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Antagonists

Michael Roa Valdamjong

Voiced by: Hiroyuki Yoshino (JP - Anime), Kirk Thornton (EN - Anime), Ken Narita (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Yohei Azakami (JP - Remake)

^{Click here to see him in the remake} 

"——I know. About death. About the darkness. The nothingness which I have journeyed through so many times——!"

Roa is Arcueid's primary target. He was once a high-ranking member of the Church who fell in love with Arcueid upon first sight. In his quest for immortality and as a way of expressing his confused feelings, he tricked her into sucking his blood and caused him to become the most powerful known Dead Apostle, though he was never accepted as a Dead Apostle Ancestor. Though he was eventually taken out, he had acquired a reincarnation technique that allows him to take over designated targets when his old body dies, usually those picked from magically unusual families with high status. When Tsukihime begins, he has already reincarnated himself seventeen times. His private war with Arcueid has gone on for centuries.

He also appears as an antagonist in the Fate/Grand Order Drama CD Heroic Spirit Lore Strange Tales ～ King of the Cavern Edmond Dantès which details the eponymous Avenger's backstory before starting his quest for vengeance.

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• Adaptational Badass: He is far more dangerous in the manga and the remake, where he has access to not only the magecraft he used in life, but also his powerful Reality Marble. This is because the remake version of Roa had his reincarnation mechanics changed from his mind deteriorating with every new body to actively studying and growing stronger with every new body he has.
• Affably Evil: Or at least, the original one. When Shiki is speaking to him, briefly, at the end of Ciel's route in the remake, he is quiet and polite and gives Shiki a few parting words. Especially notable in the Normal End, where he basically tells Shiki to have hope. He'll need it.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Edmond Dantès CD Drama revealed that the Roa from the Fate-side of the Nasuverse could use all of the abilites of any of his prior incarnations with the only known ones being the Fourth's barriers and the curses from the Seventh.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • To Arcueid, for tricking her into drinking his blood, stealing her strength, and causing her to kill her fellow True Ancestors in a bloodlust-fuelled rampage.
  • Also one to Ciel as it was his possession of her in her backstory that caused her to go insane and brutally massacre her family and entire village completely against her will.
  • In the Remake, he is one to Vlov too. Though details are vague, Roa seems to have manipulated Vlov into killing his mentor. Vlov came to Japan solely to kill Roa himself.
• The Archmage: He used to be this. Knowledge inherited by Ciel indicates he had in-depth knowledge on High Speed Incantation, Simplified Repetitive Incantation, Suggestion, Church Sacraments, and Necromancy, as well as inventing an own branch of Magecraft still used to this day: Numerology. His knowledge even extends to spells from the Age of Gods, something that is completely unheard of among modern Magi. The only thing that stops him from using all of that in the original visual novel is that he hasn't yet fully recovered his magecraft memories. The Remake shows that he's still no slouch in this department, being able to pull off amazing feats such as manipulating gravity to aid Shiki's maneuverability and reactivating what's leftover from Ciel's Star of Calvaria to turn the final battle against Arcueid, all while having to use Shiki's nerves as improvised magical circuits.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Shown in Ciel's True End in the Remake. While advicing Shiki, Roa has a complete grasp on what is happening around his host, and is able to clue Shiki in on what had and is about to happen using his vast knowledge and expertise. He is proven correct in all his assessments time and time again, allowing Shiki to defeat and save Arcueid with his help.
• Badass Bookworm: Most of Roa's former power came from his insanely massive knowledge of magecraft, even knowing several spells that date back to the Age of Gods; Nrvnqsr's trump card, The Soil of Genesis, being one such spell that Roa passed on to him. Nrvnqsr even theorizes that Roa may have even been able to tame the Chaos of his body had he been afflicted by the same magic.
• Big Bad: He's the primary Tsukihime villain in the Near Side routes as both Arcueid and Ciel are after him.
• Butt-Monkey: In several story routes in Actress Again. In Kohaku's route she trolls him. In White Len's, she informs him with a smirk right after he makes a "strong-eat-the-weak-law-of-nature" speech that he is at the very bottom of the Back Alley Alliance.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Like Arcueid and Nrvnqsr, no mention is made of him in the Far Side routes. When asked why in one of the Teach me, Ciel Senpai! segments, he responds that he can't fully take over the mind of someone who has already lost their mind through insanity, so SHIKI Tohno retains his original appearance and identity.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Roa's story mode in Type Lumina is exactly the same as his story in Actress Again, but due to the lack of TATARI to justify him being still alive, he instead wonders if his survival is a parting gift from "her", with the Japanese version clarifying that he's talking about someone named Paranodahlia. This is a completely new namedrop with no clarification who they are before or after this point, meaning that how this relates to anything is left unanswered. However, Dead Apostle Noel's Arc Drive is called "Pest Control Expert Paranodahlia", implying that they might either be related to Rita Rozay-en, or might be Dr. Arach as Roa seems to know her.
• Deadpan Snarker: While inside Shiki's head in the Remake, Roa is not above mocking Shiki's befuddlement at his very technical explanation of what's happening around him.
• Death of Personality: Shiki eventually realizes that there is basically nothing left of the original Roa, and by now, every reincarnation had simply been following the original directive, with nearly no trace of the man himself left.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: The remake's Ciel route changes how Roa dies twice over.
  • In the original, both Ciel and Shiki track down Roa, allowing Shiki to eventually kill him. In the remake, he gets killed shortly after the battle against Vlov by Arcueid who rips his heart out and crushes it.
  • Ciel's Normal Ending is replaced with the original True Ending where Shiki stabs himself to kill off Roa for good. The new True Ending has Roa burn himself out to activate the last star of Ciel's Calvaria Galgallin that Shiki can use to damage Arcueid's Astral Body enough for Shiki to save her, though he sticks around just long enough to give Shiki some parting words.
• Enemy Mine: He allies with Shiki for the final battle in Ciel's remake route true ending as Shiki successfully appeals him to help by commenting that it would be truly humiliating to never be seen as an opponent to Arcueid ever.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: While he does appear in the remake with his old hairstyle, this is due to him having possessed the body of SHIKI Tohno who still has a lingering influence over Roa. Once Roa has taken complete control over the body, his hairstyle changes to indicate that he has full control now.
• Fallen Hero: He was one of the two founding members of the Burial Agency. His flashback in the the Remake also states that he used to be kind and virtuous (though he lacked the capacity to love other people), and he would have become a saint had he not gone down the wrong path.
• The Fog of Ages: With every reincarnation, more and more of Roa's original personality is sliced away. At this point he's just information and intent, with only the barest fraction of his original self hanging on.
• From a Single Cell: During the full moon, his regeneration properties get amp up to the point that he is able to heal back to normal after getting eradicated ankle up by Arcueid's Marble Phantasm. Though he makes it clear that if the Moon was waning even the slightest bit, he probably would have died from that.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Back when he was possessing Elesia, the only article of clothing he is seen with is a cape. The original design had the cape covering all of his private parts, while the remake design has him covering his chest with his arm while his crotch is suffering from Barbie Doll Anatomy.
• Fusion Dance: After Akiha absorbs him, this seems to be the result. There isn't much of Roa's personality in Akiha unlike his usual reincarnations, but she gained his tenacity and willpower, becoming incredibly greedy to say the least... But she can control her power to a much greater extend than before, so it mostly works in her favour in the canon ending.
• Graceful Loser: In the original Good Ending and remake Normal Ending of the Ciel Route.
• Grand Theft Me: Everyone calls it "Reincarnation" but really, he just jumps to a different person's body.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of the Far Side, as while he never awakens in those routes, Roa's soul transferring to SHIKI's body ten years prior is what led to him going insane and ultimately kicks off the events of Tsukihime.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: A large part of his character and role in the story is how far he's fallen and how truly pathetic he is, especially compared to when he was at the height of his power.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: The black flames of Monte Cristo incinerated his soul and the last thing Dantès heard before losing consciousness was Roa screaming in agony from his being burnt to ash, ending the vampiric threat to the Fateverse once and for all.
• Immortality Immorality: He drove himself insane because he didn't understand his own feelings and thought immortality was the answer, and then he began to seriously lose his "self" after a few reincarnations. By this point all that is left of Roa is his need to live forever and a desire for Arcueid. Neither one is very conducive to being a nice a person.
• Immortality Seeker: He technically found immortality but Arcueid keeps killing him when he gets a suitable host.
• Jerkass: He's quite the douchebag.
• Killed Off for Real: He dies with no chance of reincarnation in every route thanks to Shiki's Mystic Eyes of Death Perception which reduces its targets to Deader than Dead. In Fate timelines he meets the same fate at Edmond Dantès's hands when the Avenger burns his very soul with black flames.
• Lawful Evil: His in-universe alignment for the remake.
• Lightning Bruiser: His C-Moon variant is one of the uncontested strongest characters in the game, thanks to having screen wide attacks that can be chained into each other and activate in nanoseconds. His H-Moon variant is able to turn into lightning and reach his opponent across the screen in a second as well. His F-Moon variant is a Shotoclone however.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: His original design, which if you ignore the sinister, predatory look, rather resembles an attractive vampiric pianist. His updated design reduces his hair to about shoulder length, but keeps his ethereal charm.
• Love Makes You Evil: He fell in love in Arcueid, but couldn't understand what he was feeling. He expressed his feelings the only way he could think of, tricking her into drinking his blood.
• Magical Eye: He has Mystic Eyes of Perception that give him ability to see and cut the "Life" of things, in a manner very similar to how Shiki's Mystic Eyes let him cut into the "Death" of things. Since it is the "Life" of something, however, he cannot cut inanimate objects or concepts with them like Shiki can, making his eyes considerably less dangerous than Shiki's.
• Mental World: Roa possesses a Reality Marble by the name of Overload that greatly boosts the effect of his spells when it is activated. Sadly, he never gets to show this off.
• Motive Decay: Originally, Roa wishes to attain immortality to witness the totality of humanity's accumulation of knowledge and its journey in full. Upon seeing Arcueid however, he falls deeply in love, and his drive to reincarnate shifts from his original goal to being pursued by Arcueid and seeing her again, no matter how many times she kills him. He himself realizes this and despises his loss of "purity", which is partly why he mistakes his love for her as hatred.
• Nerf: He has lost a great amount of his former power, knowledge and drive due to the repercussions of his reincarnations. Back when he had just stolen some of Arcuied's powers he was so powerful that he singlehandedly defeated Altrouge Brunestud, one of the only two potential vessels for Crimson Moon Brunestud.
• Older Than He Looks: He's in the body of Akiha's brother, but he dates back to Arcueid's earliest years, making him at least a thousand years old.
• Parasitic Immortality: This is how Roa Valdamjong achieved immortality: while he was alive in his own body, he magically prepared a number of unrelated individuals across the world as future host bodies, so when his body died, he transferred his consciousness to one of the candidates and repeated the process, thus staying alive for hundreds of years. In the story proper, Ciel is the most recent host whose body inexplicably came back to life after she was killed and Roa had already left it behind. SHIKI Tohno, Akiha's real biological brother, is the current host, to whom Roa's spirit transferred after that.
• Pet the Dog: In the Remake, after his death in Ciel's route, Roa gives some parting advice to Shiki before he goes. This is even more pronounced in the Normal End, as in that route, he never fought alongside Shiki, and his words are much less cryptic, essentially telling Shiki to hang onto hope, seemingly for no reason other than understanding what a tragic fate awaits him when he wakes up.
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: The Roa vs Arcueid fight in Roa's storyline of MBAA is full of this, from both sides.
• Psycho Electro: In Melty Blood. This is based on his branch of magecraft, Numerology, something he never got to show off in the story.
• Pure Is Not Good: He was described as a very pure man who's purity made it unable for him to accept his attraction to Arcueid.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: When he first possessed Ciel's body, he ran around violently raping and murdering her entire hometown, often not in that order.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: The cause of his Face–Heel Turn was his inability to come to terms with his attraction to Arcueid.
• Shock and Awe: His primary offensive magecraft is based on Numerology which allows him to fire devastating bolts of lightning at his targets.
• Spirit Advisor: In Ciel's True Route of the Remake, Roa's lost his chance of possessing Shiki while still being trapped in his head. Since he needs to keep Shiki alive, Roa helps him out with advice on Noel's and Arcueid's powers.
• Stealth Mentor: Roa casually points out the flaws of everyone around him during Ciel's route in the Remake. While Shiki initially writes this off as obnoxious boasting, it later clicks that Roa's actually giving Shiki just enough hints to see if he can figure out what to do on his own.
• Suicide Attack: He burns away after hijacking what remains of Ciel's Calvaria Galgallin and leaving it for Shiki to defeat Arcueid with.
• Superpower Lottery: His arsenal used to be ridiculous; Mastery of several kinds of Magecraft, a Reality Marble, knowledge of Age of Gods-class spells, as well as an insanely powerful Healing Factor that allows him to regenerate when only his ankles were left, which were all that remained after Arcueid's Marble Phantasm caused a vacuum next to his body. On top of that he has Mystic Eyes similar to Shiki's (though they cannot be used on inanimate objects). Luckily he has lost a majority of these powers with time.
• Thanatos Gambit: His psyche takes control immediately when a TATARI avatar of himself is formed. He knows he just has a single night to do anything so in his ending he awakens Archetype Earth within Arcueid just to see how long he could survive.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Him going by his middle name is probably because "Michael" is not that threatening of a name for an antagonist like him.
• Touched by Vorlons: This is why he can remain a dangerous vampiric threat despite his constant body-jumping. When one is bitten and turned by a True Ancestor, the bite will taint the person's body, mind, and soul, forever engraving the concept of being a vampire into their very essence unless the soul were to be destroyed and allowed to disperse back into the Root. By choosing to be bitten by Arcueid, Roa can be assured that every time he is awakened within a host, the body will automatically transform into a powerful Dead Apostle without fail.
• Unknowingly in Love: He fell for the main heroine, Arcueid Brunestud, but did not recognize his feelings as love, so he did everything possible to antagonize her in the hopes that she would hunt him down and he could be close to her. In the story's present, this results in him becoming the Serial Killer terrorizing the city, hoping that his 'beloved' will seek him out and he can toy with her a little more.
• Villain Decay: Both In-Universe and outside of it. When he first became a Dead Apostle he was powerful enough to defeat someone even Arcueid wasn't able to win against. By his 18th incarnation he's barely able to beat a heavily weakened Arcueid. By Melty Blood he's regarded as a total joke. The manga subverts this however by making him very powerful.
• Weak, but Skilled: The original Roa is stated to be fairly average in talents. However, his singular focus propelled him to become one of the greatest mage of his age. Ciel is able to produce some of the greatest magical feats a human is capable of from drawing on his knowledge alone.
• Yandere: Ciel's route reveals that Roa is obsessed with Arcueid and doesn't care that she kills constantly him so long as it means she's coming after him.

