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The Holy Grail War

Fourteen Masters summon fourteen Servants into this world.
The Masters go on to fight to the death, until only one Servant is left alive.
The final remaining Servant will be presented with the Holy Grail, which has the power to grant any wish to its wielder.

Masters

Masters are, generally speaking, magi.
To become a Master, all that is required is to summon a Servant.
Summoning a Servant usually takes an elaborate ritual, although it has been known to happen by accident in extenuating circumstances.
To summon a specific Servant, some relic of or physical connection to that hero is required.
If no relic is available, then the Servant summoned will probably be one with a character similar to the Master, but not necessarily.
Masters act as a power source for their Servant, providing them with a steady stream of mana that allows them to exist in this world.

Servants

Servants are extremely powerful heroic spirits.
Each Servant is a manifestation of some heroic legend from history.
Since Servants come from the Throne of Heroes, a metaphysical location outside the flow of time, Servants can come from any point from the past or future.
Servants are immensely powerful magical beings, capable of feats that greatly surpass human abilities.
There are fourteen classes of Servant: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Berserker, Rider, Assassin, Caster, Avenger, Saver, Brawler, General, Scholar, Soldier and Creator.
There is one Servant of each class summoned to each Holy Grail War.
A Servant is summoned into one of the fourteen classes based on his personality and fighting style.
A Servant's abilities and mentality can be altered depending on his class.
Servants cannot easily exist in this world; they require a source of mana formed by being connected to a Master.
Without a Master, a Servant will vanish from the world in a couple days.
If a Servant loses their master, then they can form a contract with a new Master to stay in the Holy Grail War.
Servants can also gain mana by consuming human souls, although this is usually frowned upon.

Command Spells

Servants, generally speaking, are compelled to obey their masters.
This is not absolute; a Servant IS capable of disobeying their master if they really want to.
For this purpose, the Command Spell exists.
Every Master has a magical tattoo somewhere on their body (usually the back of one hand), called a Command Spell.
The Command Spell can be invoked to give an absolute order that the Servant cannot disobey.
The more focused the command is, the more powerful the compulsion.
For example, commanding a Servant to "do whatever I tell you do forever" would have little to no effect.
However, using the Command Spell to order your Servant to "come to my side" would be powerful enough to transcend reality, allowing them to jump across space to you instantly.
This can be used to either force a Servant to obey, or to defy reality to make your Servant much more powerful for one instant.
Each use of the Command Spell consumes part of the tattoo. It has a total of three uses.
If the third Command is used, then the Command Spell will vanish completely, severing the connection between Master and Servant.
This is not recommended, as most Servants would then kill their Master for spiritual sustenance to increase their chances of finding a new Master in time.

Noble Phantasm

Every Servant has one Noble Phantasm.
A Noble Phantasm is a Servant's most powerful attack, its ultimate trump card.
The Servant's Noble Phantasm usually takes the form of some legendary artifact that the Heroic Spirit had when they were still alive.
For example, King Arthur's Noble Phantasm would be Excalibur.
Not all Noble Phantasms are simple weapons.
For instance, it could be a shield, a mount, an army, or some supernatural ability.
Most Servants do their best to hide their Noble Phantasm for as long as possible, since keeping your Heroic Spirit identity a secret gives you an edge.
It is possible for a Servant to have no Noble Phantasm, but it is exceedingly rare.
It is also possible for a Servant to have multiple Noble Phantasms, but this is also somewhat unusual.

Magic Circuit

Every Magus, without exception, has a magic circuit.
A magic circuit is like a second nervous system spreading through a magus's body, which connects the material world to the astral plane.
Using a magic circuit, a magus can channel the latent energy in their bodies to perform supernatural feats - in other words, magic.
One is born with their magic circuit, and it does not increase or decrease in strength naturally.
It can, on the other hand, be modified artificially.
However, doing so is very risky, as it can destabilize a magic circuit, rendering it unusable.
A stronger magic circuit makes for a stronger mage.
Magic circuits are hereditary - this is what causes magi to run in families.

