Editing Nasuverse (section)

=== Fate/Stay Night ===
[[File:FSNposter.jpg|220px|thumb|Say what you will about Takeuchi's intense sameface, he's got good character design.]]
Fate/Stay Night was the original work in the Fate series, released as a visual novel in 2004. It's where you get ancient memes like "People die when they are killed," and "I am the bone of my sword." The Holy Grail War depicted in F/SN is the Fifth Grail War, and it features the following heroes:

* Saber - King Arthur, but ''a girl.'' Her Noble Phantasm is Excalibur, which manifests its power in a slash that "cuts through everything." [[What | The actual attack is a gigantic laser beam that vaporizes whatever she points it at]], leading to F/GO's running gag where [[Lulz|you're only a real Saber if you fire sword beams of any sort]]. Saber is unique as a Servant (but only in this work) because she's neither a spirit (and therefore unable to dematerialize) nor even ''dead'' and instead sits around in Avalon answering calls to hunt the Grail. Heroine of the first story route, and one of the most popular (and lazily copied) characters in modern Japanese pop culture, Saber is an endearingly-earnest knightly woman type. 
* Archer - [REDACTED]. [[Derp | An Archer who prefers to fight up close even though he's not very good at it]], he actually isn't a legendary hero at all. At least, he's not a legend in the time Fate/Stay Night takes place. Impossible to discuss without getting too deep into spoiler territory, the original Archer is a complicated figure who varies widely between story arcs.
* Lancer - Cu Chulainn. His Noble Phantasm is the spear <del>Gay Bulge</del> Gae Bolg. The one who began the trend of Lancers having E-Rank Luck, but goes out like a man in every major route, earning much fan respect.
* Rider - Medusa. [[Derp | Isn't actually blind, despite the blindfold]]. Pegasus was born from her blood, so she gets to use it as her Noble Phantasm even though she isn't Perseus. Draws on a wider variety of sources than the prevalent Athenian version, ultimately cobbling them together into a coherent story of a fallen heroine who gradually turned into a monster, which is also why she's not got the snake-hair yet (she can become her monster form, but she would rather die). The sexy one, she unfortunately can't quite stand up to the sheer power the other Servants bring.
* Caster - Medea. Always wears a hood, but [[Elf | has pointy ears and is canonically the most beautiful woman in the entire game]]. She's still bitter about Jason cucking her, so she maintains a sadistic streak. Reenacting her legend in a way, she murdered her original Master, who was a real asshole to her, and fell madly in love with a random passerby who helped her as she was fading away. This one's completely loyal, though, leading to some touching scenes. Supplies herself with mana by sapping a little bit of life from everyone in the city. Her Noble Phantasm lets her sever magical contracts, most notably ''those between Servants and Masters''. Like Rider, she serves as a surprisingly dangerous miniboss, but unlike Rider, she never gets to ally with the protagonists.
* Assassin - Sasaki Kojirou, autistic samurai. The original example of a popular fictional tale come to life, Kojirou has never actually existed. Instead, the Grail brought in some nameless peasant of no note who [[Awesome | trained on his own and eventually became able to bend spacetime through sheer skill]] [[Derp | because he really wanted to kill a swallow]]. Has shit stats, only got a katana from his namesake ([[Katanas are Underpowered in d20 |which bends upon exchanging blows with a proper European longsword]]), and lacks a Noble Phantasm, but his [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic | ridiculous sword skills]] compensate for it as long as he can get close. Pretty chill guy who just loves to fight, but Caster used the vacant Assassin slot to summon him herself and bind him to her base's front door, so he doesn't get to do much besides serve as the odd boss fight.
* Berserker - Herakles. Monstrously strong as is, he gets a shitload of extra lives and resistance to things that kill him based on his Twelve Tasks. Theoretically unstoppable, he dies to let another character show off in every story route. Turns out Berserker is one of his ''worst'' classes, which is ironic because he was summoned by a "family" that participated in every Grail War, brought powerful non-Berserker heroes, still lost and finally decided "fuck it, why don't we just summon an extremely powerful hero with a passive NP and give them even ''more'' stats as a Berserker?". To drive the point home, in one route he dies to a weaker copy of ''his '''other''' Noble Phantasm'', which he has access to but [[Derp | can't use himself due to his mental degeneration]]. Still a cool guy despite the frothing rage, he's completely loyal to and fiercely protective of his Master, [[Awesome | managing to break out of chains designed to hold Gods when he sees her get hurt]].
* Archer 2 - Yes, there are more than seven servants. This guy survived the disaster that was the Fourth Grail War and managed to hang around afterwards. He is Gilgamesh. As pretty much the first hero ever recorded and a king, he's [[Derp | "King of Heroes"]]. All other legends are derived from him, and in his lifetime he [[Murderhobo | ignored his subjects and went around collecting everything there was to collect]], which means he has the original (and strongest) version of every artifact and can manifest them at will. This applies to pretty much anything humanity's ever produced, so it's no problem for him to summon the best car ever, or jet, or [[What | fishing rod]], or, if summoned in the future, spaceship... However, swinging swords is for losers, so he earns Archer status by launching them at his enemies. And, of course, when that doesn't work, he can just break out the [[Exterminatus | world-rending <del>sword</del> <del>drill</del> thing]] that even he respects. Gilgamesh being the strongest Servant, period, is '''very''' canon, with Nasu making sure to give him new powers whenever he's mentioned. However, while his ego is large enough to nullify any mental attack through sheer will, it also eventually brings him down without fail.
* True Assassin - An assassin summoned [[Rip and Tear | out of Kojirou's body]] during one of the routes. He actually is one of the leaders of the Hashashin. Showcasing what a real Assassin is like, he manages to bring down both Lancer and Saber by leading them to a stronger threat and helping it out. His proper title is Hassan of the Cursed Arm, whose Noble Phantasm manifests as [[Faptau|an extra-long right arm]] that allows him to crush your heart if he so much as touches you with it. F/GO reveals that he's actually quite an [[Kharn|affable, honorable guy]] when you're not on his hitlist.

