Fate Primer For TVK! (in progress)

[kindofademon]

Man, this sure is a huge cast from a confusing canon! I'm going to try to explain some of the major parts of it here, and probably fail hilariously.

These will have lots of spoilers, particularly for identities of Servants.

General
There is an artifact called the Holy Grail. It is not actually related to Jesus, but magi needed something to call a device that grants wishes. A system was set-up in which magi would summon the spirits of dead heroes and have them fight over who gets to be the one to get the wish, because the Holy Grail only has so much energy and can't just give out wishes willy-nilly. The best way to decide such things is obviously through killing each other.

The magus who summoned the hero (or villain as the case may be) is called a Master. Their mana is what's keeping the spirit in this world. They give orders to the Servant and provide their own backup in battle. Each Master possesses three Command Spells that they can use to give absolute orders to their Servant. After the last Command Spell is used up, however, they have no way to control their Servant and many Servants will turn on their former Masters.

Servants fight for their Masters partly because they have to and partly because the Grail will also grant them a wish. After the War is over, they return to being dead. They can be summoned again, but they won't remember previous wars.

Because knowing the identity of a Servant means having a good idea about what their abilities might be, Servants are summoned into one of seven classes: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Berserker, or Assassin. They go by these as codenames.

Fate/Zero
A book detailing the Fourth Holy Grail War. Arturia, Diarmuid, Gilgamesh, and Lancelot were Servants in this War; Kiritsugu, Kayneth, Waver, Ryuunosuke, and Kotomine were Masters.

The Masters here were mostly a bunch of magi who actually knew what they were doing. Almost every Master died, a lot of them ignobly through Kiritsugu's less-than-honorable methods. Almost every Servant died. There were lots of civilian casualties. It was less than fun.

The Holy Grail had been corrupted in the Third Holy Grail War and was now evil. Kiritsugu, seeing this at the end after so many people had died for the chance to win the thing, ordered Arturia with a Command Spell to destroy it. She did, but it was imperfect destruction, and the stupid thing came back ten years later.

Fate/stay night
A visual novel detailing the Fifth Holy Grail War. Arturia, Cu Chulainn, Medusa, and Sasaki Kojiro were Servants in this War, with Gilgamesh being an outlier who stuck around from the last one. Shirou and Kotomine were Masters.

Ten years after the events of Fate/Zero, the Holy Grail War came around again. The events vary depending on the route of the visual novel taken (there are three), but they all follow the same format: Shirou wants to be a hero and stop innocent people from getting hurt. Servants and Masters fight each other and die. At the end of the game, Shirou wins and the Holy Grail is destroyed or dismantled, meaning that the Fifth War is the last one ever.

Fate/EXTRA
An RPG describing a different universe's Holy Grail War. Hakuno and Alice were Masters. Francis Drake, Robin Hood, Li Shuwen, Gawain, Nero, and Tamamo-no-Mae were Servants.

First of all, this doesn't take place in Fuyuki City. This takes place in a virtual reality made to harness the power of a Holy Grail, that is basically a supercomputer on the moon. There are 128 Masters and Servants instead of 7, and fighting is much more organized. Every Master is assigned an opponent each week. They spend the week training against digital enemies in the arena, and at the end of the week face off against their opponent in a duel.

Whoever loses is deleted and dies in real life. Whoever wins goes onto the next round.

Hakuno is the game protagonist, meaning that all other Masters and Servants besides hers seen faced off against her and lost.

(Characters from Fate/stay night may appear as virtual reality NPCs due to the way that the moon supercomputer records data. The Holy Grail is not corrupted here.)

Fate/Apocrypha
An unfinished work. Basically, all Servants that come from this are just heroes that could be summoned as Servants. They don't have a plot to their name, and they don't know each other.

Fate/Prototype
The author's original version of Fate/stay night he wrote when he was a teenager. Saber is still King Arthur, but a male this time, and most of the story is highly changed.

Currently we only have male!Saber from this work.

These will list character username, name, and their role as a Servant, Master, or other.

