People and creatures outside of the Master-Servant paradigm of the Waxing Moon Ritual. They can be bystanders caught in the middle, the close friends and allies of the Masters, or figures whose presence can be keenly felt throughout the war's progression.
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Ogasawara Kaya
Voiced by: Misaki Kuno
"There's a battle going on! Which means I'm gonna help!"
Iori's stepsister, whom he has a deep bond with. She was adopted by Musashi and later by the Ogasawara clan after his death.- Alternate Identity Amnesia: She does not retain memories of what happens while Ototachibana-hime is controlling her and is completely unaware that she is being possessed.
- Break the Cutie: The "Entreat the Darkness" route is not kind to her. On top of being kidnapped again, she wakes up and finds Iori's dead body. The only saving grace is that she never learns Iori wanted to use the Waxing Moon Ritual to plunge Japan into a bloody war.
- Covert Pervert: After meeting Circe she lets slip that she's familiar with BDSM and Master/Servant play, to Iori's consternation.
- Damsel in Distress: She's kidnapped by Chiemon in Chapter 3 at Yui Shosetsu's order, since she's carrying the fifteenth Servant.
- Historical Character's Fictional Relative: Iori did have adopted siblings in real life, but none of them were named Kaya.
- Locked Out of the Loop: She is unaware of Servants, the Waxing Moon Ritual, or even that she is being possessed by a Servant. While she is let in somewhat after being directly involved more, Iori and Saber intentionally leave her out of the loop to avoid her getting herself into danger.
- Mature Younger Sibling: She goes to Asakusa to take care of Iori, who she sees as sometimes being heedless and unreasonable.
- Morality Chain: The section of Iori's profile unlocked by attaining the "Entreat the Darkness" ending notes that Kaya was the one thing keeping Iori from going off the edge and succumbing to his inner Blood Knight.
- Shipper on Deck: The second she meets Saber, she's under the misguided belief that they and her brother Iori are dating and wholeheartedly approves, even asking Saber at one point if they're considering marrying her brother. She has no idea Saber is actually married to the Heroic Spirit possessing her. She initially disapproves of Tamamo Aria and her attempts to court Iori, though by the end of the latter's Digression questline, she becomes good friends with the rogue Servant and helps her become a better cook in the hopes of wooing Iori, even scolding him when he doesn't compliment Tamamo Aria's efforts right away.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Sakura Matou from stay night, specifically the "Heaven's Feel" route. Much like Sakura, Kaya is a Living MacGuffin in that she's an integral factor of the Waxing Moon Ritual and the vessel for the Ritual itself, essentially being the 'Greater Grail' of this sub-species Holy Grail War. For bonus points, Kaya has a superpowered alter ego, though unlike Sakura's Superpowered Evil Side made manifest by Aŋra Mainiiu's corruption, Kaya is a Pseudo-Servant in that she's unknowingly playing host to Ototachibana-hime, Yamato Takeru's wife and the fifteenth Servant of the Waxing Moon Ritual.
Crimson Codex
Voiced by: Chafurin
"The bonds you make are to be cherished. ...Including the one with me!"
Iori's magecraft teacher after Musashi's passing. He is the one that teaches him about Jewel Magecraft.
- Cool Teacher: As goofy as he is, Gramps does want Iori to grow as a mage, even moreso now that Iori is regularly getting into life-or-death battles thanks to the Waxing Moon Ritual. Gramps is patient with Iori and does everything he can to help Iori succeed, even helping him construct a proper workshop.
- Dirty Old Man: While Gramps is a book, he's very receptive to being held by Takao Dayu. After initially shouting at her to be more gentle with him, he also begs her not to put him down. He also teasingly jokes that Iori is a pedophile when Tamamo Aria reveals she's got a crush on him.
- Face Death with Dignity: In the Entreat the Darkness route, when Iori plans to persist the Waxing Moon Ritual to fulfill his urge to test his blade in warfare, he informs Iori that he can absorb the power of the ritual's Grail and be able to sustain its power — but at the cost of his own sapience to do so, which he doesn't mind as the book has felt like he's lived long enough and deserves to finally pass on by choosing his time to die.
