Empatheias Application;

[professorfreischutz]

⌈ Non-spoilery BASICS & PERMISSIONS ⌉

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: DJ
Contact: biomagnet / DJ#5685 @ discord
Age: 27
Current: N/A


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: "Archer of Shinjuku" {James Moriarty}
Age: Physically in his 50s
Canon: Fate/Grand Order
Canon point: Pseudo-Singularity Shinjuku Chapter 18, following his defeat within the Barrel.
> (Shinjuku Localization: February 24th, 2019)

CLICK FOR SPOILERS

Background: Wikipedia article on the Professor Moriarty this interpretation is based off of. Information about Max, The Freeshooter, and the seventh bullet that was key to his plans. Note that Sherlock Holmes, the person and the stories published, are based in real history within the Fate/ universe and not simply a series of fictitious novels.

Much of Moriarty's early life is shrouded in mystery, as the man himself isn't very forthcoming about how much of him is real history and how much is simply made up by the masses for him to go along with. What we do know is that he grew to notable heights as a lauded mathematics professor. He published a book, The Dynamics of An Asteroid, which was supposedly buried by his peers due to the radical and evil thoughts speculating about what it would take to destroy the world. Following his nature, Moriarty went on to found and run a shadowy criminal organization that kept its fingers in a frankly unbelievable number of pies.

After encountering Sherlock Holmes, who time and again would stymie his plots and take care of his minions, it became a point of obsession for Moriarty to best him. This obsession would lead to him confronting Sherlock in person for a fatal encounter atop Reichenbach Falls; Sherlock survived against all odds, but Moriarty himself perished.

Although it's unknown how his initial summon occurred, Moriarty was eventually returned to a living state as a super powerful familiar-type entity called a Servant, in a version of the Shinjuku district of Tokyo that had become cut off from time. Presumably this was thanks to the interference of a Demon God Pillar that had fled the destruction of its entire kind when they tried to destroy humanity before history had even begun; this Demon God Pillar, named Bael, had been traumatized by the attack and subsequent defeat and wanted more than anything to destroy the object of its hate: humanity's best Master and savior of history, Fujimaru Ritsuka. Seeing a possibility unfold before him, Moriarty teamed up with Bael to bring both of their goals together: Bael would kill Ritsuka, and Moriarty would defeat Sherlock in an intellectual game while proving himself the man who could destroy the world.

Having been in hiding for three thousand years since the destruction of its kind, Bael had learned how to summon and manipulate Phantom Spirits: characters from myths, legends and folklore who either had no grounding in factual history or were not famous enough to maintain a powerful enough presence to become a Servant. Using the excuse of the time distortion they inhabited, Moriarty would lure Ritsuka in and form a bond with the Master, taking advantage of the "downside" to The Freeshooter's miraculous ability by loading an asteroid into a gun barrel-like building aimed directly at the single person Moriarty would then hold dear: Ritsuka (along with the rest of the planet under their feet). It was a risky gambit that required meticulous planning and reliance on variables there was no way to calculate, but the desperation of the two schemers was enough to convince them it was worth it.

Setting up various secondary Servants he had summoned to protect the Barrel while it was being built, Moriarty "reset" himself to zero and implanted a sense of justice where he'd previously never felt it before, then made sure this "good" Moriarty would end up in the path of Ritsuka once they arrived in Shinjuku. Meanwhile, Bael would allow himself to be brainwashed into believing he was the "evil" Moriarty to ensure the minutiae of the planning would still be carried out, and to give a form of legitimacy to the "good" Moriarty's character. This good Moriarty acted in ways that convinced Ritsuka to trust him and, in turn, he formed a genuine bond with his Master. With the help of Sherlock Holmes, who had been lured in by the utterly bizarre circumstances of the singularity, the good guys managed to clean up the city enough to approach evil Moriarty and stop his plans. When they arrived at the Barrel to stop the evil Moriarty, Bael revealed himself in the wake of evil Moriarty's defeat, which triggered the real Moriarty's memories. The trap had been sprung, Sherlock admitting himself being bested by Moriarty; with the confirmation of their equality, Moriarty absorbed his rival into himself to harness Sherlock's power and began using that to load the Bennu "bullet" into the "gun" of the gigantic building shaped like a Barrel aimed at the Master standing right before him.