Nrvnqsr Chaos / Fabro Rowan

Voiced by: Kenta Miyake (JP - Anime), Jamieson Price (EN - Anime), Joji Nakata (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm)

"Very well. I now recognize you as an obstacle to me."

A man who became a Dead Apostle vampire through magical research. He was once Fabro Rowan, a researcher in the Wandering Sea branch of the Mage's Association that studies the Age of Gods. In order to prolong his immortality, he took the bodies of many different types of beasts and made them a part of himself. However, he kept doing this to the point his body now contains 666 different animals inside him including mythological creatures. This grants him an almost indestructible body, but the downside is that all the minds in a single body are slowly degrading his mind into pure chaos. Fortunately for him, this is exactly what he wants. Unlike the other Dead Apostle Ancestors, Nrvnqsr Chaos gets along well with Roa.

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• Adapted Out: He's completely absent from the remake aside from a brief cameo in Ciel's route, with Vlov taking his role in the story.
• Admiring the Abomination: A weird example, being the abomination his own body. Through his battle with Arcueid, he speaks about the peculiar nature of his body and the thrill that he gets of not knowing what kind of beast comes out from his body. For someone capable to unleash hordes of monsters for feasting in human blood, he is comparing his power with the force that originated the life on the Earth.
• Badass Bookworm: He artificially made himself a vampire about 1000 years ago.
• Badass Longcoat: It's part of his body.
• The Cameo: Makes a sudden appearance in Fate/Grand Order in the epilogue to Tunguska Sanctuary event, still being an apprentice in Wandering Sea as Fabro Rowan, informing Sion that the destruction of Wandering Sea won't affect the True Wandering Sea and offering her a chance to join Wandering Sea before she refuses.
• The Comically Serious: Plays this role on occasion, especially when he's forced into a game of tag in Kagetsu Tohya.
• Demoted to Extra: Because of how the remake has written him out of the plot, he only has one scene in a flashback when Shiki is possessed by Roa in Ciel's route.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Shiki believes Nrvnqsr is the vampire Arcueid is hunting until he realized Nrvnqsr ate all of his victims and the vampire Arcueid is hunting sucks their blood.
• The Dragon: Averted, Nrvnqsr and Roa are old friends and were contemporary magical academics before they became Dead Apostles, but they don't cooperate.
• Evil Knockoff: Nrvnqsr's power is compared to the Primordial Sea that created all life on earth. Fate/Grand Order reveals that he's aping Tiamat's ability to birth infinite, randomized offspring and her Chaos Tide.
• Expy: Look at his above picture! Does it remind you of this??◊ They also share the same Japanese voice actor.
• Fusion Dance: His body is made out of 666 beasts fused together in a single being. They literally leap out of his body, and he states that until they've taken a form, even he doesn't know what creature will come out.
• Go Out with a Smile: He is genuinely amused that he is killed in such an unanticipated way.
• I Am a Humanitarian: When he feeds on humans, he prefers to devour them whole instead of only sucking blood. This is what clues Shiki to Nrvnqsr to being a different vampire than the one Arcueid is hunting.
• Implacable Man: Arcueid says that she probably wouldn't be able to defeat Nrvnqsr even with her full power^note Though this is likely due to the composition of his body rather than sheer strength and comments that he's far, far stronger than Roa.
• Kick the Dog: He comes across a girl and consumes her merely for the sake of doing it during the fight against Shiki. She gets a fan written sidestory in Kagetsu Tohya.
• Long-Range Fighter: In Melty Blood all his attacks reach far across the screen, his summons are also very oppressive and can really restrict enemy movement.
• Mad Scientist: His entire existence is basically one big experiment to him; he is fully aware that his personality is being destroyed by his unique nature, and rather than be worried about this, he's actually impatient to see what he'll become next.
• Mental World: Nrvnqsr's magical experiments have given him full mastery over his Reality Marble, titled "Lair of The Beast King". Unlike most Reality Marbles which expand the user's mental world onto the world around them, Nrvnqsr only employs his inside his own body in a similar vein to Emiya Kiritsugu's Time Alter, reducing it's mana expendature to the point where Nrvnqsr can easily keep it perpetually active, making him functionally unkillable.
• Meaningful Name: The written out 'Nrvnqsr' may seem random, but the letters correspond to numbers in the Hebrew numbering system which add up to 666. The Hebrew characters for "Nrvnqsr" can be pronounced as "Neron Kesar" — Nero Caesar.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: So long as his internal Reality Marble is active, he cannot be destroyed without destroying all 666 of the beasts that make him up at once, an act that would require the same amount of energy that it takes to destroy an entire continent. Killing them individually will cause them to be reabsorbed and then revived. Fortunately, the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception get around this, otherwise there's no way to really kill him.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: Exaggerated as his trench coat is the only article of clothing he wears. The rest of his body outside of his head and hands is just pure darkness that he holds in a shape of a well-build human.
• Number of the Beast: His name itself adds up to 666 in the Hebrew numbering system as noted above. Beyond just having 666 beasts within his body, he can also condense all of them to transform into the 999th Beast.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain: He ultimately doesn't have anything do with any of the major conflicts: he isn't the Dead Apostle Arcueid is hunting, he's not working with Roa, and he more than likely isn't even aware of SHIKI's existence. Not to mention that he only appears in two of Tsukihime's five routes. He ultimately serves no real purpose to the narrative beyond being sent by the other Dead Apostle Ancestors to try and hunt Arcuied down, and as a Wake-Up Call Boss for Shiki, which is likely why he wound up getting Adapted Out in the remake.
• Really 700 Years Old: Nrvnqsr looks like a middle aged man with graying hair, but he is at least a thousand years of age as of the beginning of the story.
• Threatening Shark: One of the beasts contained within him is a shark, which causes one of the most hilarious and unexpected Bad Ends in the game. Imagine being eaten by a shark at the top floor of a hotel.
• Villainous Friendship: Played with. He's actually good friends with Roa, but they don't work together, much to the surprise of Arcueid.

SHIKI Tohno

Voiced by: Hiroyuki Yoshino (JP - Anime), Kirk Thornton (EN - Anime), Takako Honda (JP - Child)

" I will be counting on you. Nanaya..."

