Atrum Galliasta

is the first Master of Caster in the Fifth Holy Grail War of Fate/stay night.
==Profile==
===Background===
If you want it, then take it. If there's a blade in your hand, then swing. That line of thinking is how the Galliasta family had risen to prominence, and that was how Atrum was taught. In order to determine the next head of the family, his father had pit him and his brothers against each other in a number of trials meant to curry political power. Atrum was the one who dealt with those trials most efficiently. And so, while earning a title in the Clock Tower, Atrum surpassed his father who had refused to step into the World of Magi and joyfully adopted it as his own. Seeing Magecraft that was considered old and outdated, he instead saw profit and potential. Even the agonizing physical pain of accepting his family's Magic Crest was pure pleasure for him. For that pain was a symbol of the power, of the value he had won.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 3: case. Twin Towers of Iselma (Lower) - Chapter 1 Part 2
Atrum's family being newly established in the Mage's Association caused him to seek out prestige by winning the Holy Grail War. Like Bazett Fraga McRemitz, he was one of the Magi backed by the power of the Association.
===Appearance===
Atrum is half European, half Middle Easterner. As such, he is a young man in his mid-twenties with a darkly tanned complexion and blonde hair reaching down to his chest. Beautiful golden rings hang about his neck.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 2: case. Twin Towers of Iselma (Upper) - Chapter 4 Part 5
Atrum Galliasta (Case Files).png|Atrum in the Twin Towers of Iselma case in Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, illustrated by Mineji Sakamoto.
Casefiles3 clear.jpg|Atrum on the cover of Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 3: case. Twin Towers of Iselma (Lower), illustrated by Mineji Sakamoto.
Atrum (CF Novel).png|Atrum in the Lord El-Melloi II Case Files novel, illustrated by Mineji Sakamoto.
Atrum Galiasta (Manga).jpg|Atrum in the Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Manga, illustrated by Toh Azuma.
Primordial Cursing Techniques.png| in Fate/Grand Order, illustrated by Ginka.
Transmutation Magecraft (CE).png| in Fate/Grand Order, illustrated by Jiro Suzuki.
===Personality===
At first glance, he is friendly and sociable, but his nature is timid and ruthless. In addition to the lack of ethics typical of ordinary Magi, such as using living children as experimental materials, he is selfish and overconfident in his own power. He calmly uses sacrifices, but he doesn't disrespect human life, he just doesn't see things that can be bought with money as "Humans" like himself.
Atrum firmly believes he can win the Holy Grail War, commenting that Kayneth El-Melloi Archibald failed to take it seriously in the previous Fourth Holy Grail War. He has invested a great deal of capital into the war, and he believes that trait puts him ahead of others. He does not trust Caster, believing her sense of values to be too different from a Human due to how powerful she appears to him. He believes she is only a vixen whose sole talent is in deceiving men.
Atrum is also a perfectionist who cannot stand when his workings are questioned or criticized.
He does not think highly of people from the Far East, and he thought that Touko Aozaki reaching the rank of Grand had to be some kind of mistake.
He enjoys fighting, not for combat itself, but because overwhelming victory is what he seeks.
==Role==
===Lord El-Melloi II Case Files===
====case. Twin Towers of Iselma====
Four months before the Fifth Holy Grail War Atrum attacks the Twin Towers of Iselma with a group of subordinates using Weather Manipulation Magecraft in the hopes of retrieving the catalyst to summon Siegfried that Byron Valualeta Iselma outbid him on. However, Byron had given Siegfried's catalyst to Touko Aozaki who burned it and used its ashes for Magecraft. 
During the events of the case Atrum became interested in Lord El-Melloi II. After the case was resolved, he bragged to El-Melloi II that unlike the previous El-Melloi, Atrum would not be treating the Grail War as a game; El-Melloi II responded by warning him not to take it lightly. Although angered for losing his chance to summon a Dragon-slayer, Atrum decided that he would aim for a Dragon-user instead, even if he wasn't fond of her Class.
====Grace Note====
In Lord El-Melloi II Case Files -Rail Zeppelin Grace Note-, Luviagelita Edelfelt, who investigated on behalf of Reines El-Melloi Archisorte, announces to Lord El-Melloi II that two positions for Association participants in the Holy Grail War have closed. As El-Melloi II decided to bow down to Bram Nuada-Re Sophia-Ri in order to have a chance to enter the ritual, Reines and Bram are later on seen discussing about Waver and his obsession with the Holy Grail War. Reines displays in her hands a picture of Atrum and one of Bazett Fraga McRemitz, revealing that both are the ones being sent by the Clock Tower to participate in the 5th Holy Grail War, hinting at the fact that despite her brother's beliefs, the remaining slot was also taken.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: Grace Note - Episode 4: "A Workshop, a Grave, and a Necromancer"
Up until the point he departed for the Fifth Holy Grail War, he visited El-Melloi II about once a week to brag, ensnaring himself in a diplomatic battle between himself, Melvin Weins, and Yvette L. Lehrman. In a way, you could call them the three monsters hanging around El-Melloi II. There was even an incident shortly before he left for the Fifth Holy Grail War in which the three of them, once and only once, worked together.
