#The Tsukihime Worldbuilding Primer

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The Tsukihime Worldbuilding Primer : Part 2 -  The Demon Hunters

Hey Type-Moon fans! Have you not read Tsukihime but wondered how much of the Nasuverse lore you’ve missed out on? Then this is for you! This will be an easy to read Nasuverse worldbuilding guide meant for those who are unwilling or otherwise unable to read Tsukihime, from a very big Tsukihime fan that understands that we’ll all be dead before the remake comes out. It will discuss everything from the factions, magic, connections to Fate and Kara No Kyoukai, and anything else people might find interesting. I will also avoid any major plot spoilers in case this convinces you to read Tsukihime in the future!

(Of course you could just read all this on the Type-Moon wiki yourself, but good luck in those murky waters)

WARNING: Minor Spoilers for Tsukihime and Kara No Kyoukai

For this post, we’ll talk about the four Demon Hunter families featured in Tsukihime and Kara No Kyoukai; The Ryougi, the Nanaya, the Fujou, and the Asagami.

First off, who are the Demon Hunters?

The Demon Hunter Organization is a joining of four families in Japan with supernatural powers. Their goal? Eliminate the Oni (think of them like Japan’s demons) from the land. In recent years, such demons have intermingled with humans to the point where their hybrid children are no longer capable of being bound by spells meant for the elimination of Oni kind, but are still capable of wielding the Oni’s vast powers. Thus, the families developed their own supernatural powers in order to combat the Oni, each one claimed to be a form of psychic power and so is considered separate from magic.

First, we’ll start with a very familiar family.

1.) The Ryougi

The family at the center of Kara No Kyoukai and thus the most well-known of the Nasuverse’s demon hunters (though admittedly that’s still not much), the Ryougi were a family who essentially cultivated themselves to be born with two distinct personalities (although according to the Ryougi themselves, it’s a lot closer to having two souls) in a single body. The purpose of this was to compartmentalize: each personality would master a different set of skills, and so the Ryougis could appear to be multi-talented geniuses to the point of appearing supernatural.

Due to the deceptive nature of their family magic, the Ryougis escaped the doom that befell the other families when the era of demon hunting came to an end and became wealthy landowners. Their powers however, had the tendency to drive them mad in old age, and almost all the Ryougis killed themselves as their insanity slowly took over their lives.

In their experiments to place twin souls within a body however, they managed to create a child with an origin of  「　」(nothingness) AKA the void. This led to the child having a connection to the root of Akasha (yes, that same route magi will kill each other for in Fate) and thus a viable candidate to hold one of the most powerful weapons in the Nasuverse, the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. 

The child, Shiki Ryougi, became the main protagonist of the light novel series Kara No Kyoukai, and subsequently became one of Nasu’s biggest badasses. After losing one of her two halves, the girl found herself able to see lines around anything that, if traced, destroyed whatever object, person,or even magic they wrapped around. 

Anything at all that is capable of death or being destroyed is vulnerable to her eyes. This means that Shiki Ryougi is able to kill even extremely durable enemies with a quick cut of her knife, destroy any object blocking her way, or even neutralize powerful magic and ESP abilities with a wave of her knife or sword. Even certain beings that lie beyond the concept of death, such as Buddha’s arm, are constantly being attacked by her eyes which attempt to draw lines over them, and these only keep growing in power as she ages. It is theorized by her nemesis Souren Alaya that given enough time, her eyes might even succeed in drawing lines upon the Buddha.

2.) The Fujou

A family of magi/ESP users, the mysterious Fujou family display several abilities that all seem to center around control over other people’s bodies. The family has mostly fallen into ruin, and all we know of them are from three individuals, Kirie Fujou, as well as Tsukihime’s twin maids, Hisui and Kohaku.