Fate/Zero
croibhristeoir - Diarmuid Ua Duibhne - Servant - Lancer
Diarmuid hails from Irish mythology. He was a loyal knight, who possessed a spot on his face that made women fall in love with him on sight. Forced by Grainne, the intended wife of his lord Fionn mac Cumhail, to run away with her, he spent years fleeing across the country from the lord he had betrayed. He later was supposedly forgiven for what he'd done, only to die when Fionn betrayed him in return.

Diarmuid had no wish for the Grail - he simply wanted to bring his Master the Grail and serve him well, as he could not serve his lord in his own life. He was unfortunately summoned to Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi, who was a suspicious man by nature and had a fiancee assisting him, Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri.

Diarmuid and Arturia battled first in Fate/Zero. During that battle both gained respect for each other as knights that would only grow. Diarmuid injured Arturia's left hand with a spear that would not allow wounds to heal. He resisted his Master's orders to team up with Lancelot/Berserker against Arturia, having to be ordered again with a Command Spell.

When Arturia was later in need in a battle against Caster (Gilles de Rais) Diarmuid came to her aid, citing that he was the only one allowed to defeat her. During this time Kiritsugu was attacking Kayneth, and after Arturia and Diarmuid drove Caster off, Arturia allowed Diarmuid to rescue his Master with the understanding that they would have a proper duel later, and he would have done the same if her Master had been in danger.

Kiritsugu had badly injured Kayneth to the point where he could neither walk nor use magic. Sola, being madly in love with Diarmuid and also crazyass, took the Command Spells from Kayneth and told Diarmuid she was now his Master. Diarmuid refused, but reluctantly agreed to follow her when she told him that the Grail would be the only way to heal Kayneth.

When Caster turned into a rampaging river tentacle monster and a bunch of Servants teamed up to fight him, Diarmuid broke the spear that kept Arturia's injured hand from healing so that she could blast Caster into oblivion. During this fight, Sola-Ui was kidnapped.

Kayneth wasn't happy about that. He had already been lambasting Diarmuid about every little thing, and was not pleased about Sola being obviously in love with him. When Diarmuid came back without Sola, he raged at Diarmuid and drove his dignity into the ground, reducing him to near tears. At this point, Arturia showed up for a rematch.

Diarmuid and Arturia had their honorable knightly rematch that was cut short when Kayneth ordered Diarmuid to kill himself. Kayneth had done it because Kiritsugu gave him those terms in order to provide a way out for himself. Pissed off that his life had ended from betrayal from a lord he had tried his best to serve loyally, Diarmuid died cursing the Grail and everyone else.

enjoymyatelier - Kayneth Archibald El-Melloi - Master
Kayneth is a teacher at Clock Tower, basically the place to be for magi. He hails from a distinguished family, is a prodigy, and is engaged to a beautiful woman, Sola-Ui Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri.

Waver Velvet was one of his students. Waver believed in the ability of a magus to overcome the shortness of their lineage through hard work, which totally flew in the face of everything that magi stood for. Kayneth ridiculed and tore apart his paper on the subject in front of the whole class.

He had an artifact that would have let him specifically summon Alexander the Great delivered to him. Unfortunately, Waver bumped into the delivery guy, and was able to easily steal the artifact. Woops.

Kayneth summoned Diarmuid Ua Duibhne with a backup artifact in the Lancer class and immediately disliked him. He interpreted his legend as Diarmuid being a womanizer, and hated that Sola, who held no love for him, would listen to whatever Diarmuid said and was full of affection for him.

Kayneth attacked Kiritsugu expecting a traditional magus fight. No technology, no guns, just the force of one magus's wits and magic against the other. Kiritsugu doesn't work like that, and Kayneth got increasingly more pissed off as he encountered traps and was then shot despite his impressive mercury-based Magical Familiar Thingy. The second time he was shot despite his impressive mercury thingy, Kiritsugu did some magical hax to the bullet that totally busted Kayneth's magic circuits (parts of the body used for magic) and screwed up his whole body.

Kayneth woke up being tended to by Sola. He couldn't use magic or move his legs and his hands were numb. Sola wanted to take over as Diarmuid's Master, but Kayneth refused. He maintained the ability to use his Command Spells, which was a type of magic - as someone who prized his ability as a magus, he clung to that. He also correctly realized that Sola would totally run off with Diarmuid and incorrectly guessed that Diarmuid would do the same.

