In the oldest myth versions, even Loki did not intend for it to happen. He was just helping him bounce stuff off him.
Magical Girl Home Base Quest
- Thread starter 7734
- Start date
- Original
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
If nothing else, the GMs own profile statement is 'Trust and Verify'. Just because we want to meet Chirs first doesn't mean we're hostile to her. It's really a basic landlord thing, meet the people who are going to living in your building before actually letting them live there.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
I think we can agree that there's any number of sneaky things the witches and alchemists can be doing to undermine/harm us, many of which involve involve them getting Chris' name. But can we actually avert any of those by just meeting her? The witches either have her name or not, and I'm not sure how us meeting her first is going to change that. Unless we can bring along some kind of trinket that tells us whether someone is being scried?
Speaking of sneaky stuff, wouldn't it be awkward if the witches just grab some yearbooks from the nearby middle schools and start combing through them for anyone who looks like the magical girls? The next mission might be a life and death, 'at any cost' mission to stop the witches from stealing some kid's yearbook.
Speaking of sneaky stuff, wouldn't it be awkward if the witches just grab some yearbooks from the nearby middle schools and start combing through them for anyone who looks like the magical girls? The next mission might be a life and death, 'at any cost' mission to stop the witches from stealing some kid's yearbook.
[X] [WORK] No, you want to improve your workshop instead.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
As funny as that is, no. Part of the issue is the fidelity of the record of the Name, and something as processed as a yearbook would be the equivalent of brute-forcing a safe with a combo dialer. You can get hits, sure, but when you don't know if the safe is full of gold or explosives, is that really a chance you want to take?
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I've always liked the Dresdenverse idea that a true name isn't just the words, but the exact pronunciation and tone a person speaks their own name with when declaring themselves.
- Location
- ?
Maybe not,but is giving Mistletoe some backup anyway bad? Even if you don't buy into the theory, giving an inexperienced MG some security while she's trying to break a person out is a fair amount of caution. Hell,if Trompdoy goes with her, it would be even easier because of her illusion trinket giving her more options.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It's plausible that she's better on the job.
It's also plausible that when she's on the job with a fellow magical girl she does the same thing to a lesser degree, and an enemy magic gribbly hiding in an alley overheard her.
Loose lips sink ships, and she's clearly being shipped.
Veteran magical girls, the kind who've been at it for years and years, tend to have resources, connections, and comfort. This is a two-way correlation- having a support structure and connections make you less likely to die, and being good at what you do makes it easier to gain such structure and connections.
The problem is that being an effective magical girl isn't necessarily compatible with being a stay-at-home girl. The girls need to sleep, either during the day or at night. If they fight during the day, they miss school; if at night, they sleep through school. Either way, the parents get worried, then upset, then ground the child. Or notice the child getting injured and ask awkward questions. Soon enough, the girl is forced to either leave home or stop fighting monsters at night. We are, of necessity, encountering the ones who leave home... Which means that typically, they're every bit as impoverished and helpless, and in many ways as vulnerable, as any other runaway children.
In the United States there is very much a tier relationship, and we've been told that the mean life expectancy of a magical girl is eight goddamn months. This is a big part of why- because America is offsourcing the majority of its supernatural evil fighting duties to teenage runaways.
Yeah, plus we've got entire floors of the building that are effectively unoccupied and unfit for human habitation. A colony of winged goddamn monkeys could probably quietly land on the roof and gain access to the building somehow if they wanted to.
We might be able to detect some even if we can't counter them, and a known problem is always better than an unknown problem even if you can't do anything about it. At least then it loses the element of surprise.
Furthermore, one of the many obvious sneaky things the witches and alchemists could be doing involving Chris is something like 'set a trap with her as bait,' which is why part of the 'suspicion' vote is to get backup for Mistletoe.
Which makes no damn sense. The government should at minimum be funding them, as they have a compelling interest in not letting anyone get eaten.
There is one problem, That requires the government being actually AWARE OF WHAT IS GOING ON. They can't solve problems they are not aware exists, as was alluded to already I think.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
According to QM we'll learn during Week 13 why things are like this and why the Masquerade is in place and upheld.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Then we discover there used to be a massive Department of Magical Warfare, but it got its budget cut by the GOP for for supporting witchcraft and heresy.
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
They'd probably have died off during Sequestration honestly due to inability to maintain staff in face of cuts. The problem with magical girl groups is that it's really hard to tie them down, and if the supply gets cut off then they go 'well, deuces to that then' and then resign en masse.
If they existed, which is doubtful. The issue with republic systems is that it's hard to really get the ball rolling since they have more people who need to know. Dynastic systems- true dynastic systems and not the modern shitshow of it- tend to have the fractal nature to mean that people know People, so it quickly turns into 'a friend of the family' scenarios and you get a lot more community effort to bring things up to par.
I think in this case its more the magical symbolism of it.
You telling someone your real name basically gives them the authorization to do something with it.
That someone telling someone ELSE your real name degrades it, and picking up the name from a mass printed yearbook has gone through so many connection-breaks that the name isn't worth anything.
Count in terms of degrees of association and in terms of permission.
Which suggests a good strategy might be to con their unknowing parent...assuming the evil team of the magic stuff is actually on the ball enough not to set up a dozen red flags to normal civilians.
