I really like the fact that the third "grey antagonist bloc" isn't actually a bloc at all like you would expect, because each and every one of them HATES all the others.
It leads into them being the most insidious villain/anti-hero power, as they instead diffuse into regular Magical Girl society, present and think of themselves as "Radiants" like the mainstream, and unwittingly poison and tear apart the good guy bloc from the inside. Even some of the Radiants don't think these girls or their queen is an enemy!
It's brilliant.
Thank you.
The arguments over the Queen of Mirrors might have been one of the things which basically led to me burning out [1] from the project [2], but I'm glad that I managed to push through the seer-queen who lives at the end of the rainbow and where the reflections of two mirrors stop, constantly scrying the future to try to find the True Heir and constantly reinterpreting her vague prophecies whenever the latest 'True Heir' fails to show that they were never the Heir. The Queen of Mirrors in this version - well, if Tears' flaw is her refusal to let go of the past (hence why Lacrima is also associated with ghosts) and Storms' is her self-righteous rage, Mirrors'
personally has the flaw that she has sacrificed her own agency, that she's so sure that she'll save the world by finding the True Heir that... uh, she's doing nothing to save the world by
actually fucking saving the world.
(Mind you, by the time I'd left I'd basically played a major role if not single-handedly reshaped all the antagonist factions, which may be some of the reason I feel Princess has a bit of the Werewolf problem - namely, that the Pure Tribes are more detailed than the Forsaken Tribes.)
...
In fact, what the fuck. I'll take any questions on original design intent for the things I was behind in this thread.
For example, one of the things about Storms is that conceptually she represents the dark side of modernism and industrial warfare, and how that's one of the "dark fates" of the idealised vision of the past which the Radiant largely associate with. That's why her main fighters are the Storms cults - they're a metaphor for conscription and the democratisation of violence, so Storms sends normal men and women into the meat-grinder rather than leaving it as a preserve of a 'warrior elite' of Princesses. That's why "collateral damage" and "acceptable losses" are an axiom of her fighting style. Likewise, there's technomythology hidden within her forces - technology dressed up as myth, because of that symbolic link to moderism. The Goalenu are golems, but they're also Terminators and war machines run by damaged uploads which only think of violence (ie, Tattered Ghosts), and the Goalenu grafts are cybernetics. The dreams of the Stormwracked are a metaphor for the internet and the way it enables insurgent groups to communicate beyond traditional boundaries - and they're also a cyberpunk-esque source of "downloaded knowledge" by the way the Storm-wracked train in their dreams. That entire theme is designed to contrast against the Alhambran dark side of excess traditionalism and refusal to change in response to the changes in the world - hence why Alhambra is culturally static, holding onto a past which has been eroded down by endless tears.
[1] The person who I was arguing with was the one who kept on trying to make the Queens personable and 'cool people' you could hang out with, rather than half-mad distant exemplars who are creatures of memory and dream logic and echoes, bodhisattvas who fundamentally when you get down to it cannot solve your problems for.
[2] That, and having to constantly explain things like "oh my god, no, statting out the Queens is
dumb" and "no, stop writing unnecessary charms. No, just because it's not being published doesn't mean you should be writing lots of niche Charms."
Queens are power-stat 10 and can't leave the Dreamworld.
Also, anyone who actually manages to get to that level has to fight Archmages, the God Machine, and who knows what else to make sure that the Nobility aren't retconned out of existence.
No, no, you see, that's the thing which I could
not hammer in.
None of that matters. Like, seriously, Archmages mean
jack shit to Princess [3]. The God Machine means even less, because the GMC turns a cool recurring idea into something which is lame. Tier 4 stuff means fuck-all to Princess, which is a Tier 1 game at heart. Wordcount spent on justifying Tier 4 stuff is basically wasted wordcount which ruins the thematic focus and so should be cut out.
Hence why I basically tried to make the Radiant Queens into a mix of distant exemplars, ancestors at the centre of ancestor cults, and not people you see casually (because in some ways, they're not people at all). You don't casually go to see the Radiant Queens. You go because you're having doubts, because you're trying to increase your Invocation and wish to study, you quest there to find a new Bestowment.
You don't go chill with the Queen of Diamonds who's wearing a MLP t-shirt, because she's a half-mad exemplar of the idea that "The World Can Be Made Better Through Knowledge". She dwells at the heart of a great diamond clock which floats above a great snow-covered mountain in the Dreamlands, and to get to her you must climb the mountain - and only by climbing the mountain and showing the understanding required to outwit the guardians and solve the puzzles do you realise that yes, you accomplished this climb through your knowledge and your learning and that you
do belong as a Diamond.
(and then the next time you go back, the floating clock rests over an ocean, and only through your friendship and teaching others to survive do you realise that this was your problem all along, and that you weren't treating your friends as equals)
That's the role the Radiant Queens have to play, in my opinion. They're vision quests, they're dream lessons, they're
ideas more than people in a lot of ways. They can't save the world. But they can help you learn lessons which will help you save your little corner of the world. And with them, you'll earn their gifts, unlike Mirrors who hands you things which have no more insight than your own reflection.
[3] Unless you choose to use the plot hint I dropped in a few places that the Kingdom was a pre-Fall kingdom which was a rival to the Awakened City, which stayed loyal to the Old Gods and did not have the hubris to try to break reality, but closed in on itself and exulted in its self-righteousness - and when the Darkness was born as reality warped, it was caught unaware.