- Forced Transformation: Getting turned into a pig by Circe doesn't change him too much physically outside of the new snout, but it does make him unable to connect to leylines or to create maps.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the "Ray of Light" ending, Crimson Codex is fully willing to pull one to help end the Waxing Moon Ritual by fusing with the Waxing Moon Vessel and rendering it a mere spellbook that can be safely destroyed, but luckily, Caster's desperate attempt to defeat Iori and Saber ends up rendering his need to perform one unnecessary.
- Hidden Depths: You may start wondering who this guy actually is when he identifies Lancer not based on her iconography or fighting style but by recognizing her face, though he admits he doesn't know why he does or what her True Name is. It turns out that he is a Sealed Good in a Can, with a dead mage's soul supporting his personality—presumably, this mage met Jeanne in person while she was alive.
- In-Series Nickname: His name is a mouthful, so everyone calls him some variant of "Grandpa Red".
- Language Barrier: Gramps' contents are written in a language that Iori can't read, frustrating Iori until Gramps came to life one day and began speaking to Iori instead.
- Mentor Archetype: He is the one who teaches magecraft to Iori.
- Mr. Exposition: As Iori's magecraft tutor, he explain several of the game's mechanics, such as how use leylines and Spirit Fonts. Additionally, he's aware of the Holy Grail War and is familiar enough with its mechanics that he realizes the Waxing Moon Ritual is a sub-category. He is also the one who reveals Lancer's True Name. Because the Waxing Moon Ritual is set during Sakoku Japan, very few of the Masters have had the opportunity to learn much about French history. Thus, it falls to the Crimson Codex, a Western spellbook, to inform the other characters.
Arai Sukenoshin
A constable in charge of keeping the peace in Asakusa, Edo... who mostly delegates his duties to Iori.
- Boss Subtitles: Hilariously, in a pushover of a boss fight in the second DLC, he's introducted as "Arai Sukenoshin, the Unscrupulous Official".
- Chivalrous Pervert: It's revealed late into the games that he frequents Yoshiwara, Edo's primary red light district, on the pretence of keeping the peace... while actually ogling all the courtesans on display. Iori is surprised to discover this side of him, since previously he'd been indicated to be a laid-back but relatively professional person.
- Professional Slacker: He delegates most of his peacekeeping duties to Iori, and it's revealed late into the game that he frequently sneaks off to frequent the brothels of Yoshiwara.
- Shipper on Deck: Like Kaya, he immediately assumes that Saber is Iori's girlfriend and is supportive of their purported relationship.
Giovanni
Dorothea's second-in-command and the leader of her group of foreigner soldiers and mages who have come to Edo with her in her bid for the Waxing Moon.
- Older Sidekick: He's visibly white-haired and looks old enough to be Dorothea's father, yet he defers completely to her command.
- Small Role, Big Impact: If Assassin's route in the Keian Command Championship DLC is any indication, it was Giovanni who revealed to Dorothea that Yui Shousetsu is a homunculus.
Tsuchimikado Takatoshi
The younger brother of Tsuchimikado Yasuhiro. While he possesses little of his brother's talent for magecraft or manipulation, he is loyal and dedicated to seeing the Tsuchimikado family be restored to its former glory.
- Foreshadowing: He makes an appearance in several Digressions leading onmyouji and at one point Caster himself to several leylines to do some sort of ritual. They were the preparations for Yasuhiro's massive control spell.
- Frontline General: While his brother spends most of his time holed up in Kan'ei-ji with the Waxing Moon, Takatoshi is out in the field leading the onmyouji, doing the prep-work, and getting into clashes with monsters and even enemy Servants. He continues this even after he becomes the Overseer, heading straight to scenes of monster attacks to do damage control to uphold The Masquerade.
