed to warn Shirou off Ilya at the last moment and stop her from abducting him. However, this caused her to call Berserker to her, which led to the Shirou-Rin alliance needing to restore Saber quickly to save all of them. With more materials at her disposal, though, Rin was able to do this in her own right, with some of her jewels (and probably some sex), without the need of Shirou's penis. In the ensuing fight, Saber and Archer faced off against Berserker on equal grounds and were able to defeat him, but just barely, and Archer did not survive.
Shirou now took on Ilya as a charge and friend, a fact that made a bitter Rin renounce their alliance and leave to handle her protection herself (for some reason, she lacked quite the attachment to Shirou she developed in Fate-route canon...). Ilya also became his most trusted ally for the rest of the Grail War, which then proceeded largely as in Fate, but without the romance and the strength it gave him. He was able to move forward against Kotomine and Gilgamesh (the latter of whom was his primary adversary and one of the clearest memories he has of his Holy Grail War that's not related to Saber) because he had no other choice, not because Saber gave him the strength to reaffirm his ideals--and he didn't give Saber the strength to believe in herself again, either. When they received the Grail, realizing it was poisoned and incapable of granting a clean wish, Saber faded away silent and regretful.
Much of the rest of his history proceeded as laid out in his background. Ilya and Rin remained his friends, but the latter drifted away, and, lacking the support and resolution she got in any of the canon routes (even Fate), eventually got herself into some magical trouble she couldn't handle and died. By that time, Shirou was already somewhat numbed by his foolish, soul-crushing heroic quest, and they had grown distant, so it didn't devastate him--but it might have been something he remembered later which influenced his observation that Rin was not suited for the life she was trying to lead. Ilya, on the other hand, stayed close to him as something like a little sister in the time she had left. Her death about a year after the Holy Grail War was the first crack in his idealized vision of the dream he followed, and despite the short time they had together as family, she remained one of the most important people in his life. Other people drifted in and out of his life, including a small handful as romantic prospects (mostly female, but Issei Ryuudou might also have been one of them; I leave this up in the air), but he grew truly close to none of them.
In between his work as a mercenary and sort-of-soldier trying to take whatever jobs he could to save people (which increasingly meant killing other people), this version of Shirou Emiya also spent a fair amount of time learning and practicing what little magic he could use (as evidenced by his increased skill at structural analysis, reinforcement, and projection) and researching the things that piqued his interest in the Holy Grail War. He subconsciously avoided learning too much about the Fourth Holy Grail War, knowing deep down that it might shatter his illusions of Kiritsugu, so there are great gaps in his knowledge when things get personal. He knows some things about the Einzberns--such as a rough idea of what they intended for their homunculi--thanks to how close he became to Ilya (though more from efforts to learn from other people around her than from things she actually said) and a bit about how the Grail War came to be, but little about the specifics of people involved in the wars.
What he does have a great deal of knowledge on are any legends and myths involving great heroes, as that was something he pursued an interest in all his life thanks to the Holy Grail War. He could quote you chapter and verse on Arthuriana in particular, of course, but that's far from the only heroic canon he knows about.
Thanks to the psychological effect of spending a timeless eternity as a spirit fighting in the service of the world after his death, Archer's memories of his actual life are heavily eroded except for fragments. He remembers Kiritsugu and Saber strongly and Ilya slightly less strongly. He remembers the dry facts of the skills and trivia he learned, but not much of the people he associated with.
The only initial difference in this version of Shirou Emiya's experience of the Fifth Holy Grail War is the obvious one: Rin Tohsaka had a different heroic spirit as her Archer. Everything else spirals out from there. When Rin raced to the Emiya house to save him from Lancer again, her Archer did not freeze up at the sight of Saber and was able to defend against her blows until Shirou could call her off. I'm not going to assign a heroic spirit to Rin's original Archer, but I am going to say that Shirou admired his strength and wanted to become someone like him.
