Recap / Fate Grand Order Event 79 Lilim Harlot

The city-eating Beast asks one question: "When all of creation disappears, who will be there to witness that end?" The city-eating Beast delivers one answer: "It is I, who feeds on civilization, the one capable of attending the world's deathbed." And at the very end, in a barren, lifeless void, I shall proclaim to myself, "What a wonderful meal."

This is surely evil, but also surely love.

But in that event—— Who will be there to attend the deathbed of the one girl left alone after the end of the world?

Written by Jin Haganeya.

Novum Chaldea finds itself under attack by a Beast. What's worse is that this sudden assault has managed to hijack even the Rayshift systems, and who should they find at the scene of the crime but their old foe Tiamat! But although she summoned herself, she is not the Beast responsible for the attack; the real aggressor takes the form of a Demon Beast Incarnadine, and Tiamat manifested to help us!

...Unfortunately, she fails, and the Protagonist is abducted via forced Rayshift.

Deposited at the bottom of the Testament World, Lilim Harlot, the Protagonist is all alone and face-to-face with its owner: Beast VI/S, Queen Draco. For reasons unknown, this realm persists despite Draco's Holy Grail no longer having power — but the far more pressing issue is Draco's actions. Reduced to a larval form and clinging to life by a thread, unwilling to die alone, she has performed what she believes to be the biggest disgrace possible for a Beast: she has forcibly contracted with a human. the Protagonist is now the master of a Beast!

As long as this maligned contract persists, the Protagonist is now considered an enemy of Humanity, and they serve as a tether with which Draco can potentially return if she is killed. But so long as Draco needs the Protagonist to live, she is forced to protect them, and she's not strong enough to rescind the contract until she's regained her full power. Only the Beast can prove the Master's innocence, but to do so requires blooming into a Beast once more... whether the Protagonist wants her to or not, especially since she plans to devour them afterward.

They are rescued from Lilim Harlot's depths by Nero's loyal assassin Locusta, accompanied by an unwitting Sétanta, chased by an overprotective Tiamat, and observed by an aloof Lady Avalon. The Protagonist and Draco must now traverse the layers of the Testament World to reclaim the lost fragments of Beast VI/S's power, the Demon Beast Incarnadines, and solve the mystery of the realm's continued existence. But not all is as it seems in the crumbling Testament World. As they see the truths of Draco's existence laid bare, it will be up to the Master whether this is the Beast's cataclysmic comeback, her redemption song, or her funeral march.

