Asterios・Minotauros STR A++ |
END A++ |
AGI C |
MAN A |
LCK E |
NP EX Berserker
Height & Weight: Big and heavy.
Alignment: Chaotic Evil
Personality: The perfect monster from birth. The ideal opponent.
The Minotaur lacks a human-like sense of self, and that in a manner makes it hard to pin down its character; A fundamentally obedient Berserker, the Minotaur is nonetheless a hungry creature first and foremost. Although without the need to eat in a strict sense, it desires food of all sorts to satiate the feeling in its gut. This makes it quite easy to win the beast’s loyalty, not unlike a dog or cat returning to the hand that feeds it. It goes without saying that it will not be a true Master-Servant relationship, as the Minotaur itself is incapable of understanding the gravity behind such terms, and many other subtleties
This is not to say the Minotaur is stupid. It is simply alien -- so far removed from human conception and senses that the implications of such words are lost. It is a bluntness that belongs to a true child of nature, compounded by its isolation of years. With such a state of being comes a sort of natural wisdom, truths that are so fundamental to all things that they are often forgotten. Should one be able to pin the Minotaur down for an actual conversation of some description, this quality of his character will become clear.
But even still...
Hunger ultimately drives this monster, and it will commit any number of horrible acts in order to see it through. In a more traditional Grail War, the Master is a provider, and any who challenges or threatens the Minotaur’s provider will too become food, torn apart in a childishly gleeful frenzy.
But that is the crux of the Minotaur. It is a child beyond children, a youth without a parent and left to the wilds. Savagery and aggression come to it naturally, like a walking antithesis to decency.
Class Skills
Madness Enchantment A+The mental state of a creature encaged within its own mind, both literally and metaphorically -- the highest expression of inherent unreasonableness and insane fury.
Even still, Minotauros remains a relatively ‘placid’ Berserker by some comparison, and may even cooperate beyond the direct control of a Command Seal. The nature of the creature’s birth and being responds well to Madness Enchantment, a skill which would otherwise rob a creature of any fine control and ability to talk seems to do the opposite for Minotauros. The less he leans into this skill, the more difficult speech becomes, yet it is when he loses himself to his hunger and desire to feel another being that his speech and actions become more coherent. While lacking any martial ability, when in the throes of his Madness Enchantment, there is a sort of bestial skill with which he moves.
A beast that consumes the flesh of humans. A monster with the fate of being defeated by the Hero. It is only fitting that he wears the Madness Enchantment skill so well.
Personal Skills
Divinity EThe pedigree of the sea and stars. Born from a bull made of Poseidon, and an incarnation of the sun itself. The Minotaur otherwise has a notable degree of Divinity, but it is otherwise offset by its status as a monster, reducing its rank notably. It is none too dissimilar to the divinity displayed in the King of Oni, a contradiction resolving itself while also retaining its qualities.
Monstrous Strength A+~A++A Skill that temporarily grants a rank-up to one's Strength parameter for a time limit determined by the ranking of this Skill. This Skill is borne from the holder's nature as a monster or Demonic Beast. In certain circumstances, it is altered to become the ultimate expression of monstrous strength. The activation of Baal-Moloch and the complete release of the Labyrinth are among them.
Natural Monster A++Endowed to those who were born as monsters, as opposed to being converted into one. The highest expression of this skill, Asterios possesses a level of strength and endurance impossible for humans to attain.
Predator Instinct BIf Instinct is the sense of a warrior, then the Predator Instinct is the sense of a beast. Conferring similar benefits, it allows for the wielder to ignore the penalties of visual and auditory interference and fight in a manner that can be described as “finding the way to kill”, as opposed to “personal best course of action”. The benefits granted to avoiding danger are lesser to its counterpart, but instead grants bonuses to the attempted act of going for the kill.
