Canon Update

[rubycitymods]

Not every canon update requires notification, but if the change to your character is a significant one, as noted here in the FAQ, then we request that you let us know in advance so that we can be sure of your ability to remain IC after the canon update is complete.

Please fill in the form below if you believe that your canon update will bring significant enough changes to your character to require notifying the mods.

<b>Character Name:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Original Application:</b> (You can link this) <b>Current canon point:</b> <b>Updating to:</b> Personality (if applicable): You don't need to write out the entire personality of your character again, but tell us about the changes that it will go through between your two canon points. Abilities (if applicable): Minor ability changes don't need to be noted, but if there are any large shifts in power (ie, being able to move through time) please let us know!

✧ N A V I G A T I O N ✧

Comments

CW: Mentions of blood and forced suicide

[oathshackledbird]

Character Name: Diarmuid Ua Duibhne (Lancer)
Canon: Fate/Zero
Original Application: Here!
Current canon point: The end of episode 5: "Howl of the Mad Beast"
Updating to: The end of episode 16: "The End of Honor"

Personality (if applicable): Diarmuid is going to be updating from basically the beginning of his canon to the end of it so he is going to be going through a great deal of personality change. I am going to do a quick summary of the events he is going to be going through and then explain how his personality will change because of it. (Okay, so it's not that quick, but...)

• Battle with Saber vs Caster: This battle is going to give Diarmuid another chance to fight with the servant he has come to feel so much respect and honor for against a foe that is the very opposite of everything they stand for. They work very well together as a team and are able to drive Caster back. However, before they can really have any kind of discussion about their views or finishing their duel...
• Both of them sense that Diarmuid's master Kayneth has been seriously hurt by Saber's master and Saber allows Diarmuid to go rescue him. Kayneth's magic circuits have been destroyed, leaving him very close to death and unable to move much on his own. He cannot really function as a master anymore. As a result...
• Sola-Ui 'convinces' him to give her his remaining command seals. She speaks with Diarmuid and, eventually, the two come to the conclusion they will continue to fight so that they can use the Grail's power to return Kayneth to good health. It is obvious that Sola-Ui is lying about her reasoning, but Diarmuid wants to win for his lord so much that he doesn't confront her about it even if she is reminding him of Grainne to an uncomfortable degree.
• Caster decides to attack again and Diarmuid once more teams up with Saber to stop him. They are joined by Rider, Irisviel, and Waver in their efforts. When it comes to light that the only way Caster can be stopped is to remove the cursed injury Diarmuid inflicted on Saber earlier so that she can use her Noble Phantasm at full power, Diarmuid does not hesitate to destroy Gae Buidhe to release the curse. To him, there is no doubt that saving the innocents that Caster would kill and allowing a knight's code of honor to win out is more important than one of his weapons.
• Caster is defeated thanks to Diarmuid's willingness to sacrifice his weapon. However, while the battle is concluding, Sola-Ui--who Diarmuid left on a nearby building to safely watch the battle--is kidnapped and the hand with her command seals is severed. Once no longer distracted by the battle, Diarmuid will realize this and begin searching frantically for her.
• Eventually, he is force to return to their base without having found her since he has no proper link to her. While she had his command spells, Kayneth is still his proper master. Diarmuid takes his failure to find her very hard.
• While the battle is finishing up, Kayneth--now able to move with the help of a wheelchair--speaks with the mediator of the war and is given a command spell as a reward for the part Diarmuid played in helping defeat Caster. To make sure no other masters can claim a command spell after that, Kayneth murders the mediator before returning to base.
• Back at their base, when Diarmuid tells Kayneth of his inability to find Sola-Ui, Kayneth tears into his servant. He cuts down all Diarmuid believes in going so far as to mock his beliefs and insist that Diarmuid is no knight at all. A tool cannot be a knight. Diarmuid is so upset by this, that he is nearly brought to tears. However, before he can reply, he hears a car approaching. Irisviel and Saber have arrived at their base. Kayneth sends Diarmuid out to find out what is going on.
• Saber has decided with everyone tired from fighting Caster, this may be the only time they have a chance to finish their duel uninterrupted. Diarmuid agrees and getting the chance to fight her fairly is enough to raise his spirits. Even though he knows only one of them will leave the battle alive, he is overjoyed to fight with her and to have gotten to meet her.
• While they are dueling, unbeknown to Saber, Irisviel, and Diarmuid, Saber's master faces Kayneth. He was the one who had Sola-Ui kidnapped and he uses her now to force Kayneth to agree to a binding magician's contract. Kayneth and Sola-Ui's lives will be spared if Kayneth uses his last command spell to order Diarmuid to commit suicide.
• Kayneth agrees to the deal, and Diarmuid finds himself one moment moving to attack Saber and the next driving his spear through his own heart. When Saber's master, Kayneth and Sola-Ui appear, Diarmuid realizes his life, wishes, and beliefs have all been trampled underfoot just as if he was a tool and not a person. This causes him to mentally snap, descending into what can only be called a maddened frenzy. He fades away cursing everyone there--including Saber who he believes betrayed him--the Grail, and the whole world. As he screams out his hate and rage with blood running from his eyes and mouth, there is basically nothing left of the honorable, hopeful, and loyal knight that was called into the war.

And this is how he will return to Ruby City. While the game will have healed the mortal part of his wounds, it cannot so easily heal a shattered heart and soul. A lot of Diarmuid's character focuses on two knightly aspects of his personality--loyalty and honor. During his first life and again during the war, Diarmuid is forced to chose between those two things. No matter how hard he tries, he can never be both. During his first life, he ran away with Grainne to keep his honor, but that eventually force him to break his loyalty with Fionn. In the war, he tries to be loyal to Kayneth no matter what he is told to do, but very often Diarmuid ends up being honorable over being loyal (for example, when he weakened himself and by extension his master, by destroying one of his Noble Phantasms). By the time he goes to face Saber in the duel right before he dies, Diarmuid feels he has failed at both being loyal (Kayneth doesn't trust him and never has) and being honorable. To have his life taken from him without the chance to finish the duel that was the only bright thing left in him for the war, is devastating. Not only that, he ends up believing (incorrectly) that the only person like him in the war actually lied to and betrayed him just as his master did. It is all too much for him to take and as a result he literally crumbles under the weight of it.

As he will be grabbed and pulled back to the city after he has faded, but before he returns to the Grail, Diarmuid will still be in the grips of that madness and despair. Fortunately, he has a network here that will be able to draw him back closer to himself, but he is never going to be the same naive, optimistic man he was before he was taken away from the city to finish the war. He is going to be less optimistic, less trusting and less open than he has been in the past. He will, however, be free to focus entirely on finding out what exactly Ruby City is because it will be all he has left. If he goes back to his world, he will be erased as if he never was. That is the Fate of all servants. He knows that now, and while he would love to forget everything that happened to him in the war, that is not the natural order of things. Memories are parts of a person's soul and what make them themselves. Even as shattered as his soul may be right now, he does not want to give up anymore than he already has. After all, he doesn't have a whole lot left. And while he does still believe in loyalty, honor, and all those knightly aspects he has shaped his life around, his failure is going to leave him not knowing what he is suppose to be. Diarmuid was a knight his whole life and doesn't really know what else to be. If he can't be that, what is left for him? This is something he is going to have to find out once he returns to the city.

Abilities (if applicable): When Diarmuid returns, he will have lost access to one of his spears, Gae Buidhe, because he destroyed it during battle so that Caster could be defeated by Saber. Otherwise, his abilities will remain the same.

[rubycitymods]

Approved!