Walter is an oddity of a spellcaster with no particular love for Magecraft and little respect for its tenets. Most basic Magecraft is of little use to him, possessing no territory or workshop to operate from. The low quality of his Magic Circuits makes the use of techniques popular within the Association difficult if not impossible for him, as his body does not possess the Od to actuate most Thaumaturgic processes. As a freelancer with next to no latent magical ability, he relies on Formalcraft and other highly ritualized forms of spellcasting in order to get the job done. By making use of ancient, established methods of making contracts with pre-existing mysteries, he can utilize natural Mana to accomplish what the inadequate supply of his body cannot. It is a basic, time consuming form of Magecraft that relies heavily on the user's knowledge rather than their ability. Ground bones, desiccated herbs, sacrificed animals, carefully choreographed incantations and even dances, he has explored and in some ways pilfered the customs and traditions of every culture he's come into contact with for the ritualistic ways of past Magi. He has a passing but first-hand knowledge of dozens of world religions' ritual practices, some with significance in Magecraft and most without. Formalcraft within his ability that fall under the faith of the Holy Church can be considered the weakest of the Holy Sacraments, with their simplest Thaumaturgies such as the Baptism Sacrament being the limit of his capabilities.
From Shinto to Sikhism, the Abrahamic faiths to Zoroastrian sects, what he hasn't witnessed first hand in the years he's sprinted around the world after ghost stories and mysterious afflictions he's at least studied and attempted to apply. His rituals are varied but weak, especially so outside of the lands of their origin. Potions lose their meaning without the lands that sustain their ingredients, and local mysteries lose most of their authority when called upon across the world. The vast majority of rites that Walter can call upon are those for appeasing or releasing spirits, as well as those for undoing or mitigating the effects of curses. These simple, core demonstrations of a faith's power to protect are often the strongest or only functional components of local religions and the kinds of treatments he utilizes most often in the field when he finds an oddity that calls to his talents. As a spirit doctor he is third, even fourth rate, a kind of nuisance that scrubs the underbelly of society and merely eases the suffering of those victimized by Thaumaturgy and wayward spirits. Where an Exorcist of the Holy Church or a Spiritual Healer could brute force their way through the limited strength of lesser spirits and amateur magecrafts, imposing the power of a greater mystery over a lesser one to undo its effects, Walter is reliant on his knowledge of those mysteries to operate within their established cultural rules and treat them. Whether he is able to undo, redirect, or simply appease is dependent not on his power as a Magus but his knowledge of the Thaumaturgical Systems of the lesser occult.
Formalcraft can also serve as a means of imitating more common Magecraft. Even in ages where Magecraft was strong there were untalented Magi or those cut off from the areas of the world where Magecraft had developed towards its current state. In their folklore are various methods for establishing contracts with natural mysteries (most of which no longer exist or have devalued to worthlessness), such as creating familiars and establishing bounded fields. Where a normal Magus can apply and modify their spells to a certain degree, most Formalcraft has both a set execution and a set result which makes them incompatible with mysteries that operate under other systems. Mysteries born of Kabbalistic tradition require a ritual of Kabbalistic origin to interact with, or at the very least a foreign ritual explicitly targeted for that mystery of the Kabbalah. In the case of certain religions and systems of magecraft that have been in conflict for millennia, these cross-system rituals are commonplace but in the case of relatively young or exceptionally old systems they often existed in a power vacuum, recognizing no other Thaumaturgical Theory than their own.
Peacemaker:
Walter's one notable conventional spell, a Single Action cousin of an Association favorite that even he can cast in its modified state. Originating from the Norse Gandr and modified by Scandinavian-American immigrant Magi threatened by their witch neighbors, it is undoubtedly weaker than the original curse but repurposed for the needs of the Magi of the New World. Rather than outpace their neighboring schools (all of whom where curse specialists to begin with) in thaumaturgical wit the modified Gandr abandoned its capacity for degrading the health of an opponent for the capacity to induce distracting nervous pain and mentally interfere in the formation of curses by the target. The version carried by Walter is dubbed by him as "Peacemaker." With his capabilities, it strikes the target with an effect similar to that a handheld stun gun. Local nerves are triggered into pain perception, but little else. Invariably, it fires six such shots with the intention of striking the opponent's body in multiple places and dissuading them from continuing hostilities. He is capable of casting it twice in succession before needing to recharge his exhausted Od. By waiting between firings he can accomplish more repetitions in a day, but the nature of the spell and its low efficacy makes it unlikely that even the utmost planning and discipline would be enough to win a duel between Magi.