Kirie Fujou, the antagonist for Kara No Kyoukai’s first story, and is, for lack of a better term, a complete monster of a psychic. A master of astral projection, the almost blind Kirie could see by projecting her mind towards locations she stayed in when she still had her sight, and was able to seize the minds of several girls, forcing them to commit suicide. She also had a second, ghostly body that she could control, haunting a commercial building the Fujou family used to own. Her killing spree put her on a collision course with Shiki Ryougi, where a battle between the last two descendants of the families determined the end of the Fujou family.

Or so we thought.

Hisui and Kohaku of Tsukihime are also part of the Fujou family (they descended from a disgraced, exiled member) who had avoided the destruction of the Fujou. 

The lovable twin maids of the Tohno mansion, the two girls appear to be normal by most circumstances. There’s just one small thing.

Although unable to perform the same kind of astral projection or body controlling magic that Kirie could, the twins have the power of the Synchronizer, which gives them the ability to share their life force with others. This leads to the strengthening of one’s supernatural abilities, as well as healing the benefactor of any malady inflicting them, whether it be physical like paralysis, or mental like insanity.

3.) The Asagami

Another ruined family like the Fujou, the Asagami were a family split into two branches, the Asakami and the Asagami. The Asakami were the major and more powerful branch, although they made the bizarre decision of worshipping the captured Oni and even interbreeding with them, until they became demonic themselves and wiped each other out. The Asagami on the other hand, quietly swept their supernatural affairs under a rug and became a family of ordinary businessmen. That is, until their old family powers manifested again in one of their children, a certain Fujino Asagami.

Fujino Asagami is an immensely powerful telekinetic, able to bend, twist, and crush any object with the incredible force of her mind. Displaying her powers at a very young age, her family began drugging her in order to sedate her abilities, but the drugs also left her with an inability to feel any pain (or indeed, any sensation whatsoever). 

She regained her abilities through a most horrible circumstance: the victim of a gang rape, one of her rapists began clubbing her with a baseball bat, and the shock reactivated and perhaps even enhanced her powers, causing her to slaughter her rapists before going on a mad killing spree throughout Mifune city.

4.) The Nanaya

The fourth and final Demon-Hunter family. While the Ryougi, Asagami, and Fujou were first shown in Kara No Kyoukai, the Nanaya did not make an appearance until Tsukihime, where the main protagonist Shiki Tohno would use his Nanaya heritage in his battles against the Dead Apostles.

The Nanaya’s original powers were having specialized eyes called Pure Eyes, which gave them vision over conceptual things. The abilities of the eyes differ depending on the individual, with Kiri Nanaya being able to see  the thoughts and intentions of people, while Shiki Tohno could spy invisible threats. They could also detect non-humans by scent, the smell of a vampire or demon filling them with an nearly maddening bloodlust.

Unsatisfied with just this however, the Nanayas developed another ability that allowed them to battle with the supernatural: Super speed. Called the Nanaya Assassination Arts, the two styles, Flashing Scabbard and Flashing Dance, allowed the Nanayas to temporarily move in superhuman speed, and also allowed them to crawl along walls and ceilings to attack from confusing angles. Doing battle with a Nanaya was like fighting a demon yourself, as their freakish abilities meant they could move faster than the eye could see, and drop down from ceilings and walls to behead you before you even realized they were there, and so the Nanaya became the most feared of the Demon Hunter families.

Kiri Nanaya in particular, was feared by the demon hybrid families. In one particularly gruesome attack, Kiri infiltrated a family of Oni, the Saiki, and killed thirty guards before dueling the head of the Saiki family one on one. Though the head of the Saiki was said to be able to kill a dozen Demon Hunters without much effort, Kiri pulled the much more powerful man underneath a table and quickly dissected him in a place where a single ordinary person would not even be able to move properly, cementing his legend as a terrifying assassin. 

Shiki Tohno on the other hand, was never trained in the Nanaya Assassination Arts, and thus has very little control over his abilities, and in fact does not know he even has speed powers. Although, several times in Tsukihime when his life or the life of someone he holds dear is threatened, he is able to call upon his heritage and do battle with terrifying monsters, occasionally even frightening them with his spidery movements and horrifying eyes.

