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The Night of the Golden Hind and the Storm.
This Noble Phantasm is Rider’s trump card, but it sees a lot of use.
With the flagship Golden Hind at the center, countless small ships swarm out and exterminate the enemy with their overwhelming firepower.
It’s an anti-army Noble Phantasm based on a mix of the Fire Ships that destroyed Spain’s “invincible” armada, and the widely known European legend of The Night of Storms.
This Noble Phantasm summons the fleet of ships that Drake once commanded in ghost form, and the fleet ships proceed to fire fiercely in unison causing physical damage. This attack has the rather strange property of dealing an amount of damage that corresponds to the amount of money Drake’s Master has.
This means that the damage largely depends on the player’s result in the event where you compete with Shinji to find treasure chests.
The episode of Drake destroying the “invincible” armada is extremely famous, and after that Drake came to be known in Spain as El Draque [Demon Dragon].
The invincible armada consisted of over 100 huge ships that were each 1000 tons or more and had more than 65,000 troops aboard. They were setting out to conquer England. To counter the Spanish Armada, El Draque, whose formal title was vice-commander (but effectively the top commander), led the English fleet to battle. The English fleet had double the ships of the Spanish Armada, but they were all small ships, and they were manned by less than half the number of soldiers that were aboard the Spanish Armada.
However, this mass of small ships was part of El Draque’s surefire victory plan. He (she) fought using primarily long range cannon combat, so the Spanish Armada ships couldn’t get close enough to allow its sailors to board the English ships, which was the Spanish battle plan. The result was that the Spanish Armada was completely toyed with and tossed about by the English fleet.
In accounts from after the battle, one could see that the Spanish especially feared El Draque’s Fire Ships which employed pirate-like tactics.
These were ships stuffed with combustibles that were rammed into Spanish Armada ships. El Draque used 100-ton class ships (the same size as used in modern naval combat today) as Fire Ships to quickly destroy many Spanish ships.
The result is that the troops aboard the Spanish Armada couldn’t even reach land at all; nothing less than complete defeat.
This was the downfall of Spain, the kingdom where the sun never sets.
On the other hand, Wild Hunt is an incarnation of extremely strong winds, rain, or snow that brews up as part of a storm. It appears as a raging storm of hunting dogs, mountain sheep, horses, soldiers clad in armor, monsters, and other terrible creatures.
The leader of this storm of beasts is said to be a demonic King Arthur, or the ancient god Odin, or the criminal Cain. In England, the most widely believed is Francis Drake.
In principle the leader of the Wild Hunt is that area’s wild or savage hero, famous person, or ancient god.
To digress, the leader of the Wild Hunt in Scotland is said to be King Arthur.
Translator’s Notes
- ^ Localized as “Hunt of the Golden Hind: Golden Stag and the Eventide Tempest,” sometimes also referred to as ”Golden Hind / Wild Hunt.“