Unoedipal

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

The Matou and Tohsaka residences are sitting empty ("rotting", as you put it). There is a chance that the cult managed to find information about the Grail from either (or both) of these locations and managed to put enough together to formulate the ritual.

@Sodium

That specific reason is impossible for a reason that will be explained during the first day of the RP.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

<Snipped quote by Unoedipal>

That primarily depends on how you want to play the mechanics of the Grail's prana supply. Linking to the Grail shouldn't be too difficult at this point, as, after all, this is the 726th time it has manifested - there should be some knowledge by now of how to link rituals into it, but little information on how to draw out of it (other than winning the war). Perform the summoning ritual along with the ritual to funnel the prana and you've got yourself a Servant.

@Sodium

"The 726th Holy Grail" refers to the fact that 725 times in the past, "something" that we call a Holy Grail's materialized. They're not the same device or something, this thing was 100% engineered by the Three Great Families (with tweaks by the Zetsumei).

The Grail has seven Master slots. When they're filled, they're filled. If you get enough prana and have the right system, it's theoretically possible to summon a Heroic Spirit without the Grail, but they won't be accounted for by the Grail System since they weren't summoned by the Grail.

<Snipped quote by Unoedipal>

They're insane cultists, so it's likely that they could develop a ritual that simply forces it to make an extra servant, even if it's at the cost of several/dozen/hundred members' lives.

Or they used their own greater ritual.

@IncredibleBee

You can't just brute-force the Grail into opening another slot, especially if you're just a group of randoms who aren't even related to the Three Families. Not even Zouken could do that.

If you give a good enough justification for why this random cult's managed to develop a ritual that makes something similar to a Servant, then sure, knock yourself out. That said, it won't be related to the Grail and when it dies its juice won't go to the Grail; it'll just be there.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

Many...at some point it feels like we are kicking an eager puppy who just urinated in the corner because he was just so excited to see us.

@Lonewolf685

Like I said, if there's a mechanically-sound means, I'm fine with an eighth Servant.

Off the top of my head, I have a good three or four methods of doing so in mind. The issue's just that I hate them all so I won't bring them up, but if they're proposed by someone else then I won't shoot them down.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

What if a cult did a ritual to force the Grail to make another servant. Say, a mass suicide and then utilizing the mana from their bodies to do the summoning thing.

@IncredibleBee

How are they linking up to the Grail?

At that point you're better off just having your own Greater Ritual to summon a Servant.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

So from what I can gather, someone's leeching all the spare prana because conspiracies, but the grail didn't have enough enough leftover to make an eight servant, despite that possibly being precisely what the grail needs to stop these conspiracies.
Am I correct?

Also, Solomon can't be the only one who willed himself to be summoned. Heroic Spirits are by their very nature exceptional individuals, and the vast majority of candidates would possess a strong desire to return to the human world, whether it's to experience battle again, see what's become of their home in the past 2000 years, etc.

I also feel like it's be weird if the Second Owner could stop the Grail or a Heroic Spirit from leeching prana from Fuyuki's leylines. In general, wouldn't she be allowing that to happen anyways, since servants use quite a bit of mana/prana to power NPs?

@IncredibleBee

No.

Sure, it's possible, but like I said, if you're doing that then you're broken enough to deserve a spot on the banlist.

There's a difference between using the city's mana and fully draining the leylines. That's like the difference between breathing in the carbon dioxide someone breathes out versus tearing out their lungs. Looking after the Spiritual Land is the role of the Second Owner in the first place, on top of this specific Second Owner being the one in control of the Grail System in its entirety.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

<Snipped quote by KoL>

I can roll with that. There's plenty of historical avengers I can write up.

@IncredibleBee

I don't know what KoL's thought process is there, but that's not the case.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

Okay but why doesn't it have leftover prana to do that one more time?

@IncredibleBee

Explaining that requires explaining certain actions of the Second Owner during the past seventy years, which I can't explain because that's a plot spoiler.

<Snipped quote by Sodium>

<Snipped quote by IncredibleBee>

What you guys are saying isn't impossible, IMO. But would only make sense for an Avenger Class Servant to be summoned in such a way.

@KoL

Summoning Avenger still means summoning a Servant, even if he's shit, so it hits the same wall.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

<Snipped quote by Unoedipal>

Yeah but the grail's a magical genie wish granting device as it is, so I'd say it could pull out some spare prana.
May also be that an especially wily Heroic Spirit managed to force itself into the Grail War, perhaps forcibly sucking mana out of Fuyuki's ley lines.

@IncredibleBee

It's just a mundane ritual on a huge scale. If you take away the scale then there's not much there. It's impossible for there to be enough prana to summon a Servant; if there was it would lead to a gaping plothole that I won't allow.

You could take the Solomon clause of "I summoned myself because I'm just that good", sure, but a Heroic Spirit at that level is far too broken for me to allow.

Besides, the Second Owner's now the true owner of the land, opposed to the greenhorn she was in the 50s. She wouldn't let someone jack her leylines nowadays.

We can always pull the leeching prana from the lives of those in the city card.

@Sodium

I don't mean for maintenance, I mean for summoning. The Grail needs to touch the Throne, copy the data, shove it into a Spiritual Core and consequently give it form, bind it to an anchor (Master), and help maintain it.

It doesn't have the leftover prana to do that.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

Might I suggest just having an eighth master?

It's a good way to shake things up, especially if he uses a non-standard class like Pugilist or Wrestler. Maybe Gunner.

@IncredibleBee

...was there something in my post that didn't explain why that's impossible?

I'm legitimately confused by this response.

Fate/Stagnant Apotheosis

You know what we could do is give Seyrun an eighth servant played by yours truly.

@IncredibleBee

The justification for this would rely on there being enough reserve prana to summon an eighth Servant, or a leftover Servant from a prior Grail War existing. The former is impossible for reasons of the plot and actions of the Second Owner that are as-of yet unknown, and the latter is too tightly intertwined with GM action for me to hand it over to a player, plus the advantage it grants is patently unfair.

There's actually not much of a mechanical problem with there being an eighth Servant. In theory, there's nothing wrong with me saying that when tweaking the Grail, an eighth class was added or something of that make. The issue, then, is the matter that if there was enough prana to accomplish that, it would contradict certain aspects of the Second Owner's actions and cause them to not make sense. That's also not getting into how annoying it would be to introduce a nonstandard class in the first place.

If you can think of another way to justify it, let me know. I won't reject things on face if there might be a viable option.

@KoL

Don't use numbers. There's a reason I only had Circuits on ranks, and it's because whenever you try to put them in terms of numbers it fails horribly. There's bits of information that don't reconcile well with one another, approximating is possible but a headache, and Mahoyo's stuff doesn't do any favors towards that either. Just stick with the ranks and rest assured that you're so much better than everyone else and Rin's in turn much better than you but that doesn't matter since she was never born.