The Anti-Cell dropped onto the Moon as the Vanguard of the predatory Umbral Star.
She is the enormous White Titan, who rendered a vast amount of damage to the civilizations of Earth (the Paleolithic era, which was also the dawn of the 2nd Age of Gods) and the Moon Cell.
As the “Titan” Anti-Cell, Altera consumes the civilizations she destroys, turns them into mana and using that energy to relentlessly continue growing ever larger. She is designed to self-destruct once the eradication of all civilization on the planet is complete.
She is only sixteen meters tall in the Zero Dark, but this is because her default size is “ten times the size of the average body size of the given species (of a civilization).”
In this environment, she consumes spiritrons to accelerate the rate of her growth.
There was a limit to how large the alter ego of the Titan Altera could grow on Earth in relation to its gravity, but there exists no such limit in cyberspace. That being said, her movements (process execution) slow down if she (her process space) becomes too massive, and since it takes time for her thoughts to be communicated to her peripheries (terminals), it’s thought that she manually optimizes her size (scope) to facilitate easier movement (execution).
She is a typical Anti-Cell, built to physically destroy civilizations with raw power.
Inside the Moon Cell, she invaded SE.RA.PH. At the same time, she sent her information to Earth, creating a material body (avatar) in the real world.
Her invasions of the Moon and Earth thus began simultaneously.
Although she caused tremendous damage to both, including the destruction of many other celestial beings who had descended to Earth, she was eventually defeated on both fronts. The Moon Cell repelled and quarantined her Anti-Cell form, while on Earth, she fell at the hands of a human wielding the fabled Holy Sword.
Altera’s avatar on Earth became a giant corpse, but her main self, on the Moon, was only sealed away.
Since the Moon Cell had no way to delete Altera, it quarantined her, along with the Star of Tears1 in which she arrived, in a zone later known as the Zero Dark (undefined address space).
And there she stayed until the time of our story, 14,000 years later.
The Umbral Star once again reaches towards the Milky Way galaxy, and Altera stirs.
(In the first half of the game, it’s said that Altera stirred of her own volition… but in truth, it was Archimedes who roused her.)
In the world of Fate/EX, it is she who created her human-sized avatar, known as Hero Altera.
Velber sealed away her sense of self during her rampage, but her time spent on Earth as Attila awakened her ego. She began to have doubts and eventually question her existence and purpose.
Titan Altera longed for the dream she saw while she was sealed away, the dream of the human Attila racing ever onward through the rolling plains. She fostered that hope without ever realizing that her dream could never coexist with her mission as an Anti-Cell.
She is the Boss of EXTELLA, as well as the new Heroine.
If Nero is the trademark heroine with universal allure, and Tamamo no Mae fills the role of “eccentric curveball heroine,” then Altera is a niche type of heroine who stands out with her striking personality, despite her lack of mainstream appeal.
She is introverted, strong-willed, and soft-spoken.
Her “gentle” feminine nature does not lend itself well to her objective of destroying civilization as Vanguard of the Umbral Star.
The three tenets of her core self are neatness (humility, purity), generosity (gentleness, patience), and innocence (she is demure, yet can be cruel in spite of herself).
(She was not designed by the Umbral Star, but instead modeled after an individual from a civilization it once consumed. The sentient organism that served as the base for the White Titan was likely filled with the spirit of maternal love and mercy.)
Although she is gentle and intelligent in nature, her sheer size makes first impressions terrifying.
As well, her modest, reticent nature and her calculating gaze can both come across as cold cruelty. Accordingly, humans completely ruled out the possibility of negotiating with her from the beginning, and so she was scorned as a fearsome monstrosity.
Altera herself doesn’t mean to scare off people, but her history and purpose of destroying all humans makes it difficult to converse with them. As a result, she has given up on trying to correct their mistaken assumptions, and is at peace with being feared.
She is the exact image of the stereotypical well-bred young lady who does not understand that she is tremendously beautiful.
She is also a maternal type cool-dere who watches over the Main Character even while she is intimate, affectionate, and dependent on him or her. She possesses the grace and patient generosity of an older woman. On top of all this is the fragility and sadness she feels as a result of the solitary position she’s placed in, as well as her calculating nature as an invader and destroyer.
Everything up until now has been a description of her “core personality.”
Altera’s sense of self is made of these three viewpoints, but they are not mixed together, and are instead treated as their own independent facets.