SHIKI Tohno^note the all-caps "SHIKI" being a way of differentiating how his name in Japanese is written differently from that of Shiki the protagonist is the real brother of Akiha Tohno. He was imprisoned when his demon-powers activated and he tried to kill Shiki when they were children. After Shiki was saved by Akiha, SHIKI's mind seemed to calm down a little so Makihisa postponed killing him in the hopes his mind would recover. He bears a grudge against Shiki for taking away his role in the family. His own powers are technically not those of a vampire, but do including blood sucking, cannibalism and the ability to reattach severed limbs.

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• Adaptational Badass: By virtue of Roa being generally stronger and also getting this treatment in the manga adaptation. He can fight Shiki on more equal ground in the manga and even once managed to nearly beat him in one of their fights as himself before Roa eventually took over his mind and body.
• Affably Evil: What's left of him that hasn't been consumed by his demonic and vampiric impulses genuinely cares about his friends and family, and wishes he could atone. In Hisui's route he is utterly distraught after accidentally killing his sister. In Kohaku's route, while having a discussion with Shiki, unable to recognize him after 8 years, he is friendly and personable, and reveals he deeply cherishes his childhood friendship with Shiki despite his growing madness. In Kagetsu Tohya, a version free of supernatural influence treats Shiki as a friend and brother, is proud of Akiha growing up into a fine adult despite everything, and expresses utter regret at the things he and his family did to Kohaku.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In Hisui and Kohaku's routes, he's treated as tragic figure whose mind was destroyed by supernatural forces out of his control, with only scraps left of the good-hearted boy he once was. The manga also expands his past and bond with Shiki to show he was a kind and well-meaning boy willing to die to protect his friends and family, before his demonic blood and Roa's influence consumed him.
• Ax-Crazy: SHIKI has undergone Inversion, meaning his demonic blood has become dominant. His demonic blood has twisted his mind and caused him to become obsessed with taking back what he has lost, including both his status and his sister.
• Big Bad: While Roa doesn't awaken in the Far Side routes, that doesn't make SHIKI any less of threat. Ultimately subverted, as despite his delusions of grandeur, he was little more than Kohaku's attack dog.
• Big Brother Instinct: Towards Akiha and Shiki (sorta), as shown in their childhood memories in the manga and Kagetsu Tohya. Also pops up during Drinking Dreaming Moon, when he demands that Shiki watch over Akiha, Kohaku, and Hisui for him, since he can't, as well as telling Shiki not to show up where he is (I.E. the afterlife) any time soon.
• Blood Magic: He's capable of shaping his shed blood and using them as bladed weaponry.
• Bratty Half-Pint: As a child, in the manga.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Shiki's dream connection shows his serial killings are targeting girls he thinks are Akiha or look like her, because he wants to "defile" them. In her route he decides that if she's in a relationship with Shiki she must want a relationship with her brother, and SHIKI is her brother right? This makes it seem like it's actually some sort of twisted attempt on his part to give Akiha what she wants, but is too insane for anything approaching reason.
• Butt-Monkey: Not as bad as Satsuki, but in the few side material he appears, he's mocked mercilessly.
• Character Exaggeration: The few adaptations he appears in tend to portray him as a siscon Yandere or as a general loser.
• Composite Character: He's very similar in looks and personality to Shiki Ryougi's male personality while his power, connection to the male protagonist, choice of weapon, obsession with a girl who never noticed him, and backstory are the same as Lio Shirazumi. Both are characters from The Garden of Sinners, an earlier Nasu work.
• Creepy Child: Was this, according to Akiha's route. However, since she was always afraid of him because of his dominant demon blood, this could be debatable, especially since Shiki's opinion of him (when he remembers, anyway) is entirely opposite Akiha's.
• Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: After inverting as a child, Makihisa kept him up imprisioned in hopes that his mind would recover. Interestingly, he seems to be aware of it in Akiha's route, but in Hisui's route, thanks to Kohaku manipulating him, he is convinced that Makihisa wanted to lock him up forever.
• Death Equals Redemption: Lampshaded by himself in Kagetsu Tohya.
• Decapitation Required: One of his demonic powers is his Death Resistive Body, also referred to as Immortality, which is part of why he's virtually impossible to kill — no matter what kind of damage is done to him, so long as his brain is intact, he can just keep on going. Doesn't matter if you cut out his stomach, slice him in half, or bleed him out, he'll still be alive. Of course, Shiki's Death Perception and Akiha's Plundering bypass this entirely.
• Demoted to Extra: SHIKI is one of the only Tsukihime characters, major or minor, to not be featured as a playable character in any version of Melty Blood. Several 4koma comics have made jokes on this.
• Despair Event Horizon: After killing Akiha in Hisui's True Ending.
• Freudian Excuse: He's insane and that's why he's violent and eats people, but this isn't helped by the fact that he was 'killed' by his father and everything taken away from him and given to his best friend.
• Forgotten Friend, New Foe: Before inverting, SHIKI used to play with Shiki and Akiha. Until fairly late in most routes, Shiki only has the vaguest recollection of there being another boy they played with, let alone his real identity.
• Grand Theft Me: He's Roa's choice of host for his 18th incarnation, kicking off the plot in the Near Side routes when Arcueid awakens and arrives in Miyaki City to hunt him down. In those routes, Roa assumes complete control and changes the body to body to look like his original form. In the Far Side routes, SHIKI is the one in control as he's too insane for Roa to take over.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • While Roa's the one running the show in the Near Side, his grudge towards Shiki is a result of SHIKI's influence. It isn't until Roa stabs Shiki does he gain full control of the body as SHIKI's revenge is now fulfilled.
  • In Kohaku's route, Akiha ends up inheriting his Inversion-induced madness after killing him, effectively becoming the route's Big Bad.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Not only is he a vampire because of Roa, his family also descends from Oni.
• Healing Factor: He can heal wounds by consuming human flesh. The more severe the wound, the more flesh he needs to eat, but so long as he's still alive, there isn't a wound he can't heal like this.
• The Heavy: What his role in the Far Side routes actually is: He's the muscle for the actual Big Bad Kohaku's revenge plans against the Tohno family.
• Hot-Blooded: When sane and not acting like a Psychopathic Manchild, he is shown to be very energetic but immature.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: The manga version shows that during his childhood days he knew what eventually will happen to him, therefore when the time come he wished that his best friend will do what is necessary to protect his sister. Shiki's refusal to kill his friend and deciding to Take a Third Option instead is what sets the events of the game.
• Insanity Immunity: This is how he keeps control in the Far Side routes. He's so far gone mentally that Roa has no hope of taking control of his body.
• Locked into Strangeness: His hair and eye color changed when he Inverted.
• Madman in the Attic: Was kept locked up by his father after injuring Shiki in his first inversion. After Makihisa's death, Kohaku releases him in the city to wreak havoc.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Wants to kill Shiki in order to regain his place in the Tohno family and to have Akiha back.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After killing Akiha in Hisui's Normal Ending.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: He appears as a Wraith haunting Shiki in Drinking Dreaming Moon and has a friendly chat with his brother over a bottle of sake under the full moon.
• Parental Abandonment: Was locked up by his father after inverting, in hopes that he would recover. He seems to be aware of it in Kagetsu Tohya and Akiha's and Kohaku's routes, but doesn't mind much. In the manga and Hisui's route...not so much.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He's in his late teens, but he still acts very much like a young child. Justified in that he actually was a young child when he was locked in the Tohno mansion's basement.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Like his hair color shifting to white, it's apparently due to the Inversion.
• The Resenter: He's got a major grudge against Shiki.
• Room Full of Crazy: In the anime, when Shiki discovers the room SHIKI was imprisoned, he notices large covered portions of the walls written in blood saying "Help me" over and over.
• Self-Made Orphan: He killed Makihisa under Kohaku's command.
• Serial Killer: He attacks and eats people.

• The Sociopath: When he is not being a Psychopathic Manchild. Especially in Kohaku's route and Kagetsu Tohya.
• Soul Jar: Roa made him a flawed Soul Jar at the last minute, meaning his control is rather weak.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Surprisingly, he and Shiki manage to come to a peaceful resolution in the Kohaku route. Then Akiha comes along...
• Trademark Favorite Food: In fandom, coffee, thanks to the infamous scene in Kohaku's route.
• Tragic Monster: Moreso in the manga, where his role in everyone's childhoods was more emphasized.
• Tragic Villain: Welcome to the Nasuverse, where everyone's lives suck horribly, especially the villain's.
• Transformation of the Possessed: In the Near Side routes.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: According to Shiki in Drinking, Dreaming Moon, which is confirmed in the manga.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Kohaku, in the Hisui route. While Akiha and Shiki were also used as pawns, Akiha had deduced it beforehand and played along with it out of guilt while Shiki was somewhat aware and learned the truth a short time later. SHIKI, on the other hand, was being used as a tool the entire time and never realized it even to the moment of his death. However, it is implied in Drinking, Dreaming Moon that he was aware of it and feels guilty for all the pain he inflicted on Kohaku.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As shown in the manga, he used to be a Bratty Half-Pint who was close friends with Shiki and was slightly jealous of Shiki's closeness to Akiha.
• Villain's Dying Grace: In Hisui's route he takes his final moment to ask Shiki just who he is, since he was unaware who he was fighting. This serves as the vital clue to Shiki realizing Kohaku's significance in the route's series of events.
• Walking Spoiler: It's very difficult to talk about SHIKI without giving away the reveal that the game's protagonist isn't the original Shiki Tohno.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Unlike the black-haired Shiki, SHIKI is a villain and has white hair.

• You Remind Me of X: In Kohaku's route, after SHIKI and Shiki have an encounter and discuss about killing, SHIKI points out that he reminds him of his important childhood friend, being oblivious that they are the same person.

Minor characters

Aoko Aozaki

Voiced by: Akiko Kimura (JP - Anime), Karen Strassman (EN - Anime), Kotono Mitsuishi (JP - Melty Blood, Carnival Phantasm), Haruka Tomatsu (JP - Remake)

"Hey boy, you're in my way."

Aoko is one of the four remaining Magicians (i.e. someone who can create a true miracle that defies the laws of the universe, rather than merely bend them the way the magecraft of Magi does) in the world and the youngest. Her specialty is the Fifth Magic Blue, though the specifics are only covered in Witch on the Holy Night rather than in Tsukihime. She met Tohno Shiki by chance after he was in the hospital. They formed a close bond, and she taught him many important things about life. Since she hates her name, Shiki decides to call her 'Sensei'. She provides him with the special glasses he has to block his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception ability. She then disappears. She shows up in the epilogue to Tsukihime, where she tells Shiki he's become a fine young man and Shiki finally thanks her for being there for him.

She is the main protagonist of the prequel visual novel, Witch on the Holy Night. For more information on her portrayal in that story, see her character entry here.