Too bad for him, for the Devil to aim the seventh cursed bullet at someone he cared about, Moriarty had to continue caring about Ritsuka. No matter how hard he tried, he was unable to bring his full brunt to bear against his Master now that a connection had been formed, and was eventually defeated by the power of narrative manipulation he'd been counting on in the first place. As this incarnation of him dies, he's left to regret the course of action he took, and ends up welcomed by Ritsuka and their companions to be summoned at a later date, this time as an ally. Not wanting to cause more hardship for them, Moriarty dies with an upbeat "Au revoir!"

Personality: Moriarty possesses an absurd, genius level intellect. He is capable of immensely detailed deductions off minimally presented information, being one of Sherlock Holmes' most notable rivals despite only explicitly featuring in two of his stories (although it's hinted they had many more clashes that Sherlock forbade Watson from writing about). Specializes in mathematics to the point where he was able to calculate the necessary energy and circumstances to destroy the planet just because he could. Very evil but also incredibly charismatic with that evil, capable of pulling the puppet strings of most organized crime in London while never once having been fingered as the true culprit behind his many schemes. He has the sense to let pride go before the fall, willing to admit mistakes, and learn from the experience and knowledge of others.

Although he is perfectly capable of "playing nice" with others and can respect them for their various strengths and specializations as tools for him to use, Moriarty had never in his life formed a significant bond with anyone. It isn't that he cannot sympathize with the plights of man or the joy others feel, but that he doesn't feel any obligation to do so genuinely. Moriarty himself is the only person he needs to trust and depend on to get what he wants in life; other human beings are either means to an end or things in the way to be disposed of. Their entertainment value is also important to him since he mostly flits through life for the hell of it, doing what he does because he's good at it and it makes him happy. For him to even feel attachment to a person, he had to brainwash himself and go through several life or death circumstances to force a friendship to bloom, and he only did it to ultimately prove a point.

His relationship with Sherlock is, ultimately, not that complicated. Where he respects and sees Holmes as an intellectual peer and a rival, the detective constantly foils Moriarty's plans and, for that, has to go. It was nuisance to such an infuriating level that Moriarty attempted to kill him even though it put his own life on the line. Someone stopping his plans pace for pace was, in a word, unacceptable. He doesn't regret going out the way he did, but there's a constant annoyance that Sherlock survived despite that. As a Servant, now he's focused on proving he's better and more capable than Sherlock since killing each other isn't such an easy option anymore.

He may be seen to have some streak of altruism in him as, more than once over different mediums, Moriarty has expressed his desire to use his own vile nature to prop up the virtuous path of his Master, Fujimaru Ritsuka. Those he sees as unwavering in their goodness hold a certain type of fascination for him (especially now that he understands what justice feels like), so while he may feel the temptation to crush and twist that goodness, he resists in order to preserve something he finds might be worthwhile. Of course, it took a ridiculous amount of work to make him see things in this sort of light, which leads us to...

An incredibly stubborn and difficult man, nobody can convince Moriarty to change his mind aside from Moriarty himself. He's also super ridiculously evil, chaotic in his goals of committing evil acts because it's all that he knows, and because he finds it incredibly enjoyable. Despite his background in math and ability to concoct incredibly complex machinations via mathmatic equations, his ego and faith in his own self means he can sometimes overlook that he doesn't know what he doesn't know and will end up in a loop of assuming he's right until the last possible moment if no one interferes. It's just as well that he finds things equally exhilarating whether his calculations bear out or not.

Related to his stubbornness, he always attempts to do things with science and knowable forces rather than learn about magic or the magecraft used to manipulate it. He acknowledges its existence and factors that into his plans, but has no interest in using the power for himself. Sherlock intimates that this glaring refusal to rely on magic was what allowed them to clash in the first place, exploiting a rarely-found weakness in Moriarty's web of contingencies and schemes. Even as a Servant, Moriarty's resistance to magical interference is only equivalent to a minor warding amulet.