Other Abilities:
Walter is a man who travels alone, survives alone, and works alone. As a combatant he is next to useless, but he's run away from plenty of ruffians in his time and knows better than to remain in a situation of escalating aggression. His skills of self reliance have not made him a superhuman handyman or particularly talented in any one field, as a matter of fact he's never done anything so drastic as to subsist in a wilderness. Instead, his talents are those of establishing and utilizing connections. Where to seek shelter, an eye for a suitable hostel, and how to barter one's way into the locals' homes were the techniques he had to develop. No matter what corner of the world he finds himself dropped into the medicine man is able to find himself a square to ply his trade and a place to set his weary body down. Where the Magi brute force their way into the memories of others and command the weak willed to accommodate them, Walter has applied the sciences of mediation, negotiation, and compensation. He has never had the time to truly become a linguist, but weighed down with enough guide books to open a library he has a working memory of certain phrases in a number of popular languages. He is everything a wanderer of civilizations must be to survive. It can also be said that he has an eye for those in need, able to discern normal illness from those caused by lesser spirits and amateur curses with a kind of predatory instinct, recognizing his next paycheck when it walks in the door.
Mystic Codes/ Magical Items:
While the oldest relics and tools Walter has worked with may hold some degree of latent mystery by the virtue of their age, few of them and none currently in his possession can be considered Mystic Codes. As a general rule, the objects used to perform a ritual hold little to no power, other than the significance that allows them to evoke Thaumaturgical Systems through Formalcraft.
Weapons/ Other Belongings:
Even for a Magus, he travels light. A duffel bag and a framed backpack are Walter's constant companions. The bag is cast in faded, well aged leather and contains objects of a wholly ordinary variety. Most of its space is used for a few changes of clothes, all varying degrees of flamboyantly western. Wherever he goes in life, he refuses to do so without the dressings to make a proper first impression. The rest is taken up by a traveler's hygiene kit containing the tools and compounds for maintaining a human body, not quite the rituals he's made a living performing but regular ones nonetheless. The outer pockets of his ordinary bag are stuffed with language primers, many in French for this current sojourn. For a Magus on his way to a battle royale, the lack of weaponry is almost more conspicuous than being outwardly armed.
His backpack, however, is no such mundane carry-on. The smell of Magecraft permeates even the canvas material of its shell. The odor of mystique, of trail dust and countless city centers accompanies the worn, frayed look of most of its surface. Bent and refurbished zippers have lost their sheen, sandblasted with experience and held on with a prayer and some pliers. Velcro pockets have given over their place to sewn on buttons once the patches fell off. As a pack warranting its own support frame it is large and spacious, with a number of interior compartments partitioned by plastic liners. Some are even waterproof, though the degree to which their waterproofing has survived the years is untested. The tan canvas is adorned with scuff marks and mementos from his journeys in similar quantities, typically stamps and patches from various countries sewn or ironed onto the material. It contains the tools of his trade, what little portion of his total collection he decided to bring to France. Only the most general of Formalcraft survive in a place like Paris, his knowledge of Navajo cures and Taoist remedies practically useless unless those systems were to be encountered. The nature of a Holy Grail War offered the possibility of encountering magics from across the world... but fighting the powers of what are sure to be accomplished Magi with mere Formalcraft would be impossible. Vials of animal blood rattle happily in transit-racks, next to them casks of powdered bone and consecrated ashes. Feathers are conveniently baggied in proper portions, and half-finished potions waiting for their volatile finishing ingredients are arranged for quick access in the lower layers. Even with keeping specialized goods at hand, each requires its own ritual to activate and isn't as simple as reaching into a supply of mystic codes and finished products for a normal Magus. To that end, while the upper two thirds of his pack are filled with those ingredients and common, safe-to-travel tools, its bottom racks are filled with arcane tomes. Texts centered around European magical traditions, Paganism in its many revivals and Witchcraft by other names, sit next to the ever stable Sacraments of the Holy Church as his options to employ in Paris.