Oh yes! I forgot to mention that point. Due to some very long circumstances in which you will need to read Tsukihime yourself to find out, Shiki Tohno’s Nanaya Pure Eyes get upgraded...

Into Shiki Ryougi’s Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

So take Shiki Ryougi’s ability to kill anything with her eyes that literally channel the void, and put it on a boy who is able to move faster than the human eye can see, and you have yourself one of the scariest combinations in this side of the Nasuverse.

As this foolish Dead Apostle is about to find out.

And that’s all for this post! Next post, we’ll talk about the forebears of the Dead Apostles, the True Ancestors, as well as the Tohno family, and the meddling sisters that get their grubby hands into any Nasuverse story, the Aozaki!

[narbarecker]

I'll reblog this properly later You need to read it It's really good

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The Tsukihime Worldbuilding Primer : Part 1 - The Factions

Hey Type-Moon fans! Have you not read Tsukihime but wondered how much of the Nasuverse lore you’ve missed out on? Then this is for you! This will be an easy to read Nasuverse worldbuilding guide meant for those who are unwilling or otherwise unable to read Tsukihime, from a very big Tsukihime fan that understands that we’ll all be dead before the remake comes out. It will discuss everything from the factions, magic, connections to Fate and Kara No Kyoukai, and anything else people might find interesting. I will also avoid any major plot spoilers in case this convinces you to read Tsukihime in the future!

(Of course you could just read all this on the Type-Moon wiki yourself, but good luck in those murky waters)

For this post, we’ll talk about the three main factions introduced in the Tsukihime franchise.

1.) The Twenty Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors

Also seen in Fate/Zero, Fate/Apocrypha, and Fate/Strange Fake, the Dead Apostles are the Nasuverse’s term for vampires, powerful monsters that feed on the living. They roam Earth in secret, disguising themselves as humans, while secretly feeding on them at night and turning their corpses into mindless slaves. They are aggressive and territorial, and thus normally stay away from each other, thankfully reducing their ability to form solid alliances and become a massive threat to humanity. 

Just like Servants, the abilities of a Dead Apostle vary per individual. Some, like Odd Borzak in Fate/Zero, are not very powerful, and are only capable of creating ghouls and controlling bees. Others like Zepia Eltnam (otherwise known as TATARI), can manifest powerful reality marbles the size of a whole city and maintain it for several days. Within Tsukihime (and apparently even in Fate considering one of them appeared in Strange Fake) 27 of these Dead Apostles form the leadership of these monsters. They are known as the Twenty Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors.

These individuals are extremely dangerous, and together they form an organization that rivals the Church and the Magus Association in power. Originally humans imprisoned to be food for the True Ancestors (a lesson for another time!), The DAA is composed of some of the most powerful Dead Apostles on Earth, each one capable of taking on servants and entirely wiping out human settlements.

A good example for what a Dead Apostle Ancestor looks like is Nrvnsqr (pronounced “Nero”) Chaos. 

This vampire keeps 666 beasts in his body, capable of using them for attack, defense, and scouting the area for enemies. The beasts themselves range from mere animals such as crows and lions to powerful magical beasts such as unicorns and dragons, making him absurdly powerful even among Dead Apostles. Though he was defeated by Shiki Tohno in Tsukihime, he was also hinted at as the reason for Richard the Lionheart and Saladin’s truce during the First Crusades in Fate/Strange Fake[1], his arrival on the battlefield forcing both sides to band together for survival.

The primary goal of this organization is the revival of The Dark Six, the very first Dead Apostle and the only one capable of uniting all of the world’s vampires under one banner. This requires an ancient ritual called the Aylesbury Valesti that would take decades to prepare for, but completion of the ritual would spell the doom of humanity (as shown by the state of the world in Fate/Extra, where said ritual is hinted as the reason behind the total collapse of magic on Earth).

In the main timeline however, The DAA suffered several defeats during their centuries-long war with the Holy Church, during which several of their members were killed or imprisoned and thus delaying the Aylesbury Valesti. Within Tsukihime and Melty Blood, several more of their members fell during their repeated attacks on Misaki town, defeated by its inhabitants.

2.) The Holy Church

REJOICE

Known to Fate fans for being the neutral judge of the grail wars and a farmhouse for psychopath villains, The Holy Church’s true purpose in the Nasuverse is to act as humanity’s shield from the supernatural, hunting anything with even a whiff of magic and keeping the general populace in the dark. While this has famously put them at odds with the Magus Association, their true enemies are the Dead Apostle Ancestors, with whom they’ve waged war with for centuries. Their agents/inquisitors, known as Executors, are all experts at fighting inhumanly powerful enemies, with the likes of Kotomine Kirei and Hansa Cervantes able to operate alone vs such creatures.

To that end, The Church has divided itself into several subfactions such as Kotomine Kirei’s Eight Sacrament Assembly or Riesbyfe’s Chivalric Order (Aka the Knights of the Church) in order to better organize their efforts to stamp out or at least control magic, with their most powerful firebrand executors becoming members of the Burial Agency, the faction of inquisitors tasked with the extermination of the Dead Apostle Ancestors and all other demonic organizations.

Burial Agents mostly operate alone, and are known to amass great power and influence while also having the freedom to ignore any direct orders from the church itself if it will interfere in their hunt. The Agency is also not above recruiting members of the DAA themselves (through force or other means), attempting to turn them on one another in order to even the odds. A good example of a Burial Agent is Ciel.

An immortal woman who has slain countless Dead Apostles, her magical ability exceeds that of magi and even her fellow executors, turning her into a one-woman army hellbent on the extermination of the undead. She is capable of wielding any weapon, including the Church’s rarest and deadliest sacred devices, and can turn even mere Black Keys into horrifying devices capable of incinerating or exploding targets. She is also a master of reinforcement magic (the same one Emiya Shirou uses), reinforcing her body in order to grant her superhuman strength and senses, allowing her to keep up with enemies as powerful as Arcueid Brunestud. She is also popularly thought of to have given Shirou his iconic red coat that he wears as Archer.[2]

By the events of Tsukihime, the Church had successfully gained the upper hand in its secret war. The Dead Apostles of the world spend most of their time in hiding, fearing the wrath of the Church and the freelancing magi like Natalia Kaminsky and Emiya Kiritsugu who would hunt them down. Despite this, the DAA themselves are unafraid of the Church, with most of them being far too powerful to be killed by conventional means. Nevertheless, with the (rather testy) alliance that the Church has established with the Magus Association and with the True Ancestor Arcueid Brunestud (whom the Church still attacks relentlessly), humanity wields enough power to keep the DAA working from the shadows.

3.) The Atlas Academy

First introduced in Kara No Kyoukai: Oblivion Recorder, the Atlas Academy is one of the three great branches of the magus association that has since shut itself off from the rest of the world. They are mostly known to Fate fans for being Chaldea’s scientists, who assisted in the construction of Chaldea’s advanced technology.

Hidden in the Atlas Mountains (according to Kara No Kyoukai), or somewhere in Egypt (according to Melty Blood), the Atlas Alchemists are the descendants of the Egyptian goddess Isis, and are concerned with only one thing: the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. No code of ethics or law binds them, allowing for any researcher to conduct any kind of experiment, no matter how strange, cruel, or horrifying, as long as the end result is never meant to leave Atlas. Due to how shut off they are from the rest of the world (and thus show up very little in the Nasuverse), little is actually known about this organization and just how powerful they really are. It is known however, that they have their own relationship with the Church and occasionally lend them the aid of their great alchemists. There are also 7 contracts in existence that bind Atlas to lend their aid to any who own them. Four of these contracts have been recovered, three more are yet to be used.

