[alumnox]

Originally Posted by Rethice

Question though, they made a big issue in F/SN about the fact that Shirou had zero magical capabilities, and yet it was so rare that he managed to summon a servant, however...

In F/Z I see multiple combatants with low or zero magical capabilities, isn't that strange?

Its not rare that Shirou could summon Saber in the FSN game since he managed to fulfill the minimum requirements to summon a servant.

You need to be choosen by the grail to be a participant and you need a magic circle that works for the invocation magic and that's it. You don't need anything else to summon a servant.

The magic circle was already on the floor of the shaft where he trained everyday.

The extra in the case of shirou was that he had inside his body the scabbard (avalon) inside his body so that worked as a relic and thats why the grail summoned saber.

Originally Posted by .:Jason:.

Is there a limit to how old/young Masters can be?

Its never been stated if there's a limit regarding age but since a master might be chosen as long as they can flow prana through a magic circuit that pretty much says that everyone has a chance.

Originally Posted by Cherry_Lover

Erm, what?

This is just plain wrong (except the HF bit). The Grail is not "purified" in Fate, and nor is it any more "destroyed" in UBW than it was in Zero. Only in HF is the Great Grail (which is what is really behind the wars, and supplies the prana to summon the servants) destroyed.

Remember that in the fate route shirou is eaten by angra manyu and he was already inside angra manyu when he projects avalon. In the game itself says:

The world changes completely as the darkness is destroyed by a golden light

Fate complete material vol 3 states that avalon is the ultimate magical item that transcends even magecraft (this means is even more powerful that the great grail itself in terms of magical mysteries) avalon creates a boundary field (similar to a reality marble just bigger) so powerful that its impossible for any kind of magic or physical force to overcome the effect of the field. The field connects the current reality where it was summoned with the land of the fairies and at that moment any magical or physical energy will cease to exist since that is not allowed in the domain of the fairies.

So in short, angra manyu's energy was purified after shirou is eaten by the dark matter. Lets remember that the dark matter its actually energy from the origin itself but corrupted by angra manyu. At the end the games says something around:

The black mud disappears and just the path remains, the holy grail.

And of course saber goes excalibur on the opened portal so this time she really gets it.

And in UBW its easier. In that reality the manifestation of the grail is not even complete (the event horizon is really weak) and there was no proper core to begin with reason why they used shinji. When tohsaka rescued shinji something similar to what happened in the very first summoning of the grail (1st grail war) happens and the grail becomes unstable because of the lack of a proper core. The difference between what happened then and in UBW is that the energy from the event horizon in the first place was very little so when archer attacks its hitting the part of the system that controls the link between the core and the energy flowing underground that's why the grail system goes for gilgamesh in the end, its trying to get the missing energy to complete itself but the portal closes after gilgamesh is devoured.

In short, archer messes up the grail system although not so badly as in the HF route.