Thaumaturgial Crest

In a lineage of magi, the most valuable and closely-guarded of treasures is the Thaumaturgical Crest.
A Crest is essentially an artificial Magic Circuit, branded onto the body of a magus's heir at an early age.
At some point during a magus's career, they expand and strengthen their Crest, storing power and spells inside it.
Then, when they have an heir, the Crest is transplanted to the new host, carrying with it the power of the previous magus.
This process continues, causing Crests to get more powerful the older a family of magi is.
Crests, like internal organs, can only be transferred to a compatible host - usually a blood relative.
It is perfectly possible to be a magus without a Crest, but it's much harder to be good at it.

Magic 101

The basic function of most magecraft is to exert one's own power to alter reality.
The energy source for magic is called prana, which is divided into Odo and Mana.
Odo is the power within living things. Drawing on one's odo to cast a spell is technically easy, but the amount of prana is severely limited for most people.
Mana is the prana that permeates the atmosphere. It usually requires more complex magecraft to use mana, but higher-level spells require too much prana to rely on odo alone.
There are three basic types of magic: Reinforcement, Alteration, and Projection.
Reinforcement takes the attributes of an object and accentuates them.
So, a jacket could be turned into bulletproof armor, or a sword could be made sharp enough to cut through steel.
Alteration is the art of giving objects properties that they didn't have before.
For example, a weapon could be made to burn, petrify, or dehydrate the target upon contact.
Alteration is much more difficult than Reinforcement, and is beyond the ability of most novice magi.
Projection is the rare art of creating something from nothing.
Simply by visualizing it, a weapon could be made to appear out of thin air.
This is extremely difficult and inefficient; few magi bother with this absurdly demanding craft.
There are many kinds of magic beyond this, such as alchemy and energy transference; magecraft is only truly limited by the ingenuity of the magus.
Every magus has a personal element, which effects their proficiency at different kinds of magic.
An element can be something as general as "air" or something as specific as "swords".
The more specific the element, the greater the boost to power and versatility the magus will have in that domain.

Sorcery

At the heart of the study of magic are the Five Sorceries, ultimate spells that defy the laws of the universe.
Only history's most powerful magi have ever been able to perform these.
The first sorcery is the materialization of physical nothingness. The ramifications of this unusual effect are not fully understood.
The second sorcery is the ability to connect parallel universes. This was mastered by the legendary magus Zelretch.
The third sorcery is the creation of living souls. This has never fully been mastered, but would allow its wielder to conquer death itself.
The fourth sorcery has never been described by canon.
The fifth sorcery is time travel. It has been explored in some limited capacity by the Aozaki family in the past.
Certain unidentified sources have predicted the existence of a sixth sorcery, which would lead to the annihilation of humanity if it were realized. Nothing else is known about it.

Mage's Association

There is an international organization, founded by western magi, whose purpose is to control, devlop, and conceal Magic in the world.
This organization is called the Mage's Association.
The Association enforces many laws about what magi can and can't do without incurring their wrath.
Chief among these is the rule that magic must be kept secret from the public.
The Mage's Association knows about and monitors all major magus families, so only obscure or non-family magi escape their knowledge.
There are three branches of the Mage's Association.
The main branch is called Atlas, a.k.a. The Giant's Pit, and is located in Egypt.
Atlas governs over the other two branches, and is the most powerful of them all.
The second branch, Clock Tower, is housed in London.
Clock Tower runs a secret but very prestigious (among magi) school of magic, run mostly from the British Museum.
While it seems welcoming and friendly, Clock Tower is largely controlled by power struggles between rival factions of magi.
The last branch is Sea of Estray.
The Sea of Estray is a conglomeration of minor groups of magi spread all throughout Europe.
This is the oldest of the three branches, most closely tied to the origins of magi in history.
Because of the tight control that the Mage Association has over Europe and Asia, America has become something of a new frontier of magic.

