Name: Guessy
Contact Info: guessy
Other Characters Played: None
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Character Name: Irisiviel ('Iri') von Einzern
Canon: Fate/Zero
Canon Point: After episode 9.
Background/History: A link to a source about the canon is fine for this.
Personality: Irisviel is not an ordinary human being; she is a homunculus created by the Einzbern family of magi, for the purpose of completing the 'Holy Grail War'. Despite this, she was able to grow into her own person, with her own identity, desires and dreams, including falling in love and being able to have a child.

Explaining Irisviel requires a fair bit of background information; the Holy Grail Wars of Fuyuki are an event that repeats every 60 years, organised by the three main families; Einzbern, Tohsaka and Makiri. The Great Grail is the ritual carved into the land of Fuyuki - owned by the Tohsakas - that feeds off the laylines of the area to charge itself. When ready, it starts calling for Masters to partake in the Holy Grail War, a battle where seven mages (the 'Masters') summon seven mystical heroes (the 'Servants') from ages past to fight for the right to make a wish on the Holy Grail. Whilst the Great Grail is a gigantic ritual carved into the landscape, the Holy Grail (also known as the 'Lesser Grail' or 'Grail Vessel') has to be constructed anew for each War; this is the duty of the Einzberns. In the Fourth Holy Grail War that Irisviel partakes in, this is the purpose of her construction; she is that War's 'Grail Vessel'.

In the previous War the Lesser Grail was damaged early on and unable to complete the ceremony (along with a bunch of other cheating we'll get to in a moment...), thus for the Fourth, the Einzberns decided to give the Grail Vessel an intelligence; a shell that would protect it and keep it from harm until the ceremony was to take place. This was Irisviel's original role; she would avoid combat and act on self-preservation until her body broke down as the Grail Vessel was filled by fallen Servants in the War.

The Einzbern family was originally attempting to regain the Third Magic; 'Heaven's Feel', the materialisation of the soul... it's complicated, but for example the summoning of the Servants - bringing (an imperfect copy of) their soul into the world despite the lack of a body and the World itself registering them as dead - could be considered an imperfect implementation thereof. To this end, they created the Grail System, and allied with the Tohsaka and Makiri families to implement it. However, the Grail would grant only one wish, and that alliance fell apart to become the First Grail War. Due to the Einzberns' specialising in Alchemy, they did not posses much fighting prowess and as a consequence their representatives always lost in the Wars.

Attempting to correct this, they made two gambits. In the Third War (preceding Irisviel's) they modified the summoning ritual to allow 'anti-heroes' and include an extra Eighth Servant; Avenger, into which Angra Mainyu, aka 'All The World's Evil' was summoned. This backfired spectacularly as Avenger was an utterly weak Servant that died very easily, resulting in it - like all fallen Servants - being absorbed and stored within the Grail. The consequences of this were not made immediately apparent thanks to the Third War's vessel also being damaged in the fighting early on, derailing the ceremony.

For the Fourth, the Einzberns hired an outsider, Kiritsugu Emiya, to fight on their behalf. A freelancer having earned the title of 'Magus Killer', the man was known and feared for assassinating magi by unconventional (ie, non-magical) means; bombing, sniping, poisoning, in short, the kinds of attack a magus would not think to protect themselves against. At this time, Irisviel had only just been created - and having been coined for the sole purpose of protecting the Grail Vessel, her construction had focused on durability over knowledge or intelligence (a homunculus' abilities, knowledge and mindset are determined prior to their creation). Kiritsugu, frustrated with her lack of knowledge of the outside world as seeing it as a liability, complained to her creator, Jubstacheit, who responded by throwing her out into the snowy wilderness surrounding the Einzbern castle to prove her durability. Disgusted by Jubstacheit's actions, Kiritsugu rescued her and began teaching her about the outside world.

Two things need be noted here; firstly, as a homunculus, age means nothing. She was created as an adult and had the reasoning and intellectual capabilities thereof from the very beginning; Jubstacheit just never included knowledge because he didn't see the point. Descended like all Einzbern homunculi from Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern, the most powerful homunculus ever created and used as the core of the Great Grail, she learned extremely quickly, fast developing a sense of self.