Because there is so little known about Atlas, most of what we know of them come from the only three individual alchemists to leave the institute: Satsuki Kurogiri, Zepia Eltnam Atlasia, and Sion Eltnam Atlasia. As the backstories of all three are rife with spoilers, I’ll do my best to stay away from the plot as much as possible, as well as skip talking about Zepia entirely. He’s ALL spoilers.

Satsuki Kurogiri was the first member of Atlas to ever be shown in the Nasuverse (and also the first time the institute was ever mentioned, though the Ufotable movie cut that part out). Like the other Atlas Alchemists, his brand of magic was strange and ancient, considered to be almost completely alien to the members of the Magus Association. He had the ability to speak to the souls of all things, bending them to his will. If he tells you to sleep, you’ll fall right over. if he tells you that you can’t see, then you’ve got to learn to be Daredevil before he gets away.

Though he had this ability as a child, according to the Light Novel version of Oblivion Recorder the ability disappeared as he reached puberty and resurfaced later on in adulthood, which he then honed in the Atlas mountains.

Though Kurogiri was a minor member of the Atlas Academy, Melty Blood would introduce one of its most important people as its main protagonist: Sion Eltnam Atlasia.

The Vice Director of the Atlas Academy and the next head of the whole institute (those chosen to succeed the previous director are given the name ‘Atlasia’), Sion’s personal vendetta with one of the DAA led to her expeditions outside the Institute, and also gave us a look at what kind of technologies the Atlas Alchemists have created.

Sion’s first and most noticeable asset is her superpowered mind (but unfortunately without a mechanical canine). She’s able to perform complex mathematical calculations and analysis with incredible speed and accuracy, and is able to partition her thoughts into 7 different parts that allows her to run 7 independent thought processes at the same time. This allows her to gather and process data like a computer during combat, eventually becoming able to predict movements and decisions through statistical analysis. Whether this is simply a supernatural gift or the results of experiments she ran in Atlas, it’s never made clear, although the two weapons she brings with her certainly are.

Her gun, the Black Barrel Replica, is a replica of the ancient god-killing firearm, the, er, Black Barrel. By almost all appearances it’s just an ordinary gun, but the bullets it holds in special; they have the ability to introduce the concept of death to a being that lives without it, making immortals such as Tiamat or Arcueid capable of death. Think of it like having King Hassan’s power contained in a bullet. Terrifying.

Her second weapon is a nearly invisible string called Etherlite. The Etherlite allows her to connect the mind of any individual it is attached to to her own, superior one, allowing her to read thoughts, sift through memories, and even hack the body to augment or disable its abilities. This horrifying breach of privacy and the abuse such power was capable of was too shocking for even Atlas, and coupled with their sordid ancestry, the Eltnam’s names were disgraced in the institute.

And that’s all for this post! These posts are meant to be read by fans with very little knowledge of Tsukihime, so if there’s anything confusing or unclear (or wrong, although I’m pretty confident in the accuracy of 95% of this post), please don’t hesitate to tell me and I’ll attempt to improve the content. Thank you for reading!

Notes

1 - I have not yet reached this part in Fate/Strange Fake, although I have heard from its fans that the Dead Apostle that battles Richard is in fact, supposed to be Nrvnsqr. If this is wrong, please do tell me!

2 - Try as I might, I can’t find the interview anymore where Nasu said the red coat was a gift from the Church and most likely from Ciel. If anyone could point me to it I’ll be so grateful!

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hey, so question: how exactly do true ancestors work? i only ask because i wanna know what consort yu/hinako's deal is - apparently they can feed off of myths and legends? also i find nasuverse vampire law fascinating but kinda confusing, ngl

Holy fucking shit you just reminded me I’ve been planning to write part 3 of my Tsukihime Worldbuilding Primer but I keep forgetting.