====case. Atlas Contract====
By the time of the case, Atrum had already left for Japan, having sent his people before him to make a lot of preparations in Fuyuki. Upon hearing that Lord El-Melloi II had given up on the Fifth Holy Grail War, he was disappointed and angrily proclaimed that he would not make the same mistake and to watch him return victorious before promptly leaving. Gray theorizes that he probably just wanted to fight the Lord again, this time as a Magus.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 6: case. Atlas Contract (Upper) - Prologue
====case. Grand Roll====
During the case, Yvette informs Lord El-Melloi II that Atrum is already dead, having been killed by Caster in the lead-up to the Fifth Holy Grail War.Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files Volume 8: case. Grand Roll (Upper) - Chapter 4 Part 1 However, he left behind a last will compact disk with data and sent it as a message to Lord El-Melloi II before his death to help the Lord figure out what Doctor Heartless is planning. Atrum had been gathering information on Doctor Heartless to hunt him down himself in revenge for his role in the Iselma Towers incident, since Heartless was the one who sold Siegfried's catalyst to Touko and who told Atrum about the catalyst (ommiting the part about being destroyed), manipulating both to cause the incident to escalate. Atrum had planned to act after the Holy Grail War if he survived it, but in case he didn't survive it, made arrangements so the info could get to El-Melloi II. One of his tips leads El-Melloi II to visit the hospital where Heartless was treated decades ago after coming back from fairyland.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 9: case. Grand Roll (Middle)
===Fate/stay night===
====Unlimited Blade Works (Visual novel)====
The Master of Caster does not appear in the original visual novel, only being told of briefly in Caster's flashback to her meeting with Souichirou Kuzuki. One month before the start of the Fifth Holy Grail War, he summoned Caster as his Servant. He was noted to be a legitimate Magus in his late thirties who had a medium build and few other characteristics of note. While he dreamed of victory, he had no will to fight and wished to simply wait for the other combatants to kill each other. He did not trust Caster from the start, his thoughts on her two-sided. On one side, he viewed her with cold envy due to being inferior to her as a Magus, limiting her Magical Energy to a level below his own; on the other side he saw her as being the most inferior to the other Servants, often insulting her as such whenever he could. Caster, giving up on obtaining victory with him within a few days, played the part of an obedient Servant to fill her Master's ego; placating him to have him spend his Command Spells on "meaningless things", all the while he was made to believe that she would remain faithful even without them. However, she turned on him the instant he used his third Command Spell. Spiteful of the contract still binding them together, she killed him using Rule Breaker.Fate/stay night - Unlimited Blade Works route - Day 13: VS berserker - Interlude 13-1: Princess
====Unlimited Blade Works (Anime)====
Atrum initially summoned Caster with the intent of taking advantage of her ability to summon the original Dragon of Colchis. However, Caster stated that while she indeed had the knowledge to summon said Dragon, she didn't possess the knowledge to control it. Hearing that, Atrum expressed displeasure towards Caster and dismissed her as useless.Fate/stay night [Unlimited Bladeworks] - Episode 14: "Princess of Colchis"
Some time after Caster's summoning, Atrum shows her his Workshop. He demonstrates its functions via human sacrifice, but she quickly shows him how even its advanced functions paled in comparison to her mastery of Magecraft. When Atrum justifies that he invented the human sacrifice process his workshop utilizes to skip the incantation step, Caster rebukes that she did not require any incantations like he did and that Magic was hers to wield freely. She suggests that he close the workshop down, commenting that throwing the lives away in such a manner is unwise when the workshop is only generating a loss of resources; something she views as "The act of a third-rate Magus". Taking it as an affront, he uses his first Command Spell to make it so she will not use her Noble Phantasm, Rule Breaker, on him in fear of being stabbed in the back by a "treacherous witch". He later meets with the mediator of the war, Kirei Kotomine, hoping to work out a means of procuring another Servant from the two yet to be summoned. Kirei tells him that while it has never been done before it could be possible and that he would do his best. Atrum then gives Kirei a message for Lancer's Master as a contract selling the right to eliminate Caster to keep from having to use a Command Spell to accomplish the task (he did not know that Kirei murdered Lancer's former master and became his new one, or that Kirei would just discard Atrum's message).
Upon returning to his workshop, he finds that Caster has destroyed it (as well as killed all his workers) and let the captives go free, deeming them unnecessary and the workshop inefficient. She suggests that she will bring him to a more suitable location, Ryuudou Temple, the heart of the ritual where the Greater Grail resides. He rejects her proposal and attempts to have her commit suicide via his second Command Spell. When the first command fails, the shocked Atrum uses his last Command Spell to reinforce the command only to find it did not work at all still. Caster then laughed at him and mocked him for his attempts before revealing that she had already broken their contract by using the Rule Breaker on herself and working around the command from the first Command Spell. She shows him an illusion of a labyrinth with murals depicting her legend, where he desperately runs through while lamenting that he will die before even fighting a single battle. She berates him, saying it is a fitting death for one who sought results before it was the right time to get them, and then promptly immolates him.