Tropes appearing in this episode

• A Million Is a Statistic: When facing Scáthach, Sétanta correctly points out to her that killing the Protagonist just for being a Beast's Master is dooming their home timeline. Scáthach's response is... that she doesn't care. She was summoned to kill Draco and that's it, nothing else matters. Sétanta quickly realizes that something is seriously wrong with his teacher.
• And Then What?: Lady Avalon asks Tiamat how she intends to walk among humanity after attacking and being defeated by them, to which she (uncertainly) replies that she'll protect humanity from other Beasts. It seems a simple enough answer at first, but it comes back to haunt Tiamat after she hears Draco's true plans for the Singularity; Draco wanted to die because she's been struggling with the same question and couldn't think of an answer. Tiamat painfully realizes what Lady Avalon was getting at and finally joins the effort to save Draco.
• Arc Hero: With all the marketing pre-event, you might have expected it to be Tiamat, and she is indeed the first new Servant you meet in the event — but surprise! You're quickly separated from Tiamat, and the actual Arc Hero you're buddying with is none other than Draco, the Big Bad of Arcade.
• Book Ends: Sétanta begins and ends his leg of the journey through Lilim Harlot the same way: clinging to the bottom of a Twilight Ladder chasing after the Protagonist.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Draco needs the Protagonist alive because she forced a contract onto them to survive; if they die, she dies. Meanwhile, the Protagonist needs Draco alive because she's their best defense against the Shadow Servants and knows the most about the Testament World, and resolving it will be an easier task with the Beast on their side rather than not. The truth, though, is that Draco wants to die and so she needs to get all the Incarnadines so she can regain her strength as a Beast and break the contract with them, thus freeing them from her and leaving her ready to die.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The first two floors are largely comedic as the party engages in typical event hijinks with Caster Gilgamesh and Jacques de Molay. The E Pluribus Unum imitation is when the story becomes serious as all the Servants there are out to kill Draco and the story stops taking Draco's situation so lightly.
• Chained Heat: Replace the handcuffs with a Servant contract, and this is Draco and the Protagonist's situation in a nutshell.
• Chekhov's Gun: During the escape from London, the Protagonist empowers Draco with a Command Spell to very quickly call her to their side, something a normal Servant wouldn't be able to do and would likely kill themselves trying; Draco's Independent Manifestation enables her to do things ordinary Servants can't. This comes into play in the finale when the Protagonist Commands Draco to live in spite of her fate to die before the thrice setting sun, as one of those things Beasts can ignore is "You Can't Fight Fate", suddenly transforming Draco into an impossible adult Nero that survived the history recorded on the Throne of Heroes.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Kadoc notes that Tiamat as an Alter Ego is not as absurdly strong as recorded by Chaldea when she appeared in the seventh Singularity.
  • Sétanta points out Scáthach is a Divine Spirit who shouldn't be summonable by conventional means, yet she's here anyway. This and her oddly single-minded desire to kill Draco clues the group in that something is wrong.
  • The Protagonist uses a Command Spell to call Draco to them from several hundred feet away nigh-instantly, something Draco herself notes would be impossible and even suicidal for an ordinary Servant. This calls to mind a similar event from the "Fate" route of Fate/stay night where Shirou issued a similar Command to Altria, who herself is an abnormal Servant.
  • Being the Master of a Beast is certainly alarming, but not impossible or even the first case in the franchise; that honor goes to Manaka of Fate/Prototype. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Beast in question was Beast VI/G, the other half of Beast VI/S.
  • Confused about how a Beast managed to force a contract onto the Protagonist? You're right to be. Indeed, only Masters can forge a contract with a Servant, not the other way around; the Demon Beast Incarnadines only thought they did. The actual contract came from Hakuno Kishinami, a former Master of Nero, who had in fact facilitated the whole thing. Existing Servant contracts can still be transferred to other Masters, which was seen as early as the original Fate/stay night, and Hakuno has just enough of their connection to Nero left to spoof the process for Draco and the Protagonist.
• Crossover: Between Fate/Grand Order and Fate/Grand Order: Arcade, with pinches of the Fate/EXTRA series thrown in to supply Draco's lore. At the end it turns out it's more than "pinches" when Kishinami Hakuno makes an honest-to-goodness appearance, making it an actual three-way crossover.
• Debut Queue: Tiamat was made summonable a week prior to the event, with Draco being added on launch day. Sétanta and the Third/Final Ascension for Draco are awarded for clearing the event.
• Easter Egg: If a player manages to stay on the event map after the designated rollover time for closing the event, the light behind the stained glass illuminating Lilim Harlot's map will disappear.