Ok so basically, think of True Ancestors as the Higher Vampires in The Witcher. They are vampires who were born vampires instead of needing to be turned, which makes them exceptionally powerful.These higher vampires were created by Crimson Moon / Type-Moon, an extremely powerful being, in his own image. Now Type-Moon was an Ultimate One, a spirit that represented a celestial being, in this case the moon. Crimson Moon discovered that Gaia had a little pest problem called humanity, and offered to create a higher race to populate the Earth and keep an eye on them just in case.

These True Ancestors were absurdly strong, and developed their own unique abilities(probably. Dead Aposltes worked the same way). They inherited his blood lust, but were banned from consuming the human race and didn’t even need the blood to live, so were told to just get over it through willpower. They would take humans into their society to act as servants / emergency craving rations. These would be the first Dead Apostles, or human vampires. Now because they were so powerful, Crimson Moon and the True Ancestors created a terminator to kill any who strayed outside the laws of their society (which include mingling with humans and abusing their powers to wreak havoc over them). That was Arcueid Brunestud, Crimson Moon’s ‘daughter’. After Crimson Moon was defeated and killed by a human mage wielding magic from peering into The Root, Arcueid was kind of ostracized by the other True Ancestors due to her job as their executioner. 

This left her vulnerable (especially since she was psychologically just a child), and a human priest called Roa who had fallen in love with her beauty (and her power) abused this to get close to her, have her suck his blood, and cause her to go on a rampage. The bloodlusted Arcueid massacred her own people, while Roa unleashed the Dead Apostles into the world.

Now Hinako is interesting because until now, there’s never been a survivor of Arcueid’s massacre of the True Ancestors. Given that this took place in the 12th century AD, Hinako would have been living as Consort Yu a full thousand years before the extinction of her people. This would mean she was breaking their laws for a very long time, and would have been exactly the kind of target Arcueid was made to kill. It’s quite likely why she disappears from history after Consort Yu’s “death”, she had to lay low or face a visit from the executioner, not to mention all the magi, priests, and Dead Apostles that would hunt her down if they knew a True Ancestor still lived.

Seems like her love for Xiang Yu was worth the risk though, since she thought disguising herself as a human magi in order to summon his heroic spirit was a good idea. 

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I noticed a lot of Nasuverse fans (especially ones that got into the universe through later installments of Fate) want to get into the worldbuilding of the Nasuverse more but have a gaping hole in their Nasuverse portfolio: the entirety of the Tsukihime franchise.

I mean, I get it. I get why. Tsukihime was Nasu at his rawest and most unfiltered, both in good and in very very bad ways. I understand that a lot of fans would much rather wait for a remake that’s never coming.  but seeing how that’s going, it could be quite some time.

With that being said, would anyone be interested in a Tsukihime primer? Basically I’ll write about all the worldbuilding you might have missed by skipping the series: the Dead Apostles, the different factions within the Church, The Atlas Academy, connections made to other Nasuverse franchises, The Demon Hunter families, etc. I would keep it as spoiler-free as possible and as easy to read as possible, and perhaps insert some commentary here and there (that I willmark as commentary don’t worry). I know you can read this all up on the Type-Moon wiki yourself, but that site’s not the easiest thing to navigate nor is it the easiest thing to read. 

I want to do this because I love seeing Nasuverse meta and I really think it could benefit a lot of these writers (or encourage would-be writers) to be on the same level as those who have played Tsukihime and the Melty Blood games.

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Hey guys I’m going to start liveblogging Hollow Ataraxia now that the voice patch is out. It’s my single favorite Fate story and the new patch gives me the perfect excuse to revisit it and give some commentary. If y’all don’t want to be spoiled i’ll be using the tag #FHA lb 

Also also, Tsukihime Worldbuilding Primer part 2 is going up this weekend. It’ll be about the demon hunter families heavily featured in Kara No Kyoukai, Tsukihime, and Kagetsu Tohya, as well as the Tohno demon family and the True Ancestors!