Kotomine . . . Kirei (言峰 綺礼) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
structuraldefect) wrote2013-06-25 03:00 pm
structuraldefect) wrote2013-06-25 03:00 pm
Entry tags:
Tu Shanshu Application
Player Information:
Name: Box
Age: 24
Contact: boxofgrenades@gmail.com, likeabox@plurk, bardwithnoname@aim
Game Cast: Maxwell Lord from DC Comics
Character Information:
Name: Kirei Kotomine
Canon: Fate/Zero
Canon Point: Post-Canon
Age: 28. Finally, no comic book style vague ages!
Reference: character and canon. As a note, his character reference contain explicit references to self-injury and suicide.
Setting: As a note upfront? Nasubabble makes almost no sense. It can’t really be helped. But here we go.
Once upon a time, there were three great mage families: the Tohsaka, the Einzbern, and the Makiri. On this world, magic is typically determined by bloodline, and the further back the magic goes, the more skill a person is thought to have. All mages have a finite supply of mana, also called prana here, and it’s typically all based in blood and other bodily fluidsbecause this franchise started with an H-Game. The three major families are the best of the best, the most prestigious of them all. And, about 200 years ago, they developed a Holy Grail. Not just a cup of legend here, this Grail has the ability to grant any wish to the victor of the war that inevitably ensues. Not only that, but the Grail is thought to be the location of the Root of all magic, also known as Akasha. The fortunes of the three families changed over time, of course. The Makiri eventually became the Matou, and lost power and magical ability to the point that the latest generation has almost none at all. The Einzbern became increasingly drawn to their alchemy practices, focusing their efforts on creating Homunculi, doll-like people who inevitably become vessels for the Grail. The Tohsaka remained in Fuyuki City, and became concerned with elegance and tradition. And yet, the Wars continued regardless, with the Grail’s powers being drawn from the sacrifices of mythic heroes.
Think of any hero, and they can be summoned for a short period of time to fight in these wars. Any hero. Whether their reputation is great and powerful or terrible and fearsome or insignificant and obscure. If they existed and they have legends to draw from, they can be summoned during Grail Wars, if only temporarily. Most Heroes summoned during the Grail Wars come from the Throne of Heroes, a metaphorical pocket dimension, although there are exceptions. King Arthur, for example, typically comes from her (yes, her) last battle. When a Hero gets summoned, they are referred to as Servants and sorted into RPG style classes based on their skills in real life. Those classes are Saber, Lancer, Archer, Berserker, Caster, Rider, and Assassin. The mage that summoned them is their Master, who is also provided three command spells when they are chosen by the Grail. These three command spells can force the Servant to obey any order given to them. Each Grail War has seven Masters and seven Servants. The last one standing wins the war, Highlander style. All wars take place within the city limits of Fuyuki City, Japan, and all damage done by the war is covered up by the Mages Association.
Give Mages enough power, though, and it’s bound to get out of hand. This is where the Church steps in. These are no ordinary Catholics here, as various other branches of the church exist. One such branch is called the Executors, who exist to fight and defeat Heretics. Heretics are basically vampire/demon/mage hybrids. It takes crazy lots of training to become an Executor, as well as a lot of church indoctrination and the like. Another branch of the Church is called the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament, and they’re the ones that directly deal with the Holy Grail War. This section is tasked with separating true Grails from false positives, handing out Command Spells, and otherwise acting as mediators and controllers for The Grail War as it proceeds.
This is where Kirei Kotomine steps into the picture. His Father in both senses of the word, Risei, is the initial mediator of the Fourth Grail War, and as Kirei works in the same branch, he could simply get mixed up in all this just as a member of the Church. But that would be too simple. A few days after Kirei’s wife Claudia dies, command spells appear on Kirei’s hand. Oh yeah. He’s in the Grail War as a Master, despite having no magical training whatsoever, and eventually summons Assassin. And it gets better. Kirei is initially tasked with teaming up with Tokiomi Tohsaka by his Father, in order to help rig the Grail War so that the Tohsaka win. See, Tokiomi Tohsaka is the only person the Church can trust to make a dull wish that won’t end up breaking things, so it’d be really helpful to the status quo if he won. They even give Tokiomi the artifact of one of the most powerful, gamebreaking Servants of the lot: Gilgamesh.
This may have been a bad move. The problem starts when Gilgamesh gets summoned as an Archer, which means he gets the special ability to basically do whatever he wants. No, really. It’s called Independent Action, and it means it takes pretty much nothing short of a Command Spell to follow orders. Throw in the fact that he’s got the temper problem of a world class diva and a blood alcohol content of ‘wine’, and he ends up taking far more interest in urging Kirei to jump through evil/pleasure hoops than doing things for Tokiomi. Also a problem, because Kirei’s not interested in the Grail War, either, so much as it presents an opportunity to stalk Kiritsugu Emiya.
No, really. Kiritsugu Emiya’s a magekiller hired by the Einzbern, the alchemy focused family mentioned up at the front. He's also married to their Homunculi heir, Irisviel. In an effort to actually win the war for once, they hire this guy to do their fighting for them. Said fighting tends to involve bullets, sketchy moves, and basically acting like a metagaming jerk. Kiritsugu grabs Kirei’s attention because of these sketchy moves and attitudes towards battling Mages, and so Kirei makes a plan to spend the Grail War finding out what this guy’d wish for. Sounds nice enough, until said plan involves trolling him like a 4chan user and nearly killing his wife by episode 9. Don’t worry, though, he succeeds by the end of the series!
