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Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

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...How much does her power cost, grief-wise? If she's anything like Sayaka, running her power 24/7 would be catastrophic. And she's got dozens of shades wandering the world and using their powers, which must necessarily generate grief because when we're not around there's a conservation law. Where does her grief go?
Iron Roby said:
, but why is it supposedly so much more fucked up when it's done to a mundane, not meguca?
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There is no possible justification. With a grief-spreader you can make a "hard men making hard decisions" argument, or a deterrent argument. Many other girls you can make self-defense arguments. But a mundane? They belong in the normal criminal justice system, or in the closest equivalent you can manage. Not enslaved.

Iron Roby said:
What would Sabrina do, if she caught a mundane serial killer, but couldn't provide non-magical evidence, or not without drawing unwanted police attention on herself? Let them go, because, oh well, mundane matters are not in her jurisdiction?
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Provide magical evidence.
 
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"Really," insists Riona, taking a long swing, eyes closed, "I only grab the bad girls. And dudes-"

Her her open to meet the white haired girl's placid, sea green, contemplating eyes.

"PFT-"

Oriko grimaces as Riona spittakes all over her face and the front of her dress.

"Quaint," comments the ex-Seer once she's sure the Soul controller was done.

"What the fuck- you- where's the witch girl gone-" Riona blinks multiple times, looking back and forth between her flask and the girl sitting in front of her, who lets out an aristocratic sigh.

"Do not worry," reassures Oriko, "your drink is not anymore spiked than usual."

A black haired girl leans from behind Oriko, waving hi.

"This is Kirika, by the way," she adds, prompting said girl to embrace her from behind, her head poking over the Seer's shoulder, "and I'm Oriko... Kure Oriko."

A whistle-like sound exits Kirika's mouth.

"Ugh..." Riona grunts, turning away, "can you fucking not?"

"As I was saying," Oriko continues, running a hand through Kirika's hair, "Sabrina was feeling rather stressed, so she asked me to take her place. I'm kind of the negotiatior of the group, you see..."

Riona most certainly did not see. Specially as she covered her eyes to not have to watch the black haired girl rubbing her cheek against the white haired one's.

Fucking white haired magical girls. Crazy, the lot of them.

The Soul controller took another swing of her flask.
 
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Vebyast said:
There is no possible justification. With a grief-spreader you can make a "hard men making hard decisions" argument, or a deterrent argument. Many other girls you can make self-defense arguments. But a mundane? They belong in the normal criminal justice system, or in the closest equivalent you can manage. Not enslaved.
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And if you can't manage anything because you have no proof? You either have to hold them yourself indefinitely, kill them, or do something else to make them stop.

Same goes for high end criminal magical girls, only the normal criminal justice system option is out by default. We can afford to put together a magical prison system because we can print money, clear seeds being worth enough to hire an army of magical girls. Other people have to deal with their problems in more permanent ways. If soul stealing is less permanent than death that makes it a step up.
 
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kinigget said:
that...really doesn't answer my question

how are you going to do this?

what do you expect the freed souls to look like?

what are you going to actually do with them?

your plan begins and ends at "stop Rionna"

this is not sufficient, even were I to agree with it
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The question of "where do the souls go?" has actually a rather simple answer. Madokami. We just had a OOC Word of Firn that these shades are the souls Madokami collects into Madohalla:

Firnagzen said:
'lil bit of Word of Firn since I'm not sure there's a smooth way to find out IC - she's definitely getting Souls-as-in-the-thing-Madokami-would-come-for, and they're bound in servitude to her.
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So in theory, once unbound they'd be saved same as every other Magical Girl Soul that Madoka retroactively collects.

If not, we (or Rionna) might have to do some classic Ghostbusting. Which wouldn't be too different from Witch Hunting.
 
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065tdsa said:
And if you can't manage anything because you have no proof? You either have to hold them yourself indefinitely, kill them, or do something else to make them stop.

Same goes for high end criminal magical girls, only the normal criminal justice system option is out by default. We can afford to put together a magical prison system because we can print money to hire an army of magical girls. Other people have to deal with their problems in more permanent ways. If soul stealing is less permanent than death that makes it a step up.
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If we don't have any proof, then we don't fucking murder them.
 
