Cry of Avalon

「 Origin 」  ⫸ Morgan le Fae is a Fae, and Avalon is her home. By invoking a territory of sorts, Morgan is capable of bringing her power to full might to bear, facing her opponent with the power of her home standing behind her.   But this is nothing but a lie. A facade to hide the truth. Morgan possesses another Noble Phantasm, but one that connects directly to the other self, her vices, her flaws, and her inadvertent corruption. Because this ‘Noble Phantasm’ does not reveal her name, she states it as such in the ‘incantation’ to have the same effect. For all intents and purposes this action will be like her NP in combat. The moment she is summoned, Morgans seals this Noble Phantasm away with such intensity that nothing short of two Command Seals can compel her to undo the restraint and unleash her NP. And even then, the Master’s relationship with Morgan will be irreparably damaged. That said, because said NP will change Morgan’s Spirit Origin into another being, that is of little technical consequence.     「 Function 」  ⫸ Caster receives a simple boost to all parameters, becoming better in more or less every aspect of combat potential. She also unlocks several new abilities such as shapeshifting, disguises, and the ability to use her illusions offensively to direct (simulated) pain to opponents instead of just changing the landscape to make enemy attacks miss. In reality, this is breaking a soft limiter she placed on her powers, bringing her full might to bear for as long as the current battle lasts, when she had previously been running on 75% of her total power.

Le Morte di Camelot

「 Origin 」  ⫸ Morgan le Fay is a traitor and a seductress, bent on taking King Arthur down through Arthur’s own illegitimate son, Mordred. That is how the narrative has thus changed, and that is something Morgan cannot run from. This is the betrayal she committed to Camelot, the conspiracy, the ultimate downfall. Even if it were not this Caster’s own, it is still her own.     「 Function 」  ⫸ The Noble Phantasm can manifest itself as one of several forms, all small physical weapons with a theme of ‘betrayal,’ ‘conspiracy,’ or ‘assassination.’ In addition, Caster, even while not desiring to use this Noble Phantasm, automatically adds to the list of potential forms from the new information she encounters in her new world. By default, the list consists of a dagger, an ornate ring with a hollowed jewel that conceals a poisoned spike when popped open like a lid, a glove shaped like a snake with an open mouth about to strike which extended curved blades Wolverine-style as a combination of a gauntlet and tiger’s claws, and a wrist-based spring-loaded dagger. With Caster’s experiences in her new world, the list expands to include a silenced pistol, a hypodermic syringe filled with poison, a gas mask with an accompanying canister of poison gas, a time bomb, and a set of ten ‘poison fingernails,’ tiny needles hidden under the nail and extended like a toy lightsaber by flicking the finger, enabling nearly unnoticeable and undetectable poison delivery.    No matter the form or how Caster chooses to employ it, any physical injury inflicted by Caster will activate this NP. Because of her low agility, it is preferable that she use a ruse of diplomacy or an ambush to deploy the Noble Phantasm. Said person will become ‘Mordred,’ and is subject to Command Seal-levels of forced obedience, which Caster can set upon one opponent and one opponent only. If said opponent flees the battle, the NP will still be in effect, but if said opponent is defeated, said pawn will be ‘disposed of,’ aka killed right there.     However, to facilitate this, this fragment of Morgan that was initially separate from later portrayals will be forced into the correct mindset. In other words, Caster’s Saint Graph will be irrevocably changed into the monster that Caster fears and hides away from day one. In doing so, not only are two Command Seals necessary to break Caster’s resistance to using it, her replaced personality will immediately shift gears to apply her schemes to her Master, resulting in a high likelihood they will be disposed of or left to die in the near future.