That was when Sola twisted off one of his fingers and threatened to cut off the arm that had his Command Spells in order to get them, and he gave in.

After the battle against Tentacle Monster Caster, the overseer of the Holy Grail War, an old priest, was handing out extra Command Spells as a reward. Kayneth came by in a wheelchair to get his and then shot the guy with a gun so that nobody else could get any.

Diarmuid came back without Sola and Kayneth screamed at and insulted him, driving him to tears. He had no mercy for the man who had no other wish but to serve him, and only stopped because Arturia showed up outside to fight.

While Arturia and Diarmuid were fighting, Kiritsugu showed up. He had kidnapped Sola and wanted to sign a Mage's Contract, the terms of which could not be broken or the signer would lose the ability to do magic forever. If Kayneth ordered Diarmuid to kill himself, Kiritsugu would be prevented from attacking Kayneth or Sola.

Kayneth agreed and ordered Diarmuid's death. After Diarmuid finished railing against him and died, Kayneth confirmed that Kiritsugu couldn't do anything to hurt him. Kiritsugu confirmed it, which was when Kiritsugu's assistant showed up with a machine gun.

Sola was killed instantly. Kayneth was left riddled with holes and begging for death, which Kiritsugu refused to give because it would go against the terms of their agreement. Arturia finally cut off his head and ended his suffering.

arondights - Lancelot of the Lake - Servant - Berserker
Lancelot is from King Arthur's legend. He had an affair with Guinevere, who he loved and who was married to Arturia out of political reasons. When the affair was exposed and Guinevere about to be executed, he tried to save her, killing some of his fellow knights in the process. Arturia refused to blame him for any of this, which kept Lancelot from feeling he could atone and compounded his guilt. At his death he wished for escape through madness, and thus was summoned in the class of Berserker. All Berserkers are summoned mad, unable to communicate or do anything but fight.

Lancelot was summoned to Kariya Matou, who was friggin' pissed off at Tokiomi Tohsaka for stuff involving his family, and also he wanted to beat everyone else and win the war. Lancelot was an incredibly strong Servant, but difficult to control, especially considering that he would drop everything else to attack Arturia.

One of his fights has him flying an F-15 jet versus Gilgamesh in some kind of ancient flying thing. That isn't really important to mention, I just thought it was cool.

Once Arturia figured out who Lancelot was during their last duel with each other, she lost her will to fight against him. Lancelot lost only because his Master ran out of magical energy to fight him with. He regained his sanity long enough to speak with Arturia, and died in her arms.

maguskiller - Kiritsugu Emiya - Master
Kiritsugu's dream is to save the world and as many people as possible. To do this he fights dirty. He's a contractor hired by people to kill magi, and was hired by the Einzbern family to fight in the Fourth Grail War for them.

Kiritsugu's wife is Irisviel von Einzbern, a homunculus. They have a daughter, Illyasviel.

When Kiritsugu summons Arturia, he immediately realizes that his style of fighting is not going to mesh well with an honorable knight's code, and tells Irisviel to stay with Arturia and pose as her Master. He works with his assistant Maiya to do dirty work like sniping Masters from long range, blowing up the hotel that Kayneth is staying at, totally screwing over Masters with technology instead of magic, et cetera.

During this time he has a mutual fixation with Kirei Kotomine. They're both afraid of each other because they do not understand each others' style of life, and something something something the point comes later.

He does not speak directly to Arturia at any point except the end. He addresses Irisviel when Arturia is there, but he will not speak to Arturia even when she's shouting at him. Which she does as she sees more and more of his dishonorable tactics.

During the final battle, while Arturia is fighting Gilgamesh, Kiristugu fights Kotomine and wins. The Grail is corrupted, and Kiritsugu commands Arturia to destroy it. He has to use two Command Spells, but eventually she blasts it apart. The Grail breaks, and Kiritsugu gets soaked with the cursed contents (this will eventually end his life). Kotomine, who's barely alive, is able to wish on the Grail for destruction, and a massive fire engulfs the city.