The 14 Servant Classes
Saber: A great hero of the sword. Greatest attribute is magic resistance. One of the three highly desirable Knight Classes.
Lancer: A great hero of the spear. Greatest attribute is agility. One of the three highly desirable Knight Classes.
Archer: One who attacks from afar. Greatest attribute is attack range. One of the three highly desirable Knight Classes.
Rider: Mounted warrior. Greatest attribute is Noble Phantasm.
Caster: Wielder of arcane might. Greatest attribute is mana.
Assassin: A silent killer who strikes from the shadows. Greatest attribute is stealth.
Berserker: A hero whose reason is sacrificed in exchange for great power. Greatest attribute is physical strength.
Avenger: A hero who attained the status of devil through the power of their believers. Greatest attribute is divine rank.
Saver: A hero who attained the status of God through the power of their believers. Greatest attribute is divine rank.
Brawler: A hero who fights using their own body. Greatest attribute is martial skill.
Soldier: A martial jack of all trades, proficient with all weapons. Greatest attribute is adaptability.
Scholar: A hero whose strongest weapon is their mind. Greatest attribute is wisdom.
General: A hero who leads others. Greatest attribute is charisma.
Creator: A hero who specializes in the creation of physical objects. Greatest attribute is projection ability.

History of the Holy Grail War
The Grail artifact was first materalized in the year 1666. There was no formal War that year - it began as a joint production between three great magecraft families, who then all tried to backstab each other, and in the ensuing chaos, the Grail was lost. This is not recognized by modern magi as having been a true Grail War. The first sanctioned, recognized Grail War was 66 years later, in 1732, and took place in London. At this time, there were only seven Servant classes: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Berserker, Caster, and Avenger. As it turned out, though, a seven-Servant war is not stable, and the Grail collapsed before the war could be concluded. The ensuing destruction wiped out an entire city block, and caused a great fire in London that to this day is the subject of many conspiracy theories. Following this disaster, Clock Tower, backed by Atlas and the Sea of Estray, declared the pursuit of the Holy Grail to be forbidden.

However, the desire for power is not to easily suppressed, and the Grail War began again another 66 years later, in 1798. This time, the scene of the war was the comparitively newly-formed United States of America - the frontier continent was far from the influence of the Mage's Association, and so the Grail War began anew, this time with ten Servants. The records of the second Grail War are muddled, but the winner was a runaway slave wielding Saber as his Servant. His fate following the war is unknown, as is the fate of the second Holy Grail.

66 years later, the Holy Grail rose again in America, this time coming into a time of great strive. In the year 1864, America was being torn apart by two conflicts. One was known by many - the American Civil War. The other, however, was restricted to the shadows of the country - escaping European oppression, many vampires had come to America seeking to control the new world. In front of this backdrop of strife began the third Grail War. Abraham Lincoln, a powerful and infamous enemy of most of the more revolutionary vampire families, assigned Vice President Hamlin to participate in the Grail War in his stead. Hamlin overcame the other thirteen Masters, many of whom were vampires, and used the Grail's power to erradicate the majority of the vampire forces seeking to overthrow America.

America isn't like Europe, which moves forward under the watchful eye of Clock Tower. In many ways, it is still a new frontier, despite its many years of history. There are agents of the Mage's Association present, but they are few and far between, and far from able to keep tabs on the entire country. The existence of magic is still mostly a secret here, but there are plenty of rumors about another world hidden in the shadows of the one we know. It is in this frontier, in the year 1925, that rumors began to spread: The Grail War was coming around again.

Highgate, Maine is an awkward place, too big for the small town atmosphere it clings to, but too small to properly be called a city. There's always places for strangers to stay; lots of people seem to move away, or just plain disappear. Strange things happen in Highgate, followed by strange rumors, but never for long. Nobody likes to ask too many questions here. People say the town is cursed, but they pretend to be joking when they say it. And now, in the year 1930, 66 years after its last summoning, the fourth Holy Grail War is about to commence.

If I've forgotten anything too important, or if you have futher questions about the rules, let me know.

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