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• Actor Allusion:
  • Kotono Mitsuishi is best known for voicing another plucky blonde-haired moon princess warrior...
  • Perhaps less intentional, but Kotono Mitsuishi is also known for voicing the maternal figure of the teenage cast in an introspective horror story about otherworldly monsters and associations to the moon.
    • Carnival Phantasm's joke about Aoko grooming Shiki may be a nod to Misato attempting to seduce Shinji in End of Evangelion.
• The Ageless: She hasn't aged much in the three decades since her appearance in Mahou Tsukai no Yoru for the remake. It was confirmed in FGO's 6th-anniversary interview (July 2021) that she hasn't aged at all physically past the age of 20.
• Alliterative Name: Aoko Aozaki.
• Ambiguous Situation: The epilogue supposedly takes place after each ending, even in Akiha's True End, where Shiki may be dead. Subverted in that Kagetsu Tohya reveals that Shiki survived that ending, so "Eclipse" could take place after that.
• Beam Spam: In Melty Blood, courtesy of her powers.
• Big Eater:
  • Among other things is the winner of a beef-eating contest.
  • In Melty Blood: Type Lumina, if she faces off against Saber, the latter is looking for a certain restaurant and Aoko responds with, "Hey, I know that place! Let's grab a bite after we're done here!"
• Big Good: She's one of the only users of Magic and she's responsible for instilling good ideals in Shiki Tohno and giving him glasses to control his Mystic Eyes.
• Brick Joke: In Melty Blood, one of her victory quotes is telling the loser that if they see Touko ("A smoking, teacher-like woman with glasses"), beat her up and tell her to stop buying stuff under her (Aoko's) name. In Clock Tower 2015, Aoko wears a wig to appear as Touko and Touko wears Aoko's t-shirt/jeans combo to appear as Aoko to ask mages for money.
• Cain and Abel: The Abel to her older sister Touko's Cain, who hates Aoko for stealing the rights of the Family Head of Aozaki Clan. Aoko doesn't like her back.
• The Cameo: She can be seen in Fate/EXTRA along with her hated elder sister Touko — in the very same room, no less.
• Comes Great Responsibility: She scolds Shiki for attempting to use his Mystic Eyes to impress her, telling him to use his powers for good. As a user of Magic, she has huge authority in lecturing Shiki on this.
• Destructive Savior: This seems to be her specialty. Also literally. When Shiki first met her, she threatened to kick his head off. She goes through with it in Carnival Phantasm in both their first and last meetings.
• Dope Slap: Does something like this to Shiki when he tries to use his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception on a tree to impress her. She smacks him for using his powers for injustice.
• The Dreaded: A Human Magus that even Arcueid is nervous of meeting. One of the few humans who can fight Servants on her own. Dust of Osiris also fears her putting an end to her ritual.
  • In particular, when Arcuied examines Shiki's glasses and realizes who made them, she asks him if Aoko is in the city and expresses relief at not having to fight her when he confirms she left a long time ago.
• Everybody Has Standards: She views her grandfather as a monster.
• Fiery Redhead: She's a redhead (mostly because of Fifth Magic; she's actually a brunette) and a hothead.
• First Love: Is aware of Shiki's Precocious Crush on her, and happily abuses her status as such to mess with him and all the people who are in love with him, most notably Akiha. In fact, she consciously encourages his crush on her just for the fun of it, although she doesn't reciprocate. Probably. This seems to provide consistency with Aoko being a Celibate Hero back in Witch on the Holy Night, where a certain incident made her apathetic to romance in general.
• Foil: To Touko. Touko is a successful Renaissance Man while Aoko is a decent mage, but Touko is a jerkass who is willing to kill even her friends (for calling her by her Embarrassing Nickname) on Disproportionate Retribution grounds as well as being a jerk because "[she's] a Magus" and because her "immortality" has given her a nihilistic view on life. However, she does have a soft spot for Shiki Ryougi and the Kokutou siblings and tries to lead them on a better path. She's also technically achieved immortality (the goal of all Mages) by using puppets (clones) that she uses to replace her body when she gets killed. Meanwhile, Aoko is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold (mainly because she's plucky and hotheaded; she's otherwise a good person) who cares deeply about her friends (she attempts to bring Soujuurou back to life when Touko kills him, and succeeds and her becoming The Mentor to Shiki Tohno) and she remains an idealistic person. Despite being average in most fields of magecraft, she's managed to achieve Fifth Magic, all because she wanted to revive Soujuurou, and as a result, she's truly achieved immortality. Aoko also ends up being the mentor to Shiki Tohno, the owner of the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception in timelines where Shiki Ryougi doesn't have them, and is part of why he ends up being a good person.
• Hair Intakes: She has two little intakes in her hair that resemble small cat ears.
• Hero of Another Story: Heroine of Witch on the Holy Night.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's still just as harsh as she was back when she was younger but thanks to her experiences in her youth and as a now fully-grown adult she's now much more mature about it.
• Locked into Strangeness: Her hair wasn't always bright red, though the reason why has changed over time. First it was dyed, and then it was because of overuse of magic. This is explained in Witch on the Holy Night. The latter is more likely, if we count Shirou's hair color change to white because of the overuse of his Projection.
• Long-Range Fighter: Magic Gunner Blue naturally favors destructive ranged magecraft, and plays as a zoner in Melty Blood.
• Man Behind the Man: In Melty Blood Re-ACT, it's revealed she's the creator of that game's Big Bad, White Len.
• Meaningful Name: As a user of Blue, her names also happen to mean "blue child"(Aoko) and "blue cape"(Aozaki). She also earned the Brand color of Blue from the Mage Association. She hates the omnipresence of the word, and as such, Shiki's taken to calling her "master" instead.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: "Magic Gunner Blue".
• Nice Girl: She's willing to steal one of Touko's magical glasses, made it indestructible, and pass it on to Shiki to help suppress his Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and teaches him the important value of 'life' to him so he can grow up to be a better person as he is now.
• Noodle Incident: She stole Shiki's Mystic Eye Killers from Touko, which was apparently very difficult to do and doesn't want to do again. She also somehow enchants them into being indestructible.
• Not Wearing Tights: Joked about in fighting game enthusiast circles as the pinnacle of fighting game character design, Aoko operates in nothing more than jeans and a white t-shirt, highlighting her lackadaisical attitude.
• Older Than She Looks: She's only a few years younger than her sister Touko, but her appearance does not give the vibe of being an older person (Touko is hinted to be in her thirties in The Garden of Sinners, but looks mid-to-late twenties at least. Justified with her being in a doll body). Even after the 7-year Time Skip in the game, she is still mostly the same. Possibly the side effect of mastering the Fifth Magic.
• Outside-Context Problem: Inverted in her scenario in Type Lumina, which has Mario contracting her to capture Roa and interrogate him about his reincarnation knowledge. Predictably, she ends up massively overkilling Roa and blowing all his research to smithereens, then nonchalantly fixes whatever problem Mario was having with Fifth Magic.
• Parental Favoritism: According to Mahou Tsuki no Yoru, her grandfather chose her as the next head of the Aozaki clan, thus giving her the family Crest. Touko, who was the eldest child, was being groomed by their grandfather to be the family's successor, and should have received the Crest because of it. Soujuurou guesses that their grandfather had high expectations (which is saying something since this is Touko), so it can be assumed he did it to spite and punish Touko.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Her nickname is "Magic Gunner Blue" and she's indisputably the best at destroying things. Even Arcueid shows relief that she won't have to meet her.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: In a roundabout way. Aoko's story, Witch on the Holy Night, was originally written in 1996, 4 years before Tsukihime's release in 2000. Thus, Aoko was written to be a previous protagonist appearing as a cameo in a later story to mentor a new protagonist in the ways of the world she had already come to grips with. However, since Mahou Tsukai no Yoru ended up never being widely released until a Visual Novel remake in 2012, 12 years after Tsukihime's original release, this intention ended up being lost on most till Tsukihime got its own remake in 2021.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red Oni to Touko's Blue Oni. Quite literal with Touko's original design (kept in Fate/EXTRA) and pre-Mahou, where Touko had blue hair to compliment Aoko's red hair.
• Shotoclone: Aside a stationary orb attack, the serial numbers are exact.
• Sibling Rivalry: Not just that, but they absolutely loathe each other and would kill each other if given the chance... at least during Mahou Tsukai no Yoru. Touko apparently doesn't hate her as much by The Garden of Sinners (which takes place around the same time as Tsukihime, albeit in an alternate timeline), and Clock Tower 2015 suggests they've mended their relationship.

• SNK Boss: Let's see... Formerly unplayable? Check. Beam Spam? Check. Overpowered? Check. All her attacks have godlike priority and cannot be canceled or stopped? Check. Yep, she definitely fits the bill. On the other hand, her attacks are blockable, and EX-shielding any of them basically refills your magic circuit. She gets a whole new moveset when she becomes a playable character in Act Cadenza. One that doesn't make her look like a character from a Touhou Project game.

• Token Good Teammate: Like Zelretch, she's a good-hearted and powerful mage who is aware of the evils of the Mage Association and thus bring good will to everyone they meet to counteract that and because it's the right thing to do.
• Too Spicy For Yog Sogoth: In Melty Blood, Nrvnqsr believes she's too chaotic for him to absorb into his Chaos and avoids doing so.

• World's Strongest Woman: Aoko is one of the most powerful magi in the Nasuverse, even setting aside her command of the Fifth Magic. She's one of the few human characters in the franchise who's stated to be capable of fighting Servants, AKA sapient weapons of mass destruction, on even terms thanks to her overwhelming firepower and inexhaustible mana supply.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Aoko finds no problem with blowing up a city block to get her job done, but she goes out of her way to make sure that no innocent people get killed in her actions.

Makihisa Tohno

Voiced by: Kinryū Arimoto (JP - Anime), Michael McConnohie (EN - Anime)

Makihisa is Shiki's father and died immediately before the story began, at which point his daughter Akiha took over as the family head. He was a mysterious figure for Shiki and could be rather stern, but he truly did love his son. He was subject to fits of rage.

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• Abusive Parent: Akiha nostalgically remembers being thrown in the basement's cage (meant for whenever a family member got inverted) whenever she misbehaved.
• Asshole Victim: Killed by his own son, who he kept locked in a cage in the basement of his house to live out his life as an insane monster, against his son's initial wishes. To say nothing of how he physically and emotionally abused his own children for years, ordered the death of Shiki's entire family, and raped a girl the same age as his daughter for about a decade.
• Best Served Cold: It is implied that the reason he went after the Nanayas is because Nanaya Kiri badly wounded him during a moment of berserker fury.
• The Faceless: We read his diary, and there's a lot of references to him, but no actual appearances of him, even in flashbacks. He also lacks any character artwork, and the only description of him is that he was very intimidating in stature and personality.
  • In the manga, we get a glimpse of him, and he looks like an older and short-haired SHIKI (not inverted, that is).
• Greater-Scope Villain: His death is the Inciting Incident for Shiki moving back home at the start of the story, but his abuse and foolishness is still the ultimate cause of the Dark and Troubled Past of multiple members of the cast, as well as the plots of the Far Side routes.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Like all of the main Tohno family, his blood was a mixture of humans and Onis powerful enough to give him supernatural abilities at the cost of With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.

• Hidden Depths: In general he's a heartless bastard but he did go against his family to spare his son's life after he inverted.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: While being head of one of the strongest family of demon-hybrids, he worked with the demon-hunters.
• Mood-Swinger: He is described as having been a kind man, but due to his inverting he could be extremely violent and kept that part of himself in control by repeatedly raping Kohaku, who has stabilizing powers. It only helped so much.
• Pet the Dog: Despite the horrible way he treated Kohaku and the distant way he treated his children, he truly loves his son SHIKI and was unwilling to kill him, choosing to lock him up instead. He also kept mementos that were important to Kohaku and set her and Hisui very generous salaries that will be given to them if they ever leave the estate. They're enough to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives, apparently.
• Plot-Triggering Death: His death is what makes Shiki to move to the Tohno mansion.
• Posthumous Character: He died shortly before the start of the plot.

Kiri Nanaya

"Hey, old man. People's lives are very well made."

Kiri was the head of the Nanaya clan of Demon Hunters, both famed and feared as the 'Red Demon God of the Nanaya Clan'. He retired to raise his son away from the life of an assassin, which ultimately led to his death at the hands of Kishima Kouma.

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• Aura Vision: Though it was thoughts he could see, they appeared as auras.
• Badass Normal: Just a human, but able to kill untold numbers of demon hybrids.
• Deliver Us from Evil: Never exactly evil, but the birth of his son changed him significantly. He retired from being an assassin and came to view life as something precious.
• Disappeared Dad: Killed when his son was only six.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Again, not quite evil, but very determined that his son not follow the same path in life as he did. It... Doesn't quite work out.
• Expy: He seems to have partly inspired Kirei Kotomine in his Fate/Zero depiction. Kirei physically resembles Kiri and they have similar first names, as well as being emotionally distant Professional Killers. Their emotional distance even towards their loved ones also creates some complicated issues (Kiri intended to leave Shiki in the care of his wife as he had no interest in raising him and just had him for the sake of his clan until he changed his mind and decided to be a father; Kirei also had no real interest in raising a family with his wife and daughter, only doing so because he wanted to see if he could feel, and when that failed, he intended on committing suicide and leaving them), including making their only child distant to them after they leave/are killed.
• Flash Step: His "Sensou" technique lets him pull these.
• Fragile Speedster: Able to outstrip the human eye, and decidedly fragile, at least in comparison to his chosen prey, who could kill him with one blow.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: He's Shiki's actual father.
• Magical Eyes: Pure Eyes that let him see thoughts.
• No Social Skills: Happens when you don't actually leave your room until you're in your teens.

• The Quiet One: Actually didn't even learn to speak until his early teens. The way he sees it, what's the point in speaking to someone if you already know everything they're thinking?
• Red Baron: Red Demon God.
• Retired Badass: Retired from being an assassin after his son's birth, although he still did occasional bodyguard work.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: A three-person example. Kiri's sister was constantly fearful and especially terrified of demons, where his brother was hot-headed and enjoyed killing demons a bit too much, and Kiri himself was stoic and detached.

• Worf Had the Flu: It's said that if he had remained in his physical prime after his retirement, his final attack on Kouma would have killed him instantly. Instead, he fell just short of breaking his neck, and was killed immediately by the retaliatory strike.

Arihiko Inui

Voiced by: Takahiro Sakurai (JP), Dave Wittenberg (EN), Makoto Furukawa (JP - Remake)

^{Click here to see him in the remake} 

"You're my dear friend, right? I'd exchange fists with even my parents, but I have a policy of not fighting with my friends. I'm the very model of chivalry."

Shiki's best friend and rival. One of the few muggle characters in the game. His role in Tsukihime is rather minor, but in Kagetsu Tohya he gets a sidestory that shows why he and Shiki are friends and shows him to be more complex than he looks.

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• Chaotic Neutral: His in-universe alignment for the remake.
• Hidden Depths: Due to watching his grandmother commit suicide to save his life, he is not emotionally affected by death the way normal humans are. It's why he's friends with Shiki.
• Japanese Delinquent: Pierced ears, incorrectly worn uniform, dyed hair, out late and often late to school... yeah, he fits.
• Muggle Best Friend: Pretty much the only normal human in the original Tsukihime cast who is also Shiki's best friend.
• Parental Abandonment: His only living family is his sister. The above quote? His parents are actually dead.

• Vitriolic Best Buds: Oddly enough, he'd rather just be Shiki's normal friend. But by the time he was willing to be friends with Shiki, he himself had only moved from the category of stranger to this.

Backstory

Brunestud of the Crimson Moon/Type-Moon

Crimson Moon Brunestud is the Ultimate One of the Moon, which is a kind of being a celestial body creates to protect itself. Because Gaia could not make a similar being for itself, the Crimson Moon offered to allow Gaia to make copies of it. Thus came into being the race known as the True Ancestors around 2000 BC during the Age of Gods. However, from Gaia's perspective there were two problems with them: The first is that, having foresaw its death, the Crimson Moon could use the True Ancestors to reincarnate itself. Since the True Ancestors were supposed to be exact copies of the Crimson Moon, this could be possible. The second flaw was that Gaia-created beings like fairies could not drink blood or they would go insane. Since the True Ancestors were Gaia-created beings, they could not drink blood either, but because they were copies of the Crimson Moon, they had an urge to drink blood that could not be controlled without using a large amount of their own power. This meant that True Ancestors who did drink blood and go crazy were more powerful than the sane ones as the Demon Lords did not suppress their power. This is why Arcueid was created. She was born without an innate desire for blood, and so could fight the Demon Lords at full power.

Eventually, the Crimson Moon revealed that it wished to create a kingdom on earth. Then its foreseen death came about, though unexpectedly. In 300 AD, Zelretch used the Second Magic to warp it to an Earth with nothing on it, then dropped the moon on it. However, as an Ultimate One, it still, in a sense, exists. Currently there are two beings into which it can reincarnate. The first is Altrouge Brunestud. Though she does not possess the ability known as the Marble Phantasm that should be required, she still posseses the strength to hold Crimson Moon. However, she is noted to be unstable. The other candidate is Arcueid. However, Arcueid's sense of self is too strong. Even if Crimson Moon were to reincarnate into either, it would not be quite the same being it was before.

Due to being the original vampire, Crimson Moon ranks as the 3rd Dead Apostle Ancestor (number 2 in the remake).

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• Ambiguous Gender: People default to calling Crimson Moon 'he' but whether it even has a gender is unclear.
• Ambiguously Evil: Despite being opposed to the likes of Shiki or Arcueid, it doesn't seem particularly malicious and bears them no ill will, though it does wish to reincarnate through Arcueid. It's also been seen helping humans and some of its followers are more able to get along with humans than Dead Apostles who arose without its direct influence.
• Antagonist Title: His status as Type-Moon, the Ultimate One of the Moon, is the namesake for the company that makes the Nasuverse franchise.
• Blow You Away: Alt Nagel (German for Ancient Nail). It's a ridiculously powerful spell which is described as an immensely destructive pillar of wind which stretches as far as the heavens.
• Fighting a Shadow: In a sense. His body was destroyed, but he still exists inside every True Ancestor. Should they become powerful enough, he can revive inside of them. However, there were only ever two strong enough for this and neither is a suitable host.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Has a conversation with Shiki in the guise of Arcueid in a dream in one of Kagetsu Tohya's side stories. Although it does shred Shiki into eighteen pieces after the first conversation, the next chat was far more cordial.
• Gone Horribly Right: Gaia wanted an Ultimate One of its own to bring humanity to heel. It wound up getting several from Crimson Moon in the form of the True Ancestors who were each, as it was loathe to discover, a Manchurian Agent for the sinister satellite in case something happened to its main body.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Its signature move is a Colony Drop. Zelretch defeated him using one on a barren Earth where the only thing to harm was Crimson Moon himself.
• Humanoid Abomination: While it is more human than most of the other TYPEs it is still the same manner of being that they are.
• Irony:
  • Despite being the origin of all vampires and thus closer in nature to a True Ancestor, Crimson Moon is actually listed among the Dead Apostle Ancestors. Furthermore, he is not even the highest number of that group- he is surpassed, at least in terms of threat to humanity, by Primate Murder and the Dark Six.
  • The Ultimate Lifeform was vanquished by having the Moon itself colony dropped onto him.
• Magical Eye: It has Rainbow Mystic Eyes that allow it to "crush reality".
• Mental World: It has a Reality Marble of an unknown nature, only that it contains the Millenium Castle Brunestud.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The god-like ultimate lifeform of the moon.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Among other things it can create giant wind pillars that reach into space that destroy whatever they touch, create mirror images of THE MOON AND THROW THEM and it has a Knight Arm that can be used to complete the true purpose of the True Ancestors, namely "restoring the world to its natural state".
• Soul Jar: All True Ancestors are built with the capacity to become Crimson Moon again after its destruction. However, this isn't enough to allow it to return. They must also possess immense power even by the standards of True Ancestors and a weak sense of self. Those who are candidates are given the title of Brunestud and treated something like royalty. Both the remaining/active True Ancestors carry the title, though neither is in a state where they might be used to bring back Crimson Moon.
• Ultimate Lifeform: The Ultimate One of the Moon.

Altrouge Brunestud

Altrouge is a mysterious vampire who is a mix of True Ancestor and Dead Apostle. She is called the "elder sister" of Arcueid because she is the only other thing in existence that can cause the Millennium Castle to appear, which earned her the 'Brunestud' title, and likely because she is older. Her normal form is as a 14 year old girl, though she apparently has a second form as well. She has no role in Tsukihime, and is only mentioned in world-building asides. She "stole" Arcueid's long hair during a past battle, lost a fight to the first incarnation of Roa and was responsible for giving Wallachia his powers. She controls Primate Murder, the Beast of Gaia and some other Dead Apostles apparently work as her flunkies. She ranks as the 9th Dead Apostle Ancestor.

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• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: She's called a princess because she's a badass.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to Arcueid's Abel.
• The Corrupter: If Cath Palug falls under her sway, he becomes Primate Murder and a monster who feeds on humanity, instead of remaining as Cath Palug who is firmly on humanity's side.
• The Ghost: She's mentioned occasionally in background material, but we don't even know what she looks like apart from a vague "young."
• Half-Human Hybrid: Half True Ancestor, half Dead Apostle (Dead Apostles being former humans).
• Kid with the Leash: Primate Murder is the Beast of Gaia, the manifestation of the planet's will to survive. It takes a minimum of seven Counter Guardians or Grand Servants to restrain Primate Murder. Of course, Altrouge isn't a kid.
• Really 700 Years Old: Normally she appears around fourteen, though she has an older form.
• Red Baron: Let's see... The Eclipse Princess of Black Blood, The Lord of Blood and Contract, and The Princess of The Dead Apostles, contrasting Arcueid's "White Princess of The True Ancestors".
• Ultimate Lifeform: According to Fate/Grand Order, the reason why an awakened Arcueid in the remake timeline wouldn't be considered to be the Ultimate One of Earth is because she hasn't settled her score with Altrouge, a being 'that forms the celestial' on the same scale.

Kishua Zelretch Schweinorg

Voiced by: Tadahisa Saizen (Japanese - Fate/stay night Realta Nua), Ikuya Sawaki (Japanese - Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel), Brook Chalmers (English)

Zelretch is known as the Wizard Marshall and is the master of the Second Magic known as Kaleidoscope, which deals with movement between alternate realities. He vanquished the Crimson Moon, though the latter managed to suck his blood, turning him into a vampire.

Though listed as the 4th of the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors (bumped to third in the remake), he is still friendly to humanity at large and has contacts with various characters across the multiverse: He knows Aoko Aozaki and is the godfather of Arcueid Brunestud and aided in the formation of the Fate/stay night Holy Grail War system. Despite having access to the entirety of the Nasuverse continuity, he very rarely appears directly.

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• Alternate Company Equivalent: Word of God says that Zeltrech's personality is based on Jotaro Kujo.
• Alternate Self: In the pamphlet that came with the Heaven's Feel 3 Blu-Ray, it's explained that the Zeltrech there isn't a vampire, "but still immortal."
• The Archmage: Unquestionably the strongest living mage in the Nasuverse.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Even though he did defeat Crimson Moon, he was turned into a Dead Apostle in the process. It doubles as Cursed with Awesome, because 1700 years later, he's still up and kicking.

• Big Damn Heroes: In the True End of Heaven's Feel he pops in from an alternate universe (just as Rin was about to lose everything in a Mage Association's Kangaroo Court) to announce that he was taking apprentices. Rin's case was forgotten in the ensuing excitement; Zelretch praises her and takes her under his wing.
• Blessed with Suck: Word of God notes that his influence over the Nasuverse is so great that, if he were to "observe" any given Alternate Timeline, it would be considered "real". While the meaning of this was vague for a long time, later works reveal that parallel worlds have certain events that they all must follow in order to maintain uniformity, meaning that whatever events Zelretch directly has a hand in will become fact across the entire multiverse. As it turns out, this isn't a good thing — Zelretch wants to investigate the extremely irregular Fate/strange Fake timeline, but cannot actually enter the timeline lest these irregularities spread across the multiverse for the worst. Thus, with his hands tied, he has to send Ayaka Sajyou to do the investigation for him.
• Cool Sword: His personal mystic code, the Jeweled Sword, is capable of drawing an infinite amount of magical energy from parallel worlds and unleashing it with immensely destructive results. It is the same sword that he used to vanquish Brunestud.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Why, yes. Yes he did defeat Crimson Moon. However, this was only possible because he took it by surprise and required an amount of effort that Zelretch can no longer duplicate.
• Dimensional Traveler: As user of the Second Magic, Zelretch is capable of observing and traveling into parallel worlds across the Nasuverse. However as already stated in the Trope above, he must very selective of which worlds he can actually enter and influence.
• Empathic Weapon: Created one known as the 'Kaleidostick'. Unfortunately, in addition to being sentient it's sort of a jerk and has a distinct taste for humiliating its wielders. So rather than using it himself, he 'loans' it to apprentices. Poor Rin... and indirectly Illya...
• Flanderization: Later entries in the franchise portrays him as a good deal more goofy and cartoonishly Troll-like than he originally was, when he's otherwise shown to be a responsible and serious, if slightly whimsical person.
• Founder of the Kingdom: He is one of people credited for founding the Clock Tower.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Well, he's still a jerk, but he's a good jerk.
• Heroic RRoD: Defeating Crimson Moon Brunestud took an amount of effort that Zelretch cannot ever replicate, and caused his otherwise incredible physique to crumble and aged him to an elderly man instantly. This is why unlike other Dead Apostles, who all look young no matter their age, Zelretch looks like an old man.
• Noodle Incident: One of his deeds involves stopping Crimson Moon from dropping a mirror image of the Moon on Earth through the use of a Magic Circle powered with mana from countless worlds to fire a limitlessly powerful Ether Cannon to stop and destroy it. Nasu states he would need 5 times the budget of Witch on the Holy Night to do it justice.
• Old Master: Old enough that even as a vampire, he's starting to feel his age, and he is still one of the most powerful beings on the planet. He's one of the absolute most powerful things to have ever lived who defeated Crimson Moon by himself. He was 50 by the time he defeated Crimson Moon, but due to not feeding for a very long time, his body deteriorated to the point of being compared to a 70-year old man.
• Parental Substitute: Of sorts. He's officially Arcueid's godfather, though it's unclear what that really means.
• Present Absence:
  • In Prisma Illya. Not only are his Kaleidosticks a major plot point, but his opinions and orders help move the plot forwards, since Rin and Luvia follow his orders, admittedly through Waver.
  • In general, Zelretch is one of the most important characters we never see, since he has to be ''very'' cautious about when and where he interacts with the universe.
• Pro-Human Transhuman: One of the few Dead Apostles who like humans.
• Quantum Mechanics Can Do Anything: The Second Magic often makes things more convenient than they ought to be. This is Lampshaded several times in Prisma Illya.
• Really 700 Years Old: Considering he was already an old man and a vampire when Arcueid was a child, he's at least 900-1200~ years old. The Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Material reveals that he fought Crimson Moon at 300 AD, placing him at a little over 1700 years as of the 21st century. Then "Katagetsu Manuscript" reveals that he was one of disciples of King Solomon, making him be even older than that.
• Red Baron: "Wizard Marshall", a title which he gained when he was able to wrangle the self-serving mages into an unified army to fight against the Crimson Moon.
• Renowned Selective Mentor: Zelretch will occasionally take apprentices, but those that do it for the purpose of "being the pupil of a famous magus" are ground up by his style of training and drop out. Those that become his pupil to "learn from a great magus" turn out as some of the best of their generation. It is strongly implied Rin Tohsaka is on the way to being the latter, much like her ancestor.
• Secret Test of Character: It is stated that those who accept his apprenticeship out of greed for the fame, glory, and prestige of being his pupil are the only ones who crack under his Training from Hell, but those who simply desire to learn from him because he is a skilled wizard turn out okay.
• So Proud of You: He says this word for word to Rin Tohsaka as he bails her out from a Kangaroo Court, happy that his apprentice, Nagato Tohsaka, has some great descendants.
• Space Master: The Second Magic is the ability to manipulate the border between different "worlds" existing in parallel.
• Spell My Name With An S: His first name is sometimes romanized as 'Kischur.' Those who know Hebrew would probably consider it more appropriate as that means "Link" or "Connection", a fitting name for a walking conduit between realities... if it wasn't for the fact that "Kishua" also has a meaning, that being... "Eggplant". Which, in Japanese, is called "Nasu", thus making him a likely Author Avatar.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: He made appearances in several Type-Moon media but despite his dimensional-traveling abilities, he's very careful in using them. He assigned Ayaka Sayjou as his observer in Fate/strange Fake after learning about the possibility of ORT's awakening. In Mario's Arcade Mode on Melty Blood: Type Lumina, he contacts Aoko about Mario's deal with Roa on his research that could endanger humanity. However, he never shows up in other Type-Moon media that has lift-threatening and world-changing events such as Fate/Grand Order.
• Time Master: In addition to its dimensional border-bending abilities, the Second Magic is said to also have the ability to interfere with time, though to what extent is unknown, but it can be slightly explained: since Kaleidoscope allows him to land on any universe, Zelretch can visit on any given time period of that universe on a whim and such, alter any particular timeline.
• Training from Hell: Students (hand-picked and initially very eager, mind you) are more often than not left a gibbering mess and unable or unwilling to continue their careers, usually those who signed up merely for the status of being his student, rather than genuinely trying to learn from him.

ORT (aka Type-Mercury)

Ultimate One of Mercury (?)

Type-Mercury is the Ultimate One of (supposedly) Mercury. It received Gaia's dying call to exterminate humanity, and traveled through space to arrive in South America five thousand years before the Common Era, where it fell into slumber deep beneath the Earth, awaiting "the promised time". It is recognised as the 5th Dead Apostle Ancestor on a technicality, due to having a few vampire-like properties and having killed the previous holder of the rank (who was stupid enough to try and capture it).

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• Ambiguous Situation: The Character Material book's profile on ORT openly questions if came from Mercury, hinting that it may be an Ultimate One from somewhere else. In Fate/Grand Order's Cosmos in the Lostbelt Chapter 5.2 Olympus, it's further hinted that the name "ORT" might actually be derived from its place of origin in a case of Named After Their Planet, and in reality it's the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud. However, none of this is confirmed so the question still remains.
  • By Lostbelt 7 all ambiguity is thrown out of the window, as it's confirmed it's Type-Oort Cloud.
• The Assimilator: Anything it kills and crystallizes to eat will have its abilities incorporated. Since the 5th Ancestor was eaten by it, it has a partial mimicry of vampirism now within it. Grand Order reveals that it can also do this to Servants, and if it were to eat enough of them, would figure out how to summon itself as a Servant.
• Berserk Button: Don't disturb its sleep, unless you have a death wish. The incident with the previous 5th Ancestor was the equivalent of it drowsily smashing its alarm clock before going back to sleep, and Fate/strange Fake implies that if it's fully woken up it'll destroy humanity ahead of schedule.
• Caps Lock: Its name is officially romanized with all uppercase letters.
• The Dreaded: It's virtually indestructible, rivals Primate Murder in terms of human-killing capacity despite not being specialized for it, and its mere presence overwrites reality and warps the area around it. It isn't talked about as much because it's content to sleep in South America and doesn't act at all unless it's disturbed, though when it is it annihilates the offenders rather quickly. However, in Fate/strange Fake, the idea that it could be awakened a century early due to a wish made with a Holy Grail causes Zelretch to get involved. When it finally appears for real in Grand Order, the fear is founded: it's introduced as a multi-billion HP, Servant-eating thing, and unlike past examples in the game there's no way to weaken it because this is already its weakest state (it is literally Lv.1). Chaldea's attempts to fight it are as futile as a termite attacking a hurricane.
• Eldritch Abomination: ORT, a top-tier attack-type life form and the Ultimate One of Mercury (?), which is apparently sleeping somewhere in South America and is only on the list because it acts a little bit like a vampire and the previous number three on the list was stupid enough to attack it. It's so alien that it's slowly warping the territory around it into a place more like itself, no small feat since the World reasserts its reality and crushes any abnormalities, including Reality Marbles. ORT is doing something similar to a Reality Marble but on a much higher level, and winning against reality in its sleep.
• Fun with Acronyms: What does O.R.T. stand for? As revealed in Fate/Grand Order, it's One Radiance Thing.
• Giant Spider: ORT somewhat resembles one at times, and is constantly referred to by other characters as "the spider." If someone randomly talks about a spider, chances are they're talking about ORT.
• Inscrutable Aliens: Its profile states it's too alien to understand or learn Earthly concepts, so there will be no romancing Cthulhu here. Like its sibling Type Venus, it can eat others and absorb the information they have but unlike Type Venus who can truly internalize what it learns, ORT's understanding is shallow and comes across as mimicry.
• Invincible Villain: Nasu has gone out of his way to state that mankind cannot defeat ORT without help from those beyond Earth. Grand Order finally reveals why - its abilities as The Assimilator extend to literally anything. When forced to fight an army of servants, it's able to use the accumulated data acquired from eating them and the Tree of Emptiness to create a false history and etch itself into the Throne as the Grand Foreigner (which is stated multiple times over to be impossible to do).
• Kaiju: ORT is a forty-meter-tall, vaguely spider-ish, half-UFO creature.
• Non-Linear Character: Possibly, as it somehow received Gaia's dying call to exterminate humanity way ahead of time and arrived at South America in 5000 BC to sleep until the promised time.
• Punny Name: As ORT is truly Type Oort-Cloud, then confusing it for Type Mercury is a Japanese pun. Both Mercury (水星) and Comet (彗星) are pronounced Suisei in Japanese. Further along these lines, its common description as The Spider can also be considered a form of this, as both Spider (クモ) and Cloud (雲) are pronounced Kumo. Thus, "Suisei no Kumo" can be read in Japanese as either "Spider of Mercury" or "Cloud of Comets," and the latter describes the Oort Cloud perfectly.
• Reality Warper: ORT can change its surroundings to its native Crystal Valley.
• Ultimate Lifeform: It's an Ultimate One, allegedly from Mercury.
• World's Strongest Man: ORT is described as an attack-type life form with destructive power beyond anything currently on the planet. Though apparently some of the other Ultimate Ones who will respond when the "Promised Time" in Notes comes are more powerful than it, and Primate Murder, The Dark Six, Brunestud and Zeltrech himself rank higher in the Dead Apostle Ancestor Listing. This is likely because ORT will generally continue sleeping for a very a long time and until it wakes up will only be a threat to those stupid enough to enter its domain. Grand Order shows what happens if it's woken up early via peering into the future, and the goal is to NOT let it happen.

Caubac Alcatraz

Voiced by: Daisuke Kishio (Mr. Cellphone, Carnival Phantasm)

The 27th of the Dead Apostle Ancestors, he is a strong believer in the Church's ideology even after transformation into a Dead Apostle. Caubac subsequently spent most of his time hidden away in an underground cavern, and later, his own castle and great labyrinth, which he has been locked in for the past several centuries. In three, Caubac toiled away at his magnum opus, the Triten Scripture, to prove God's love and ensure the Scripture's protection. He subsequently lost track of it when it left to go be a human in Japan.

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• Animate Inanimate Object: He turned himself into a padlock out of disgust at his body requiring blood to live. He's also been using the animate cellphone Zelretch gave him to interact with the outside world.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: He intended to use Triten to prove the existence of God and thought he did by creating a functional universe in miniature. Its unintended shape as the human Hibiki Hibino only proves to him that God possibly isn't real because He would never be human.
• Luxury Prison Suite: Caubac doesn't seem to really mind the fact that he is trapped within his own labyrinth. There is no day or night inside of it so he doesn't really have a grasp on the passage of time, he can gather information about the outside world thanks to Zelretch, he can keep on "killing himself" to avoid getting hungry, and Arcueid would have a hard time finding him inside the labyrinth in order to kill him. To him, it is a world with no change that is a paradise to him.
• Meaningful Name: Caubac Alcatraz has been trapped inside a labyrinth of his own devising for several centuries, although he insists he actually prefers his labyrinth to the outside world. On the bright side, he can still interact with the outside world by way of the animate cellphone Zelretch made for him.
• Plucky Comic Relief: One of his epithets was "Comedian of the Dead Apostles", which has defined his character throughout various Type-Moon works, whether it be appearing as a wacky perverted cellphone in Mahou Tsukai no Hako and its derivative works or his backstory being a comical string of failures one after the other and locking himself away in shame. He stands in sharp contrast to the other murderous and dead serious Ancestors shown throughout the Nasuverse.
• Religious Vampire: Caubac was originally a member of the church before Crimson Moon took interest in him and turned him into a Dead Apostle Ancestor. Before Caubac's transformation into a padlock happened, he decided to write down his thoughts about God's love into a scripture, creating the Holy Scripture Triten that he decided to lock away in his Labyrinth to keep it a secret.
• Retcon: The original canon stated that he became a Dead Apostle during his research as a magus. The remake canon changes him to be affiliated with the Church and was directly transformed into a Dead Apostle Ancestor by Crimson Moon.
• Theory Tunnel Vision: He is in deep denial over what happened to Triten or the possibility of it being God because that would upend his millennia long conviction in his interpretation of Biblical scripture.

The Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors

The 27 most powerful and influential of the Dead Apostle vampires, recognized as such by the Church and the Mage's Association. Whether they turned into vampires by having their blood sucked by other vampires or had their bodies warped by their own magecraft, they are those who have transcended the normal limits of humanity and now possess a limited form of immortality. Succession rites ensure that the number is kept constant at twenty-seven even if one is slain, though despite this some positions do not appear to be filled any longer.

While the Dead Apostle Ancestor grouping only exists in Tsukihime worlds, the individual members still exist in other worlds where they are called "Superior Dead Apostles". However, many of their statuses differ greatly from their Tsukihime counterparts, such as already having died or never having reached the point of becoming a Dead Apostle.

Seven of the known Dead Apostle Ancestors have their own entries on this or other pages: Nrvnsqr Chaos, Vlov Arkhangel, The Night of Wallachia (in Melty Blood), Brunestud of the Crimson Moon, Altrouge Brunestud, ORT, and Kishua Zelretch Schweinorg, and one of the Ancestors also appears in Fate/Grand Order, though in a fairly unusual role, comparatively. For tropes concerning that character, consult the Grand Order character page, though beware of spoilers in their own right.

It should also be noted that Michael Roa Valdamjong, despite being an extremely powerful vampire, is explicitly excluded from the ranks of the Dead Apostles, with the given explanation that his "goals" differ from theirs.

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• Adapted Out: Primate Murder is removed from the list in the remake.
• Adaptational Badass: As explained in an interview, Nasu realised that the Power Creep of abilities introduced in Fate/stay night and its many spin-offs, up to the world- and reality-ending threats of Fate/Grand Order, made even top-ranking DAAs look... lacking by comparison. So with the remake, he essentially put out a update patch for the Ancestors: he cut those who were "only" relatively-amazing, replaced them with new members who were stronger and met the new standard for inclusion, and buffed the surviving members while shuffling their ranks to reflect their new power levels and standings.
• All There in the Manual: Most of them appear only in supplemental materials.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • In the remake, it's unclear which version of TATARI is active as part of the group since the list only has part of the name.
  • Be'ze's fate is left ambiguous in the Remake. He is not among the ones Arcueid listed as "sealed by the church", and he is not among the True Ancestors Mario listed as "killed by Ciel". However, she is in possession of his Blood, and Tsukihime Material I mentions that it was she who defeated him, leaving it unclear under what circumstances he was defeated and why he was not listed among the two (three in her own route) True Ancestor Ciel had taken out.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Gransurg Blackmore is styled after a raven. His Reality Marble is even called 'Nevermore'.
  • Primate Murder is often associated with canids, and is even described as "Altrouge's Demonic Dog" at one point. In Fate/Grand Order, it's much smaller than most (being about the size of a large squirrel or small housecat), but it's still recognizable as a fox-like canid.
• The Beastmaster: Merem Solomon's preferred mode of combat. His beasts actually comprise his four limbs.
• Botanical Abomination: Forest of Einnashe, that is a forest corrupted in becoming the Seventh Dead Apostle Ancestor when Arcueid screwed up the disposal of the corpse of the previous number seven, Einnashe. It's considered strange even for Dead Apostle Ancestor standards, and it can spawn similar, but less dangerous offspring.
• Canis Major: Primate Murder is apparently one, given that it's called a dog by multiple characters.
• Child Mage: When human, Merem was a kid with the power to talk to the animals and materialize the people's wishes.
• Clever Crows: Gransurg Blackmore, styled after a Raven.
• Cool Big Sis: Sumire is described as being like a drunken older sister in Character Material. In Tsukihime 2 she was supposed to turn up and drunkenly annoy Shiki.
• Cool Ship: Fina-blood Svelten is the captain of a "ghost ship".
• Cool Sword: Enhance and his sword "Avenger", for which he killed his vampire master to get it.
• Cryptic Background Reference: The Dark Six, the very first Dead Apostles, exist in a state where only thing that is known about them is that they haven't reached completion. Some lore bits around the release of the remake implies that they might be the six fairies who forged Excalibur, or related to them, but otherwise exist in complete darkness.
• Daywalking Vampire: Sumire is a variant as she is a Dead Apostle who overcome her weakness to bodies of water. However, this made her weaker on land in return, leading to her to live underwater.
• Death by Adaptation: Mario mentions Ciel having killed the True Ancestors with the principles "Castle" and "Forest", meaning Einnashe is already killed in the remake continuity.
• Despair Event Horizon: In Fate timelines where the Human Order is stronger, Gransurg Blackmore loses all hope after Zelretch defeats Crimson Moon and allows himself to be killed by the Church's Executors.
• Detachment Combat: Merem Solomon fights by detaching his own limbs, which then turn into Divine Beast-class monsters (that is, something on par with a Sphinx or a Gazer) to fight for him.
• The Dreaded: Primate Murder. There may be other entities in the Nasuverse who are more generally powerful, but Primate Murder is the absolute, number one, standout pinnacle creature when it comes to ending the lives of "primates", including humans, with the only possible competition it has for the spot being ORT. A certain entity from Fate/stay night can match them in killing "quality", but will take much longer to kill as many as they can in number. Any discussion of it tends to come with a veneer of terror.
• Dwindling Party: By the end of the remake, six of the Dead Apostle Ancestors have been either sealed away or outright killed off with their Idea Bloods taken out of the circulation, meaning that currently there are only twenty-one seats remaining.
• Expy: Enhance is said to look exactly like Dante from Devil May Cry — though it's worth noting that this is, by the early 2020s, a very old statement and he's never been properly depicted on camera in a Nasuverse work.
• Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire: Merem Solomon and Zelretch are both friendly to humanity, with the former being employed by the Church's Burial Agency. Gransurg Blackmore and Enhance might also count, given that the former is a devoted servant of Arcueid, who defines this trope, and the only certain facts about the latter are his hostility to the other Dead Apostle Ancestors and him wielding a weapon from the Church alongside a trophy from his first kill. Sumire was also planned to appear in a fairly harmless role in Tsukihime 2. And a far less threatening Primate Murder shows up in Fate/Grand Order, though it's a little unclear how much this'd apply to the Nasuverse as a whole and Primate Murder himself says that in other times and places, he's far more ugly and threatening.
• Giant Spider: Besides ORT, the remake adds a second giant spider to their ranks. Unlike ORT, this Ancestor is far more human in thought as they scream about the need for humans to understand their love in a flashback.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Sumire is described as being constantly drunk.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Enhance is said to have turned against a group of Dead Apostles planning to assassinate Arcueid.
  • If he manages to hang out with Merlin instead of Altrouge, Primate Murder turns out way more okay and less threatening (not to mention loads more adorable). He still retains a lot of his power, though, and in the exact right circumstances can even get around that "no true resurrection of the dead" rule that binds the Nasuverse otherwise.
• Humanoid Abomination: Nearly all of the Dead Apostle Ancestors are this, with them being ludicrously strong Dead Apostles with powers defying sense even for Dead Apostle standards. Brunestud of the Crimson Moon is the same type of being as ORT, but seems to have had more of a human form to judge by True Ancestors being considered copies of it. However, it may actually have had a fairly human personality, though it's not quite clear. The only ones to fully break from this trend are Primate Murder, who is pretty much always a full-blown canine of some description, and Forest of Einnashe, which is, well, a bunch of trees. ORT just barely qualifies, since it does have a recognizable(ish) head, torso, and arms.
• In the Blood: Quite literally, each of the DAA have "Idea Blood" which represents their Principles such as "Castle, therefore Kingdom" or "Sword" or "Limbs." Should a Dead Apostle qualify to inherit the Blood, their personalities will still radically alter to accommodate it. Vlov is an exception because he was taught how to resist that effect (though he wants to kill the Dead Apostle who taught him.)
• Klingon Promotion: If the one who kills a Dead Apostle Ancestor meets the requirements such as drinking blood, they will instantly earn the Dead Apostle's ranking. Incidentally, this is how ORT got on the list, by virtue of obliterating a Dead Apostle Ancestor foolish enough to disturb its slumber. It may also be how Primate Murder makes the cut, since it wasn't a vampire and isn't even human, but to date, this hasn't been elaborated on. The remake adds tighter restrictions to this process, as the Dead Apostle must also acquire the Idea Blood of the corresponding Ancestor and withstand its curse via experience of being a Dead Apostle for at least a thousand years or using certain techniques to inherit their seat.
• Mental World: A multitude of them have Reality Marbles.
• Minor Major Character: Most of them to varying degrees are incredibly relevant to backstory and establishing setting or character connections, but have nothing at all to do with the plot. Two of them stand out in particular:
  • Caubac Alcatraz who created many Labyrinths and the Holy Scripture Triten both of which have relevance to multiple works, but since he's locked away in his own Labyrinth, all of his interactions with characters are via telephone and very brief at that.
  • Rita Rozay-en as all of her character is entirely exposited with silent cameos. Her personality has been described in various glossary entries, some of her powers and her background have been explained in -A piece of blue glass moon-, her hobbies like Mystic Eye collecting have been explained in works like Witch on the Holy Night and Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, and her appearance has been revealed in the manga adaptation of Case Files. It's to the point where the audience essentially has every part of her character from cameos, namedrops, or All There in the Manual except for what she's like when serving as a character in an actual story.
• Named by the Adaptation: The remake provides names for the holders of the Twelfth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Second. Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fifth, and Twenty-Sixth slots.
• Person of Mass Destruction: One of the ones who don't even breach the top 10 is known as the "City Devourer", which should give you a vague idea as to how destructive the Ancestors can be.
• Posthumous Character:
  • In the remake, Zaria Offenbaum is established to have been killed by Vlov to take their seat, and Be'ze who held the position of number 25 and Chromclay Petastructure who held the position of number 22 were killed by Ciel some time before the game starts.
  • Stanrobe Calhin, The First Wraith, Duke of Predation and City Devourer is an Ancestor the Church destroyed in the past, but in a massive case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, whatever process destroyed him allowed him to continue to exist as a ghost that will continue to haunt the world for at least another two hundred years. Thus, despite being dead, Stanrobe is still on the list and due for exorcism.
• Red Baron: Some of their names.
• The Rival: Rizo-Waal Strout to Shiki Tohno in Tsukihime 2, according to Kagetsu Tohya.
• Sapient House: In the remake, the new list for Dead Apostle Ancestors subtly implies that the Millennium Castle of Crimson Moon is also a Dead Apostle Ancestor, holding the 4th Seat, though it is hard to tell since the list is partly blurred.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Dark Six, a.k.a. the first Dead Apostle. It's currently resuscitating and summoning it is the focus of the Aylesbury Ritual. The risk of it being un-canned is the essential thrust of the proposed Tsukihime 2.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Enhance uses a Holy Scripture shotgun.
• Spell My Name with a "The":
  • It's "The 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors." The list is important in some way that is not clear, they themselves maintain it by replacing any who die. It is likely related to Crimson Moon (aka Type Moon) who created the True Ancestors who created the original Dead Apostles. In the Fate Series, Dead Apostles exist; but they aren't nearly as strong and there is no organized 27.
  • The Dark Six are also only referred to exclusively as "The Dark Six" to the point where their name is written in Gratuitous English even in the Japanese script just to ensure that readers get the point of having "the" in front of their name. Due to their cryptic nature, it's not clear why they are referred to in this manner but it is consistently reiterated that they have an extremely important status even among this group of vampires as the centerpiece of the Aylesbury Ritual, the first Dead Apostle, their remake status of being ranked first of the Ancestors, and being the "first and highest system".
• Superpower Lottery: All of them save Alcatraz has ridiculously powerful abilities, often possess Reality Marbles and ancient magecraft that should be impossible to achieve in the modern world, making even the weakest of the DAA extremely powerful. One of them even qualifies as a full-bore Evil of Humanity in Fate/Grand Order, putting it on par with beings like the primordial goddess Tiamat.
• Sword and Gun: Enhance's fighting style.
• Too Dumb to Live: There once was a certain Dead Apostle Ancestor who looked upon the sleeping, 40m-tall Eldritch Abomination from outer space and decided to aggressively wake it up for an examination. The Ancestor was instantly reduced to red paste on the ground, and that's how ORT ended up on a list full of vampires right after it went back to sleep.
• Trans Human Treachery: Defied by Enhance — a Dead Apostle is supposed to be scornful of normal humans, but Enhance retained his humanity, and the first thing he did after becoming a full-fledged vampire (a sentient vampire, a fully-fledged Dead Apostle if not for the fact he's still subordinate to his sire) was to kill his master, usurp his position as Eighteenth Dead Apostle Ancestor, and start hunting down the other Ancestors with the purpose of destroying them.
• Unseen No More: Several of the Ancestors were first mentioned in an Info Dump or All There in the Manual and have been slowly revealed over the decades since the original Tsukihime in various works.
• When Trees Attack: The Forest of Einnashe, a tree that ended up becoming a sentient, mobile, and bloodthirsty forest after absorbing the blood of a Dead Apostle that Arcueid had killed and failed to properly dispose of. It can spawn smaller offspring called a Child of Einnashe, one of which appears in Lord El-Melloi II Case Files.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: Sumire is one of the very few able to use Marble Phantasm. Too bad she's typically too drunk to do anything with it.
• Winged Humanoid: In Talk Enhance shows the ability to sprout a pair of wings that "resemble neither those of a bird or those of an insect".

Burial Agency

The branch of the Church dedicated to obliterating the heretical no matter what, their fight to destroy what they consider evil means they will utilize anything and any person of any creed, even non-Christian ones.

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• Ambiguous Situation: The remake's list as given by Noel leaves number 5's seat unknown, making it unclear if Merem Solomon is still part of the group in this timeline. In addition, it's also left unstated whether Mr. Dawn's partner is still working with him or not as a Burial Agency duo.
• Adaptational Wimp: Implied, as the remake establishes that only six Dead Apostle Ancestors have been taken out, (one is killed by either Shiki or Ciel depending on the route, at least two of them were sealed by the Church, and at least another two were killed by Ciel excluding Vlov, leaving only one's circumstances of death/sealing ambiguous), meaning that Narbareck's old record of sealing away three Ancestors no longer applies in this timeline.
• Canon Immigrant: Two of the members in the remake version are Cardinal Noi and Sister Kiara Kisshoin, implied to be the Tsukihime versions of their Fate counterparts.
• Legacy Character: The position of director is passed through the Narbareck family, who is always referred to by their last name.
• Oddly Small Organization: There are only eight (technically nine in the remake as Narbareck was moved from #1 to being just the Director) permanent members at a time as the nature of this group being some of the most absurdly powerful agents the Church can employ, it's deemed too much of a risk to add additional slots to this group.
• Prohuman Transhuman: Kiara Kisshoin used something called "Sabbath" to transcend humanity and become a Maradeva-ranked daemon; implied to be equivalent or similar to the power she gained in EXTRA or Grand Order as "Heaven's Hole". This makes Kiara nigh-omnipotent in the world of humans... but on the lowest rung of power in the higher dimension of Demons and greater beings: a fact she only discovered after transcending her human perceptions, deflating all her grandiose ambitions at once. As her ego is unable to tolerate being a insignificant fish in a galaxy-sized pond, Kiara chose to instead remain attached to her human form and the world of humanity as a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond.

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