"All magic is the work of Satan, so if a few magic using girls die protecting the people of this great nation against other works of the Devil, then that is a risk I am perfectly willing to take."
-Some politician somewhere in that on(c)e great nation.
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
That makes sense.
[X] [CHRIS] Something smells fishy about this; reserve a final decision on the matter until you meet her yourself and send some backup with Mistletoe to go get her.
Loki was just halping?
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
Odin: "Stop halping!"
Not to mention that the alternative to dynastic support is religious organizations, and America being highly Protestant and lacking a national church means that hierarchical religious organization is also much less prevalent in the US. Basically you probably have the Catholics in Baltimore and Boston, with a lesser network of them providing some aid in the rest of the country, and then the Mormons in Utah. And that's about it for American organized religion having the hierarchical structure needed to support a Magical Warfare department.
Given the approach the Catholic Church has towards subjects related to "magic" you can bet you'r ass they would never under any circumstances give even a smidgen of support to any "Magical Girl". Further even MG's are probably part of the "targets of opportunity" for their anit-magic-devil-heretic-warfare units.
That or we go straight into grim-derp territory alla Highschool DxD.
- Location
- ?
This is off topic,but I think grim-derp is totally overused term to the point where it has no meaning anymore because that accusation has been leveled at series that aren't really that and just darker in tone.
This...is not true. While there probably are Church organizations like you described,there are ones that are willing to work with MGs as the QM states here:
In Mexico,there is a strong Catholic Church presence,but like Elder Hamman's post mentioned this isn't true for the U.S for a variety of reasons. And I consider that to be the more plausible reason than simply saying 'all churches hate magic!' theory you're talking about.
Last edited:
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Also I'm pretty sure the Catholic Church's official position on magic is that it's not real, but if it was real it would only be bad if it comes from the devil or other non-holy sources. MGs are, in this verse, explicitly forces for good, which would get them the support of a lot of the Catholic Church, outside of crazy fringe groups and/or people who jump to conclusions about the magic being from an evil source.
Also the modern Catholic Church is an extremely peaceful organization that does not do violence. I would expect if they thought magic was evil they'd send priests to talk the MGs out of using their powers rather then anything more aggressive.
That's completely leaving aside the fact that given the worldbuilding of this verse, I'd expect the Catholic Church to have learned about MGs a very long time ago, and to have a friendly policy towards them out of sheer pragmatism if nothing else. MGs fight demons and witches, which are natural enemies of the church, it just makes sense to side with them.
Also the modern Catholic Church is an extremely peaceful organization that does not do violence. I would expect if they thought magic was evil they'd send priests to talk the MGs out of using their powers rather then anything more aggressive.
That's completely leaving aside the fact that given the worldbuilding of this verse, I'd expect the Catholic Church to have learned about MGs a very long time ago, and to have a friendly policy towards them out of sheer pragmatism if nothing else. MGs fight demons and witches, which are natural enemies of the church, it just makes sense to side with them.
Icipall
Don't worry, we can fanfix that!
- Location
- Cold snow fields of Finland
It will be interesting to learn, if not during Week 13, at some point how do religious/supernatural organizations mesh with the magical girls.
We know that devils and demons exist, so does that mean there are also angels? What about things like djinn, yookai, nature spirits or elementals? Can these beings grant magical girl powers? Can you have a Hindu god on a speed dial? And how did it go that specifically magical girls are the main force combating the forces of evil, and not say a trained and supplied army of exorcists, onmyoji or druids?
7734
Trust and verify.
- Location
- Philmont
You'd really be suprised. Try googling the word "thaumaturgy" and see what it gets you. Most pop-culture 'Catholic' responses to magic et all are really more Protestant responses brought over from the Good Old Days before big tent revivals and the best way to drum up fervor was to hold a big religious problem solving gig- including but not limited to witch hunts and exorcisms.
Ironically, there is still IRL a formal branch of exorcists for the Church of Rome, but they're dying out since the base requirements are something like a Master's or Doctorate in psychiatric medicine, a bachelor's in Divinities, and at least four years service in an archbishophric and a letter from said archbishop which may need to be co-signed by a cardinal (which probably means at least an associate's in accounting too). This is entirely because as per doctrine laid out in the post-counter-reformation period and reinforced in the mid-1700s, demonic possession and witchcraft was to be considered the least likely cause of any one given problem with the more realistic issue to be a human related one or a medical problem.
Depends on the org, really. Some get along well, some are the fucking Mormons. Incidentally, Utah alone drives the MG lifespan averages in the US down by two weeks during a good year, more on a bad one.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It seems like for some weird reason, the highly diverse forces that grant people magical powers tend to disproportionately hand out those powers to teenage girls, which is one of the core premises of a "magical girl" setting. Without that, you have either "nonmagical girl" or "magical nongirl."
Boys get to have magic, sure, but it seems like they're not preferentially chosen as designated paladins of a particular magical cause. So they tend to slot naturally into artificer/enchanter/diviner type roles.
So basically, if you have an all-male clergy, you're faced with the reality that most of the magically empowered humans likely to fight for Good against Evil are, well... teenage girls. Deal with it.