• Guilt by Association: The Protagonist's problem. Even if it isn't willing, their status as a Beast's Master means Draco can theoretically be revived as long as they're alive, and the Counter Force comes at them just as hard as Draco.
• Happy Ending Override: Or would that be a Deus ex Machina from Draco's perspective? The alternate Protagonist and Chaldea defeated Draco and left her to vanish along with Testament World, which should've been the end — but something else has taken control of the Singularity, giving Draco a slim chance at survival. She used this chance to abduct the main timeline's Protagonist, kickstarting the plot. Or, rather, that's the case from the outside. In truth, Draco was trying to die, so she modified the Testament World in order to get hunted until she died. The Incarnadines were against this, and without her knowledge abducted the Protagonist in an attempt to survive.
• Hero of Another Story: The silhouette of the Arcade timeline's Protagonist will be the opposite gender of the player. Hakuno, however, has their gender picked in an in-game choice.
• Hidden Villain: Though Draco happily proclaims her goal is to ascend to Beasthood again, she is not the main villain of the event. This is evidenced by Lilim Harlot not having faded away despite Draco's own Holy Grail being depowered, suggesting a new foe has hijacked the Testament World for their own ends. But in a twist, the villain isn't so hidden: Draco subconsciously forced this situation on herself so she could die, and the Incarnadines were the ones who summoned the Protagonist in order to save themselves from her suicide, so the actual villains are the MacGuffins themselves.
• Ironic Echo: Upon the reveal that the Protagonist is contracted to Queen Draco she drops an inversion of the classic line:
  Queen Draco: "I answer you. You are this Beast's Master."
• Irony:
  • All throughout the game, the Protagonist has been contracting Servants to fight against the Beasts. Now they've been forcibly contracted to a Beast in order to fight Servants. The ends up letting the Protagonist experience the conflict from the opposite side. It's not fun.
  • Tiamat and Draco, two Beasts who nearly drowned the world in a flood, are about to be crushed by a flood themselves due to Okeanos collapsing over top of London. Draco just has to laugh at the irony.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Draco describes the events of her original ascension as an 'arcade' she modeled off of Mobile Chaldea's Goetia storyline, and states she will devour the Protagonist whole out of 'respect for the source material'.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Discussed. Tiamat is adamant that they kill the larval Draco and be done with it, and while the Protagonist doesn't disagree, they refute that killing her now would do nothing but shove the problem under the rug. Draco's Independent Manifestation and her contract with the Protagonist would just cause her to revive later, the Counter Force would still target the Protagonist for being the Master of a Beast, killing her wouldn't resolve the Singularity, and most importantly it's a chance to see a Beast's past so humanity doesn't repeat the evils that made Draco in the first place. That last point actually gets Tiamat to back off, but she doesn't bend on her opinion until the very end.
• My Name Is ???: Hakuno Kishinami, on account of being the renamable protagonist of Fate/EXTRA, has their name listed this way.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The Protagonist invokes a Command Spell to quickly summon Draco to their side — as in suddenly empower her to make a several-hundred foot leap from a heavy-gravity zone into a flying elevator. Draco herself notes that an ordinary Servant, even empowered with a Command Spell, wouldn't be able to perform this physics- and death-defying stunt. Draco being a Beast with Independent Manifestation means she doesn't subscribe to the same rules as ordinary Servants, something that comes in handy later.
• Mythology Gag: Being structured as a Whole-Plot Reference to Fate/Extra Last Encore, there are several throughout the story:
  • Similar to Last Encore's Floor Masters, each Singularity has a Servant in charge who can warp the area to their whims dubbed its Floor Guardian.
  • Both stories skips a floor, Last Encore skipping the fourth floor while the Testament World's Okeanos collapses on its London before the latter is completed.
  • The protagonists commandeer a ship to fight in a water based environment: Nero in Encore using Imperial Privilege to use an unnamed ship against the Golden Hind, and Lilim Harlot's Altria Lancer Alter drawing on their shared title of King of the Storm to use the fallen Drake's Golden Hind.
  • It also takes elements from Fate/EXTRA CCC, most specifically the Secret Garden system when the crew go to Draco's mind during the Septem floor.
  • Hakuno could jokingly introduce themselves as "Francis Xavier" in Fate/EXTRA. They almost do so again here before realizing that the Protagonist, who is surrounded by Servants on a daily basis, might actually believe it.
  • "I can do anything, so I will do anything." This line is said in a flashback by Agrippina in regards to her actions to mold Nero into the perfect Puppet King. This line is also said by Manaka in regards to her destructive affection for King Arthur, and Manaka is similarly considered the mother of a Beast. The line is the exact same right down to the Japanese lettering.