After this, things proceeded somewhat similarly to Fate, with a dash of the beginning of Unlimited Blade Works as well. When Rin and Shirou first ran into Ilya and Berserker, Saber and the first Archer were able to fend them off without further damage to Saber. After that, Rin and Shirou went their separate ways until learning about the trouble at the high school and deciding to team up to deal with it (although without the battle between them that led to this in Unlimited Blade Works). From there on, it went very similarly to Fate, right up to Saber finally exposing her Noble Phantasm on the rooftop against Rider and nearly disappearing because of the magic expenditure.
After that is where it starts to change. Shirou was not kidnapped by Ilya, and therefore the emergency, uh, mana restoration of Saber out in the ruins in the middle of the forest never had to happen. Instead, Rin's first Archer managed to warn Shirou off Ilya at the last moment and stop her from abducting him. However, this caused her to call Berserker to her, which led to the Shirou-Rin alliance needing to restore Saber quickly to save all of them. With more materials at her disposal, though, Rin was able to do this in her own right, with some of her jewels (and probably some sex), without the need of Shirou's penis. In the ensuing fight, Saber and Archer faced off against Berserker on equal grounds and were able to defeat him, but just barely, and Archer did not survive.
Shirou now took on Ilya as a charge and friend, a fact that made a bitter Rin renounce their alliance and leave to handle her protection herself (for some reason, she lacked quite the attachment to Shirou she developed in Fate-route canon...). Ilya also became his most trusted ally for the rest of the Grail War, which then proceeded largely as in Fate, but without the romance and the strength it gave him. He was able to move forward against Kotomine and Gilgamesh (the latter of whom was his primary adversary and one of the clearest memories he has of his Holy Grail War that's not related to Saber) because he had no other choice, not because Saber gave him the strength to reaffirm his ideals--and he didn't give Saber the strength to believe in herself again, either. When they received the Grail, realizing it was poisoned and incapable of granting a clean wish, Saber faded away silent and regretful.
Much of the rest of his history proceeded as laid out in his background. Ilya and Rin remained his friends, but the latter drifted away, and, lacking the support and resolution she got in any of the canon routes (even Fate), eventually got herself into some magical trouble she couldn't handle and died. By that time, Shirou was already somewhat numbed by his foolish, soul-crushing heroic quest, and they had grown distant, so it didn't devastate him--but it might have been something he remembered later which influenced his observation that Rin was not suited for the life she was trying to lead. Ilya, on the other hand, stayed close to him as something like a little sister in the time she had left. Her death about a year after the Holy Grail War was the first crack in his idealized vision of the dream he followed, and despite the short time they had together as family, she remained one of the most important people in his life. Other people drifted in and out of his life, including a small handful as romantic prospects (mostly female, but Issei Ryuudou might also have been one of them; I leave this up in the air), but he grew truly close to none of them.
In between his work as a mercenary and sort-of-soldier trying to take whatever jobs he could to save people (which increasingly meant killing other people), this version of Shirou Emiya also spent a fair amount of time learning and practicing what little magic he could use (as evidenced by his increased skill at structural analysis, reinforcement, and projection) and researching the things that piqued his interest in the Holy Grail War. He subconsciously avoided learning too much about the Fourth Holy Grail War, knowing deep down that it might shatter his illusions of Kiritsugu, so there are great gaps in his knowledge when things get personal. He knows some things about the Einzberns--such as a rough idea of what they intended for their homunculi--thanks to how close he became to Ilya (though more from efforts to learn from other people around her than from things she actually said) and a bit about how the Grail War came to be, but little about the specifics of people involved in the wars.
What he does have a great deal of knowledge on are any legends and myths involving great heroes, as that was something he pursued an interest in all his life thanks to the Holy Grail War. He could quote you chapter and verse on Arthuriana in particular, of course, but that's far from the only heroic canon he knows about.
Thanks to the psychological effect of spending a timeless eternity as a spirit fighting in the service of the world after his death, Archer's memories of his actual life are heavily eroded except for fragments. He remembers Kiritsugu and Saber strongly and Ilya slightly less strongly. He remembers the dry facts of the skills and trivia he learned, but not much of the people he associated with.