Yeah, uh, Kirei’s not a very nice person. And over the course of the series, he only gets worse. Oh, sure, he loses Assassin very early on under Tokiomi’s orders, but later the same night, he regains his Command Spells while talking with Gilgamesh. Later, he refuses to intervene in a duel between Tokiomi and Kariya Matou. Kariya had previously gained Kirei’s interest due to his ineptitude as a mage and the tragic circumstances that propel him to fight in the Grail War. Namely, he became the Master of Berserker in order to free Sakura from Zouken’s abuses. Kariya loses the duel to Tokiomi, and Kirei defies what is proper for an apprentice and heals Kariya. His father gets murdered on the very same night, and entrusts his Command Spells to him. Once his father dies, all bets are off regarding his behavior. On the verge of being kicked out of the war by Tokiomi for going behind his back and antagonizing Team Kerry, Kirei meets with Gilgamesh one more time. He teams up with him, betrays and murders Tokiomi, and basically proceeds to emotionally or physically wreck everyone who gets in the way of the inevitable Kiritsugu vs Kirei showdown.
During the course of the fight, however, the Grail begins leaking corruption on them, eventually drenching them entirely. Unknown to anyone else at the time, the Holy Grail got corrupted during the last war. Someone summoned Angra Mainyu as an Avenger, a special one of a kind eighth class. When Angra lost and went into the Grail to power it, the corruption spread. Angra Mainyu, for those of you not up on your Zoroastrian mythology, is the embodiment of All The World’s Evil.
It kind of explains a lot, like how someone like Kirei got pulled by the Grail in the first place.
Because of Angra Mainyu’s influence, any wish made on the Grail will have the most disastrous consequences possible. And since Kiritsugu Emiya wishes for nothing more than to save the world, Angra Mainyu interprets this wish as killing pretty much everyone. Kiritsugu rejects the Grail, but not before Kirei sees the entire thing. Kirei projects onto Angra Mainyu, and thus professes a wish to see Angra Mainyu born, so Kiritsugu makes the perfectly rational decision to shoot him.
By all accounts, this should be the end of Kirei’s story. It isn’t. The Grail’s still going and spilling evil grail goo everywhere. When Saber is ordered to destroy it, the Grail causes a massive fire that nearly burns Fuyuki to the ground. It also drenches Gilgamesh in the corruption. Gilgamesh sloughs it off, but the goo’s gotta go somewhere, and due to Kirei sharing mana with him now, it ends up going into Kirei. So Kirei’s still alive and powered by an evil goo heart, Gilgamesh has a human body, and both of them are planning on raising a more than a little hell. So yeah, Kirei and Gilgamesh kind of won the Grail War. Oops.
Kirei’s being taken from here. But, there’s one more piece of the people Kirei interacts with puzzle. Namely, Rin Tohsaka, Tokiomi’s daughter. Due to yet another bad judgement call on Tokiomi’s part, he entrusted care and guardianship of Rin to Kirei in the event of his death. When that death happens about five minutes later, Kirei does, in fact, take up guardianship of Rin. They don’t get along, putting it mildly. He basically exists to troll her, ruin her estate, and raise her to be sentimental on purpose. He also gives her dresses she’d hate every year for her birthday. He even gives her the very dagger he murdered Tokiomi with at his funeral solely because she wasn’t crying enough. Good times.
Fate/Stay Night takes place ten years later. Usually Grail Wars happen every forty years, but the near kerplosion and rejection by Kiritsugu speeds up the process. Unlike Fate/Zero, which has one single timeline, Fate/Stay Night has three mutually incompatible routes, each focusing on Shirou Emiya, and his interactions with different characters. Kirei appears to function as a mediator in all three routes, but the reveals concerning his behavior and motives are different in each one. And yes, Shirou's related to the above mentioned Kiritsugu, in this case by adoption during the Fuyuki fire, and yes, Kirei has a great deal of fun with that bit. The first route focuses on Saber, otherwise known as King Arturia and the very same one summoned in Fate/Zero, in which Kirei reveals that he took in all the other Fuyuki fire orphans and used them as living dead Gilgamesh mana fuel. He also stole Lancer, in this case Cu Chullain, from another Master before the Grail War started, making him the Master of two Servants at once. In this route, Kirei is killed by Shirou via the dagger he gave Rin. In route two, which focuses on Rin, Kirei meets his end after ordering Lancer to kill himself, who lasts long enough after said order to revenge stab Kirei in the heart and set the building on fire.
The last route, which focuses on Sakura Matou, also puts a great deal of focus onto Kirei himself. He directly participates in the rescue of Ilyasviel von Einzbern, Master of Berserker and a vessel of the Grail just like her mother, Irisviel. He also nearly exorcizes Zouken to death, only failing because Zouken’s made of worms and he didn’t step on the main wormy body. Kirei survives Sakura almost murdering him by cutting him off from the Grail Goo powering his heart to confront Shirou at the end. Here, he reveals the bulk of his motivations and expresses an understanding for Shirou, who like him was born empty inside. They have a fight, which Kirei loses due to dying slightly before Shirou started turning into swords.
In all three endings, Kirei dies smiling.
Personality: Kirei Kotomine begins dull eyed and blank faced. In fact, it’s entirely possible to forget he even exists in the early episodes. He’s very calm, to the point of appearing robotic. He very seldom talks, and when he does, it’s almost always relatively brief and composed. He even has quite a few doormat tendencies, best demonstrated as his willingness to play second fiddle to Tokiomi. More often than not, Tokiomi’s the one telling him how to use Assassin, and more often than not, he listens. He has beats and rhythms, but on the whole and on the balance, he appears as a non-entity in his own story to begin with.
Kirei is a very thoughtful person. This applies in a few distinct ways: he thinks carefully about what he says, and he thinks carefully in general. He picks his words, rather than having the words come to him. He has a rampant, incessant internal monologue, and it often feels as if he’s only voicing part of it. Philosophy in general seems to interest him, if his chats with Gilgamesh are any indication. He puts great weight on the matters of good, evil, happiness, humanity, choice, you name it, he’s probably got a treatise brewing about it. If he’s not voicing it, he’s probably at the very least thinking it. He’s an empty sort of person, as well, and he’s desperate to find something that fulfills him. He’s tried quite a lot of things, most notably the church, his wife, and his father. He’s noted to be an excellent student, but every time he got close to the top of the class, he disengages. When he gets his Master calling, Kirei proclaims that he has no idea what he wants with the Grail. Even by the end of the series, grail goo interference notwithstanding, he’s still more concerned with the wishes that can be made with it than a wish for himself.