- Morality Chain: He's pretty much the only person Yasuhiro actually cares about, but at the same time the desire to see his younger brother reap the rewards of the plan is part of what motivates the lengths Yasuhiro will go to to win.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Though he clearly possesses some skill and knowledge in the magical arts, he freely admits he cannot hold a candle to his older brother in that regard. He is considered a superior statesman, however.
- Taking Up the Mantle: After Yasuhiro's death, Takatoshi takes over as the Waxing Moon Ritual's Overseer. As he knows he doesn't have any chance of somehow winning the Ritual at this stage, he dedicates himself and his followers to upholding The Masquerade by preventing the common folk from stumbling across the fights between Servants and dealing with the monster attacks until it's over.
Miyamoto Musashi
Voiced by:
"Iori... You were born in the wrong age."
Iori and Kaya's adopted father, one of the most famous swordsmen in Japanese history. He recently passed away without teaching Iori all of his secrets.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Musashi in history is infamous for being a massive Combat Pragmatist who saw any challenge he took as a No-Holds-Barred Contest that left many, many bodies in his wake and the male Musashi in Fate is argued as being no different compared to his female counterpart who was more straightforward in her duels. That said, his most infamous moment of underhanded guile that was his "shrewd beatdown" of Sasaki Kojiro with his oars until he was a broken mess bleeding out is omitted in this timeline, leaving Sasaki Kojiro Spared by the Adaptation, developing a more professional rivalry with him instead to the point that after his death, his former rival took it on himself to mentor his adoptive son Miyamoto Iori in his own technique out of respect.
- Blood Knight: Even as he got on in years, Musashi never lost his love of battle and adopted Iori not out of compassion but because he wanted to hone the boy into a worthy opponent he could then fight to the death.
- Combat Pragmatist: Musashi resorted to "shrewd strategy" to defeat Kojiro rather than facing the latter's sword directly. As per the myths, Musashi wielded two oars and fought with his back facing the sun so that Kojiro would be constantly blinded.
- I Was Quite the Looker: Flashbacks show him to be quite handsome when he was younger.
- Master Swordsman: In his prime, Musashi's skills were considered "invincible". Kojiro is the only one managing to come close to defeating him. In his later years, he chronicled his techniques, as well as his philosophical and spiritual views on sword-fighting, into The Book of Five Rings.
- Older and Wiser: Compared to the female Musashi, who is surprised to hear that he was a "man of culture". Iori does say that she reminds him of the stories the male Musashi told him of his youth, though.
- Posthumous Character: He died before the events of the game, and as such only appears in flashbacks.
- Warrior Poet: Musashi founded the Niten Ichiryu school of kenjutsu, focused around the use of both the katana and wakizashi in combat, and wrote the Book of Five Rings as both a guide on how to use it and a philosophical treatise on sword-fighting.
Sasaki Kojiro
Voiced by: Shin-ichiro Miki
Miyamoto Musashi's famed rival, a renowned samurai.
- Ambiguous Situation: Fate/stay night previously established that in Proper Human History, Sasaki Kojiro was not real, but a fictional character amalgamating various real rivals to Musashi. The guy summoned in stay night is not the real deal, but the best possible fit: a contemporary of Musashi's with no notoriety of his own, but who developed a version of Kojiro's Signature Move, and was then slightly shifted by the Servant summoning to better fit the folkloric Kojiro. So exactly who Samurai Remnant Kojiro is is unclear; it's possible he's someone under an alias, even the same impostor from stay night. The important thing to note, however, is that this is not Proper Human History, meaning anything is possible. Grand Order's Shimousa chapter also features a "real" living Kojiro resembling stay night Assassin and under similar circumstances, so that may also be the case here.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Defied. Years since their duel, Kojiro has come to acknowledge that every dirty trick Musashi pulled to have an advantage over him was legitimate in how lawless real combat is.
- Master Swordsman: He's an incredible swordsman who even the "invincible" Musashi feared. Although their skills were comparable, Musashi chose to fight in a way so that the sun would be in Kojiro's eye the whole time, eventually leading to Kojiro's defeat.