Secondly, Kiritsugu himself was more than just a cold-blooded killer for hire; in actuality he was an idealist - he believed that by killing those who would harm humanity far more lives could be saved than in simply responding to their actions. To this end he became the 'Magus Killer', hunting down with ruthless efficiency mages and inhumans who wreaked havoc and destruction, all the while secretly hating his actions but believing them necessary. His contract with the Einzberns was to win them the Holy Grail, but the wish he intended to make on it was to end all wars and suffering. To the Magus community - focused only on secrecy and knowledge - he was an incomprehensible, unpredictable irregular. In reality, he was a human being like any other; he empathised, he could find joy, and he could fall in love.

It was a gradual thing over the course of nine years, but over time they became a loving, ultimately married, pair, tinged with one inescapable problem: Irisviel, being the Grail Vessel, would die upon the Grail's completion and Kiritsugu, who's moral philosophy was founded on killing one to save many, could not turn away from sacrificing someone he loved to save the world. As a way of preserving their love, they arranged to conceive a child; Illyasviel (technically, a new Einzbern homunculus who grew at the natural rate and she brought to term rather than being created). Thus, Irisviel became the first and so far only homunculus to expand beyond its initial design purposes; becoming a mother of her own free will.

Irisviel has a playful but caring personality; contrasting the air of an upper class lady (having lived exclusively in the Einzbern castle) with occasional bouts of childishness (for instance when visiting new places or doing new things... or if anyone's mad enough to let her drive a car). Bright and cheerful, she can put great trust in others, but is not blind to the dangers of the outside world; for instance, recognising Kotomine Kirei for who he really is. Whilst she can certainly be shocked by human actions (namely, Caster's), she is not surprised that this can occur (except, again, with Caster's, but to be fair who expected him to summon Cthulu in the middle of a river), probably due to having heard about the world purely through Kiritsugu's extremely cynical lens. She is unfamiliar with the outside world, but not naive.

During the war itself, Iri was the one who accompanied Kiritsugu's Servant Saber, posing as her Master herself and actually making a lot of the decisions (accepting Lancer's summons at the beginning, sending out Saber to intercept Caster in the forest and in the river and agreeing to the alliance with the Tohsakas in the closing stages of the War). She and Kiritsugu, in short, have the utmost trust and faith in each other. Only two of the other Masters realised Irisviel was not the Einzbern's representative in this War.

Though she claims she understands Kiritsugu's ideal, being sheltered in the castle all her life this is not actually the case; she herself admits it to Maiya when asked. All the same, she is willing to sacrifice her life for that goal, trusting Kiritsugu and preferring to die for his sake rather than as the wish of Einzbern family; given the former is 'wish for peace on Earth on the Holy Grail' and the other 'the Einzbern contestant wins and makes a wish on the Holy Grail', there is no actual practical difference between the two. It's simply a decision she made; one of the few freedoms she truly has. The greatest proof she has gone beyond the Einzbern's original goal is that she took an active role in the war at all; even fighting Kirei to stop him reaching Kiritsugu of her own volition, when as the Grail Vessel she is supposed to avoiding combat entirely.

Kiritsugu's victory would also mean that the Fourth Holy Grail War would be the last Holy Grail War; meaning Illya would never suffer the same fate (being her descendant and thus the next Grail Vessel should there be another War). She had Illya more as a symbolic thing; their little girl symbolises their love, Irisviel's own growth as a person and as a way of continuing their family after her death.

Having given birth to Illyasviel, she is demonstratively protective of children; siding with Saber when it came to rescuing them from Caster and giving her the order to intercept him. She also actually disagrees with Kiritsugu's more brutal methods, siding again with Saber in their argument, though that specific event has yet to actually happen from her canon point. Even after that point, she still believed in his dream, and died believing in that dream.

Which is where that bit about Angra Mainyu comes up.

Having been defeated almost immediately, Servant Avenger, aka All The Evils of the World was absorbed into the Holy Grail... and there it remained, being an unconventional 'eighth' class. This corrupted the Grail itself and granted it a sense of consciousness; specifically, a wish of it's own; to be born into the world (essentially, a wish to grant someone else's wish). Upon Iri's death, she was used as a template by the Grail she carried; copying her appearance, personality and memories, but subtly twisting and corrupting them. When Kiritsugu succeeded in claiming the Holy Grail, he was met by this 'false' Irisviel; the Grail using her as a template so it could communicate with others. It showed how, exactly, it would grant his wish; achieving peace on Earth by taking his ideals to the extreme; killing the few to save the many, until the only people left were Kiritsugu himself, Irisviel and Illya; showing his true desire, just to have a family.

Kiritsugu, still following his ideals, rejected it, killed the false Irisviel (as she cursed him as Angra Mainyu in the process), and ordered Saber to destroy the Grail, ultimately sacrificing his family to save the world from the Grail itself. Irisviel, in the end, died completely in vain.

Abilities/Powers: Irisviel is an Einzbern homunculus, meaning she differs from an ordinary human in a number of ways. Creating them is the Einzbern family's speciality; they are 'coined' by combining human genetic material with various substances. The concept of 'age' is irrelevant to them; their bodies are formed of a certain age and will not change further for the rest of their existence. Equally, they are imbued with all necessary knowledge and reasoning during their construction. Typically, they struggle to develop a sense of self if one is not pre-defined; Irisviel is actually a counter-example to this thanks to Kiritsugu. In Irisviel's case this doesn't really matter much (she is technically younger than she appears and acts, but that's about it) - for a more extreme example, there are the homunculi maids her daughter Illya creates to take of her in the sequel. Both have adult minds, bodies and temperament... and are all of two years old. Homunculi live as long as they are needed; otherwise, true age means nothing; somewhat akin to robots, it's age designed to be that counts.

Though they can technically live forever as long as the planet exists, they typically have some defects on account of being a constructed being (ie 'human error'). Irisviel is a bit of an odd case; her purpose was essentially to protect the Grail from damage until the end of the war. To this end, she is more durable than most, and her creator Acht didn't really see the need to imbue her with knowledge during construction, given she would only be in existence temporarily and for a single task. Kiritsugu fixed the latter problem, and as a general result she is not more or less weaker than a human being, physically.

Her physiology does have some interesting side effects though. For example, she can survive on mana instead of food if necessary and heal within magical circles built on ley-lines. She can also 'optimise' herself; cutting off non-essential functions (for a canonical example, her sense of touch) to help preserve her integrity.

It should also be noted she is a Grail Vessel; should any Servants die their souls will be collected by her automatically, resulting in Irisviel's body degrading as it starts turning into the Holy Grail proper (at 1 servant she had to cut off her sense of touch as above, at 3 it was mostly Avalon keeping her alive and she was killed by Kirei before things got further than that. Her corpse turned into the Holy Grail once 5 servants had died.). Her canon-point is just before any of the Servants have died.

(Her appearance, incidentally, seems to be the de-facto norm for all Einzbern homunculi; even models unrelated to the Holy Grail War still share the same red eyes / silver hair traits to the point Tohsaka Tokiomi is able to identify her as an Einzbern from that description alone).

Kiritsugu has taught her a number of things about the outside world; how to drive a car, for instance, though it was only on the Einzbern castle grounds and she treats them like toys, being considerably less aware of things like 'traffic safety laws'. She also has limited knowledge of using communications equipment and 'modern' (80s-era) technology.

Finally, she has all the alchemical knowledge of the Einzbern family; this relates primarily to the manipulation of noble metals and of flesh. Though the latter is intended to be used for the creation of homunculi (which she is capable of, though not at Haven due to lack of equipment), it also makes her an excellent magical healer. She can manipulate wires of noble metal to form mental shapes and obey her commands (memorably, creating a wireframe raven to attack Kirei Kotomine with), but her magic is otherwise unsuited to combat. She is capable of other 'basic' magus tricks, such as setting up Bounded Fields (which may or may not work with the 'No Writing' rule) and making familiars out of small mammals, ie bats or rats.

It's worth noting that Angra Mainyu and the Grail being corrupted had no actual affect on her whilst she was alive (except in the Einzbern Consultation Room OVAs, but they're Type Moon's traditionally silly non-canon sideshows anyway), and the form of her it copies may as well be considered a separate entity entirely; it's basically Avenger hijacking her appearance and most of her personality and personal attachments. Still, it could potentially crop up in an event or something.

Items/Weapons: Avalon, the sheath of Excalibur, which will provide 'limited immortality' (healing and regenerative powers) if the Heroic Spirit Arturia Pendragon - ie Saber - is nearby... and do hilariously little if she is not. This is actually inside her body (it's... never wholly explained how that works but Avalon can be safely 'held' by people internally, providing regenerative abilities).

Secondly, a box of alchemical supplies (mercury and other noble metals, alcohol and chalk amongst other things).

Sample Entry: At least ten sentences in first person, please. A link to a previous post or thread with the character is also acceptable.

Sample Entry Two: A third person sample of at least two paragraphs.