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[philosopherspotato]

Player Information

Name: Usagi
Age: 28
Contact details: usagisquared
Other characters: Katsuya Jonouchi, Emporio Alniño, Yuume Souryuu/Kaiba

Character Information

Name: Mondial Ribbok Vardaman (aka 'Potato')
Canon: Fate/
Canon Point: End 'Third Route'
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OC
Age: 4

World Information: It's fate/ ! Which is a bit of a messy place. An AU of the 'Fate/Grand Order' timeline, in which the first Fuyuki Grail War of 2004 ended with the Caster creating so much of a mess, that it ended with no winner (and also no Fuyuki). As such, the second Holy Grail War is set on Vancouver Island, in 2029.

Personal History: There's not a whole lot to say about Potato- known to most before the war as 'Mondial' of course, but ultimately insisting on Potato for ~Code Reasons~. As undoubtedly surmised from the age of '4', she simply hasn't been around very long. Born without a name so to speak, Potato is a homunculus- a 'created' being, a cheat of life. Potato's creator however- who she only ever refers to as 'Granny'- didn't create her with the intentions that most mages do. Typically a homunculus is treated as little more than a puppet, a tool- a walking set of magic circuits or similar for temporary use. They're created with a limited timespan to live, and follow their somewhat pre-determined roles (mostly).

'Granny' however, created Potato for only one reason; to exist. While she claims the reason was 'to make others happy' when asked for details, that reason is ultimately all there is to it. She made no effort to put a clip on life, nor any effort to do more than design a base appearance for the thing- to that end, resulting in what can only loosely be called a springhare, and absolutely called a walking stuffed toy.

Furthering this is how Potato was 'raised'- intelligent enough to quickly grasp things like speech and day to day function, Granny essentially gave Potato absolute freedom as much as possible- including with electronics. In essence, she was a learning AI made real, with her genuine-ness and eagerness to ask Granny and the internet questions helping to improve her understanding of things. Over all, she came out of this, out of watching videos online, and more, with the idea that 'people, and the world, are good'. She picked her name. Picked her birthday. What she liked, and what she didn't like- and that was all that was necessary.

And in time, started joining dear Granny when they were finally forced to leave South Africa for work with the Mage's Association via the Clocktower. Potato, being her bubbly self, was a slow but nonetheless incredible 'hit'. People liked the kooky little magic battery, even if a number of the more snooty mages in the organization found it nonsense to bother creating such a thing. The 'battery' part however, caught the attention of a few people.

A cohort of Granny's- a young mage who had staked out the right to participate in the upcoming Holy Grail War as the association's representation- determined that if made to use the circuits forming Potato's being, she could essentially allow unlimited access to mana for magecraft use. All it would take is for Potato to be the conduit- in that way, he could acquire the energy necessary to summon a great and powerful Heroic Spirit for the grail war, without any trouble at all.

The only problem was convincing Potato. Granny had of course, in her usual way, allowed the homunculus to simply follow along and make her own judgements of things. Unfortunately however, she had also warned the others of what would happen if she caught them trying to use the little thing for their own ends. Thus, Potato needed to come upon things of her own free will.

Mostly. The mage created a plan- speaking about the war within Potato's earshot, and leaving the necessary tools where she could find them, Potato was soon scurrying off to a secluded area with a fabled shield thought to have once belonged to a fabled hero of ancient Greece, theorized to have been one of those from the Iliad. The mage watched from afar, and waited. And waited. And waited, eventually discovering the unfortunate consequence of leaving things in the homunculus' hands. Though certain that control of a servant would fall to them as the lone human present, a servant needed to be summoned first- and Potato, frankly, was not doing well.

Eventually, Granny found the mage and quietly convinced him to go home and rest, chuckling about learning from mistakes.

About twenty minutes after they left, Potato was struck with a bolt of inspiration, determining that the real answer to things was to drop the shield, and run as many laps around the summoning circle as possible.

It turned out, good shields made good hand-me-downs; the infamous runner of Marathon, known to have dropped his shield and blasted from there all the way to Athens to deliver word of victory, Pheidippides, was summoned.

So, the mage had to find another option. Meanwhile, Potato unwittingly became a second representative- and Granny was of course resolute as ever in keeping others from stepping in on her decision. As such, telling the homunculus vaguely that the grail war was a 'contest' of sorts, she sent her and her new Servant off to Vancouver Island for their 'vacation'. Only a few matters of the grail war would be explained in this time, including the matter of names- Pheidippides would warn his Master that they needed to refer to him as 'Lancer', as knowing his real name could reveal weaknesses in battle. Potato, determining that this meant all of them needed codenames, thus determined she would therefore be called 'Potato'- a nickname that would stick even in all the times she was 'disqualified' so to say.

At any rate, Potato was a constant through all three of the routes of the Holy Grail War- unwittingly charming numerous people, and otherwise having the time of her tiny life running around the island. Potato didn't really know what the Holy Grail War was after all, and while forced to take things a bit more seriously as things go, ultimately bounces between rushing recklessly and cluelessly or being surprisingly wise. As it stands-

Very quickly in the 'first route', Potato is left without a Servant, with Lancer killed early on. The homunculus is ultimately left to her own devices, interacting with the others on her own terms until eventually ending up caught in the mess that is the confrontation between the remaining Servants and Saber-

But while Potato is Potato, she's not the one who watched everything so violently come to a head. Or at least, not in that way.