- Small Role, Big Impact: While he doesn't appear outside of flashbacks, he's responsible for training Iori, who eventually develops the ability to perform Kojiro's signature Tsubame Gaeshi.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Historically, Kojiro was supposed to die during his duel with Musashi yet he managed to survive that encounter and even outlive his rival to the point he was able to help give lessons to Musashi's student.
Yasomagatsuhi (Unmarked Spoilers)
Voiced by: N/A
A draconic god of destruction summoned by Caster using the Waxing Moon, serving as the final boss of the Ray of Light route.- Ancient Evil: It's old enough that even Saber, Japan's oldest hero, is only vaguely aware of it as a god of destruction shrouded in mystery.
- Boss Subtitles: Before battling it, it is prefaced by the title "False God Yasomagatsuhi - the Avatar of Calamity"
- Breath Weapon: In addition to breathing fire, it can fire a blast of destructive purple energy that only Yui's strongest spell can defend against.
- Destroyer Deity: Its epithet is "the Avatar of Calamity", and Saber refers to it as an ancient god of destruction.
- Draconic Abomination: It is an ancient god of destruction that looks like a Western dragon with the head of an Eastern dragon, but has six glowing red eyes and eyes on its wings.
- Dragons Are Demonic: It resembles a black and red Western dragon with a demonic twist, though it's actually an ancient god of calamity and destruction.
- Dragons Versus Knights: Fitting for the more straightforwardly heroic Ray of Light route, the final opponent for the Knight Class Saber, the principled ronin Iori, and the noble samurai Yui is a dark dragon god.
- Eye Beams: It can fire barrages of energy projectiles from the eyes on its wings.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: Yasomagatsuhi can fly high above the battlefield, putting it out of the range of most of the attacks in the game—to the point that an improperly timed and situated area-of-effect Noble Phantasm can miss it entirely.
- God of Evil: It's a god of calamity and corruption born from Izanami cleansing himself of the corruption of Yomi, alongside a sibling Destroyer Deity called Omagatsuhi.
- Godzilla Threshold: Yasomagatsuhi is Caster's ultimate weapon, but one that requires so much magical energy to summon and control such a malevolent Divine Spirit almost nothing would actually be worth using it against. As the notes describing it detail:If Puppet Playground can be considered a trump card, then this is a forbidden art to be used only when victory must be achieved at any cost.
- Physical God: Yasomagatsuhi is a Shinto kami mentioned in the Kojiki written by Hieda-no-Are. As such, he is able to summon it as his trump card within his Reality Marble, though he needs a massive amount of mana to do so. So much so that Zheng needs to use all three of his Command Seals on top of Caster shoving the Waxing Moon's Vessel into the orb of darkness it emerges from to manifest it, and even then Zheng complains in pain and exhaustion it might well kill him just from the mana drain regardless.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: Its scales are jet black while its hair is fiery red... and in the case of its underbelly literally fiery.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Caster uses Zheng's Command Seals and the Waxing Moon's stockpile of corrupted mana to summon it to defeat Iori, Yui, and especially Saber—who has a knack for slaying gods.Caster: Catastrophe incarnate, arise from the void. Manifest thyself! ...Invoke the Demigod - Yasomagatsuhi!
Great God Ibuki
Voiced by: N/A
The ancient snake-god that presides over Mt. Ibuki, better known as the Yamata-no-Orochi.- Cool Sword: The Amenomurakumo-no-Tsurugi/Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi/Kusanagi-no-Tachi, among other names, is a powerful divine sword sealed within the Orochi's body until it was taken by Susano. Both Saber and Ibuki-Douji wield versions of it, though Ibuki-Douji consider's Saber's version to be the real deal due to them having been summoned first.
- Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Saber or rather Yamato Takeru was killed when they angered the Great God Ibuki and was subsequently cursed to death by illness. Even a slayer of gods and demons couldn't overcome this particular god.