Kiritsugu wanders the city looking for survivors. He finds only one that he can save - a young boy, who Kiritsugu adopts as his son. This boy is named Shirou. Kiritsugu refuses to teach him more than a little of magecraft, citing that he doesn't want Shirou to become a magus.

Before Kiritsugu's death from Grail-curse, he talks with Shirou about his ideals. Shirou promises to uphold them and become a hero.

kindofademon - Ryuunosuke Uryuu - Master
Ryuunosuke is a serial killer who enjoys murder, killing small children, killing young women, and murder. He summoned Caster after finding an occult book in his backyard shed - his ancestors were magi, and although he knows nothing about magic, he still has the ability to perform it and support a Servant. He doesn't know anything about the Holy Grail War, but he wants to spend time with Caster killing in new and cooler ways. He basically has a fanboy crush, and they kidnap and torture children and send the city in a panic.

Because they're breaking the rules of magi ("be secretive for god's sakes") the overseer of the war calls a halt to hostilities between the other Masters in order to take them down. The other Masters keep fighting each other on the side, but they do eventually team up to fight Caster.

Ryuunosuke never interacts with any character other than Caster. During the Tentacle Caster battle, Kiritsugu snipes him from a distance and blows his head off.

lordsexybritches - Waver Velvet (Lord El-Melloi II) - Master
Waver Velvet was nineteen when he was part of the Holy Grail War. He comes from a family of only three generations of magi, and isn't very powerful. He stole Kayneth's summoning artifact to make a name for himself and earn respect. Kayneth pisses him the hell off and also scares the crap out of him.

Alexander the Great, Rider, treats him like a kid because, well, he was one. Waver gets pulled along as Rider does whatever the heck he wants. Gradually their friendship grows.

Waver decides towards the end of the war, after seeing all that Rider can do without him, that he's only hindering Rider. He uses up all three of his Command Spells and tells Rider to go. Rider insists that Waver is his friend regardless of whether or not he's a Master, and Waver agrees to come with him to his next battle.

During Rider's battle with Gilgamesh, Rider asks Waver if he would be his servant and follow him. Waver agrees to follow his king, and Rider tells him to live on.

Gilgamesh defeats Rider, comes over to Waver, and asks if he's his Master. Waver says he's his servant. Gilgamesh asks if he would try to avenge his king, and Waver tells him that he would die if he did that, and was ordered to live. Gilgamesh spares his life.

The Waver we have in the game comes from after Fate/stay night, ten years later. He is Lord El-Melloi II, Kayneth's successor, since it was his fault that the El-Melloi family was short a head anyway. He teaches at Clock Tower and has lots of students lusting after him because he's hot.

Fate/stay night
fates - Arturia Pendragon - Servant - Saber
Arturia's story is the same as King Arthur's - she posed as a man so that she could be king. Mordred was conceived through magic (blame Merlin). Her wish for the Holy Grail, if she ever got it, would be to allow someone better to become king of England, because she regretted all of the mistakes she made during her rule.

Arturia was first summoned to Kiritsugu Emiya during Fate/Zero. She did not like him very much, but agreed that his ideals were worthy ones and obeyed him. She worked with Irisviel von Einzbern, his wife, as her surrogate Master.

During this time she interacted with most of the other Servants. Lancer (Diarmuid) shared her code of chivalry and wished to have an honorable duel with her, which kept getting cockblocked by their Masters. Rider (Alexander the Great) lost respect for her after hearing of her wish, claiming that to wish to take back what she did was an insult to all that followed her and that no one could have true loyalty for a king like her. Archer (Gilgamesh) wanted to have sex with her. Caster (Gilles de Rais) mistook her for Joan of Arc and wanted to... something. He was definitely obsessed with her, anyway. The mysterious Berserker (actually Lancelot) was also obsessed with her and kept trying to kill her at every opportunity.

So yeah, she was popular.

Kiritsugu kept dropping more and more in her esteem as he committed more and more dishonorable acts. Irisviel was still cool with her, though. Irisviel was actually nice and would talk to her.