===Fate/kaleid Liner Prisma Illya Drei!===
Atrum appears as one of the Dolls, used by Julian Ainsworth, to fight against Shirou Emiya as he uses the Caster Class Card, Medea, and was defeated.
===Other appearances===
In Fate/strange Fake, the Scladio Family stoled and improved the Magical Energy generation system that Atrum developed. This system is used by Bazdilot Cordelion, using a far larger number of sacrifices, to power his Servant, True Archer.Fate/strange Fake Volume 3 - Chapter 9: Day 1, Evening "A Horse Not Yet Pale; Mud Yet Firm"
In the altered version of the events of Moon Cell Holy Grail War used for the backstory of Fate/EXTELLA, Atrum is Tamamo-no-Mae's original Master. The two of them faced Hakuno Kishinami in the 4th round (replacing the Rin/Rani route split from the original game). After losing to Hakuno, Atrum uses Caster as scapegoat to escape deletion. While Caster is saved by Hakuno using a Command Spell and forming a second contract with her, Atrum is later killed by either Julius or the Moon Cell itself.The BAMBOO BROOM DIARY (Nasu and Takeuchi blog) - 11/12/2016: Grateful EXTELLA (Kinoko), translated by mewarmo990
==Abilities==
CasterMasterWorkshop.png|Workshop
CasterMasterStock.png|Sacrifices
Atrum's family uses Alchemy, and he builds a workshop with the intention of giving him a great advantage over the other Masters with a Magical Energy generating technique. His family's system of Magecraft uses exchange in the form of a "primitive curse" to generate Magical Energy from human sacrifices. He has used his finances and all his knowledge to design the workshop to make the system more modern and efficient by skipping the incantation process, allowing a ritual that would take a month and require a transmutation incantation of a three-day and night duration to be completed in an instant. The sacrifices are placed in cylinders, liquefied, and then transferred into a crystal. It is more efficient with "pure" raw materials, so he is shown using a stock of a number of young girls brought in from elsewhere rather than abducted from Fuyuki.
Caster describes the method as "third rate", commenting that the crystal is tiny despite the number of lives take to create it. It takes her only a single action using the mana in the air to create a much larger crystal due to her mastery of Magecraft being far above modern Magi.
He uses Magecraft with Middle Eastern indigenous Magecraft mixed in. Atrum is skillful at using ritual Magecraft that utilizes subordinates.
Though saying his skill as a Mage was lacking, Bazdilot Cordelion referred to him as a genius at developing things like his system of Mana Crystals.
===Primeval Battery===
He wields a Mystic Code known as a , descended from the that had been found in the Middle East. The Magus family that had kept the method of crafting Primeval Batteries fell to ruin, and the Galliasta family used their incredible wealth to secure its history for themselves. By lacing the electricity in the Primeval Battery with his own Magical Energy, the battery converts that energy into lightning that can shoot out in various shapes such as a hand or a Dragon.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 3: case. Twin Towers of Iselma (Lower) - Chapter 2 Part 2
It was the acquisition of the Primeval Battery that eventually led to the Galliastas developing Weather Manipulation Magecraft. Through an inefficient ritual that takes thirty-two people all casting together, Atrum can cause changes in the weather.Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 3: case. Twin Towers of Iselma (Lower) - Chapter 1 Part 3 While Magecraft that put the weather to work was certainly of an enormous scale, it wasn't particularly rare. On the contrary, it would be harder to find a single place that didn't have it's own long history of Rainmaking rituals. However, if one looked at modern Magi, examples of success were few and far between, especially when one considered how much the current state of Magecraft had declined. The large thunderstorm that Atrum and his men caused at the Twin Towers of Iselma was only possible due to the lakeside location of the towers being perfect for generating stormclouds, but it was still a result worthy of praise.
==Development==
===Creation and Conception===
Atrum is a of the unnamed character originally described in the visual novel of Fate/stay night in 2004. First appearing in the anime adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works in 2015, he has been utilized as the primary version of the character in all other works since. When commenting on it in his blog, Nasu said, "What, the game version says he's a middle-aged man of medium build? No, no, that's definitely just an illusion. Don't give it a second thought. You need to raise your "Insight" more... line your brain with eyes... yes... let's make contact together in Yharnam..."The BAMBOO BROOM DIARY 2015 - April 11, 2015
When Makoto Sanda, the author of Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, was told by Nasu to make Caster's Master in his books match the depiction in the anime, Sanda questioned "Wasn't Caster's Master supposed to be a middle aged man...?". Nasu's reply was "Hahaha! The world marches ever onward!"Lord El-Melloi II Case Files Volume 3: case. Twin Towers of Iselma (Lower) - Afterword
His dialogue in Lord El-Melloi II Case Files was completely supervised by Nasu.Makoto Sanda Twitter January 12, 2016 21:56
==References==
Category:Humans
Category:Masters
Category:Characters in Fate/stay night
Category:Clock Tower magi
Category:Characters in Lord El-Melloi II Case Files
Category:Heads of household
Category:Introduced in 2015
Category:Europeans
Category:Middle Easterners