• Out of Focus: Due to the Protagonist being abducted, the rest of Chaldea has no screentime except for the prologue and the epilogue, forcing the Protagonist to make their own judgment calls for the event.
• Perspective Flip: The Protagonist has to experience the equivalent of Chaldea throwing every single Servant at an enemy because of the contract with Draco. It's exhausting for them.
• The Reveal: A trip into Draco's Secret Garden unravels 95% of the event's plot. It's quite a doozy, because Draco was keeping quite a few secrets:
  • It wasn't Draco who abducted the Protagonist, but her Demon Beast Incarnadines acting on their own. Draco only thought she subconsciously willed them to do so, when in fact they're performing a Zeroth Law Rebellion in the name of survival.
  • Draco wasn't really trying to ascend to Beast VI/S again, nor is she going to devour the Protagonist at the end of it. Draco is trying to die, and the only reason she needs to re-ascend at all is so she can use her full Independent Manifestation to annul the Protagonist's contract with her. The Protagonist was never supposed to be involved at all, and Draco has actually been trying to save them the entire time.
  • Draco was only half-lying when she said her Holy Grail was depowered and no longer maintaining the Singularity. She actually used it just before the Incarnadines went rogue, to summon a bunch of Servants to finish her off. This was foreshadowed by the Singularity's Servants not being summoned by the Counter Force.
  • The missing 5% that even Draco wasn't aware of, only revealed in the finale: the Protagonist's contract to Draco and the Incarnadines was not caused by them. It was caused by Kishinami Hakuno, who did so in a bid for the Protagonist to save their former Servant from herself. Despite the sleight-of-hand, the Protagonist didn't need any convincing.
• Screw Destiny: Sétanta has all of the memories of his future self Cú Chulainn. Despite this, he is determined that the him standing here now can cut his own path, and proves it by taking down Scáthach. This inspiration becomes important in the finale when the Protagonist saves Draco, who as a Beast actually has the power to defy her original fate as Nero, evolving into a completely different being from the original Beast VI/S that survived the thrice-setting sun.
• Spotting the Thread: A side-event featuring Tiamat and Lady Avalon has them saving Sita from a bunch of Babylonia cameos seemingly aimed at getting rid of Tiamat specifically. Sita was given no context for being summoned other than the vague objective of "kill Beast VI/S", and Tiamat isn't even a Beast anymore and shouldn't be targeted — both blunders the Counter Force wouldn't make, meaning these Servants have a Master. Tiamat quickly pieces together that something is pulling the Testament World's strings. It turns out in the end that Draco herself summoned a bunch of incomplete Servants expressly to hunt herself down, and the ones harassing Tiamat are implied to have been directed by Locusta; the only real Servants she brought into the Singularity were the Floor Guardians.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: Despite the numerous death flags and the obvious hypocrisy of Chaldea helping a Beast, Everybody Lives, even Draco! The Protagonist not only saves Draco in the end with her full status as Beast VI/S restored, but Draco pulls a Heel–Face Turn with a burning passion to prove that the Evils of Humanity can still walk alongside humanity towards the future. It's implied that this miracle is what resulted in the summonable Draco, as if the World is testing the waters of this new possibility. Draco herself even survives to live on her own since fully-manifested Beasts don't require mana or a Servant contract to maintain their existence, making her the second truly autonomous Servant in the entire franchise after Abigail.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Draco considers resorting to contracting with the Protagonist disgraceful for a Beast, and they don't disagree. The Protagonist thinks the mess Draco is in is her getting what she deserves, and she doesn't disagree either. Both only continue together for their individual survival.
• Whole-Plot Reference: The event story is structured like Fate/Extra Last Encore. A simulation of endless conflict from a story that had started long ago repeats until a Master is suddenly brought to the bottom of the place designated as purgatory to make a contract with Nero or a Servant related to her. The two are then tasked with ending the current status quo as they ascend upwards through seven floors via elevator, encountering twisted versions of the seven story arcs from the original source material along the way.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Draco states she will devour the Protagonist the moment she finishes re-blossoming into a full Beast. She's lying. She was never planning to kill the Protagonist.
• Zeroth Law Rebellion: The Demon Beast Incarnadines gained their own will after Draco was defeated in Arcade. Since Draco was an existence that tried to defy Nero's original fate of dying before the thrice-setting sun, the Incarnadines violently rebel when she resigns herself to her fate.