The end of the war came when Kiritsugu found out that the Holy Grail was corrupted and ordered Arturia to destroy it. She resisted, and had to be commanded twice with Command Spells before she blew its physical form to bits, then disappeared.

Ten years later, it turns out that blowing its physical form to bits was not enough. Arturia was summoned by Shirou Emiya, with the memories of the previous war intact due to timey-wimey stuff that's not important. Her role, naturally, changes greatly based on which of the three routes she's in - she and Shirou have been taken from Fate route, so I'll just cover that.

Arturia fights pretty much everyone. Shirou and Arturia are shippy. Berserker (Heracles) is obscenely hideously strong. In order to get enough mana, because Shirou sucks as a magus and isn't supplying it right, Shirou, Arturia, and Rin have a threesome. Arturia beats Heracles, more fighting, Gilgamesh comes and establishes himself as the most powerful Servant. At some point around now Arturia and Shirou talk about ideals and Shirou sways Arturia out of wanting to fix her mistakes. Also at some point around now Shirou and Arturia have sex again.

Arturia defeats Gilgamesh while Shirou defeats Kotomine. Arturia destroys the Grail for real this time, and confesses her love to Shirou before she disappears.

athngabla - Cu Chulainn - Servant - Lancer
Cu Chulainn hails from Irish mythology, where he was a knight who was pretty awesome in battle and occasionally went crazy. When summoned, he didn't have any real goals, just wanting to enjoy himself.

Cu Chulainn was originally summoned by Bazett, but she was betrayed and killed by Kotomine. Kotomine stole her Command Spells and took over as Cu Chulainn's Master, who couldn't do anything about it.

Kotomine ordered Cu Chulainn to play recon duty, engaging all the other Servants in battle but not killing any of them. The first shown battle in Fate/stay night is Cu Chulainn versus some Archer guy, which is interrupted by a normal person (Shirou) finding them. The rules of the Holy Grail War and magi dictate that if a normal person sees you, they've got to die, and so Cu Chulainn goes and stabs Shirou in the chest.

Another Master (Rin) heals Shirou, and so later that knight Cu Chulainn goes after him again, complaining that he really doesn't like having to kill the same person twice. This time Shirou accidentally summons Arturia, who handily drives Cu Chulainn off.

In Fate route, where Arturia and Shirou come from, Cu Chulainn and Gilgamesh are later ordered to kill a weakened Arturia and Shirou. Instead they attack each other because they really just can't stand each other. Cu Chulainn gives Arturia and Shirou time to escape, and then is killed by Gilgamesh.

In Unlimited Blade Works route, where Cu Chulainn comes from, Rin and Shirou are in a tight spot before Cu Chulainn shows up and offers to ally with them. He's been ordered to by Kotomine, but he didn't need a lot of encouragement to hang out with the good guys.

Cu Chulainn hangs out with them through Team Shirou-Rin-Cu Chulainn vs. Team Medea-Kuzuki-Archer, then helps them out when Rin gets kidnapped. He stops Shinji from sexually assaulting Rin, which is when Kotomine shows up. Kotomine orders him to kill Rin because Kotomine is a troll - Cu Chulainn refuses. Kotomine commands him with a Command Spell to kill himself instead. Cu Chulainn stabs himself, then gets back up and stabs Kotomine before collapsing again. Shinji figures this means it's free game to assault Rin - nope, Cu Chulainn gets back up and slices off Shinji's arm, making him run away screaming. Cu Chulainn frees Rin, tells her to get out of there, and sets his dying place on fire before finally dying.

king_of_heroes - Gilgamesh - Servant - Archer
Gilgamesh was originally summoned during Fate/Zero by Tokiomi Tohsaka, and yes I know you've never heard of this guy. Tokiomi Tohsaka was a standard magus who utterly bored Gilgamesh. The guy who was Tokiomi's student, Kirei Kotomine, was much more interesting to Gil because he was unusual, having no idea what his desires were.

In terms of actual battles, some Berseker (Lancelot) ticked Gilgamesh off from the get-go. Bastard picked up his weapons and used them against him. Shouldn't be able to do that. Also in terms of other Servants, Saber was hot. He heard about her ideas and thought 'man she's so beautiful and noble, she'll be so hot when she's horribly ruined'. Or something like that. Also he was rivals with fellow tyrant Rider (Alexander the Great).

But back to Kotomine and Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh encouraged Kotomine to try out being evil, as that was what he really wanted to do. Kotomine stabbed Tokiomi in the back, took his Servant from him, ruined a few other people's lives horribly, and enjoyed all of it. Mission success.

Gilgamesh fought Rider and won, sparing his Master's life. Gilgamesh fought Saber and lost. The Grail that was corrupted broke and spewed black mud everywhere, which gave Gilgamesh a physical body. He could stay in the world without the Grail's support, although he still needed supplies of mana to be able to use his weapons.

Thankfully there was a huge disaster that created a lot of orphans, and thankfully his Master was a priest who could lock those orphans up in the basement and drain their mana for him. So that worked out.

Ten years later, Saber was summoned again. Gilgamesh still possessed a desire to do her, and disliked the fact that her Master Shirou possessed the same desire and was less of a jerk. After establishing that he was a huge threat and beating Saber to an inch of her life, Gilgamesh lost the rematch.

unknownrival - Issei Ryudo - Neither
Issei is Shirou's best friend and the student council president at his school. He knows nothing about the Holy Grail War, although his adoptive brother is a Master to the woman posing as his fiancee. He's not a magus or extraordinary in any way, and he bears pretty much no relevance to the plot. Moving on.

problemshirou - Kirei Kotomine - Master
Kotomine is a priest, a magus, a whole bunch of things. He kept moving from occupation to occupation, trying to find something that would give his life meaning but never finding it. There is only one thing he enjoys, and that is causing suffering and misery.

During Fate/Zero, Kotomine is Tokiomi Tohsaka's student, and is working with him to help him obtain the Holy Grail. He summons as Assassin a group of Hassan i-Sabbah Servants who work for him mostly as spies.

He also spends a lot of time talking to Gilgamesh, Tokiomi's Servant. Gilgamesh finds him more interesting than his own Master, and makes him consider his wish, why the Grail chose him to be a Master, and what his desires are. He is eventually convinced to screw some people over, and thoroughly enjoys ruining their lives and/or killing them. He also takes Gilgamesh as his own Servant after killing Tokiomi.

Kotomine cannot find happiness or meaning in normal things. He has no sorrow at the deaths of his wife or his father, even though both loved him very much. He has an obsession with Kiritsugu Emiya, believing him to be a similar man to himself, but realizes that instead of finding everything meaningless, Kiritsugu only cast aside meaningful things for his own goal.

Kotomine loses the final battle against Kiritsugu, but the broken Grail brings him back with... okay there's something about a dark body here but I honestly wasn't paying attention to this part, the point is that he survives. He wishes to end humanity and the Grail responds by starting a massive fire that engulfs the town and is a huge disaster.

Kotomine uses his status as a priest to take in a bunch of orphans and suck their mana out in a horribly torturous process to feed his Servant.

During Fate/stay night, Kotomine is the church overseer of the Fifth Grail War, and supposedly runs the safe house for defeated Masters. Of course he's a villain in every single route. He has two Servants - he killed Cu Chulainn's former Master and stole her Command Seals, and Gilgamesh is still hanging around - and screws with the heroes in wildly different ways depending on the route.

Kotomine is the final boss for Shirou in the Fate route, where Shirou and Saber come from. In Unlimited Blade Works, where Cu Chulainn is pulled from, he gets killed by Cu Chulainn towards the end, and in Heavens Feel where our Kotomine is pulled from, he is the final boss for Shirou after having worked alongside him due to some unlikely complicated circumstances.

Nobody likes this guy.

snakeeyes - Medusa - Servant - Rider
Medusa was originally a minor goddess with two sisters, Euryale and Stehno. To protect the island she lived on, she turned into this horrible monster thing and ate people. Eventually Perseus killed her.

Medusa was summoned to Sakura Matou, but control of her was given to Shinji Matou, Sakura's abusive older brother who in tern physically and sexually abused Medusa. To protect her true Master, Medusa submitted to this and followed Shinji's orders.

In Fate route, where most of the Fate/stay night cast comes from, Medusa started draining energy from the people at the school before being killed by Arturia, and nobody knew that she was actually a nice woman when not being ordered around by a horrible person.

In Heavens Feel route, where Medusa comes from if I'm not mistaken, everything bad that could happen to Sakura did happen. In order to protect her from Shinji and later herself, Medusa worked with Shirou as allies and even lived with him for a while. Even though Sakura was responsible indirectly for terrible stuff happening, Medusa always protected her, and in the end after a whole lot of stuff happened was able to stay after the Holy Grail War ended as Sakura's familiar.

monohoshizao - Sasaki Kojiro - Servant - Assassin
Sasaki is not actually Sasaki Kojiro, because there was no real Sasaki Kojiro. The Grail took a man (farmer, I think?) who perfected a technique like the Tsubame Gaeshi that Sasaki was famous for and made him into a Servant.

Sasaki was summoned by Medea, the Caster Servant in the same war. Because he was a Servant summoned by a Servant, he was severely limited in what he could do. He has the leyline under the temple as his mana source, and guards the temple gate for Medea because he can't leave.

Sasaki gets into fights with Arturia a few times depending on the route. In Fate (where Arturia comes from) they fight once. In Unlimited Blade Works (where Sasaki's taken from, I believe) they fight twice. Both fights are motivated simply by 'she's an awesome swordfighter and I want to fight her'. Sasaki has no particular loyalty to Medea, nor any great drive to win the war under a name that isn't even his really. He just wants to get a good battle in.

emptysword - Shirou Emiya - Master
The dumb hero of our story. Shirou was found after a horrible fire by Kiritsugu Emiya and adopted as his son - he has no memories from before then. He was taught the very basics of magecraft, but he sucks at anything but reinforcing objects and projecting swords. He latched onto Kiritsugu's ideal of becoming a superhero and saving everyone. How this turns out depends on the route, but our Shirou comes from Fate route, so let's stick to that.

After witnessing a battle between Cu Chulainn and some Archer guy accidentally, Shirou gets stabbed in the chest. Rin comes by and heals him, and Shirou goes home. Cu Chulainn tries to kill him again, which is when Shirou accidentally summons Arturia.

Shirou has some problems with Arturia fighting because he wants to protect her from getting hurt, to which Arturia reminds him that she's supposed to fight and is not meant for other things. Shirou breaks through this in time. He also breaks through her 'I should fix all my mistakes in life with the Grail' thing.

Meanwhile, fighting. Shirou learns to suck less at it and be more heroic. He also has sex with Arturia for mana purposes. His ultimate battle is against Kotomine, he wins, and tells Arturia to destroy the Grail. She does it wholeheartedly this time. After it's destroyed, she tells him she loves him before disappearing.

Fate/EXTRA
letsplaylady - Alice - Master
Alice is dead outside of the virtual reality, and her personality was brought in. She became a Master, and summoned as her Servant the incarnation of nursery rhymes, who took her form and also went by the name Alice. They both refer to themselves in third person.

Yep. It gets really confusing to us too.

Alice is the Master Hakuno fights during the third round. She's cute, but she's also really creepy and nearly kills Hakuno a few times before their last fight. Alice is looking for a friend, but they keep dying on her. Alice's Servant is her only true friend.

They lose in the third round, and die in each other's arms.

hellburner - Francis Drake - Servant - Rider
Francis Drake was summoned to Shinji Matou, and is round one's opponent. A word about Shinji - he's nothing like the other Shinji in terms of backstory. He'a actually eight years old, for one thing, and a hacker rather than a magus, and also not a totally horrible person. Francis likes teasing him and driving him nuts.

Francis fights better if she gets money, as that's her driving force. She doesn't mind losing in round one to Hakuno and her Servant, and exits the stage gracefully.

white_knightin - Gawain - Servant - Saber
Gawain is Leo Harway's Servant, and the opponent of the final round, round seven. Gawain is really, really pissed off at Lancelot for what he did to Arturia, and his anger at Lancelot helped ruin the country. Gawain seeks to atone for that.