Of course, he knows damn well what he wants: to see other people suffer. Nothing else brings him joy. It doesn’t matter if it’s trolling via ugly outfits or outright murder, betrayal, and destruction. If people are hurt, and he caused it, it makes him happy. He’s like a black hole powered by schadenfreude. While he may have suspected this for a very, very long time, it’s the deaths of his wife and father that clinch it for him. When they die, he can only feel remorse because he didn’t kill them himself. This is especially potent in the case of his wife, as he viewed her as a combination of an experiment and a last ditch effort to be normal. His inability to love her and the resulting fallout make their marks in his behavior from that point on, which means that it’s absolutely no coincidence that his command spells appear just a few days after Claudia dies. While he may wish for other things, only evil makes him feel alive.
The only thing worse than being born evil? Being born evil with a conscience. He’s completely and perfectly aware of how messed up he is. Kirei pays very careful attention to his motives, and while he denies the worst of his impulses for most of the series, he still knows what he’s doing is wrong. He very rarely tries to justify his actions under the ‘greater good’ clause. He doesn’t kid himself, in other words. In fact, this keen awareness of his darker urges once served pushed him to attempt suicide in the past. While his thoughts towards himself aren’t quite so despairing nowadays, he still carries the weight of his conscience with him. His awareness of his own nature can even serve to create glimpses a warped kind of caring underneath all his destructive impulses. For example, he stops trying to kid himself about his true motives after Claudia dies in part because he knew that otherwise, he’d grow to consider her death meaningless and he couldn’t allow that to happen. While he does attempt to stop himself from giving into his nature, he knows exactly what that nature is. He instead spends most of Fate/Zero trying to walk this revelation back.
Evil’s in his blood. There is, however, something he craves even more than that: To understand and be understood. It doesn’t matter if he’s covered in grail muck or just informed he’s participating in a grail war, he craves this sort of understanding. It has to be in exactly the right fashion, too. For example, his massive hatred of Zouken stems more from Zouken pinning him too closely down than Zouken being an abusive fuckhead. However, as shown in his scenes with Gilgamesh, the temptation Gilgamesh offers to seek what he likes is too great for him to resist. Most people in the series see Kirei as a blank slate and project trustworthiness onto him; Gilgamesh, on the other hand, sees Kirei’s true nature for what it is and approves. It’s this approval cloaked understanding that is critical. Throw in his claims that Angra Mainyu wants to be born, and you’ve got a ten year mission.
This also ties in to his hatred of Kiritsugu. Kirei is not immune to making misjudgments, as it turns out, and he starts off with a big one: that Kiritsugu Emiya is just like him. Therefore, every bit of evidence that goes against that helps to twist his hope towards understanding into despair and hatred. He doesn’t understand how other people can choose to be good, or how non-humans like Irisviel can fall in love. After all, he’s human, so why can’t he? This makes for a very potent ticking rage bomb. In fact, one of the absolute last straws regarding Kiritsugu is that he is capable of love and yet seems to throw it away. Kirei is keenly aware of what he lacks, and so being reminded of all those ways he lacks is a surefire way to make the priest go berserk.
Kirei Kotomine comes to life as the canon progresses. There’s no other word for it. His voice picks up emotion, his movements become more grand, and he starts voicing that incessant internal monologue of his. He also picks up a fantastic knack for false reassurance. He’ll spill basically his entire plot to you, only with the words twisted around so far you can’t quite see it coming. As he does so, he pushes his conscience further and further aside. Still, he can’t silence it completely, and it continues to influence his behaviors, even after the war ends. His questioning simply switches from “What kind of person am I?” to “Why does a person like me exist?” And Kirei, as seen repeatedly over the course of the show, is willing to burn the world down to get the answers he seeks.
Oh, and he likes Mapo Tofu, and he’ll take it extra hot, thank you.
As for the sea turtle? Well. If there’s anything Kirei loves, it’s metaphysics and using them to justify his existence. So, upon finding out he’s in between Life, Death, and Dreaming, he’s going to be wrapped up in trying to pick those things apart and figure out how this place really ticks. He’s also coming in with a new mission, namely seeing Angra Mainyu be born, but since this place lacks a Grail War entirely, he’d most likely put that specific goal on the backburner. He is, though, coming in on one hell of an epiphany and I expect he’d be very manic about it for some time upon entry. He’d also seek to make people suffer on an individual level, perhaps not in uppercase letters but definitely in any way he can manage. He’s naturally drawn to people who lead sorrow filled lives, are sick or dying, or are empty inside like he is. Once he finds some here, he’d glom on and try and figure out how and why they work. Lots of trying to figure things out in general. Ironically, for such an evil little shit, he’s more likely to side with the turtle over the Malicant, push come to shove, solely for the sake of answers.
As one last note, I have an existing permission post on his journal, where people who don’t want to deal with his evil jerkness can opt out. Anyone can refuse CR with him at any point, too. As for his more murdery impulses? Well. It’s unlikely that he’d go on some sort of spree here, as he gets more joy from the betrayal and emotional reactions than out and out murder. That being said, if it ever came to it, I’d ask for permission for victims OOCly and notify the mods in advance. I’ll also keep track of any Kedan victims in case it hits ten. Anything violent or that delves too deeply into his brand of psychological trauma, particularly his suicidal ideations and self-injury in the past, will be cut and warned for.
Appearance: official art. Notably, he has a large, very web-like scar over his heart and back now.
Abilities:
Black Keys: Black Keys are the signature weapon of the Executors, although very few members of the group specialize in them. Kirei does. They’re basically throwing knives generated by a magical current. He can use them to absorb magic-sapping blows, so that the knife will be destroyed instead of losing his abilities, but it costs one command spell to do so. The knives are about a foot long, and he tends to use them Wolverine style, or held between his knuckles in a group of three. He can either throw the knives away, or else dispel them, in which case he’s left with only the handles. He carries an uncounted number of these handles, though it’s probably extremely high, given how many he goes through over the canon without any problem. They aren’t very good at close range, however, and in such fights he tends to rely entirely on martial arts.
Command Spells: Kirei still has three Command Spells, which can be used to make Gilgamesh obey him at any point. The likelihood of Kirei using them for that purpose, however, is very low, due to not wanting to be stabbed in the face by an insulted Demi-God. In addition, due to taking over for his Father’s position as mediator in the Grail War, he’s come into possession of about twenty-four additional Command Spells. These Command Spells are ones left over from previous wars, and are intended to be doled out as necessary to other participants. He burned away two to Kariya, in order to make Berserker shapeshift into another Servant to trick Saber, and he used two more in the fight with Kiritsugu, in order to negate Kiritsugu’s magic severing bullets. This brings him down to roughly twenty-one Command Spells. It’s most likely that he will use his Command Spells in the latter function, specifically to power his Black Keys, than give them out to others, especially since there’s no Grail War here. His three ‘legit’ Command Spells form a spinning circle like a blood splatter on his right hand, while the additional bonus spells form a crisscrossing pattern up his left arm. Aside from the orders and the temporary power ups, they provide no extra abilities.
Heretic Hunting: Kirei’s been training to fight Heretics pretty much his entire life. He’s pretty good at it. Aside from the Black Keys mentioned above, he’s also been trained for hand to hand combat. He most commonly uses a highly specialized version of Bajiquan, which is so powerful he can straight up kill people by punching them in the chest. In Fate/Stay Night, the trunk of his car contains a massive pile of submachine guns, so presumably he knows how to use those, too. Still, in canon, he’s never shown using anything beyond hand-to-hand skills or the Black Keys. He’s noted to be an extremely tough opponent and once broke a tree in half when he’d been pinned to one. When he fought Kiritsugu, he was able to keep up with him while moving at quadruple speed. However, due to, uh, being dead at the moment, his skills are going to inevitably atrophy away from his peak performance during the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny with Kiritsugu. He also likes to go jogging. Like, a lot. Even in the future, he can run about as fast as a Servant. As one more note, his Executor training allows him to baptize evil spirits, or essentially exorcise them. All he has to do is say the rite and have some holy water and bam, no more zombie or other evil spirit hanging around.
Magic: Kirei was Tokiomi Tohsaka’s apprentice when he joined the Grail War, and as such learned quite a bit of magic from him. Magic in Fate/ verse is based upon magic circuits and prana usage. The circuits are sort of a pathway along the nervous system, and by using prana, a mage is able to use that system to, well, do magic. Most mages have very narrow skills that they excel at. For example, the Tohsakas tend to use mainly gem based magic, or pouring their prana into gems in order to cast spells from them. Kirei is decidedly average in all magic skills except for healing. Yes, really. Healing. Granted, his healing spells are noted to be essentially like surgery and cause a great deal of pain, but still, the irony remains valid. He once saved Kariya from being burned to the brink of death, so his skill in this area is actually pretty legitimate, too.
Grail Goo: So, uh, due to an accident involving all the world’s evils, a partnership with Gilgamesh, and being shot at the time, Kirei’s got evil corrupted grail goo for a heart. This means that his life is essentially tied to the Grail, so if it goes kablooey, so does he. He also can use the goo itself as sludgy projectiles and tendrils, which may not be possible here due to lacking a large enough supply of evil grail goo. The curses inside him are so powerful that their pressure can be felt just by touching him. As a side effect of these curses, any type of evil magic akin to it won’t affect him, because his own repels the others like a magnet. The curses inside him are so powerful that their pressure can be felt just by touching him. He’s basically a zombie now, and if he puts his willpower to it, he can actually survive for a short amount of time without his heart at all. That being said, he still acts almost exactly like a human being. He still gets tired, and if you score a good enough hit on him, he’ll die anyway. His heart in particular is a massive weak point, as all three of his deaths in Fate/Stay Night and his one in Fate/Zero are caused by hits to it.
Inventory: Priest outfit. Gold cross. Holy water.
Suite: EA-1D
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
He knows the stories of Moses and Jesus and Jacob and the others by heart by now. Recited them all during liturgy, read them in the book, heard them from his father and wife and strangers. Stories full of prophecy, of promises fulfilled and unfulfilled, of the glory of god in the highest, of old laws replaced with the new, of redemption and sacrifice and blood. Above all and always, there was blood. He wonders, sometimes, if many of his fellow practitioners and brothers have read it as much as he has. He’s poured over pages and pages, as if the next time he turned them, the answers he sought would appear. Instead, all he’d ever gotten were more questions, more proof that there was something deeply despairing lurking at the corners, just waiting for a chance to be free. But he’d read the stories, and so he knew some things very plainly, as if written upon his heart in deep, dark ink. How all men required God’s love to be saved from their sins and the sins of their fathers.
There was another story he’d read in his holy book. A man named Job got caught between God and Satan, and the two played a game with his life to prove that he would remain faithful. Satan took his wife and sons and daughters and health and everything he’d loved and wanted in the world away. In the end, God won the game. Job still fell on his knees and praised God for the trials that marred his life, and so he was returned all that had been taken from him. Kirei knew that last part to be impossible. What had been lost could not be returned. That would reduce the value of it. But despite the time that passed and the flaws of it all, he found himself flipping back to those pages the most, above all others, above even the psalms and liturgies and songs.
God’s love must be crueler than any other. And if that were so, then Kirei would do everything possible to deserve it.
Network:
What have we done to deserve this? Surely, there must have been something that made us worthy of being sent here. To distinguish us from our friends, our families, our enemies, everyone we know, the strangers we don’t, all of whom must have equal chance of being here, if all this were truly random. After all, if it’s only a matter of falling asleep or dying, then why us in particular? Surely there must be many more dead people who yearn for a second chance at life, at the very least. There must be something that calls us here. Some quality, above all others. Something that is as essential and varied as each of us. Something that we all share.
