Servants (Type-Moon)

Servants are entities that feature in Fate.

History

Servants (Japanese: サーヴァント, Hepburn: Sāvanto?) were types of spirits whether they were Heroic Spirits or Divine Spirits that were summoned by the Holy Grail where they were summoned to serve Masters that competed against one another in the Holy Grail War.

Around 1800 AD, the foundational ritual for what would become known as Servants was first enacted in Fuyuki City by the Three Founding Families: the Einzberns, Tohsakas, and Makiris. Seeking to reach the Root of all magic, these magi designed a 'heist' of the Throne of Heroes, an extra-dimensional archive of humanity's greatest souls. In this First Holy Grail War, the participants successfully summoned Heroic Spirits into specialized Servant classes like Saber and Caster to serve as spiritual familiars. However, the initial attempt was chaotic; because the Command Spell system had not yet been perfected by the Makiri family, the summoned Servants often refused to obey their Masters. The ritual quickly degenerated into a bloody, unorganized massacre rather than a structured tournament, as the magi possessed a weak sense of being 'participants' and mostly viewed the Servants as mere tools for sacrifice. Ultimately, the Greater Grail failed to manifest a winner, as the Masters were either killed or abandoned the project, leaving the first generation of Servants to vanish back into the Throne without granting a single wish.

In the mid-19th century, the Three Founding Families reconvened for the Second Holy Grail War, having refined the summoning ritual into a formalized "Heaven's Feel" system. This era saw the introduction of the Command Spells, absolute contracts developed by Zouken Makiri that finally allowed Masters to exert total authority over their Heroic Spirits. Despite this technical leap, the conflict became a brutal, lawless urban battlefield where Servants clashed openly across Fuyuki, causing massive civilian casualties and significant structural damage to the city. The lack of oversight led to such carnage that the Mage's Association and the Holy Church were forced to intervene, establishing the Supervisor role to manage future wars. By the time of the Third Holy Grail War on the eve of World War II, the ritual took a catastrophic turn when the Einzbern family, desperate for victory after two failures, attempted to summon an Eighth Class Servant. They manifested Angra Mainyu, an entity representing "All the World's Evil," whose eventual defeat and absorption into the Greater Grail permanently corrupted the wish-granting mechanism, ensuring that any future desire fulfilled by the Grail would result only in destruction.

Overview

In appearance, Servants were multi-gendered spiritual entities whose true forms were fully corporeal, human-passing, or monstrous physical builds that visually mirrored the peak physical conditions of their historical or mythological lifetimes. As such, they came a wide variety of forms and were largely based on the identity of the spirit from legend. They featured highly distinct and diverse body structures, ranging from slender, athletic frames to massive, heavily muscled statures wrapped in fair, pale, or deeply tanned skin tones depending on their cultural origins. Because they possessed a completely mutable spiritual physiology, these entities possessed the remarkable biological capability to dematerialize their physical builds at will, turning into invisible, weightless spirit forms to navigate mortal environments undetected. Their garments consisted of elaborate, historically accurate attire that directly reflected their legends, ranging from shining steel plate armor sets and flowing silk robes to dark stealth bodysuits and ornate ceremonial capes that covered their shoulders and weapons.

These familiars were Heroic Spirits (英霊, Eirei?, localized as "Legendary Souls") of heroes who had achieved great deeds in life. When called, the spirit was removed from the constraints of time and the ring of reincarnation where they moved into the Throne of Heroes (英霊の座, Eirei no Za?) that was a place existing outside of both the World and the time axis. Once summoned, they were able to switch between their spiritual body and material body at will. Within their spiritual form, they were effectively invisible and could not be easily detected by enemies. In fact, they cannot be seen with the naked eye nor by most forms of scrying and were unaffected by any physical objects in their path. As beings of ether, they did not require oxygen to breath and the energy allowed them to appear to carry out pulmonary respiration as a land type exoskeleton lifeform. Typically, they the form of themselves in the prime of their lives. The true being of a Servant resided within the Spiritual Core (霊核, Reikaku?) which they obtained upon first materializing on the physical plane. Once formed, the Material Body formed around it which was able to bleed and take damage to organs but the core needed to be harmed in order for it to be defeated. Servants when summoned only had the memories of when they were still alive.

Servants were a materialized spiritual race of heroic entities, which naturally granted them the basic biological traits of immense physical strength, supersonic movement speeds, and a specialized physiology that bypassed standard mortal human weapons entirely. Their natural biology offered them massive internal reservoirs of magical energy that allowed individual entities to walk across water, survive lethal kinetic blunt trauma, and heal severe physical injuries as long as their spiritual core remained intact. They did not rely on standard human science, possessing instead an absolute, highly specialized ultimate attack known as a Noble Phantasm, which crystallized their historical legends into a physical weapon capable of unleashing city-destroying energy blasts or manipulating localized reality. Their primary capabilities allowed them to dominate modern military forces, though they remained strictly bound by a critical energy limitation that required them to continuously siphon ambient mana from a mortal Master to maintain their physical anchor on the Earth.

A Master had to conduct a summoning in order to bring a Servant into the world with this occurring as part of an ornate ritual. Different systems offered different means in bringing about a summoning. The summoning ritual (儀式の召喚, gishiki no shōkan?) as part of the Holy Grail War was a system designed to bring forth a reliable spirit to aid in the conflict. To bring forth a Servant, a catalyst (触媒, Shokubai?) was needed that were either symbols or holy relics used to attract the desired Heroic Spirit. Upon manifesting into the world, the existence of the Servant was maintained through the connection with their Master who anchored them in reality. Though too powerful to be controlled by humans, a Servant was bound to their Master through Command Spells that were the right to rule over the spirit. These commanded them to display absolute obedience to the Command Spell with this being a requirement for their materialisation. The use of a Command Spell also served as an incentive for a Servant to cooperate with their Master and helped keep them in line.

They were divided into multiple classes which included:

• Saber (セイバー, Seibā?) :
• Lancer (ランサー, Ransā?) :
• Archer (アーチャー, Āchā?) :
• Berserker (バーサーカー, Bāsākā?) :
• Rider (ライダー, Raidā?) :
• Caster (キャスター, Kyasutā?) :
• Assassin (アサシン, Asashin?) :
• Shielder (シールダー, Shīrudā?) :
• Ruler (ルーラー, Rūrā?) :
• Avenger (アヴェンジャー, Avenjā?) :

The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of a Servant was their Noble Phantasms (貴い幻想ノウブル・ファンタズム, Tōtoi Gensō Nouburu Fantazumu?) or Precious/Treasured Tools (宝具, Hōgu?). They were said to be derived from each hero's legend and great deeds with them serving as a secret weapon in a battle. It was held that the Noble Phantasms all had their origins from the Gate of Babylon that was the treasury of Gilgamesh who had the greatest treasures of the world collected across his lifetime. The nameless weapons were said to had acted as Noble Phantasm prototypes (原型, gentei?) before becoming part of the foundations of the legend of a heroic spirit. Typically, use of a Noble Phantasm was risky as it led to the uncovering of a True Name of the heroic spirit.

All Servants fell under different kinds of Alignment (属性, Zokusei?) that was a representation of their mentality.

An aspect of a Servant was their True Name (真名, Shinmei?) which was the identity of the heroic spirit. This allowed their enemies to learn of their foe and their capabilities through their legend. As such, they often hide their identity behind their class name. In some cases though, a Master or even the Servant themselves can be so confident in their capabilities that they freely identity themselves to their foe.

Masters were said to have the ability to analyse their Servants parameters, skills and matrixes.

Members

• Arturia Pendragon :
• Cú Chulainn :
• Gilgamesh :
• Hercules :
• Medusa :
• Medea :
• Shiro Emiya :
• Hassan-i-Sabbah :
• Lancelot :
• Iskandar :
• Gilles de Rais :
• Shirou Kotomine :
• Mordred Pendragon :
• Siegfried :
• Karna :
• Vlad III :
• Achilles :
• Chiron :
• Jack the Ripper :
• Frankenstein :
• Enkidu :
• Ishtar :
• Ereshkigal :
• Leonidas I :

Notes

• Servants were created by Type-Moon where they featured in the setting of the TYPE-Moon universe.

Appearances

• Fate/stay night:
• Fate/Zero:
• Fate/Grand Order:

External Links

• Type-Moon Wiki Entry

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