Firnagzen said:
"Powerful. She's..." Nadia mutters for a second in Darija, taking a moment to stuff her mouth with more fries, chewing and swallowing before continuing. "Reserved, yes. Does not become friends. If she offers cider, refuse politely, fimti? She brews it herself, but it is..." The Moroccan girl winces.

"Noted," you say with a snort. Friendly, then, for a given value of friendly.
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This is what Nadia told us about Riona's character. Not a glowing praise, but not a condemnation, either.

To those who would argue she would be too terrified to tell on her, Nadia rather flippantly discusses groups killing for fun, running protection rackets and tribute systems in the areas she's been traveling through.

Do with this what you will. ( I shudder to imagine. :p )
 
Iron Roby said:
I keep seeing this argument, but I really don't get the supposed moral distinction here. Yes, what she does is fucked up, but why is it supposedly so much more fucked up when it's done to a mundane, not meguca?

Because I can imagine several scenarios, where a mundane could be doing as evil things as a most evil magical girl, and has been successfully avoiding the law. If a magical girl like Rionna (or us) found out that the beloved and well-connected mayor is secretly leading a child trafficking ring, what should they do? Give their expert testimony to the court, as magical girls?

What would Sabrina do, if she caught a mundane serial killer, but couldn't provide non-magical evidence, or not without drawing unwanted police attention on herself? Let them go, because, oh well, mundane matters are not in her jurisdiction?
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There fucking isn't a justification. If Mayor Rapist is on the loose and for some reason you don't just kill the son of a bitch, you have magical powers, and access to the magical powers of every Meguca you've ever soul-ganked. You have options. I mean at the very least, by her logic she'd be totally in line with soulganking a Mindrapeguca and she can just use their power for Ethical Mind Control like "The rapist is suddenly morally disgusted by his actions and turns himself in."

That's... still VERY Morally Gray but for someone in Riona's position I can excuse it. "That guy bothered me morally so I stopped him in a way that let's me personally benefit in terms of magical power," not so much.

Also, @BlackoutSampler , Magireco confirms there's a mundane afterlife.

argentorum said:
We don't know. That's the point, Aura.

Even still I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head, without much effort. The first of which being when magical girls are involved, it is really hard to gather evidence, even before you start factoring in Incubator involvement, in the case of heinous criminals (like Rapists, for instance). Never mind getting a conviction. Then, she probably chose to do this instead of killing because I do not doubt she rationalizes her power to be better than just flat our murder, because that is the normal human response to such a situation.
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Then cut Mister Rapist's dick off or something, or rip his soul out and send it to the afterlife. There's several less bad moral atrocities before Soul Rape.


But you can morally justify not dealing with the consequences of removing her from the picture. In all reality, if we gem her, we're never going to have her on our side, barring mind control (slavery), stealing her power via Sayaka (may not be possible, also basically the same as what's she's doing right now), and thus we are not fixing anything. Instead, we're just going DEUS VULT and making the situation actively worse.
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I don't really think we can ever have her on our side if she turns down this offer, anyway.

You guys are kind of ignoring something pretty serious. She has the souls of other Grief Benders. She's been operating for years with no real scarcity issues, to the point that she can abandon her territory of an entire city going around the planet on rumors and hearsay. She's effectively already solved her grief issues, since she can offload it on other people.

Nevermind trying to take souls. If Riona steps out of this privacy field and wants to get at us, she can witch out Mami instantly. She could possibly try to witch us out if our reaction time is shitty enough. We have no leverage.

Also, Nadia's account doesn't really matter that much. She could simply not know the full extent of what she's doing.
 
AuraTwilight said:
Then cut Mister Rapist's dick off or something, or rip his soul out and send it to the afterlife. There's several less bad moral atrocities before Soul Rape.
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That's just nonsense. If taking someone's soul is reversible and/or doesn't cause ridiculous levels of suffering then it's not worse than death, and I say it's up to you to prove the second if you want to argue it.