But what is it? What can it be? There are some things in this world and others that are worthless, after all, but there are seldom any meaningless things. Do this realm and those that shape it know? Can they see what we cannot? What makes us worthy of being saved from death, or pulled from life, or awakened from dreams? Do each of us hold meaning, just from being alive?
And if that’s so, then who are we to deny the shape of that life?
Name: Box
Age: 24
Contact: boxofgrenades@gmail.com, likeabox@plurk, bardwithnoname@aim
Game Cast: Maxwell Lord from DC Comics
Character Information:
Name: Kirei Kotomine
Canon: Fate/Zero
Canon Point: Post-Canon
Age: 28. Finally, no comic book style vague ages!
Reference: character and canon. As a note, his character reference contain explicit references to self-injury and suicide.
Setting: As a note upfront? Nasubabble makes almost no sense. It can’t really be helped. But here we go.
Once upon a time, there were three great mage families: the Tohsaka, the Einzbern, and the Makiri. On this world, magic is typically determined by bloodline, and the further back the magic goes, the more skill a person is thought to have. All mages have a finite supply of mana, also called prana here, and it’s typically all based in blood and other bodily fluids
Think of any hero, and they can be summoned for a short period of time to fight in these wars. Any hero. Whether their reputation is great and powerful or terrible and fearsome or insignificant and obscure. If they existed and they have legends to draw from, they can be summoned during Grail Wars, if only temporarily. Most Heroes summoned during the Grail Wars come from the Throne of Heroes, a metaphorical pocket dimension, although there are exceptions. King Arthur, for example, typically comes from her (yes, her) last battle. When a Hero gets summoned, they are referred to as Servants and sorted into RPG style classes based on their skills in real life. Those classes are Saber, Lancer, Archer, Berserker, Caster, Rider, and Assassin. The mage that summoned them is their Master, who is also provided three command spells when they are chosen by the Grail. These three command spells can force the Servant to obey any order given to them. Each Grail War has seven Masters and seven Servants. The last one standing wins the war, Highlander style. All wars take place within the city limits of Fuyuki City, Japan, and all damage done by the war is covered up by the Mages Association.
Give Mages enough power, though, and it’s bound to get out of hand. This is where the Church steps in. These are no ordinary Catholics here, as various other branches of the church exist. One such branch is called the Executors, who exist to fight and defeat Heretics. Heretics are basically vampire/demon/mage hybrids. It takes crazy lots of training to become an Executor, as well as a lot of church indoctrination and the like. Another branch of the Church is called the Assembly of the Eighth Sacrament, and they’re the ones that directly deal with the Holy Grail War. This section is tasked with separating true Grails from false positives, handing out Command Spells, and otherwise acting as mediators and controllers for The Grail War as it proceeds.
This is where Kirei Kotomine steps into the picture. His Father in both senses of the word, Risei, is the initial mediator of the Fourth Grail War, and as Kirei works in the same branch, he could simply get mixed up in all this just as a member of the Church. But that would be too simple. A few days after Kirei’s wife Claudia dies, command spells appear on Kirei’s hand. Oh yeah. He’s in the Grail War as a Master, despite having no magical training whatsoever, and eventually summons Assassin. And it gets better. Kirei is initially tasked with teaming up with Tokiomi Tohsaka by his Father, in order to help rig the Grail War so that the Tohsaka win. See, Tokiomi Tohsaka is the only person the Church can trust to make a dull wish that won’t end up breaking things, so it’d be really helpful to the status quo if he won. They even give Tokiomi the artifact of one of the most powerful, gamebreaking Servants of the lot: Gilgamesh.
This may have been a bad move. The problem starts when Gilgamesh gets summoned as an Archer, which means he gets the special ability to basically do whatever he wants. No, really. It’s called Independent Action, and it means it takes pretty much nothing short of a Command Spell to follow orders. Throw in the fact that he’s got the temper problem of a world class diva and a blood alcohol content of ‘wine’, and he ends up taking far more interest in urging Kirei to jump through evil/pleasure hoops than doing things for Tokiomi. Also a problem, because Kirei’s not interested in the Grail War, either, so much as it presents an opportunity to stalk Kiritsugu Emiya.
No, really. Kiritsugu Emiya’s a magekiller hired by the Einzbern, the alchemy focused family mentioned up at the front. He's also married to their Homunculi heir, Irisviel. In an effort to actually win the war for once, they hire this guy to do their fighting for them. Said fighting tends to involve bullets, sketchy moves, and basically acting like a metagaming jerk. Kiritsugu grabs Kirei’s attention because of these sketchy moves and attitudes towards battling Mages, and so Kirei makes a plan to spend the Grail War finding out what this guy’d wish for. Sounds nice enough, until said plan involves trolling him like a 4chan user and nearly killing his wife by episode 9. Don’t worry, though, he succeeds by the end of the series!
Yeah, uh, Kirei’s not a very nice person. And over the course of the series, he only gets worse. Oh, sure, he loses Assassin very early on under Tokiomi’s orders, but later the same night, he regains his Command Spells while talking with Gilgamesh. Later, he refuses to intervene in a duel between Tokiomi and Kariya Matou. Kariya had previously gained Kirei’s interest due to his ineptitude as a mage and the tragic circumstances that propel him to fight in the Grail War. Namely, he became the Master of Berserker in order to free Sakura from Zouken’s abuses. Kariya loses the duel to Tokiomi, and Kirei defies what is proper for an apprentice and heals Kariya. His father gets murdered on the very same night, and entrusts his Command Spells to him. Once his father dies, all bets are off regarding his behavior. On the verge of being kicked out of the war by Tokiomi for going behind his back and antagonizing Team Kerry, Kirei meets with Gilgamesh one more time. He teams up with him, betrays and murders Tokiomi, and basically proceeds to emotionally or physically wreck everyone who gets in the way of the inevitable Kiritsugu vs Kirei showdown.
