Application for empatheias

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⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Steve
Contact: opticblast
Age: 29
Current Characters: Junko Enoshima | sobored


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Archimedes
Age: Mid 30s is my guess
Canon: Fate/Extella
Canon Point: Postgame

Background: All right, so Fate is a mess, and the wiki isn't great, so bear with me.

Archimedes, like most Fate Servants, is based on a real historical figure, which to the surprise of no one is Archimedes. The materials book for Fate/Extella and conversations throughout the game reference the events of the real Archimedes' life and don't provide some sort of crazy contradiction, so it can be assumed his life was fairly similar to the real thing. If you do want to see what the materials book says about his history, it's posted into his Type Moon wiki article almost verbatim.

Which is fine, nothing really important to Fate/Extella happens during his lifetime. He lives, invents some cool stuff, dies, and since he was a memorable historical figure, he ends up in the Throne of Heroes, which is just basically the equivalent of a closet servants sit in until they get pulled out to be used in whatever installment of the series they're needed for. And that usually involved something called a Holy Grail War, the rules of which vary by installment, but it usually involves Masters and Servants teaming up and fighting against other pairs until somebody wins and gets a wish from the Grail, or the Moon Cell (this'll get explained in a second), and so on.

But Archimedes is a special case and doesn't get summoned for a Grail War. See, in the world of Fate/Extella, inside the moon is a giant super computer called the Moon Cell (with sort of a VR environment called SE.RA.PH that the characters live in) and it's summoned him to be its system admin. So if you're following along, the ancient Greek mathematician lived, died, and came back to become the moon's IT Department. Now here's where things get more complicated.

14,000 years before Extella, this horrible cosmic threat called the Umbral Star/Velber (they're interchangeable at times in the game) rolled into our Solar System and tried to basically devour all life and data on the Earth and the moon. It's some bad stuff, but it got stopped due to things that have nothing to do with Archimedes since this is way way before ancient Greece was just called Greece. Anyway, so this thing is coming back and that's really bad for everyone involved.

So Archimedes, being in charge of the moon's system, decides to go check out what was sealed inside the moon from the last time it attacked everything. And honestly, it's hard to argue with his train of thought besides maybe leave the chunk of space horror alone, buddy. Being the brilliant Archimedes, he can gather data and when the Moon Grail War is over (it's a completely different game in the series, without Archimedes so it isn't going to be explained here), he can give it to the winner and they can keep Velber from eating the planet again!

Except he gets contaminated by it and decides that you know what? Humanity sucks anyway, let's let the cosmic horror show up and destroy everyone. And that Grail War winner? He's going to lure them into a trap, making sure they can't ruin his plan to bring his new friend to Earth. But that doesn't work out, so Archimedes continues his plots and plans, abusing his admin privileges by manipulating the residents of SE.RA.PH (including the now amnesiac Hakuno) and jumping back to other possible realities to try and change things while working around the Quantum Timelock (For the sake of making things a lot less complicated than Fate does, the Quantum Timelock is basically the first save file you make in a game. So you can't load before that without starting over, and in this case it's not an option.)

In one route, he enlists the help of Elizabeth Bathory to help him, which results in her eating the Regalia (a super powerful plot item) and transforming into Dark Eli/Dark Eliza/Corroded Elizabeth Bathory/etc. (she keeps renaming herself). Despite this being a giant mess and eating the Regalia not being something he really wanted, he decides to take Liz to the next timeline. And the one after that. This is a mistake.

But after several routes and occasionally infuriating musou gameplay, everything is doomed and Archimedes is going to bring about the end of the world. Except Liz screws up his plan because of course she does. Relying on someone who decided to stage a concert during the middle of a battle was probably a poor choice. Oh, and Hakuno has also figured out how to use the Regalia to send memories back in time, which means everyone knows about the crap he's trying to pull from the route's start. And if that wasn't bad enough, his whole focus on rationality and mathematically devising the perfect apocalypse didn't account for people being emotional and magical plot twists, which leads to Hakuno's Servant Saber getting a ridiculous power up and destroying the thing bringing the Umbral Star to Earth and Archimedes gets buried under the rubble. The end.

Except he gets out from under the rubble after the credits and reveals that while he'll let them have this win, the Umbral Star is out there and he's basically learned nothing. Please buy the sequel to see if this gets resolved.

Personality:
All right, so before we talk about Archimedes now, we should probably talk about what he was like before horror from beyond the stars made him a horrible person and painted half of him purple.