There are also a whole fuckload of additional Servant classes (called Extra Classes) but they don't show up in F/SN.

Yes, that girl with the platemail-dress combo is King Arthur. The original novel actually puts a great deal of thought into this, with her whole character and backstory being deeply informed by having been a woman in a traditionally-masculine role who hid her gender from all but her closest confidants her entire life, though later titles were much more cavalier about it. She did spend some time [[/d/ | transformed into a man to beget an heir with a wife]], however, leading to one of the [[Meme | cheesier lines]] in Nasu's already [[Lulz | legendarily cheesy sex scenes]]. It's still a sticking point for a lot of people only tangentially aware of the franchise though, and the fact that Artoria is a beloved company mascot (and Type/MOON artist Takeuchi's favorite character ever) does her no favors.  For instance, that they were lazily coming up with excuses to clone her and reuse her character design was an old hat joke as early as 2015, but they keep on doing it anyway. Here in 2022, Artoria now has at least one variant/version of herself summonable in F/GO as every standard Servant class and has numerous other "Saber-face" clone characters who, while they aren't specifically her character, look borderline identical to her, bar personality differences. Almost every Fate series has at ''least'' one character that either is her or looks like her. They print out copies of her out like she's a goddamn currency at this point (not entirely exaggeration either; one event in F/GO even had her cowlicks as the event-only currency).

This also started the ''Fate'' franchise's long love-affair with gender-flipping other historical characters.  While in later titles, this was done in a mixture of cynical sex appeal-adding and the high-minded goal of making human history and mythology less of a goddamn sausage-fest, here it was done during the retool from their original plans as part of trying to make the title more marketable. Nasu's original plan was actually to have the main character be a girl and keep King Arthur as an actual king, but his artist and comrade Takeuchi convinced him they would do much better in the VN market if the protagonist was a male the audience could project on, and King Arthur was a girl. And thus, history was made.

All that aside, the actual plot of Fate/Stay Night follows Emiya Shirou, a boy who was adopted by Emiya Kiritsugu when the fallout from the Fourth Grail War turned Shirou's neighborhood into a burning hellscape. Ten years later, he gets wrapped up in the aforementioned Fifth Grail War when he unwittingly summons Saber. Oh, and that Archer has a burning hatred of him for some reason...

Almost all the characters are popular in their own right and frequently show up in spin-off material.