- Draconic Abomination: Its true form is a mountain-sized dragon-god with eight heads and eight tails, and even the fraction of its power possessed by Assassin and Saber is able to level cities. As a Divided Spirit of it, Ibuki-Douji possesses the power to cause natural disasters that could decimate a significant chunk of Japan.
- Fighting a Shadow: The Great Orochi able to be summoned by Assassin and Ibuki-Douji is an avatar of the Yamata-no-Orochi, but only possesses a fraction of the serpent/dragon-god's full power—being capable of levelling cities while rampaging rather than whole countries.
- The Ghost: Saber, Assassin, and Ibuki-Douji derive their powers from it and can summon avatars of it using their Noble Phantasms, but Ibuki itself doesn't directly appear.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Great God Ibuki has served as an antagonistic force in several Servants' backstories—having killed Saber, cursed Assassin to become a human/snake-god hybrid, and fathered several of the oni of Mount Ooe that Rider was sent to subjugate (Shuten-Douji from Fate/Grand Order being an offshoot of Ibuki-Douji).
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Prior to becoming the guardian deity of Mt. Ibuki, the Yamata-no-Orochi terrorized Japan and devoured other earthbound deities until being attacked by Susano.
- Multiple Head Case: It has eight heads, as seen when its visage is summoned by Saber's "Eight-Current Raging Storm" Noble Phantasm and Ibuki-Douji's "Octo-Pulsing Carnage Strike: Divine Laceration" Noble Phantasm.
- Not Quite Dead: The Kojiki and other compilations of early Japanese myths state that it was slain by the storm-god Susano, who got it drunk and cut off its heads. However, it survived the encounter and became the guardian deity of Mt. Ibuki, "fathering" a female Divided Spirit called Ibuki-Douji, cursing Assassin to become a snake-god/human hybrid, and killing Saber when they picked a fight with it.
- Orochi: It is the Yamata-no-Orochi of Japanese myth, a mountain-sized dragon-god with eight serpentine heads and eight tails. Barely surviving being cut to ribbons by Susano, it retreated to Mt. Ibuki and became worshipped as a snake-god.
Yagyu Toshiyoshi
Yagyu Munenori's nephew.
- BFS: In his true form, Toshiyoshi wields a cursed odachi with forward-curving branched protrusions, wreathed in red and black energy.
- Demon of Human Origin: He is an onryō whose true form is an oni-like monster with flaming red hair, driven by hatred and resentment for his uncle.
- Enemy Mine: In life, Toshiyoshi and Munenori were heads of rival branches of the Yagyu clan, with Toshiyoshi hating his uncle's guts. Even after death, Toshiyoshi was corrupted into a vengeful spirit by his hatred and grudges, and sees Munenori being reanimated as a Servant as a chance to get revenge.
- Red Herring: While Iori is initially suspicious of the enigmatic Yagyu Munenori, it's initially indicated that Toshiyoshi is the one behind the tsujigiri killings and the weird monstrous swordsmen who use Yagyu swordsmanship. However, it turns out that Iori was right all along and that Munenori was behind almost everything, with Toshiyoshi's vengeful ghost manifesting to exact revenge on his uncle and seizing control of his shadow minions.
- Red Is Violent: He his true form as the walking dead has red hair and a red katana, along with a propensity for being violent.
- Related Differently in the Adaptation: MAYBE. There was a Yagyū Hyōgonosuke (柳生 兵庫助, 1579–1650) or — Toshitoshi (利厳) who was the founder of the Owari mainline of the Yagyū Shinkage-ryū style of swordsmanship in the early Edo period. He was the grandson of Yagyū Muneyoshi (Sekishūsai). His name is sometimes mispronounced as Toshiyoshi. It only muddle due to his real name being the mispronunciation yet is called 'Hyougonosuke of Owari' in-game. So whether he's the historical figure or not is up for interpretation.
- Vengeful Ghost: Rather than being brought back as a Heroic Spirit, Toshiyoshi is an onryō who returned from the dead to get revenge on his uncle.