During the course of the fight, however, the Grail begins leaking corruption on them, eventually drenching them entirely. Unknown to anyone else at the time, the Holy Grail got corrupted during the last war. Someone summoned Angra Mainyu as an Avenger, a special one of a kind eighth class. When Angra lost and went into the Grail to power it, the corruption spread. Angra Mainyu, for those of you not up on your Zoroastrian mythology, is the embodiment of All The World’s Evil.
It kind of explains a lot, like how someone like Kirei got pulled by the Grail in the first place.
Because of Angra Mainyu’s influence, any wish made on the Grail will have the most disastrous consequences possible. And since Kiritsugu Emiya wishes for nothing more than to save the world, Angra Mainyu interprets this wish as killing pretty much everyone. Kiritsugu rejects the Grail, but not before Kirei sees the entire thing. Kirei projects onto Angra Mainyu, and thus professes a wish to see Angra Mainyu born, so Kiritsugu makes the perfectly rational decision to shoot him.
By all accounts, this should be the end of Kirei’s story. It isn’t. The Grail’s still going and spilling evil grail goo everywhere. When Saber is ordered to destroy it, the Grail causes a massive fire that nearly burns Fuyuki to the ground. It also drenches Gilgamesh in the corruption. Gilgamesh sloughs it off, but the goo’s gotta go somewhere, and due to Kirei sharing mana with him now, it ends up going into Kirei. So Kirei’s still alive and powered by an evil goo heart, Gilgamesh has a human body, and both of them are planning on raising a more than a little hell. So yeah, Kirei and Gilgamesh kind of won the Grail War. Oops.
Kirei’s being taken from here. But, there’s one more piece of the people Kirei interacts with puzzle. Namely, Rin Tohsaka, Tokiomi’s daughter. Due to yet another bad judgement call on Tokiomi’s part, he entrusted care and guardianship of Rin to Kirei in the event of his death. When that death happens about five minutes later, Kirei does, in fact, take up guardianship of Rin. They don’t get along, putting it mildly. He basically exists to troll her, ruin her estate, and raise her to be sentimental on purpose. He also gives her dresses she’d hate every year for her birthday. He even gives her the very dagger he murdered Tokiomi with at his funeral solely because she wasn’t crying enough. Good times.
Fate/Stay Night takes place ten years later. Usually Grail Wars happen every forty years, but the near kerplosion and rejection by Kiritsugu speeds up the process. Unlike Fate/Zero, which has one single timeline, Fate/Stay Night has three mutually incompatible routes, each focusing on Shirou Emiya, and his interactions with different characters. Kirei appears to function as a mediator in all three routes, but the reveals concerning his behavior and motives are different in each one. And yes, Shirou's related to the above mentioned Kiritsugu, in this case by adoption during the Fuyuki fire, and yes, Kirei has a great deal of fun with that bit. The first route focuses on Saber, otherwise known as King Arturia and the very same one summoned in Fate/Zero, in which Kirei reveals that he took in all the other Fuyuki fire orphans and used them as living dead Gilgamesh mana fuel. He also stole Lancer, in this case Cu Chullain, from another Master before the Grail War started, making him the Master of two Servants at once. In this route, Kirei is killed by Shirou via the dagger he gave Rin. In route two, which focuses on Rin, Kirei meets his end after ordering Lancer to kill himself, who lasts long enough after said order to revenge stab Kirei in the heart and set the building on fire.
The last route, which focuses on Sakura Matou, also puts a great deal of focus onto Kirei himself. He directly participates in the rescue of Ilyasviel von Einzbern, Master of Berserker and a vessel of the Grail just like her mother, Irisviel. He also nearly exorcizes Zouken to death, only failing because Zouken’s made of worms and he didn’t step on the main wormy body. Kirei survives Sakura almost murdering him by cutting him off from the Grail Goo powering his heart to confront Shirou at the end. Here, he reveals the bulk of his motivations and expresses an understanding for Shirou, who like him was born empty inside. They have a fight, which Kirei loses due to dying slightly before Shirou started turning into swords.
In all three endings, Kirei dies smiling.
Personality: Kirei Kotomine begins dull eyed and blank faced. In fact, it’s entirely possible to forget he even exists in the early episodes. He’s very calm, to the point of appearing robotic. He very seldom talks, and when he does, it’s almost always relatively brief and composed. He even has quite a few doormat tendencies, best demonstrated as his willingness to play second fiddle to Tokiomi. More often than not, Tokiomi’s the one telling him how to use Assassin, and more often than not, he listens. He has beats and rhythms, but on the whole and on the balance, he appears as a non-entity in his own story to begin with.
Kirei is a very thoughtful person. This applies in a few distinct ways: he thinks carefully about what he says, and he thinks carefully in general. He picks his words, rather than having the words come to him. He has a rampant, incessant internal monologue, and it often feels as if he’s only voicing part of it. Philosophy in general seems to interest him, if his chats with Gilgamesh are any indication. He puts great weight on the matters of good, evil, happiness, humanity, choice, you name it, he’s probably got a treatise brewing about it. If he’s not voicing it, he’s probably at the very least thinking it. He’s an empty sort of person, as well, and he’s desperate to find something that fulfills him. He’s tried quite a lot of things, most notably the church, his wife, and his father. He’s noted to be an excellent student, but every time he got close to the top of the class, he disengages. When he gets his Master calling, Kirei proclaims that he has no idea what he wants with the Grail. Even by the end of the series, grail goo interference notwithstanding, he’s still more concerned with the wishes that can be made with it than a wish for himself.