Morgan is a strange woman girl of two primary axioms that seem to drive a majority of her behavior, yet are also contradictory (at least at first glance).     The first is a belief that she has already contributed enough to humans and her fae brethren for one ‘life,’ and thus seems slightly mopey about having to continue ‘work’ as a Servant. She frequently talks of retirement, leading to comparisons of an overworked office employee, and sometimes just can’t be bothered if there is no threat to her life or her Master’s. This is not to detract from her achievements. Morgan is a strong combination of high inherent learning speed and frenzied dedication to her studies, making her a polymath in everything from the expected witchcraft, magic, and spells to the seemingly unrelated mathematics, astronomy, and politics. She also is not one to shirk her duties as she sees them, and will only slack off if she thinks she has done enough. Morgan is just hair-pulling-levels of annoying in how erratic and irregular of a worker she is. It is impossible to predict a transition between tearing up her room to research her new world or practice/create some spells and bringing the police for a noise complaint late at night to straight-up refusing to get her rear off the sofa. One moment she could be lazing on the bed with a bag of chips, the next she could be prancing around the house in a self-made costume claiming to be ‘☆Mysterious Transfer Student Mahou Shoujo Magical Morgan☆’. Often, she will slip away from her Master to buy herself some food or hang out at an arcade because waiting around for someone to start a fight is too boring for her. She goes as far as setting up a shoddy decoy that only says a few prepared lines, but this actually works about half the time due to her constant lazing around by default.     The second point is more simple: she refuses to believe that she is old in age, despite multiple records stating she was in possession of eternal or prolonged youth due to Fae lineage. There may be sufficient evidence to claim she is indeed a younger form merely self-educated in Arthurian canon after being summoned, but there is just as much evidence to suggest she is the further-down-the-line Morgan who purposefully set up a false youthful body and is thus pretending. In any case she is extremely adverse to being called anything that even slightly suggests age above a teenager, including ‘Ma’am,’ ‘Lady,’ and ‘Mrs.’ She also voraciously studies modern culture, language, and technology in an attempt to build a high school girl schtick, and even records a magical girl outfit into her Saint Graph to reflect her new favorite genre.     Beyond her axioms and the consequent personality traits, Morgan is a very blase and head-in-clouds person. She often talks in a very dreamy tone, necessitating constant use of “~” when writing dialogue. She can also in general seem very carefree, even when her life is in danger, although she certainly obeys her Master’s orders and engages in combat with terrifying power. She shows very little intense emotion otherwise aside from a cheery, carefree attitude, never getting overly mad, angry, or even happy or excited, to the point of suspicion for being emotionally stunted.
Character Development:  If Morgan seems significantly different from her canonical self, both before and after the shift of becoming Mordred’s mother, it is because she is. This is a false personality, using a veneer of laziness, apathy, and airheadedness to keep herself from having to consider the truth. While Morgan was not summoned as the scheming mother and pawn-manipulator of Mordred, she is aware of such shifts in perceptions about her (as reflected by her Innocent Monster EX). She is also able to confirm that such a version of her exists, possible for summon, which her Master was lucky in avoiding such an interpretation of Morgan as a Servant. And even then, her 3rd Ascension has this appearance show up as irrevocably tied to her. Morgan is fully aware this is far from her fault, especially since nobody could have possibly seen such an unprecedented connection between her and Mordred to be made. However, she, a serious and dedicated person she is, still can’t help but feel terrible about it, thinking that her atonement by bringing Arthur to Avalon after her scheming days to take him down were haunting her even still. Pretending to be lazy and throwing herself into the magical girl genre are her ways of coping with this, and she will thus hide her True Name from her Master if she can help it, wanting to avoid associations with her name.     To sum it up, Morgan is a very dedicated and intelligent woman who while having an issue with long-lasting grudges, is extremely supportive of those she is close with. Furthermore, despite convincing herself that she is unable to or does not deserve love after how her narrative has changed, she badly desires to love and care for someone.

「 Armaments 」  ⫸ Staff (two-handed)  ⫸ Modified to a one-handed staff resembling a magical girl’s stick. Can be reverted.  ⫸ Can be ‘filled’ with magical energy to serve as a blunt weapon or to prepare for a spell.   ⫸ Staff can be morphed into other weapons to strike with greater physical strength.  ⫸ Physical blows have a chance to internally rattle and disorient (Stun) opponents.  ⫸ Staff can be thrown, and will return to the owner's hand at will.   ⫸ Combat spells  ⫸ Light beams of varying intensities and quantities depending on time and magic dedicated.  ⫸ Orbs of light to shoot as homing projectiles at opponents  ⫸ Shockwave from directing magical energy into the ground  ⫸ Body enhancement spells to deal or take physical blows  ⫸ Utility spells  ⫸ Healing spell to repair combat damage  ⫸ Spirit Origin-cleansing spell to eliminate curses and negative status effects.  ⫸ Shield generation to reduce or negate incoming damage  ⫸ High-tier illusion spells    「 Tactics 」  Caster is best described as a frontline tank and a supporting healer. She lacks proper agility to dodge attacks, but she is perfectly capable of taking and giving multiple hits in both the physical and the magical department. Her high magical potential also means she can spam powerful and complex spells with little issue barring incantation periods, and her constant use of mirages means finding her to aim a hit is difficult. Her strong resistance to mental interference or trickery also means one must generally face her head on, facing a tough and healing-specialized wall that is overall difficult to take down.     In support of another combatant, her healing and generation of defensive shields to absorb damage is naturally an asset to keep more fragile combat classes going. However, her use of mirages and illusions also open up a lot more possibilities for those she helps to land a stronger hit. Therefore, while Caster does not necessarily need allies to survive, having one will tremendously benefit both parties. If translated to FGO, Caster is a Merlin-tier crit support, providing a deluge of C. stars and control of who gets to use them, albeit with no way to boost Quick cards.     As a side note, Caster modifies her attacks to have a general magical girl air. Lots of sparkles, a general heart motif, and strong light shows will be present. Her illusions will also be by personal preference with some kind of ‘magical girl-like setting’ as believed by Caster. Nothing changes about the actual effects of her magic: they will merely be aesthetically changed. She will also drop it if she is angered or otherwise feels intense emotion.     In addition, this is noted as about three-quarters of Caster’s total ability. This is not out of arrogance, but rather to create a disparity between her normal combat strength and her ‘Noble Phantasm’ (see Noble Phantasm for details).