Also, Rionna probably avoids Mindrapegucas, for the same reason everybody does since you know, if their range is longer than yours or their reflexes are faster then you lose. The only reason I'd consider going to fight one of those is because with Homura along for the ride we always shoot first.
 
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AuraTwilight said:
Also, Nadia's account doesn't really matter that much. She could simply not know the full extent of what she's doing.
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Yeees.

An Info-broker whose job is literally finding information and selling it doesn't know the extent of Riona's atrocities, but luckily, we the knight in shining armor sitting atop our thirty feet tall warhorse have her all figured out in the course of a fifteen-minute long conversation.

Fuck.

@Higure, I'm sorry to impose on you, but can you suspend me for a day, too?

I largely trust Onmur's judgement on the question, and they seem to have the same view on the situation as mine. And quite more patience, to boot.

So I'm leaving my vote in your hands! Don't screw up!

( No pressure. :V )
 
065tdsa said:
That's just nonsense. If taking someone's soul is reversible and/or doesn't cause ridiculous levels of suffering then it's not worse than death, and I say it's up to you to prove the second if you want to argue it.

Also, Rionna probably avoids Mindrapegucas, for the same reason everybody does since you know, if their range is longer than yours or their reflexes are faster then you lose. The only reason I'd consider going to fight one of those is because with Homura along for the ride we always shoot first.
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If she is unable to release souls, the next update is her chance to say so. for now, though, since magic requires constant upkeep and has no ontological inertia and this is in fact an inescapable law of the fucking universe, I choose to believe she needs to actively maintain her soul-enslavement and that it ends if she dies or stops maintaining the magic.

Raiseth said:
Yeees.

An Info-broker whose job is literally finding information and selling it doesn't know the extent of Riona's atrocities, but luckily, we the knight in shining armor sitting atop our thirty feet tall warhorse have her all figured out in the course of a fifteen-minute long conversation.

Fuck.
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I mean, Homura fucking lied to Nadia's face about her damn name and got away with it, she's not magically good at digging up info, she just moves around a lot and has really good rapport. Maybe Riona keeps her mouth shut except when she thinks she's finally achieving her life's goal. Maybe Nadia doesn't grasp the damn implications because her magic isn't Soulguca or Griefbending.

Or, you know. Maybe Nadia was willing to smooth over some details because she wants us to succeed at overcoming global Grief Scarcity and Dewitching.
 
Vebyast said:
How do you know they're doing it if you don't have proof?
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Come on Vebyast. There's a major difference between knowledge of a crime and ability to prove it in court. What if all you have is your own recollection? Then it becomes a he said she said where one of the two is a homeless and paperless meguca. Who do you think the jury would side with. Assuming the police even believe you enough to listen in the first place.

There are dozens of ways to have knowledge of a crime and not being able to prove it. You're just arguing for the sake of disagreeing here.
 
Nervos Belli said:
Come on Vebyast. There's a major difference between knowledge of a crime and ability to prove it in court. What if all you have is your own recollection? Then it becomes a he said she said where one of the two is a homeless and paperless meguca. Who do you think the jury would side with. Assuming the police even believe you enough to listen in the first place.

There are dozens of ways to have knowledge of a crime and not being able to prove it. You're just arguing for the sake of disagreeing here.
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We have magic. Your argument is invalid.
 
I have this big hunch that Riona can't reverse Shading a soul.

Firnagzen said:
"Let me finish, I might not have a chance to later," Oriko hisses between gritted teeth. "The... magical girl specialising in soul magic will be here in a week. It doesn't matter what you tell Miss Bennouna." Her lips compress together for a moment. "Do not... do not ask her about her sister."
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The biggest idea I have is her sister dying and Rion+a using her wish to try to revive but she was revived "wrong" as a Shade. Otherwise it's her sister, not a magical girl, who was Rion+a's first victim by using her new powers carelessly.

Probably wrong, but... just a gut feeling.