Personality:
Walter is a drifter, through and through. He's never found a place he cared enough about to settle down in, least of all the dreary place he was born. Unwarranted indifference plagues him at every turn. He's never felt passion for his work, only the need to see things through until the end. He's never felt passion for his Magecraft, only to continue on his course of study until its conclusion finds him. He is a man perpetually in a state of journey who finds himself fascinated only with the prospect of what its resolution may be. His indifference for the means and resignation in reaching an end, whatever it may be, is at the core of his personality. At a glance he's a whimsical person, with a devil-may-care attitude and a flippant disregard for the code of Magi, operating on his own demagnetized moral compass and dealing out justice to those with enough cash to pay for it. To a certain extent he's even bought into it, keeping a distant manner with his clients and reminding them of the costs of his work with every new ingredient expended in their care. His professional witticisms are so frequent and overt one might even realize that's he's reminding himself of what he is, too. He'll tug his collar and glance at his pocketbook in good faith as he looks at a situation, but every now and then a glimmer of true weakness emerges. "Well, a little pro bono is good for the reputation," or, "For you? I'll throw that in as a favor. Tell your friends." For what little he may genuinely feel, even as a smirking, back alley specialist peddling self-admitted second-hand remedies, he knows that he could have chosen any other pursuit. Engaging himself in the 'means' beyond keeping his own professional standard is a matter of discomfort him. Admitting that he cares for the victims he encounters and aids is a matter of impossibility for someone only allowed to feel satisfaction in resolution. He doesn't despise his nature, although he at times wonders what must have gone wrong to create a human afraid of their own empathy. It is a fear he cannot admit to, or risk falling to pieces. The falsehood of his way of living is something that no human being has ever been close enough to discern, but the money hungry glare the medicine man likes to wear couldn't be more out of place in the frugal lifestyle of a man who refuses to abandon his first backpack.
The story of Walter C. Moen began in Estes Park, Colorado, in the United States. He was born in transit, while the minuscule and weak Moen family repositioned itself from the one coast to the other. From the beginning he was out of place, a weak son even for minor family of Magi who came into the world with next to no potential for the craft. They loved him still, and in him Erasmus Moen confided the future of their lineage. At the age of four he received the first part of his family's magic crest, in the sort of gradual transplant common to those without a uniform enough bloodline to guarantee transmission. Dosed with an infusion of various alchemic compounds, numbed to near nothingness, the first circuits of the Moen crest were withdrawn from his father's body and engraved upon his right hand. The fundamentals of their Magecraft, the circuits which permitted Peacemaker, fused themselves beautifully to his own... And no more followed. Somehow his capacity to even accept Magecraft was exhausted with one trivially simple Program. The next month's transfusion failed, the next portion of his Father's crest rejecting him and peeling away, boiling the circuits where they had been engraved and forever blemishing the crest on either's body.
Somehow, he was not disowned. Another heir would have to be found, if such a thing was even possible, but against all logic and all the fury that should have accompanied the potential death of a minor but developing family he was kept. Walter did not want to remain. His own life was a representation of error. The cheerful smiles his happy, mundane family gave him could never mean anything. They were simply living. No matter what gratitude burned in his heart for their kindness, no matter the affected love he'd hold the rest of his life for that bleak, pretty town the Moen line decided to stop existing in, his nature made him uncomfortable there. He had to pursue meaning, satisfaction, resolution. At first that seemed to be his completion as a Magus. Against his father's wishes he sought to continue the art. His father was a poor Magi, who had learned weakness and put his family above his pursuit, but Walter refused to judge him for that. He could never operate as those beloved by the Association and the Clock Tower did, and so turned his back on them as well. Perhaps he had learned too. His self imposed exile lead him to the ways of heretic Magi, not the strong heretics who drew the ire of Enforcers and pursued their freakish powers to the absolute ends... but the unspoken of heretics who simply happened to represent long lines of mediocre Magi that never had anything to do with the Association or ran from its influence. His first forays into Formalcraft were disastrous, his impotent Od unable to supply even the simplest of magic circles until he began to develop as a spellcaster. In his adolescence he could only study theory and the basic principles of spiritual medicine, learning to craft and imbue poultices and potions in the local traditions, drifting between Western Witchcraft and those of the Ute people once prominent in his state.