We don't have a ton of details about his life on Fate, but we do know a fair amount about his feelings. Archimedes was viewed as a strange person in life due to his focus on math and invention. He was...and honestly still is, somebody who thinks math is great, numbers are great! Look at how orderly and rational they are...but finds people weird because people are basically the exact opposite of that. And sometimes that irritated him. And sometimes he completely misread people because of this and that led to more problems. Such as the account of his death where he was stabbed to death for essentially telling a Roman centurion “Not now, I'm busy.”

But he didn't hate people! He had issues with them and found them imperfect and annoying, but he didn't want to see them annihilated by some sort of horrible murder star. And then Velber happened, and now he does.

Exposure to Velber seemingly amplified Archimedes personality in the worst possible ways. He still thinks math is great and the key to everything, but that's expanded to more than just numbers. He views people as parts of his equations too, to be added, subtracted, divided, and in some cases quite literally, in order to achieve his goals. And hey, since people are math now, that means he can find joy in dealing with them and using them to achieve his goals. Instead of getting mad, he can laugh at their stupidity and ignorance as they all work towards summoning the Umbral Star.

Except he still does get mad because people are still people. They're irrational. They do dumb things. They get emotional. And that tends to throw a giant wrench in his plans since the most perfect equation in the world means nothing if someone gets mad enough to erase it from the blackboard. And before, he would get irritated. But now, he's willing to just scream and throw tantrums because it was all so perfect, why is everyone ruining everything? These aren't destructive tantrums though, he's more reserved than that. Or as reserved can be while screaming about people ruining his attempts to cause the end of days.

He's also incredibly arrogant. He was slightly arrogant before being contaminated too. We can see that when he underestimates Velber's influence and declares that only he can unlock all of its secrets. This arrogance leads to him ending up as the Apostle of the Umbral Star (which is just a fancy name Archimedes seems to have given himself). But now that's amplified by about a millionfold. No one can stop his plans and plots, they're all far too stupid and irrational. And even if they were capable of figuring it out, they still aren't clever enough to manipulate the Quantum Timelock like he is. Which then leads to him throwing a fit when it turns out that being the smartest guy in the room doesn't necessarily mean people can't figure out what you're doing.

Though it's worth noting, he's also good at concealing himself. He can pass himself off as normal (aside from the weird...purple Velber stuff but no one really brings that up ever). As the system admin for the Moon Cell, he's more than capable of playing the role he's been assigned and convincing people that he's on the level without going off the rails. It's just that if things do go off the rails, he follows them right off the cliff.

And it might've been noticeable but Archimedes is pretty hypocritical too. People are stupid and emotional and ruin everything. But it's okay for him to fly off the handle and scream about things or make terrible recruitment choices that ultimately doom his plans. Oh, or show up to mock Hakuno and Saber about another character dying, when his plan might've stood a better chance of succeeding if he hadn't decided to show up and rub it in their faces. But then again, that makes sense. He's a human too, and no matter how smart he is, he's prone to doing the same things he complains about everyone else doing. Though at some point after dying, being summoned as a ghost to be tech support for a moon computer and then being messed with by some sort of ancient alien monstrosity, he might've lost sight of that.

Abilities:
Okay, so some of Archimedes abilities are due to him having administrator privileges and since Empatheias probably isn't connected to the Moon Cell's network, Archimedes won't be doing anything ridiculous like switching timelines. He'll just have to make due with his normal Servant abilities and probably thank his lucky star (the civilization eating one mentioned about fifty times in this app) that he's not banned.

Which brings us to his Servant abilities, since like every Fate character, he has some. And they're weirdly conditional since he's a Caster but doesn't really have any crazy magic powers. And some of them are going to sound really silly, but they're listed for completion's sake:

High Speed Incantation A: This normally lets Casters cast magic quickly, but in Archimedes case all it does is mean he can think really fast.

Item Construction A+: He can make items! Really crazy ridiculous items! ..which isn't that far fetched when you consider he's Archimedes and is credited with possibly inventing some sort of mirror heat ray during his lifetime. The game mentions that he could replicate an elixir of immortality, but there's really no reason for him to even try something like that because he'd rather humans not be immortal. No thanks.

Tech & Understanding EX: We're really stretching the definition of special abilities here, but he has the power to understand things, discern their causes and prove them. BASICALLY HE CAN LEARN THINGS. WHAT AN AMAZING ABILITY.

