Class: Faker
True Name: “George Psalmanazar” (Has no actual True Name, rather is identified by the false person he is most commonly associated with)
Sex: Male
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Lore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Psalmanazar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1DDsBr80ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR-e5EWLcG8
One of the most famous fraudsters and con artists in history, a man whose name of birth and original identity have been completely forgotten and discarded even by himself. He is known to have been a Frenchman, and details of his life have been recorded through his memoirs, but much about his identity remains unclear. He is remembered entirely under the false name he invented for himself during a years-long scheme in which he impersonated an inhabitant of the island of Taiwan, then known in Europe as Formosa, deceiving the people of England with fanciful tales, an improvised nonsense “language“, and a fabricated history and culture of his island home. While the majority of Englishmen had little to no knowledge of the island, and thus were easily fooled by his ruse, other Europeans, especially the Jesuit missionaries of the Catholic Church, had firsthand experience there, and attempted repeatedly to expose him as a fraud. Due to the conflict at the time between their faith and the Church of England, however, these were written off as Papist lies and “George” became a prominent figure in anti-Catholic propaganda. Eventually he stretched the ruse far too thin to continue fooling people, and it had to be abandoned, causing him to completely disappear from the public eye. Decades later, near the end of his life, he published a genuine memoir including some details of his life and motivations for concocting the ruse, as well as on his history of schemes and frauds he perpetrated prior to adopting the identity of George Psalmanazar.
A highly theatrical and fanciful individual who simply cannot stop running his mouth. Faker loves telling exaggerated stories about himself and rambling on as much as he can. He has an extremely active imagination that never stops running, constantly coming up with new ideas. He also has a good sense of humor and talent for jokes and poking fun, but can force himself to be serious if the situation absolutely calls for it. He is particularly fond of inventing fake languages and slipping into imagined personas, and had he not not become a con artist he would have found gainful employment as an actor. His acting skills come in handy given his Noble Phantasm. Due to the fact that in life his greatest enemies were Jesuit priests that worked tirelessly to expose his false identity, since this identity was employed in anti-Catholic propaganda by the Church of England, he has a great dislike for the Holy Church and its agents, though he mostly regards it as a particularly irritable annoyance to be avoided more than a dangerous or hateful organization.
Deep down, Faker regrets the life he lived and desires to do it over, this time being able to live as himself. His wish for the Grail, accordingly, is that he may be incarnated with a chance to live a totally different life, in which he could become remembered as one of the greatest writers and actors in history under his own true name, an identity which as a Heroic Spirit even he himself has forgotten.
Faceclaim:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/835741808868196362/868934680580329493/82941503_p1.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/835741808868196362/868934683243724810/82941503_p0.jpg
Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezpHLVH4U5Q
Strength D
Endurance C
Agility C
Mana B
Luck A+
NP EX
Class Skills:
Camouflage A: Allows Faker to disguise his servant class and physical stats. Cannot actually grant him different Class Skills or any other characteristics of another class, only trick others into believing he has them.
Personal Skills:
All Kinds of Talents (Improvisation) A+: The sole Personal Skill Faker needs to carry out his deceptions. A manifestation of both his background as an exceptional natural genius and child prodigy with numerous anecdotes of his skills at improvisation during his cons and frauds, this extremely versatile and powerful Skill allows Faker to perform any task or replicate any skill with high proficiency so long as he has observed someone performing it or received an explanation on how to do it. Rather than naturally obtaining such a talent, however, Faker “improvises” it via trial and error, reconstructing the steps necessary to master the skill within his mind and achieving them in ways that are often highly unorthodox or even bizarre. This Skill guarantees that any talent he wishes to replicate can be accomplished so long as he genuinely understands what he is trying to do, no matter how unusual his improvised methods are. This does not make him omnipotent or allow him to copy any other Skill possessed by a Servant, rather only allowing him to acquire skills based on talent, knowledge, or training. While this extends to imitating magecraft as well, allowing him to tap into various thaumaturgical foundations, his magical energy output cannot be increased, and the Skill only allows him to copy spells which anyone can learn. This Skill allows him to become remarkably able in combat to make up for his middling physical Parameters (themselves a result of a lack of combat-related anecdotes and only kept out of the complete bottom of the barrel via his high Mystery), but given the nature of the Skill, he will always manifest a highly unpredictable “trickster” fighting style based on underhanded schemes, traps, and deceptions regardless of what martial art he imitates or weapon he chooses to use.
NP:
Memoirs of █ █ █ █ █, Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalmanazar: Assumption of a Nonexistent Legend
Rank EX
Anti-Unit (Self)
Targets: 1 person
A crystallization of Faker’s most famous con, the character of George Psalmanazar and the fabrication of his imagined “Formosan” culture. To put it simply, this Noble Phantasm allows Faker to fabricate entirely original Noble Phantasm from scratch by temporarily adopting a false True Name and the identity of a nonexistent hero. It cannot allow him to mimic any real person, living or dead — only wholly false or fictional identities imagined by Faker or his Master. In addition to creating a false Noble Phantasm, Faker can also change his clothing and standard equipment to adopt such a persona, but for unknown reasons he cannot use this to change his physical appearance in any way beyond what mundane cosmetics can accomplish, only his clothing and equipment.
False Noble Phantasms manifested with Memoirs of █ █ █ █ █, Commonly Known by the Name of George Psalmanazar are fully functional like a genuine Noble Phantasm, making this ability extremely versatile and powerful. Essentially any Noble Phantasm Faker can imagine can be manifested, though only a single one at each time. It may be possible for him to “cheat in” multiple Noble Phantasms in one by trying to create something similar to Gate of Babylon, but doing this may be rather taxing on his magical energy.
One trick Faker particularly likes to use with his fabricated Noble Phantasms is to pretend to “give away” a weakness or counter-strategy for them that doesn’t actually work, in order to bait opponents into doing something to his advantage. He will adopt the persona of an honorable warrior giving away his weaknesses in the interest of “fairness” to try and cast aside suspicions. His natural tendency to run his mouth comes in handy here, making this ruse blend in with his genuine personality. He will also often pretend he has more than one fake Noble Phantasm in order to similarly mislead foes — for example, after dodging an attack, he will claim to have a Noble Phantasm that makes him impossible to hit, in the hopes this will either dissuade opponents from attacking or try a highly risky strategy to counter this imaginary strength of his.
The power of this Noble Phantasm comes with a single, enormous weakness. If Faker’s true identity is discerned in any way, or anyone realizes the false identity he adopted to be a fictitious invention, the false Mystery behind it will completely collapse and the false Noble Phantasm will crumble into nothing, unable to be used again. It is possible for him to use this Noble Phantasm repeatedly to create new identities, but an identity which has been exposed cannot be reused.
• • •
This is an extremely gimmicky Servant in a weird class with a small but ridiculously versatile power set — in a “wacky” way. I stole the All Kinds of Talents skill from Richard’s sheet, but heavily fleshed it out with some modifications to fit Psalmanazar and justify him making up for his lack of other Skills or combat abilities with it. I debated including the “Deception” skill I used on my Gwydion sheet, but decided against it because his version of All Kinds of Talents kinda does everything it could do already.
The one NP, though, I’m 100% confident on. Yes it is as powerful as you think, yes it can create fake NPs that are as powerful as the most ridiculously busted stuff in canon, but the moment someone figures out that the identity is fake it completely falls apart. High risk, high reward. For a good idea of how Faker uses his fabricated NPs, refer to the first half of Jack the Ripper's fight in Record of Ragnarok.