Demon of the Labyrinth - A skill that does not provide, but rather acts as the proof of skill. It is the aptitude of a slasher horror monster. The monster lurks shadow, and despite its ferocity and overwhelming might, strikes with a surprise. This ability of the Minotaur is, in part, born from its prodigious Predator Instinct and nature as a Divine Beast. The Minotaur is capable of ‘sinking’ its presence into the World around it as an entity closely entwined with it, concealing its presence until it finally emerges, striking with supreme violence. A martial arts technique would later replicate the principle of this natural ability, improving upon it and even allowing one to attack while hidden, but for the Minotaur it is somewhat less so.
Noble Phantasms
Chaos Labyrinthos
Manifest Inescapable Lair: Dread Maze ASTERIOS
Type: Anti-Unit, Anti-Team
Rank: C (EX)
Targets: 1, 14
Range: 1~30, ?
The labrys is an axe with a connection to the earliest relics of the Minotaur’s culture sphere, and its name derived from the very word labyrinth, the Minotaur’s home and prison. The great axe, sometimes divided into two, is the entirety of Daedalus’ inescapable labyrinth condensed into a weaponized form, a compact world of confusion, monsters and danger. The axes themselves have the quality of ‘Inescapable’. Whenever combat is entered against the Minotaur, Skills and abilities such as Disengage and certain iterations of Battle Continuation do not function. Escape is possible, but miraculous escape is not. It must be earned.
Elements of the Labyrinth may be unloaded from the Labyrs at the Minotaur’s whim, and in turn returned. Traps and magical beasts, silent halls and overbearing shadow are all things that can be unleashed from the Labrys, converting elements of the Minotaur’s surroundings into a part of the labyrinth, the extent varying from the transformation of a part of the floor into a pit trap, blanketing the area in the oppressive, chthonic darkness of its halls, manifesting a wing of the labyrinth and converting the inside of a building to match, or outright recreating the entire place he used to live in exchange for losing his weapon until the labyrinth is ‘repackaged’.
A strangely tactical Noble Phantasm for a Berserker which only functions due to the Minotaurs alignment with the Mad Enchantment skill, and his inherent knowledge of his home.
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Baal-Moloch
Five Suns Surround Him
Rank: B++
Type: Anti-Unit (Self)
Targets: 1
Range: -
The phoenician deity Baal-Moloch, lord of child sacrifice and fertility, first god of the Minoans, and progenitor of the Greek pantheon. The bronze bull consumed by flames, fueled by the souls of the youth. Around him, stars burn on command. An entity from beyond the world, enshrined into the planet as a God in the days before the coming of the White Titan. First to fall to it.
Baal-Moloch is a scarcely remembered entity, but it is one which saw its lineage continue through the Age of Gods and its decline in Carthage, Mesopotamia and Greece. The most notable of these descendents comes in the form of the Minoan form of worship, which carried the ‘essence’ of the slain divinity and allowing for a measure of rebirth.
Such is the Minotaur, born of the sea and stars; lineage of Minos, Poseidon and Baal-Moloch.
The Noble Phantasm ‘Baal-Moloch’ is a representation of this divine potential within the Minotaur, and the strength of its ancestry, and the awakening there of. It is in its essence a ritual none too dissimilar from the Holy Grail itself, mirroring the sacrifice of seven youths and seven maidens to the Minotaur and too the giving of life to Baal-Moloch. After seven entities -- Servants or entities on par with/beyond one -- are defeated by the Minotaur, a miracle may manifest, an impossibility reconciled with possibility.
But it is a very particular one; The Miracle is the existence of the Divine Demon, an entity that carries equal measures divinity and monstrosity without suffering a reduction in either quality. It is transformation of the Minotaur that carries a heavy meaning, but in practical terms it results in the inclusion of a ‘Solar divinity’ into the Minotaur’s Saint Graph, granting a boon in the form of Protection of the Sun God and Mana Burst Heat & Flames, elevating its Divinity to B at the same time.
The Miracles has, in short, made something more than just a ‘stronger’ Minotaur.