Being defeated by Sherlock time and again has certainly shaped the way in which Moriarty views the world and the way he must move through it to achieve what he wants. He teamed up with a being that knows nothing but hatred for one specific human and concocted a ridiculously elaborate, though well-calculated, plot in order to defeat Sherlock even though they had both been long-since dead by the time he was able to manifest and carry everything out. As a byproduct of that plot, Moriarty learned the power of friendship (no, I'm not kidding) and thus has come to find genuine attachment to Ristuka Fujimaru, whom he would consider his friend, and has felt perhaps one of his first regrets that he put them through so many hardships for a plot that was doomed to fail from the moment he set out. It's awakened in him the understanding of good and what it can feel like, although he has no desire to go down that path when in possession of his full faculties, and with his Master as the "gateway drug" to friendship, he may be susceptible to forming more bonds with others in the future whether he realizes it or not.

Despite his own gambit to be a "good" Moriarty for a while, he apparently just exudes an untrustworthy, shady aura without realizing it. Poor guy couldn't actually be good even when his life literally depended on it. Similarly, absorbing Max into his being did virtually nothing to his personality. At most, he enjoys using firearms more. Really.

While no one could ever call Moriarty silly, most of the time the man can some off as quite ridiculous. In normal conversation where he allows his guard to lower (or pretends to do so), his gregarious and lively manner can seem off the cuff and irreverent. You know the "you're right but you shouldn't say it" meme? That's basically him, because when he knows that he's right, he feels completely confident in whatever he says. This applies even if he's fucking with someone or leading them on, despite lacking some of the self-awareness to realize how much he sounds like a gregarious dumbass at times. When focusing on his evil machinations, he manages to be much smoother, but all bets are off once he starts reacting on a more personal level.

When stuck within the confines of the Empatheias setting without any powerful allies or resources to call in, Moriarty will likely go into quiet schemer mode. He'll attempt to bide his time while learning the lay of the land and ingratiating himself into useful positions where he might be able to lay claim to some kind of power should he have need of it. Regardless of how long that will take (and no one's ever called Moriarty impatient), he'll still need his regular entertainment and will seek people out to play with and act as fonts of information. Although he gets a kick out of poking and prodding good guys and testing their mettle, morals and backbone, he also knows better than to cross any lines while he has no backup or exit strategies. At most, he might convince people to shoplift, etc., just to see if they can be nudged.

Abilities: In the Fate/ universe, the spirits of all powerful and famous existences are preserved after death in the Throne of Heroes, an otherworldly archive powered by humanity's collective unconscious. The World itself sometimes draws upon these Heroic Spirits to deal with threats of grave importance to save its life, but in relatively more recent times, humanity came up with a system to take control of this power themselves: the Servant system. Generally speaking, a Heroic Spirit is too strong for any human to possibly sustain, so they are instead placed into Class Containers that best exemplify certain talents and feats. The major seven classes are: Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Caster, Assassin and Berserker. Some Heroic Spirits can qualify for multiple different classes, wherein upon they might manifest with a different mental state to better facilitate the container (Gilgamesh's Archer self falls more on his warrior side, while Caster Gilgamesh is the relatively more restrained and responsible kingly side, for instance). Notably, Servants are on the whole just immensely powerful: even an E- rank in a Servant's parameters is more than enough to match a human of peak aptitude and training.

(Most of the time, Servants are summoned directly by Masters. Most Masters are mages, although there can be exceptions, but their general purpose is to provide power for the Servant's existence and maintain control over this super being via the use of limited, super power spells called Command Seals. In Fate/Grand Order, sometimes the World itself is a Servant's "Master" where timelines have gone wonky, and it spirals out from there. This Moriarty is without an official contract but considers Ritsuka Fujimaru to be his informal Master regardless.)