(I'm aware this doesn't change or excuse any other things Riona did, my point is about the first line: I think Riona may not be able to reverse Shading a soul)

EDIT: I'm aware the second case fills the "innocent, non-MG" quota
 
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Raiseth said:
This is what Nadia told us about Riona's character. Not a glowing praise, but not a condemnation, either.

To those who would argue she would be too terrified to tell on her, Nadia rather flippantly discusses groups killing for fun, running protection rackets and tribute systems in the areas she's been traveling through.

Do with this what you will. ( I shudder to imagine. :p )
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You forgot the line before:
"Riona. Is she feared because she's powerful, or because she's powerful and mean? There's a difference, after all."

"Powerful. She's..." Nadia mutters for a second in Darija, taking a moment to stuff her mouth with more fries, chewing and swallowing before continuing. "Reserved, yes. Does not become friends. If she offers cider, refuse politely, fimti? She brews it herself, but it is..." The Moroccan girl winces.
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okay so hands up, how many people here think she's a horrible monster and/or needs to be stopped and how many are actually willing to work with her?
 
Filraen said:
I have this big hunch that Riona can't reverse Shading a soul.

The biggest idea I have is hersister dying and Rion+a using her wish to try to revive but she was revived "wrong" as a Shade. Otherwise it's her sister, not a magical girl, who was Rion+a's first victim by using her new powers carelessly.

Probably wrong, but... just a gut feeling.



(I'm aware this doesn't change or excuse any other things Riona did, my point is about the first line: I think Riona may not be able to reverse Shading a soul)
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okay look.
If Riona fucking Shaded her own goddamn sister and can't reverse it, and she kept doing it to people?
FUCK HER.
 
I'll point out that if people want to play the villan in this encounter, theirs better ways to do it.

You are a remarkable actor. You can pretend we aren't bothered. You know where she sleeps. You have the evening to put a plan together that isn't a desperate spur of the moment juggling of our friends.
You can be craftier than this.
 
AuraTwilight said:
She's effectively already solved her grief issues, since she can offload it on other people.
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Except here she is, still looking. Why, you might ask, if she can just jam her grief in whatever MG looks at her funny that day before ripping her soul out and generally being an evil tyrant? Could it be because she's not actually an evil tyrant? Maybe? Possible? Or is it too far to think that someone could still be a good person, despite having their morals subject to different circumstances than us?

AuraTwilight said:
I mean, Homura fucking lied to Nadia's face about her damn name and got away with it, she's not magically good at digging up info, she just moves around a lot and has really good rapport. Maybe Riona keeps her mouth shut except when she thinks she's finally achieving her life's goal. Maybe Nadia doesn't grasp the damn implications because her magic isn't Soulguca or Griefbending.

Or, you know. Maybe Nadia was willing to smooth over some details because she wants us to succeed at overcoming global Grief Scarcity and Dewitching.
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That's nonsensical. Why would she be more abrasive and off putting with the girl who has what she wants, as opposed to a random info broker that couldn't touch her? Maybe Nadia lied to us, but again why. She makes a living off of her Rep, and she can't imagine that we wouldn't figure out that Riona was a baby eater if she lied about it to our face. Furthermore, she's shown herself to be mercenary, if neutral, and she already has her clear seed. There's no reason to throw her reputation under the bus there, at all.

Look, if you want to be convinced that Riona is evil off of two comments and less that five minutes of dialogue, then go ahead. But this is starting to reach the point of turtles all the way down.

Vebyast said:
We have magic. Your argument is invalid.
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yes well, not all magical girls are hooked up to a gestalt of hundreds of people centuries if not millennia of collective life experience to call on (and also the internet). No one comes into the world with an indepth understanding of legal procedure and how to manipulate it.
 
CornyBones said:
You are a remarkable actor. You can pretend we aren't bothered. You know where she sleeps. You have the evening to put a plan together that isn't a desperate spur of the moment juggling of our friends.
You can be craftier than this.
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If we let her out of the privacy bubble, we lose our chance. This is very close to being the only time we can ever engage her while she doesn't have access to her shades. Any future privacy bubbles, she'll pull them in with her, or they'll certainly have standing orders to defend her against surprise attacks.
 
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