As an adult he could finally run away from the insanity of his predicament. Walter's escape from the love of his homeland was an abrupt one, and the first thing he did was board a plane for South Africa without a clue in the world what he was getting involved with. His Magecraft was weakened there, his language worthless. With nothing but Peacemaker and a tourist pamphlet he ventured into the bush, wandering from town to town. Far outside the territory of the Association he sensed the echoes of Systems outside of their care, traditions far incompatible with their own Magecraft. His presence was conspicuous to local Magi, and even through the rest of his travels he encountered scarce few. He saw their handiwork though, witnesses with no memory of what had befallen them but the ill effects of Magecraft gone awry etched into their bodies. Modern medicine was often enough for them, and he had no calling in that trade... but those who couldn't afford or did not believe in the new ways still turned to traditional treatments. What he couldn't learn from the healers he stole from observations of their technique. At the time it was a necessity, having crossed a few country lines and surmounted much of the Subsaharan continent, his funds were gone and his only trade was in his Formalcraft knowledge. Trying to break into an art preserved mostly through oral tradition was the greatest challenge of his career, one that fostered the resourcefulness that carried him into the more developed schools with ease. By the time he had moved on to the Middle East he was ready to begin his study in earnest, working from translations of Esagil-kin-apli's Sakikkū and the Golden Age studies of Hunayn ibn Ishaq. He learned to dispose mere homeopathy from Thaumaturgical treatment, and more than once had to demonstrate his capabilities with Peacemaker. At some immaterial point in wandering the globe he became 'well studied,' and he had unconsciously transformed his goal of becoming a Magus into that of becoming a Spiritual Healer. Even though he had an adequate repertoire of Formalcraft at his disposal, he felt no accomplishment, none of the peace that would allow him to return home or find a new one. He hadn't found a resolution, he had only transplanted himself into a new chain of events.
Years of business passed. He returned to old stomping grounds, he continued to hide himself from the civilized world of Magecraft. It would have been enjoyable work, putting people at ease for more than enough money to see him through the rest of his life, if he allowed himself to feel satisfaction for what had become day to day life. Behind every "Come again!" Smile was a slow burning fire, the flame of anxiety that would gnaw and scorch at the fringes of his cheerful life for the rest of his days. He knew not what he was waiting for, his instinct only told him that he was waiting for the cap on his life, the archstone that would dictate the meaning of his short 28 years. What answer could resolve the questions and feelings that composed his life? Too deep in a bottle to care, he got his best lead while reclined on a bottom bunk, somewhere in an anonymous hostel of Prague. A letter arrived to the building addressed with his name, thrown onto the foreigner's lap as the rickety owner made her rounds at mail time. Numb fingertips unfolded the parchment, thinking nothing of it. A request for his aid from someone who had heard his name, or just the kind words of a happy customer? He'd gotten a few condemnations in his time as well. "The Holy Grail War..." He scoffed at it. Was it someone's idea of a threat? Too tired to care, he let the note slip from his hands. Even through all the vodka in the world he would have felt what came next. The same burn, the same pain. The nerves of his right hand, uprooted and torn away.
Somehow, it wasn't the end of his Magecraft. Three red seals burned where his future should have always been. It had all been meaningless after all: His resolution was with the grail.
@Gabriel Heartache
I don't believe posting level will be a problem, and as far as series knowledge goes you don't even need to be a Magus to be a Master so even if you wanted to do something like turn a lack of familiarity into your asset/gimmick it'd be fine. That said if you have any questions about how stuff should work I'd be happy to answer them in short form or direct you to the right place on the wiki.
I mean, come on. Kirei Zero was a Grail War God. Got stuck with the shittiest Servant around, but he backstabbed himself into hanging with the strongest Servant at the end AND he didn't even die after getting offed by the MC.
I mean, come on. Kirei Zero was a Grail War God. Got stuck with the shittiest Servant around, but he backstabbed himself into hanging with the strongest Servant at the end AND he didn't even die after getting offed by the MC.
I was thinking of making a servant inspired by Olga of Kiev, but I'm not sure where she would fit in, possibly Ruler of Caster. It seems my options are pretty limited at this point though.
Been watching Archer vs Lancer earlier and figured a fight like they had in UBW would be quite interesting if something similar happened between Saber and someone else :P
Been watching Archer vs Lancer earlier and figured a fight like they had in UBW would be quite interesting if something similar happened between Saber and someone else :P