Moriarty is a Servant of the Archer class. Within the confines of a regular summoning, Moriarty should have been a Caster class Servant where most scientists and authors end up due to lack of any other fitting options. However, thanks to his own personal meddling in order to enact his grand plot, Moriarty has fused himself with the conceptual power of Max, the Freeshooter (from Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber), and was able to form as an Archer class instead.

Since he was able to game the Servant system and manifest as one of the knight-type classes, his statistics manage to keep from dipping below "average" across most of the board. His agility and luck are high, allowing him to maneuver his way through any number of physical battles easily. Because being summoned in the prime of his life places him somewhere in his 50s, his endurance is low and he'll still feel the aches and pains of age if pushed too much or he sustains too much damage. Whiny baby.

Using his power as a Servant mixed with the concept of Max's Noble Phantasm (otherwise known as the magical embodiment of someone's claim to fame), Moriarty is capable of using any gun-like object to always hit his target even when it would otherwise be totally impossible (facing away from them entirely, for instance). This can extend to things such as rocket launchers or missiles or, given enough power, literally slamming asteroids into the earth or something silly like that. As long as it can be conceived as bullets or ammunition being shot from some type of gun, Moriarty will hit what he wants with it. Additionally, it appears that the "seventh bullet shot by the Devil" is something that either must be invoked specifically or is something that Moriarty can directly control. Despite any other variables in his plan, loading Bennu as his seventh bullet was never in question no matter how many shots he'd taken as his "good" self prior to the final steps of his plan.

By invoking the name of his own Noble Phantasm, The Dynamics of An Asteroid: The Ultimate Crime, Moriarty is capable of carpet bombing an area before shooting a goddamn laserbeam through the target to obliterate a foe similar to how his book posits destroying the earth may be possible given proper energy and calculation. It's classified in-game as "Anti-Army" (despite being single-target?) but says that if he were to collect enough power, it could rank up to "Anti-City" or "Anti-Country." Without mod permission and plot necessity, there's no way he would be able to gain that much power within the game itself; at best, release of his Noble Phantasm will be limited to a ten meter circumference when using his own energy supply.

Although his senses far surpass that of a human's, he still wears glasses. Likely, he is capable of functioning just fine on a human level without them, but with them on his eyesight is properly to the par of a Servant. Who the heck knows. If we go by mechanics presented by Fate/GO, then Moriarty can have difficulty fighting Lancers or those with elongated weaponry that might slip past his defenses. If he lacks a Master to provide consistent magical energy, he will likely submit to eating and sleeping in order to keep up his power and conserve his stores, although he doesn't necessarily need either; his Independent Action skill will still allow him to function for some time before needing to resort to such measures, but better safe than sorry.

He's trained in the art of Animal Whispering, meaning he's capable of understanding the expressed thoughts and intentions of animals. This is different from being able to talk to them back, but Sherlock learned Whispering so, dammit, Moriarty learned too! Similarly, he's pretty handy with disguises although Sherlock still beats him out handily in that regard.

Alignment: Piphron. As someone who never even understood what it was to care for another person, the only thing he could truly trust was his own calculations and the actions of men, but not the people themselves. He would swing entirely to the sway of distrust near constantly, except for that "gateway drug" to friendship thing and also Ritsuka is around, that might put a spanner in the works. It's certainly one of the most poignant set of emotions he's going to be feeling for a while.

Other: He'll likely be coming in with: Reichenbach; a gun-knife-chameleon-cane; a pair of glasses; and his usual bundle of attitude. His amulet will appear to be a flat-backed version of this display. If any of these things are troublesome (I know Reichenbach could go either way, honestly), please let me know what you'd like to do with them!
> Note that some of my random screencaps of text blurbs come from the translated character materials that help give further insight to characters beyond what we get a chance to see in the game. I just didn't want to make anyone search through that page every time I referenced it.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
General sample: TDM threads
Emotion sample: Moriarty has immense trust issues but he's the type to try and control himself to not let anyone else know how he's feeling when it's disadvantageous to him.

Note: Seeing as the mobile game itself will spoiler-tag his name until the player finds it out directly, I've taken measures to keep it hidden unless the reader would intentionally look to keep with the spirit of the game.