Morgan le Fay, which translates to Morgan the Fairy, is both a very early addition to the Arthurian canon and also one of the most heavily modified in both role and moral position as time went on. She was introduced as a purposefully mysterious and vague person, described either as a sorceress, a witch, a fae, or an enchantress, fully supportive of Arthur (very similar to Merlin with Uther and at first, Arthur). Most notably, she is the first of her sisters to take Arthur to Avalon for healing after he was critically injured defeating Mordred at the Battle of Camlann. From there, Morgan was modified to be Arthur’s half sister, and the Vulgate Cycle gave her a more comprehensive backstory. Morgan shares mothers with Arthur, and Uther was her stepfather due to this. Put in a political marriage by Uther, Morgan rebels against this by having multiple relationships, but is called out by the future queen, Guinevere. This sparks off the rivalry that has since been used as a base to major changes to Morgan. Morgan makes multiple attempts, using her extensive studies and tutoring under various teachers like Merlin, to get back at Guinevere. One of the most famous is featured in Gawain and the Green Knight, where Morgan conscripts the titular Green Knight to get his head chopped off in front of Guinevere, something he could survive no problem, with the hopes that she’ll die of a shock-induced heart attack.     However, after making a career out of targeting Arthur and Guinevere, Morgan stops out of the blue, and disappears for many years. Arthur assumes her dead, but runs into her castle during a hunting trip years later, finding Morgan not only very much alive, but fully reformed and repentant of her actions against Arthur, with plans to move back to Avalon with her sisters. Hearing Arthur update her on what was going on in Camelot, she decides to show him a giant mural that Lancelot made documenting his entire affair with Guinevere for some reason during his imprisonment there. Arthur naturally flies into a rage and runs back to Camelot, kicking off a civil war. After Mordred is killed and Arthur critically wounded, Morgan finishes her redemption by taking Arthur to Avalon to heal.     From here, the modern consciousness of Morgan was changed dramatically to be more consistently an evil seductress bent on taking Arthur down. This is not the aspect of Morgan summoned as Caster, but it is still significant as Morgan herself is aware of this retelling and comments that she is eligible for summon in that form. Mordred, while initially not as clear in relationship to Arthur rather than just being a traitorous knight, was expanded to be Arthur’s nephew: the son of another half sister of his, Morgause. Some versions then furthered this by making Mordred also Arthur’s illegitimate son, morally complicating all parties involved. Morgan was shanghaied into this by replacing Morgause, Mordred’s original mother. This is despite zero precedent in Arthurian canon, especially considering that Mordred’s entire point was that his own ambition resulted in the downfall of Camelot. Morgan’s scheming days, despite being long over by the time Mordred usurps the throne, was rolled over into Mordred’s traitorous nature. This made Mordred and Arthur’s dynamic even more complex than before and something that could be sliced from many different angles. As a cost, Morgan is now a flat, straight-evil character that only has impact through Mordred being her pawn to take Arthur down. This opened up the possibility for Mordred to be written as more sympathetic. Such a view has on the whole dominated Morgan’s portrayal in pop culture today, while notable exceptions do certainly exist.

Yes, yes, I made this Morgan le Fay before Lostbelt 6 was released. It was my own personal take on how the canon of Morgan has shifted over time. As said elsewhere, this Morgan probably shouldn't exist because the canon on which her characterization and story are based is long gone in the public consciousness, and even I only found out about it while trying to research what kind of angle to approach Morgan as a Servant with.     As for the images below, that is a custom-made outfit I was given when I entered Morgan into a "Battle of the Bands" creative competition in the FFS. The designer, Lunethary, chose to give Morgan an Alice in Wonderland motif alongside the normal bunny outfit, and I'm very happy with how it was made. So thanks, Lune.    -Raven