To describe it in human terms, it is akin to multiple personality disorder. Altera switches between them to suit her needs when she deals with other people; in essence, she changes the OS of her personality.
Those three personalities pertain to the three primary colors of the prism that is Altera’s symbol.
Green: The facet of the maiden. Weak-willed and cute.
Red: The facet of the warrior. Cold and fearsome. This is the most visible aspect of the Hero Altera.
Blue: The facet of the goddess. Kind and merciful.
The blue facet is Titan Altera’s main personality. She switches to green when she stirs from “sleep” or when something makes her happy, and to red when she is in battle or when she becomes angry.
The three colors of light that reflect Altera’s personality are actually kind of like a traffic light.
However, even though she has multiple persona OSes, her tastes and predilections are constant across each.
Things she like: small, fragile things, gentle times, hair accessories, and physical affection.
Things she dislike: weaklings, stereotypes, lies, and sickness.
By “gentle times,” Altera means the interactions she is able to have with people who are not afraid of her.
In this context, “weaklings” does not describe beings who lack power, but rather refers to those who lack mental fortitude.
“Fragile things,” in contrast, actually means “cute things.” This is why Altera’s My Room slowly fills up with more and more girlish objects.
It’s a complex matter, to be sure, but her way of approaching any situation is different for each of her facets.
For instance, if she encountered a “fragile thing,” her maiden personality would interact with it lovingly, her warrior personality would toy with it, and her goddess personality would cherish it.
Basically, Altera is starved for communication with others.
She has always wished to talk to people, to truly interact with them, but this was never granted to her.
The Main Character is the first person Altera has ever interacted with who does not stereotype her. Because everything in the world has been scared of Altera up until that point, she is just happy that the Main Character will touch her kindly. She begins to find joy in gentle physical contact.
She frequently tries to touch the Main Character, but she usually pulls back her hand because she’s afraid of being scary. She’s constantly fighting an internal battle between those two lines of thought. She’s actually quite shy, as it turns out she tends to pull back most of the time.
However, once she has good reason to do so, she seizes the opportunity with surprising boldness.
An example scenario: Her Master is tired from fighting, lies down on her stomach in order to recover, and starts an event.
The interactions between a human and a giant, both heart-warming and passionate, are described in the main story. In that story, Altera goes from being surprised and happy about physical contact to fully enjoying herself. (In other words, she finds a certain pleasure in having the Main Character play on her body.)
When it comes to Nero and Tamamo no Mae, Altera sees both of them as obstacles who stand in her way of conquering the Moon Cell.
On the outside, she says only that the other Regalia wielders are in her way and strives to get rid of them.
She would never say it out loud, but she is full of jealousy, admiration, and even fear for both of them. She respects them as proper Servants of her Master.
Altera realizes that her existence inspires fear, so she is preoccupied with worry that the Main Character will return to his or her two previous Servants.
She also believes that the only way to truly make the Main Character her prisoner, both physically and mentally, is to defeat Nero and Tamamo.
Thus, there is more than one reason why she attempts to obliterate Nero and Tamamo without mercy.
Hero Altera brazenly declares: “I will put an end to them, and make you entirely my own.”
Titan Altera’s sentiment is much the same: “There is no meaning in conversing with them. The two of them must be removed.” Although her words are gentle, she has no intention of holding back.
For both Alteras, Nero is an obstruction as both a conqueror and a Servant. She is someone Altera cannot co-exist with. She both hates and envies Nero’s tendency to act with wild abandon.
(If the Main Character were not in the picture, there is a good possibility that Nero, who tends to lavish attention on one person, and Altera, who gets lonely easily, would be good friends.)
On the other hand, Tamamo no Mae is still someone Altera needs to get rid of, since she is contracted to the Main Character, but she does not irritate Altera as much as Nero does. In fact, she feels like there are many parallels between them, from the fact that Tamamo is “not human” and their respective positions as divine spirits (of a sort) to their shared frustration that Nero holds the “main” contract with the Main Character. But in some ways, it’s precisely because of these similarities that the two are incompatible.
Altera cannot understand whatsoever how Tamamo can act so fecklessly, even though she, too, is a monster.
If Nero is her rival in conquering the Moon, Tamamo no Mae is her rival in having the greatest stats in the world of Extra.
Translator’s Notes
- ^ 涙の星, Star of Tears, another name for the Ark of the Stars.