He's a knight in shining armor, but he also gets kind of nasty with the insults towards Hakuno's Servant... Neither Nero nor Tamamo-no-Mae remember him very fondly

Gawain is defeated at the end of round seven.

inconversable - Hakuno Kishinami - Master
Hakuno is the main character of the game. (The character can either be male or female, but there are barely any differences between.) All prospective Masters regain their memories of their lives outside the virtual reality once they pass a test to become a Master. Hakuno passes hers, summoning Saber (or Caster or Archer - this one is from a Saber/Nero route), but she doesn't regain her memories of who she really is.

She goes through seven rounds of combat against other Masters. At first she's weak, and doesn't know if she has the right to kill people when she doesn't know what she'll wish for if she wins. But she doesn't want to die, and she wants to learn the truth. She becomes more confident and more powerful each round, taking on greater opponents and forging a greater bond with her Servant.

It turns out that in the real world, Hakuno Kishinami was a victim of a terrorist attack and had amnesia. There was a surgery that could help her, but only one doctor in the world talented enough to do so. Until the surgery was able to be performed, she was placed in stasis. The Hakuno in the virtual reality is thus technically an NPC based on a person who exists but did not choose to enter the game.

nosecondstrike - Li Shuwen - Servant - Assassin
Round five's opponent, Li Shuwen is summoned to Julius Harway, the assassin of an extremely powerful family. Li Shuwen is an extraordinarily powerful Servant, taking out many opposing Masters and Servants while remaining unseen through martial arts hax.

He's beaten in round five, but neither he nor his Master can accept being deleted, and they manage to come back in the next round. Li Shuwen is brought back as an insane Berserker, but once Hakuno defeats him for the second time, he's gone for good.

nrvn_qsr - Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus - Servant - Saber
Nero has a hero upgrade from her historical counterpart. While self-absorbed, she does genuinely love her countrymen.

Nero is one of three Servants who can be summoned to the player character in Fate/EXTRA. She serves the player well, leading them to victory over each opponent. Her bold nature tends to annoy a lot of the enemy Servants.

She's the easiest mode, by the way. And she openly states herself to be bisexual. Score for RPGs.

yewbow - Robin Hood - Servant - Archer
Robin Hood was summoned to Dan Blackmore, a former knight, and is round two's opponent. He fought to protect a small village, but was never rewarded for his efforts, even by the villagers. He was never able to fight like a hero, and died in the shadows instead.

Robin poisons Hakuno early on in his round and gets chewed out by his honorable Master for it. He bickers a whole lot with everyone, especially his Master and an opposing Archer. Being not the main character, he loses his fight and is deleted in round two.

kitsunemimi - Tamamo-no-Mae - Servant - Caster
Tamamo-no-Mae is from Japanese mythology, an avatar of the goddess Amaterasu. Her goal in this war is to get a husband. Who may or may not be a woman, depending.

Her sights are set on the player character - Hakuno can summon her as one of three possible Servants. She's devoted to the main character and dislikes anyone who poses a problem for her future husband.

She's the hardest mode.

Fate/Apocrypha
ridertothemoon - Astolfo - Servant - Rider
Astolfo, knight of Charlemagne.

chastehuntress - Atalanta - Servant - Archer
Atalanta from Greek myth.

rocker - David - Servant - Archer
King David of Israel.

pucelle - Joan of Arc - Servant - Ruler
Joan gets to have a super special class for some reason. She's summoned to be kind of like the overseer in other parts of the series, and she gets to remember all the previous wars she's been called to. She also counts as a Saber.

coldhearted_sun - Karna - Servant - Lancer
Karna is from Indian mythology.

stagecontroller - William Shakespeare - Servant - Caster
Shakespeare. Self-explanatory.

Fate/Prototype
knightking - Arthur Pendragon - Servant - Saber
Arthur Pendragon, English mythology, actually male. Unlike Stay Night's Saber, he has a more relaxed personality. His Master, Sajyou Ayaka, is female, and they have the obligatory shiptease.

He knows Gilgamesh and Cu Chulainn because versions of them appeared in his canon, but they're not quite the same. He'll also know Gawain and Lancelot, but they won't know him because their version of him is female. Isn't it sad, male!Saber?