In another timeline, the 'Second Route' so to say, things start out a little differently. Instead of Potato being an orphaned Master right out the gates, it's Kyrie, the master of Caster- which in turn leads to Potato meeting her, and creating something of a team. Joining forces to try and fight through for Kyrie's Golden Ending, the various Servants and Masters once again team up, but this time due to a series of unforeseen circumstances, Saber is not the issue- instead it's Rikka, the (soon 'former', though Berserker is alive) master of Berserker. Realizing that things simply won't work out at all as they face the power Rikka carries, Potato manages to give Lancer an order while the others fight- and more importantly friendship-speech- Rikka into relative submission. As the one who ran an impossible distance without pause and died only after, Lancer is able to stay alive and do just that in order to deliver a similar message of import.

Lancer is ordered to deliver all of the knowledge before them to the 'them' of another world, so that it can be saved.

Thus, we enter 'Route Three'- the timeline Potato is from. Memories from another timeline come pouring in, and so a number of alliances are formed immediately. Potato eagerly follows along and helps in her own potato-y way, buying copper from Ea-nasir, getting thrown through walls...so on, so forth, the usual for Potato. Ultimately it comes down to the final confrontation, with the combined abilities of various servants first saving Rikka from her steadily eroding end as caused in the first route, and then also coming up into the final confrontation with the Holy Church's overseer and (also soon to be 'former') master of Saber, Evan. A massive showdown between servants and shadow servants occurs thanks to Ea-nasir distorting the final plan of the church overseer (aka 'Evil Priest Guy', in Potato's words). And the battle ends in favor of the alliance!

...

And now she's here, apparently!

Personality:

Potato is...a bit of an odd duck. Well she's not a duck at all, but that's hardly the point. A living equivalent of a learning AI, a cartoon mascot, so on so forth, a good amount of her was determined by cartoons, a few crowd on the internet, and...maybe a few crash courses in Canadian.

It shows, but not quite in the way one expects. Perhaps the most vital point of Potato is that she's nice. To everyone, as a matter of principle. She's even nice to Assassin and Assassin's Master, and those guys are the ones who kill her partner in the first route. And this isn't a matter of being too naïve to understand what happened- indeed, while the Grail War is very much Potato's first proper experience with death and its consequences, a matter that she very much has to personally come to grips with, it doesn't change the fact that she'd simply...prefer to be kind rather than not. She wants the people in her life to be happy- and while she herself notes that 'Granny' told others that was the reason she exists, it's clear that blindly doing just that is not a thing Potato is doing. She watches, she learns, and she acts accordingly, doing her best from there. 'Doing her best' is rather key though- observant as she is, her first efforts are very often focused around something she has an interest in, and it unfortunately shows. Ultimately a vital part of her ability to actually lend to the interests of others is her similarly astounding power of enjoying just about any non-harmful thing she gets her paws on.

In that sense, she's not as dumb as one expects though. Indeed, on top of all the above she can be a goofball, airing out thoughts such as if flying Rider's broom would make her a witch familiar, and other strange things. But the fact of the matter is that Potato learned to read, write, and speak, within at best three years- possibly less given how much media she's consumed. She picks up on things fast- and makes use of it all just as quickly. While she's no genius, it would be more accurate to say she's easily distracted by things rather than unable to comprehend most other matters- distracted by experiences, by interests. Once she gets going into something, she'll probably be going for quite a while as well- and whatever else is happening is going to go in one ear and out the other.

Her love of cartoons and games and the like has given her a fairly childish but ultimately admirable in its dedication, outlook of the world. The idea that everyone deserves happiness, the idea that no matter what, no matter how, 'good' wins over 'evil'. The idea that even if it involves throwing yourself against a wall a few times, that never-give-up attitude will get you somewhere!

But how much can Potato walk that talk? Well, even if she wanted to hurt someone, she wouldn't be able to- and it can't be said that she never does want to hurt someone, oddly enough. Indeed, at least once or twice during earlier iterations of the 'final showdown', Potato is a bristling mass of anger. One that absolutely tries (ineffectively) to hit someone with her tiny pudgy paws. But it's physically impossible for her to hurt another- which means finding the 'better' solution no matter what, and ultimately, she's quick to get through such a tantrum long enough to pull her thoughts toward the goal. And that's how she 'walks' that 'talk'- if she keeps going (and after all, nothing keeps her down for long, so she Can keep going), and keeps shouting, and keeps thinking, she'll land on something that works and saves the day and gets everyone smiling again- including herself, of course. It sort of beats the point if they can't All be happy.

