The Great Holy Grail War (聖杯大戦, Seihai Taisen?), also called the Apocryphal Holy Grail War (外典の聖杯戦争, Geten no Seihai Sensō?), is the Holy Grail War of Fate/Apocrypha. It is a conflict based upon those of Fuyuki that takes place in an alternate timeline where the Greater Grail was stolen after the Third Holy Grail War. It takes place in Trifas, a city on the outskirts of the Transylvania region of Romania.
History[]
Fuyuki's original Third Holy Grail War took place on the night before Nazi Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II, but the ritual failed due to the Lesser Grail being destroyed. Afterward, Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia, a Magus supporting the Nazis, found the location of the Greater Grail in the caverns underneath Mount Enzou, and it was removed using military aid from the Nazis. The Three Families and the Imperial Japanese Army fought to thwart the theft, but they were left in a weak position due to having been weakened by the Holy Grail War. With their opposition defeated, the Greater Grail was successfully taken by the Nazis.[1] Sometime during the events, Amakusa Shirou Tokisada was summoned as Ruler, and later remained materialized to join with the Holy Church.[2]
Nazi Germany had planned to utilize it to allow them to rule the world as they saw fit, but Darnic interfered during its transport and took it for his own Yggdmillennia family. Records of battle for it were only known to Magi and its whereabouts thereafter were not known to anybody, leading to speculation that it may have landed in the hands of the Imperial Army or raided by the Soviet forces. It was not allowed to become the symbol of the Third Reich and their dream of world unification, and it vanished without a trace, Darnic having also vanished from the Nazi's side.[1]
Though the theft marked the end of Fuyuki's conflicts and the dreams of the Three Families, the Einzberns did not give up and seemed to be crafting a new Grail. The Tohsakas gave up the Holy Grail.[3] Nothing was heard from the presumably-decayed Matous. It also marked the beginning of spreading Holy Grail conflicts worldwide. While attempting to prepare to utilize the Greater Grail for his own purposes, Darnic allowed for the spreading of information pertaining to the ritual, which he considered to be his only misstep. Though the Mage's Association had paid little attention to Fuyuki's ritual, the information behind its system was spread to Magi throughout the world, beginning an advent of rituals, the Subcategory Holy Grail Wars, across each continent.[1][4]
The ritual was commonplace around the end of the 20th century, but the majority were all small in scale compared to that of Fuyuki. They could only summon five Servants, and even if the ritual were fully established, they could never proceed to the point of it being able to grant a wish.[1] The location of the Greater Grail was revealed due to Yggdmillennia seceding from the Association and using it as the focal point of their own association. They summoned Servants of their own in preparation for conflict, and settled themselves into their new position.[1]
Due to interference from fifty hunters from the Mage's Association, the Greater Grail's backup system was activated, allowing for the Association to summon seven Servants of their own to oppose Yggdmillennia.[1] The scale of the Holy Grail War, fourteen Servants being summoned, was the largest ever seen,[5] leading to it being called the Great Holy Grail War. Due to the repeated Holy Grail Wars over time, relics acting as catalysts for powerful heroes like Gilgamesh, King Arthur, and Alexander the Great had been scattered and lost over time. There were still enough left for Yggdmillennia and the Association to properly summon excellent Servants of their choosing.[1]
Procedure[]
The Great War makes use of the reserve system set up within the Greater Grail. While it would have likely exhausted the Ley Lines of Fuyuki, Trifas's land is positioned on the best Ley Lines of Romania, and they have been stockpiling Magical Energy at a higher speed than Fuyuki to the point of calling it an inexhaustible amount.[1] As a highly abnormal situation, it makes for a very different battle than the Fuyuki Wars. Rather than each Servant having to form separate strategies, teams of Servants allow for Servants like Berserker, Assassin, and Caster that would normally have difficulty surviving in single combat to show their full potential.
Due to the unprecedented nature of the Great War, the Holy Grail sees it as an abnormal encroachment of its authority no matter how much the system has been altered. The status of an impartial overseer is only outside interference, so it disregards whether they exist or not and instead uses its own logic to call upon a Servant to act as Ruler of the Holy Grail War. Ruler does not serve one side or the other, but protects the very concept of the Holy Grail War. Both sides believe the monsters gathered would be too much to ignore, so they took the summoning of a Ruler-class Servant as a given.[6]
Participants[]
| []Faction | Servant | Identity | Master |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | Saber | MordredWP | Kairi Sisigou |
| Red | Archer | AtalantaWP | Rottweil Berzinsky Shirou Kotomine |
| Red | Lancer | KarnaWP | Feend vor Sembren Shirou Kotomine |
| Red | Rider | AchillesWP | Cabik Pentel Shirou Kotomine |
| Red | Caster | ShakespeareWP | Jean Rum Shirou Kotomine |
| Red | Assassin | SemiramisWP | Shirou Kotomine |
| Red | Berserker | SpartacusWP | Deimlet Pentel Caster of Black |
| Red | Ruler | Amakusa Shirou TokisadaWP | None |
| Black | Saber | SiegfriedWP | Gordes Musik Yggdmillennia |
| Black | Archer | ChironWP | Fiore Forvedge Yggdmillennia |
| Black | Lancer | Vlad IIIWP | Darnic Prestone Yggdmillennia |
| Black | Rider | AstolfoWP | Celenike Icecolle Yggdmillennia Sieg |
| Black | Caster | Solomon ibn GabirolWP | Roche Frain Yggdmillennia |
| Black | Assassin | Jack the RipperWP | Sagara Hyouma Reika Rikudou |
| Black | Berserker | Frankenstein's monsterWP | Caules Forvedge Yggdmillennia |
| None | Ruler | Jeanne d'ArcWP | None (Greater Grail) |
Servants for the canceled Fate/Apocrypha game project.
| Servant | Identity |
|---|---|
| Archer | DavidWP |
| Berserker | Sakata KintokiWP |
| Lancer | Musashibou BenkeiWP |
| Rider | Saint GeorgeWP |
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Fate/Apocrypha Volume 1: Apocrypha: Great Holy Grail War - Chapter 1
- ↑ Fate/Apocrypha Volume 3: Triumphal Return of the Saint - Prologue
- ↑
[] Fate/Apocrypha material - Encyclopedia: The Three Families [Others], p.166 [T] The Three Families [Others]
In “Apocrypha”, the Three Families are the magi who constructed the Fuyuki Holy Grail War… in other words, the Einzberns, Tohsaka and Makiri.
Just as alluded in the light novels, Makiri (Matou) Zouken fought fiercely against Darnic during the Third Holy Grail War, but became practically crippled due to the shock of the Greater Grail being stolen. The family wasn’t blessed with a successor either, so their future as magi has been completely shut.
The Tohsaka gave up on the Greater Grail, and now seek a new path in becoming one with the universe with Chinese Kenpou while learning magecraft. The twin-tail daughter of the family might also end up becoming the founder of a “completely new martial arts that combines magecraft and Chinse Kenpou” by the time she becomes a high school student. However, she never imagined that her younger sister who was adopted by distant relatives would come visit her in Japan after becoming a pro-wrestler with unimaginably nice proportions and forming a tag team with a drill-roll-haired girl…!
The Einzberns are in the midst of struggling to make a new Greater Grail under the excuse “It was stolen, so we’ll just make a new Holy Grail”. Fortunately, in the “Apocrypha” world, a certain dead fish-eyed mercenary won’t end up becoming involved with the Einzberns, so their greatest work Illyasviel will never be born—therefore, as long as she isn’t born, the Einzberns will never despair… Is that really fortunate?御三家【その他】
- ↑
[] Fate/Apocrypha material - Encyclopedia: Subcategory Holy Grail Wars [Others], p.154-155 [T] Subspecies Holy Grail Wars [Others]
The small Holy Grail Wars that have been recklessly happening everywhere since several decades ago in the “Apocrypha” world. Varying from those with only two Servants to wars with five Servants which, though inferior in scale to Fuyuki, are still considerably large conflicts, all kinds of Holy Grails Wars are brightly, happily and violently taken place throughout the world.
This is because, after the Third Holy Grail War, Darnic disseminated information on the structure of the Holy Grail War, which normally should have been concealed at all costs, to other magi in order to forestall them from searching for the Holy Grail that he had stolen.
Even for magi who lament over how the Root is just a distant fairy tale, once they learned that they could take a step… or perhaps even just half a step towards reaching it through this ritual, they ended up desperately creating Holy Grails of their own.
Broadly speaking, out of a hundred Holy Grails made, ninety-five of them get stalled due to setbacks in the midst of constructing them, and out of the remaining finished five Grails, four end up incomplete and explode while prana is poured into them. The last remaining Grail out of them all manages to work properly, but the ritual is degraded in quality and cannot be compared to the one in Fuyuki.
However, with the prana accumulated in the Grail, it still becomes possible to bring about miracles of varying scale. Being summoned by such a shoddy Holy Grail is a real nuisance to the Servants, though. There are many Servants who refuse the summoning or rebel and kill their Masters.
Amongst young magi, something like a “Holy Grail War Walkthrough Wiki” has been secretly created and is used to outwit obstinate old magi by mustering their intelligence… maybe. The early period right after the subspecies Holy Grails began was called the “golden era of Assassins”, where Assassins (Hassan-i-Sabbah) were a great menace (because, on top of their prana consumption being low, killing Masters was far easier than battles between Servants, so it might have seemed like easier work in its own way), but by the middle period, countermeasures against them were naturally taken and the Hassan boom fell into decline. It’s apparently a common sight for Masters who enjoy having their Servants fight each other to easily team up just as Assassin is confirmed to be summoned.
It is quite common in the subspecies Holy Grail Wars for the Servants to be unable to display their full power as much as in Fuyuki depending on the quality of the leylines, and, since the advantages and disadvantages of each Servant also becomes clear according to their level of fame in the land where a war takes place, it often turns into a competition to obtain the catalysts of local Servants.
For instance, a subspecies Holy Grail War in Greece would create a struggle for a “catalyst of Heracles”, and the magi who managed to get it would win… In other words, the whole thing seems to go full circle and turn into a simple battle of magecraft between magi in the end. As a cute one-time divorcee magus said, “Rather, the whole idea of fighting that macho guy in his homeland is seriously ridiculous in the first place.”
After the use of Heracles was forbidden as a result of that, the next war turned into a competition over the catalyst of Achilles, and so there has never been a proper Holy Grail War held in Greece. There exist terrible tales of Holy Grail Wars like this.亜種聖杯戦争【その他】
- ↑ Fate/Apocrypha Volume 1: Apocrypha: Great Holy Grail War - Chapter 3
- ↑ Fate/Apocrypha Volume 1: Apocrypha: Great Holy Grail War - Chapter 2