Of course, he knows damn well what he wants: to see other people suffer. Nothing else brings him joy. It doesn’t matter if it’s trolling via ugly outfits or outright murder, betrayal, and destruction. If people are hurt, and he caused it, it makes him happy. He’s like a black hole powered by schadenfreude. While he may have suspected this for a very, very long time, it’s the deaths of his wife and father that clinch it for him. When they die, he can only feel remorse because he didn’t kill them himself. This is especially potent in the case of his wife, as he viewed her as a combination of an experiment and a last ditch effort to be normal. His inability to love her and the resulting fallout make their marks in his behavior from that point on, which means that it’s absolutely no coincidence that his command spells appear just a few days after Claudia dies. While he may wish for other things, only evil makes him feel alive.
The only thing worse than being born evil? Being born evil with a conscience. He’s completely and perfectly aware of how messed up he is. Kirei pays very careful attention to his motives, and while he denies the worst of his impulses for most of the series, he still knows what he’s doing is wrong. He very rarely tries to justify his actions under the ‘greater good’ clause. He doesn’t kid himself, in other words. In fact, this keen awareness of his darker urges once served pushed him to attempt suicide in the past. While his thoughts towards himself aren’t quite so despairing nowadays, he still carries the weight of his conscience with him. His awareness of his own nature can even serve to create glimpses a warped kind of caring underneath all his destructive impulses. For example, he stops trying to kid himself about his true motives after Claudia dies in part because he knew that otherwise, he’d grow to consider her death meaningless and he couldn’t allow that to happen. While he does attempt to stop himself from giving into his nature, he knows exactly what that nature is. He instead spends most of Fate/Zero trying to walk this revelation back.
Evil’s in his blood. There is, however, something he craves even more than that: To understand and be understood. It doesn’t matter if he’s covered in grail muck or just informed he’s participating in a grail war, he craves this sort of understanding. It has to be in exactly the right fashion, too. For example, his massive hatred of Zouken stems more from Zouken pinning him too closely down than Zouken being an abusive fuckhead. However, as shown in his scenes with Gilgamesh, the temptation Gilgamesh offers to seek what he likes is too great for him to resist. Most people in the series see Kirei as a blank slate and project trustworthiness onto him; Gilgamesh, on the other hand, sees Kirei’s true nature for what it is and approves. It’s this approval cloaked understanding that is critical. Throw in his claims that Angra Mainyu wants to be born, and you’ve got a ten year mission.
This also ties in to his hatred of Kiritsugu. Kirei is not immune to making misjudgments, as it turns out, and he starts off with a big one: that Kiritsugu Emiya is just like him. Therefore, every bit of evidence that goes against that helps to twist his hope towards understanding into despair and hatred. He doesn’t understand how other people can choose to be good, or how non-humans like Irisviel can fall in love. After all, he’s human, so why can’t he? This makes for a very potent ticking rage bomb. In fact, one of the absolute last straws regarding Kiritsugu is that he is capable of love and yet seems to throw it away. Kirei is keenly aware of what he lacks, and so being reminded of all those ways he lacks is a surefire way to make the priest go berserk.
Kirei Kotomine comes to life as the canon progresses. There’s no other word for it. His voice picks up emotion, his movements become more grand, and he starts voicing that incessant internal monologue of his. He also picks up a fantastic knack for false reassurance. He’ll spill basically his entire plot to you, only with the words twisted around so far you can’t quite see it coming. As he does so, he pushes his conscience further and further aside. Still, he can’t silence it completely, and it continues to influence his behaviors, even after the war ends. His questioning simply switches from “What kind of person am I?” to “Why does a person like me exist?” And Kirei, as seen repeatedly over the course of the show, is willing to burn the world down to get the answers he seeks.
Oh, and he likes Mapo Tofu, and he’ll take it extra hot, thank you.
As for the sea turtle? Well. If there’s anything Kirei loves, it’s metaphysics and using them to justify his existence. So, upon finding out he’s in between Life, Death, and Dreaming, he’s going to be wrapped up in trying to pick those things apart and figure out how this place really ticks. He’s also coming in with a new mission, namely seeing Angra Mainyu be born, but since this place lacks a Grail War entirely, he’d most likely put that specific goal on the backburner. He is, though, coming in on one hell of an epiphany and I expect he’d be very manic about it for some time upon entry. He’d also seek to make people suffer on an individual level, perhaps not in uppercase letters but definitely in any way he can manage. He’s naturally drawn to people who lead sorrow filled lives, are sick or dying, or are empty inside like he is. Once he finds some here, he’d glom on and try and figure out how and why they work. Lots of trying to figure things out in general. Ironically, for such an evil little shit, he’s more likely to side with the turtle over the Malicant, push come to shove, solely for the sake of answers.
As one last note, I have an existing permission post on his journal, where people who don’t want to deal with his evil jerkness can opt out. Anyone can refuse CR with him at any point, too. As for his more murdery impulses? Well. It’s unlikely that he’d go on some sort of spree here, as he gets more joy from the betrayal and emotional reactions than out and out murder. That being said, if it ever came to it, I’d ask for permission for victims OOCly and notify the mods in advance. I’ll also keep track of any Kedan victims in case it hits ten. Anything violent or that delves too deeply into his brand of psychological trauma, particularly his suicidal ideations and self-injury in the past, will be cut and warned for.
Appearance: official art. Notably, he has a large, very web-like scar over his heart and back now.
Abilities:
Black Keys: Black Keys are the signature weapon of the Executors, although very few members of the group specialize in them. Kirei does. They’re basically throwing knives generated by a magical current. He can use them to absorb magic-sapping blows, so that the knife will be destroyed instead of losing his abilities, but it costs one command spell to do so. The knives are about a foot long, and he tends to use them Wolverine style, or held between his knuckles in a group of three. He can either throw the knives away, or else dispel them, in which case he’s left with only the handles. He carries an uncounted number of these handles, though it’s probably extremely high, given how many he goes through over the canon without any problem. They aren’t very good at close range, however, and in such fights he tends to rely entirely on martial arts.