Art of Massacre A: Unfortunately for him, fate (the noun not the series) hates him, and stuck him with this skill. Which means that whatever he creates has the chance of being used to kill or harm people. I mean right now, with the whole wanting humanity gone thing, that's okay with him, but inventing something mundane like a pencil tray and it apparently has a special function to explode and blow up a city or something isn't the best skill in the world to have.

Okay, now we get to the only one of these that's actually a power. Like all Fate servants, Archimedes possesses a Noble Phantasm, which is basically the equivalent of a special attack or limit break. These are usually tied to something they were known for while they're alive, like King Arthur has Excalibur and things like that. Well, Archimedes has:

Katoptron Katopregon: Remember that death ray/heat ray/doomsday weapon thing? That's his special attack. It's a bunch of mirrors that channel light from somewhere and does well this. It also has an incredibly specific range of 50 people or one ship for some reason. Given that it's more than a little ridiculous and was a stationary object in life (if it ever existed...which it probably didn't), I'm cool with it not being a thing in game! Plus, given his Item Construction skill, he could probably invent a death mirror of some sort if he really wanted to..which he doesn't, he'd rather the Umbral Star eat everyone instead.

He also does use some sort of second unnamed Noble Phantasm to bind another character at one point. But since it's not named and not given any real detail, I'm assuming it's tied to his admin status and thus, can be removed.

Lastly, he does wield a set of giant gears as a weapon. They can transform into weaponized versions of his inventions as seen here but he mostly just smacks enemies around with them.

Alignment: Sosyne, easily. Archimdes is a walking rage factory when things don't go his way and the picture of calmness and serenity when they do (unless he decides to do some sort of crazy villain laugh which happens occasionally). It's hard to imagine him fitting in to any other alignment.

Other: Nothing much! Just wanted to point out that while he dislikes everyone and everything, he's not going to try and burn down the game or anything. While he'd like for everyone and everything to die, he's already proven that Velber's the best way to do this...and with no Velber, he's more interested in going home than anything else. Who knows, he might even grumpily contribute to society in the hopes of going home to cause the apocalypse?


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Remember that we ask for samples that show 1) core character portrayal and 2) some use of emotions, such as environmental effect. You can also use the same sample source for both, just make sure to directly link or quote the emotion portion. We highly encourage using the Test Drive, and you can use prompts from the Test Drives, Intro Logs, and the Task board if you need them. Refer to the main application page for links and more suggestions.

General Sample:
[Image]

This is quite the problem.

[The image shows the unending ball pit of apples mentioned on the task board, and there's just this vague annoyance coming through the crystal. It's minor, this is hardly the most annoying thing Archimedes has seen, but why are you like this, world of Empatheias?]

It just keeps producing them, no matter how much people take away, the tree simply generates more to replace it. It would be easy enough to patch a bug like this out of the system in SE.RA.PH, but that's hardly an option in the real world.

[Unless someone here has the ability to somehow patch reality, but as far as he knows, they don't.]

So I would ask whoever's listening, how would you manage this problem? Assume they wish to keep the tree and aren't going to entertain the thought of removing or relocating it.

[Because he suggested that and it sure went over well. And hey, there's a flash of irritation coming across the channel again.]

Emotion Sample:
The best way to understand such a bizarre irrational infuriating world like this would be to research it. So it should be no real surprise that Archimedes has decided to pay a visit to the Grand Central Library in the Administrative Quarter. He can be found seated at one of the reading desks with an impressive stack of books from the history section, turning pages at an incredibly rapid speed, not having any trouble comprehending the words he's reading, but attempting to come to terms with what they mean is another story entirely.

Emotion powered everything, giant creatures reflecting emotional states, people pulled across time and space for what? It's all so...so...frustrating. Like if someone out there had designed a world to specifically anger him, this would be...well, not it. But pretty close. And yet as annoying as it all is, he continues to read, wishing all the while the Umbral Star would appear and remove this blight from the multiverse. He stays like this, lost in his own world of introspection and until the pages start to smolder between his fingers.

With a yell, so much for being quiet in the library, he throws his chair back and starts attempting to smother the flames before they start. But the ridiculous of the situation is only making him more annoyed, and the edges of his cloak are beginning to smoke as well, everything on its way to becoming some sort of small fire. Paying to have the book replaced would probably be the least terrible outcome of this scenario.


Questions: