Pale Rider

Overview

Pale Rider is a Servant featured in Fate/strange Fake, summoned by Kuruoka Tsubaki in the False Holy Grail War of Snowfield. Designated as the False Rider of the conflict, this entity is not a traditional Heroic Spirit with a historical background, but rather the conceptual personification of pestilence and death inspired by the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse. Lacking a living body or individual ego, it functions as a mindless calamity that gradually engulfs its surroundings to fulfill its Master's subconscious wishes.

Appearance

Lacking a physical body as a living creature, Pale Rider manifests visually as a formless black cloud, dark mist, or shadow. Its physical dimensions and scale are not fixed, changing according to the status of its infection and spread. At its absolute minimum size, it shrinks down to a microscopic scale equivalent to a parvovirus.

Personality

Pale Rider possesses no distinct personal ego, self-awareness, emotions, or capacity for verbal communication. Operating primarily as an unthinking natural disaster, its movements are driven entirely by the subconscious desires and emotions of its Master, Kuruoka Tsubaki. While showing a quiet, protective disposition toward the young girl, it displays complete neutrality and lack of empathy toward the outside world as it spreads contagion.

Abilities

Operating under the Rider class, Pale Rider has the ability to spread magical diseases and pestilence across vast areas. It can engulf entire cities in dark mist to infect targets with lethal illness. Additionally, its physical manifestation scales in response to the spread of infection, ranging from a microscopic viral level to an expansive environmental hazard.

Background

During the False Holy Grail War in Snowfield, Pale Rider was summoned by Kuruoka Tsubaki, a young girl left comatose due to painful magecraft experiments performed by her family. Reacting to Tsubaki's subconscious desire for safety and escape, Pale Rider infected her parents and the medical staff, incapacitating them. To protect her mind, the Servant established an isolated dream world for her while expanding as a deadly plague in the physical city.

Relationships

Kuruoka Tsubaki serves as Pale Rider's Master and affectionately refers to the shadowy entity as Makkuro-san without fear. In turn, Pale Rider prioritizes her peace and safety above all else. Regarding Tsubaki's parents, whose magecraft experiments caused her immense suffering, the Servant treated them as threats to its Master and incapacitated them with severe illness.

Trivia

The True Name Pale Rider references the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, who rides a pale horse symbolizing disease and mortality. Within official character profiles, its gender is categorized as non-applicable, and its moral alignment is specified as Neutral Neutral.