Command Spells: Kirei still has three Command Spells, which can be used to make Gilgamesh obey him at any point. The likelihood of Kirei using them for that purpose, however, is very low, due to not wanting to be stabbed in the face by an insulted Demi-God. In addition, due to taking over for his Father’s position as mediator in the Grail War, he’s come into possession of about twenty-four additional Command Spells. These Command Spells are ones left over from previous wars, and are intended to be doled out as necessary to other participants. He burned away two to Kariya, in order to make Berserker shapeshift into another Servant to trick Saber, and he used two more in the fight with Kiritsugu, in order to negate Kiritsugu’s magic severing bullets. This brings him down to roughly twenty-one Command Spells. It’s most likely that he will use his Command Spells in the latter function, specifically to power his Black Keys, than give them out to others, especially since there’s no Grail War here. His three ‘legit’ Command Spells form a spinning circle like a blood splatter on his right hand, while the additional bonus spells form a crisscrossing pattern up his left arm. Aside from the orders and the temporary power ups, they provide no extra abilities.
Heretic Hunting: Kirei’s been training to fight Heretics pretty much his entire life. He’s pretty good at it. Aside from the Black Keys mentioned above, he’s also been trained for hand to hand combat. He most commonly uses a highly specialized version of Bajiquan, which is so powerful he can straight up kill people by punching them in the chest. In Fate/Stay Night, the trunk of his car contains a massive pile of submachine guns, so presumably he knows how to use those, too. Still, in canon, he’s never shown using anything beyond hand-to-hand skills or the Black Keys. He’s noted to be an extremely tough opponent and once broke a tree in half when he’d been pinned to one. When he fought Kiritsugu, he was able to keep up with him while moving at quadruple speed. However, due to, uh, being dead at the moment, his skills are going to inevitably atrophy away from his peak performance during the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny with Kiritsugu. He also likes to go jogging. Like, a lot. Even in the future, he can run about as fast as a Servant. As one more note, his Executor training allows him to baptize evil spirits, or essentially exorcise them. All he has to do is say the rite and have some holy water and bam, no more zombie or other evil spirit hanging around.
Magic: Kirei was Tokiomi Tohsaka’s apprentice when he joined the Grail War, and as such learned quite a bit of magic from him. Magic in Fate/ verse is based upon magic circuits and prana usage. The circuits are sort of a pathway along the nervous system, and by using prana, a mage is able to use that system to, well, do magic. Most mages have very narrow skills that they excel at. For example, the Tohsakas tend to use mainly gem based magic, or pouring their prana into gems in order to cast spells from them. Kirei is decidedly average in all magic skills except for healing. Yes, really. Healing. Granted, his healing spells are noted to be essentially like surgery and cause a great deal of pain, but still, the irony remains valid. He once saved Kariya from being burned to the brink of death, so his skill in this area is actually pretty legitimate, too.
Grail Goo: So, uh, due to an accident involving all the world’s evils, a partnership with Gilgamesh, and being shot at the time, Kirei’s got evil corrupted grail goo for a heart. This means that his life is essentially tied to the Grail, so if it goes kablooey, so does he. He also can use the goo itself as sludgy projectiles and tendrils, which may not be possible here due to lacking a large enough supply of evil grail goo. The curses inside him are so powerful that their pressure can be felt just by touching him. As a side effect of these curses, any type of evil magic akin to it won’t affect him, because his own repels the others like a magnet. The curses inside him are so powerful that their pressure can be felt just by touching him. He’s basically a zombie now, and if he puts his willpower to it, he can actually survive for a short amount of time without his heart at all. That being said, he still acts almost exactly like a human being. He still gets tired, and if you score a good enough hit on him, he’ll die anyway. His heart in particular is a massive weak point, as all three of his deaths in Fate/Stay Night and his one in Fate/Zero are caused by hits to it.
Inventory: Priest outfit. Gold cross. Holy water.
Suite: EA-1D
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
He knows the stories of Moses and Jesus and Jacob and the others by heart by now. Recited them all during liturgy, read them in the book, heard them from his father and wife and strangers. Stories full of prophecy, of promises fulfilled and unfulfilled, of the glory of god in the highest, of old laws replaced with the new, of redemption and sacrifice and blood. Above all and always, there was blood. He wonders, sometimes, if many of his fellow practitioners and brothers have read it as much as he has. He’s poured over pages and pages, as if the next time he turned them, the answers he sought would appear. Instead, all he’d ever gotten were more questions, more proof that there was something deeply despairing lurking at the corners, just waiting for a chance to be free. But he’d read the stories, and so he knew some things very plainly, as if written upon his heart in deep, dark ink. How all men required God’s love to be saved from their sins and the sins of their fathers.
There was another story he’d read in his holy book. A man named Job got caught between God and Satan, and the two played a game with his life to prove that he would remain faithful. Satan took his wife and sons and daughters and health and everything he’d loved and wanted in the world away. In the end, God won the game. Job still fell on his knees and praised God for the trials that marred his life, and so he was returned all that had been taken from him. Kirei knew that last part to be impossible. What had been lost could not be returned. That would reduce the value of it. But despite the time that passed and the flaws of it all, he found himself flipping back to those pages the most, above all others, above even the psalms and liturgies and songs.
God’s love must be crueler than any other. And if that were so, then Kirei would do everything possible to deserve it.
Network:
What have we done to deserve this? Surely, there must have been something that made us worthy of being sent here. To distinguish us from our friends, our families, our enemies, everyone we know, the strangers we don’t, all of whom must have equal chance of being here, if all this were truly random. After all, if it’s only a matter of falling asleep or dying, then why us in particular? Surely there must be many more dead people who yearn for a second chance at life, at the very least. There must be something that calls us here. Some quality, above all others. Something that is as essential and varied as each of us. Something that we all share.
But what is it? What can it be? There are some things in this world and others that are worthless, after all, but there are seldom any meaningless things. Do this realm and those that shape it know? Can they see what we cannot? What makes us worthy of being saved from death, or pulled from life, or awakened from dreams? Do each of us hold meaning, just from being alive?
And if that’s so, then who are we to deny the shape of that life?