History Fanfic / TheSagesDisciple

* GuileHero: Out of all the Masters, Crow is the weakest when it comes to magecraft (even Waver and Kariya had more). He leverages his WildCard status to keep everyone off balance as he scrambles to survive and thrive in the Fourth Holy Grail War. [[spoiler: When facing people that, by all rights, should be very capable of squishing him like a bug, he either relies on fast talking or hit and run tactics.]]

* KnifeNut: Crow's main armaments are a married pair of knives called the Twin Tines, E-ranked Mystic Codes created by Caster. Made from a stag's antlers, they were imbued with the concept of "purification." They function similarly to Kiritsugu's Origin Bullets, but both have to be used for power to take effect.

** [[spoiler: During their fight, Crow managed to deliver one to Tokiomi. Despite using Reinforcement magecraft on himself, Tokiomi was still went "slightly cross-eyed."

** [[spoiler: While she hasn't appeared in the story, Kiritsugu briefly compared Crow to Aozaki Touko while under the mistaken belief that the former was a puppet master.]]

* BeneathTheMask: Crow, as seen by the other Masters, is a bombastic and suicidally-confident magus with a flair for the dramatic. [[spoiler: However, Caster mentions that Crow is soft-spoken and nervous when away from the War, but drastically changes when needed. It's implied later that he separates the personas into "Crow the crazy badass" and the real Crow. He also tends to use terminology that frames his "badass" moments as a stage performance. How much is the real Crow and how much is the role he's playing aren't really clear, but it's also implied that the line is starting to blur.]]

** [[spoiler: After Crow arranged for the worms to be removed from Sakura, the animosity between the two has lessened somewhat, though Kariya is still suspicious of Crow and tends to snipe at him.]]

* MistakenForBadass: Crow deliberately invokes this trope by trying to make himself look far more dangerous and powerful than he actually is by doing things such as joining Caster on the front lines instead of hiding. [[spoiler:So far, he's convinced Emiya Kiritsugu that he's a high-tier Puppet Master by using Caster's mini-Wicker Men as decoys, Rider thinks that he's an oracle due to his future knowledge, and the rest of the competitors see him as a combination of MagnificentBastard and TheWonka. The only one that has a hint that he isn't quite what he seems is Kirei.]]

* BeneathTheMask: Crow, as seen by the other Masters, is a bombastic and suicidally-confident magus with a flair for the dramatic. [[spoiler: However, Caster mentions that Crow is soft-spoken and nervous when away from the War, but drastically changes when needed. It's implied later that he separates the personas into "Crow the crazy badass" and the real Crow. He also tends to use terminology that frames his "badass" moments as a stage performance. How much is the real Crow and how much is the role he's playing aren't really clear.]]

* BeneathTheMask: Crow, as seen by the other Masters, is a bombastic and suicidally-confident magus with a flair for the dramatic. [[spoiler: However, Caster mentions that Crow was soft-spoken and nervous when away from the War, but drastically changes when needed. It's implied later that he separates the personas into "Crow the crazy badass" and the real Crow. He also tends to use terminology that frames his "badass" moments as a stage performance. How much is the real Crow and how much is the role he's playing aren't really clear.]]

* BeneathTheMask: Crow, as seen by the other Masters, is a bombastic and suicidally-confident magus with a flair for the dramatic. [[spoiler: However, Caster mentions that Crow was soft-spoken and nervous in private, but drastically changed when it was needed. It's implied later that he separates the personas into "Crow the crazy badass" and the real Crow. He also tends to use terminology that frames his "badass" moments as a stage performance. How much is the real Crow and how much is the role he's playing aren't really clear.]]

* BatmanGambit: After acknowledging that his future knowledge will dry up fairly quickly, Crow relies on what he knows of the other competitors' personalities when planning his nightly activities.

* TheApprentice: [[spoiler: Shinji sees himself as this after latching onto Team Caster and calls Crow "Tengu-sensei." While initially reluctant, Crow went along with it since the boy had nowhere to go after getting left behind by his DirtyCoward father during the Matou house raid.]]

* DestructiveSavior: Team Caster causes a LOT of collateral damage and their actions tend to have unexpected consequences. [[spoiler: During the raid on the Hyatt Hotel, Kiritsugu lost an arm to Lancer and was forced to use a Command Seal to survive. All due to Team Caster's interference. During the Feast of Kings, a significant portion of the Einzbern Castle was demolished by a combination of Rider's Gordius Wheel and Archer's Gate of Babylon and Kirei lost the use of his left hand. All because of Team Caster's interference.]]

* OhCrap: Happens several times.

** [[spoiler: When he tried to invade Team Caster's camp to retrieve his fiance, his Servant was forced into an inescapable death match via Caster's Ath nGabla, leaving him to face Crow. Despite arguably being the strongest magus in the war, Crow brought him down with what boiled down to flashbang runestones, an enchanted slingshot, a vest of invisibility, and guerrilla tactics. To Kayneth's credit however, this was only possible because Team Caster had stolen his most powerful Mystic Code and Crow was equipped with weaponry specifically to use against him. Even then, Crow was forced to do a lot of running until he got the chance to get close and knock him out.]]

* ButtMonkey: Kayneth. As pointed out by Caster in Chapter 14, every single plan that Crow comes up with somehow comes back to bite the Master of Lancer. This prompts Caster to jokingly ask if he has an irrational hatred of blondes, to which Crow admits that Kayneth was just the easiest target, despite being the strongest magus in the war (barring Caster).

* DestructiveSavior: Team Caster causes a LOT of collateral damage.

* FanNickname: Fans of the story have started jokingly referring to it as "Grand Theft Grail War" due to how often Team Caster has to steal supplies from the other Masters.
** [[spoiler: This fic also coined the phrase "Grand Theft Babylon" after Caster used his imitation Gate of Skye to dump all of Gilgamesh's "ammunition" into the Land of Shadows.]]

* WhatCouldHaveBeen: Rictus has said that if Crow had used Ryuunosuke's summoning circle (the one he popped out of), he would have summoned Shakespeare as Caster instead of Cú Chulainn.

* WouldntHurtAChild: As much as he grumbles about it, Crow has gone out of his way to help the kids he's come across and refuses to use foul language in front of them.

* ShoutOut: [[spoiler: When Gilgamesh calls him a mongrel, Crow comments [[Literature/ThePrincessBride "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it does...]] half-breed."]]