(And of course, Potato isn't always happy- that's why she's able to be so kind, be so curious, and be so filled with love for the world. Potato was equipped with the ability to feel pain, and recoils from it- she was taught, 'think in yourself how it would feel if you were the one hurt, and ask yourself what would be worth giving someone that suffering'. She's watched a lot of hurt, and it's only made her more certain that it's better for the world to be without it. It's a very selfish sort of kindness, and a selfish sort of empathy, but it can be said that it's a pretty darn phenomenal sort for someone who's been alive for four years.)

So- a nice, helpful goofball of a potato, who occasionally sits on a thought long enough to pull out something profound. Things like 'does fear really make someone weak', or 'Can you hate everything that's dangerous?', just to name a few. It's a strange sort of childlike logic that evokes the 'wisdom of babes' in full, and perhaps highlights just what Granny was after when she made the homunculus without blueprints so to speak.

Because the result is that Potato is 'friendshaped'- and very literally so.

Key themes:

Independence, Understanding, Identity as shaped by the self, Connecting to Others. Potato's whole thing is not merely becoming someone by even the most literal definition, but also paradoxically in refusing to be changed by the surroundings.

Main Motivation:

Existing! Existing is great! To be clear, Potato doesn't really have a sense of self-protection (there's not a lot to protect), but simply desires to see more, do more, experience more etc etc. And if that involves doing some pretty wild impossible stuff then she's gonna just do some wild impossible stuff, because those guys over there made her smile and they seem neat and she'd like them to keep smiling, even if it takes a few paradoxing bits.

Skills:

Generally speaking, she's got a number of unexpected ones. Skiing, despite her homeland hitting below 0 celcius all of once in her life. Climbing, RPGs, really really good hotpot cooking...

But in terms of actual combat...er. Well, pushed into a corner enough she'll think of a way out, but mostly her greatest superpower is being unable to actually suffer any injury. At all! Does Potato Bleed? No one can find out... (though if somehow something does manage it, it's going to be a very strange goo scenario)

Potato is also a living battery of sorts- she takes in latent mana from the air, and stores it in her system (and she's stored quite a bit away already!), functioning off of that. Generally, any world that's at least had magic will have enough in the air that she's drawing something in. How does it come out?? Er. Well.

Typically it doesn't. She certainly managed an odd hamster-wheel situation to summon Lancer, but that's about it beyond the standard use of Command spells. Which, short of a Heroic Spirit asking her for a contract, won't be happening either.

That said, the massive reserves of magic energy do mean that using a command spell would mean quite the potential power! Though whether or not those can regenerate (typically in fate/ they can't- but in fate/Grand Order, they can, using a system that restores the magical energy involved at a rate of one spell (there's three in a set) per day. And since Potato is a reserve of massive amounts of magical energy...

Item: Her handheld game console! Somehow, all of the games on it (for her own sake, Granny made sure she gets digital copies)... ...all have a lot of copper involved now...

Sample: To say being on the train was super cool, would be putting it mildly indeed. First of all, Potato had been on a train all of twice in her life, the first time getting to cling to the front of it like some sort of monkey when going to visit Johannesburg, the second being on the way to see the 'Clock Tower' that Granny was doing some work at, and neither of them were anything like this one. For starters, this train had a cool shape to the front, which was roughly mirrored by the equally cool book reading spot in the library.

Which, by the way, was her spot now, forever.

For second-ers, there was a lot of stuff on this train that she did not at all see on the other ones! And it definitely wasn't because she didn't see the whole train. Maybe she didn't see it on the Meyl, but she was pretty sure given all the people in the windows that it was just a lot of seats. And the one in London definitely was just a bunch of seats, with an extra bit or two. Not that those weren't neat either, but it just didn't compare.

This train had bed benches. THIS train had a bunch of video games on it, and even non-video game ones, which she'd seen a few of yes, but nothing like this. THIS train had plants! It had a big warm bath tub and a steamy room! A jungle gym!

...A really big kitchen!

"Hmhmhmmm...!" Potato beamed at the counter, somehow managing to not shed even a hair of fur over what she was creating.

At best it could be called a mess, to the untrained eye. A half loaf of bread, hollowed out into a bowl. A pile of curry loaded in, to the point it was spilling over. It's... "Perfect..! Mnh!! It's perfect! Now I just need-" Potato blinked, looking left and right and around the curry dish. "...Eh? ...Eh!! Where'd it go!! Where'd the spoon go!!"

Alright, perfection was on hold. Time to find a spoon again. "Mnhhh...!! If I don't find the spoon soon..." Paws squashed against her cheeks, the homunculus sucking in a breath. "...It's gonna go cold...............it'll take ages for me to eat it then..." Cold things took longer to eat if they weren't meant to be cold. She was sure that was just a fact of nature. "Mnnnnhhhhhh..." Well, eventually she'd find something in one of these drawers she decided as she rooted through. It was way too big to just have the silverware in one spot! That would be ridiculous.

The spoon soon in hand, Potato was just as soon back to the counter, ready for a big bite of curry. "Annnd...time! For...! Bunny!"

...

"HOOOOH!! Too much of the orange one..!!"

Whoever is on kitchen duty is in for a nasty surprise. Perhaps the bigger surprise is going to be if and when she has the chance to offer the next monster-of-the-mission a plate of 'Bunny Chow'.

Notes: