Puella Magica Somniabunt Sanguinis [PMMM/Bloodborne]

Then why was it voted for? If I'm just going to ignore a non-conditional part of the winning option, then what's the point of me being here?
You missed the entire point of that sub-vote then. It wasn't questions we had to ask, it was questions about things Ruby would be unfamiliar with and thus be inclined to ask about that are common for us, like what a car is, that you could have summed up and ignored or used to extend the post if you felt the post was too short.
 
Suppose I did. Ah well, that's what I get for trying to rush an update out before I have to take a weekend off for visiting family. I apologise for the inconvinience.

edit: sorry if I'm being a bit of an arse, I'm ill, tired and feeling unappreciated, and while none of that is any of your fault, it isn't something I can just switch off, no matter howw much I'd like to.
 
Last edited:
This is perfectly salvageable. At this point, we should probably ask a few leading questions about our surrounding, in a meta effort to get Homura to start asking questions of her own. While the running misunderstandings are kinda hilarious, we as voters should probably make an effort to rectify them before anything bad happens.
 
I'm fine with this minor mess up - As has been said before, this vote is salvageable and lessons have been learned, so we might as well continue whilst trying to make the best of this as possible.
 
Just as someone who does not know the PMMM setting anyone feel like explaining the context of whats going on right now?
 
Just as someone who does not know the PMMM setting anyone feel like explaining the context of whats going on right now?
Homura is a little girl lich with Time Stop powers and a Hammer Space pocket, her phylactery is the gem on her ring.
Every few days, when everything is destroyed by a "Witch", she is sent back to this starting point.
IIRC what she has in the Hammerspace Pocket in one time-loop stays in it for the next, and she spent one time-loop stuffing it full of as many firearms and explosives as possible.
 
Last edited:
In your defence, your kind are more than a little notorious for their excessive emotions, and you feel very proud, personally, that you haven't succumbed to the urge to devolve into a cuddly flowerbed again.
If we ever get Homura to hug Ruby I want this to happen.:tongue:
At least you couldn't see any mis-sized top hats. Being an Eternal One must bring a few perks, after all.
No taste, at all.

Ok so to get a vote rolling I'll try it. Again as everyone is mostly saying no big deal about the update.

[x] Inquire the eternal o-errh Homura of the rules of her dream. Much of this is different than what you're used to and to get an understanding is imperative.
-[x] Offer what is common to you if the eternal one is curious.
--[x] Ask about those things and how you could help.

This is to get the common stuff out of the way and maybe open the way to the reveal Ruby has got this all wrong. Course tell me what you think and I'll make edits if necessary.
 
Just as someone who does not know the PMMM setting anyone feel like explaining the context of whats going on right now?
I'm assuming you're willing to be spoiled on a lot of important plot points of the show, but in case you aren't, I'll spoiler tag the info. Warning, wall o' text incoming.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a dark pseudo-deconstruction of the magical girl genre. In the show's setting, there are little alien creatures running around called Incubators, or Kyubey. Ruby calls the Incubators parasites, which is kinda hilarious for reasons you'll see later. They offer wishes in exchange for becoming a magical girl and fighting monsters called Witches. When a Witch dies, it drops an object called a Grief Seed, which a magical girl can use to refresh their magical powers.

When a girl makes a contract with Kyubey, they are given an object called a Soul Gem. This name is literal, and their soul is literally in the gem. This has the upside of them being resistant to body damage, but it means that when the gem is broken the girl dies. Kyubey does not tell the girls that he does this.

The magic a magical girl can use is related to their wish. A girl who wished to heal someone gets enhanced regeneration, a girl who wished for guidance gets precognition, etc.

When a magical girl uses magic, they build up a bit of corruption, or grief, in their gem, proportional to the amount of magic they used. This corruption looks like ink staining the gem, but starts going interesting colors when the gem gets covered completely. If a Soul Gem gets filled with corruption entirely, the gem breaks and a Grief Seed is created from the remains of the girl's soul. A Witch then "hatches" from the seed. Grief Seeds are used to clear corruption from girl's gems. So yes, the magical girl economy is pseudo-cannibalistic. Kyubey does not tell girls this.

Corruption is also built up by strong negative feelings, and can also have negative effects on the magical girl's psyche, which causes further despair, which causes more issues. This is has the unofficial term grief spiral, as the girl's own despair makes more of itself in a feedback loop which only ends when the girl either gets a Seed to cleanse with or turns into a Witch. Or smashes their own gem, if they know about that detail.

Witches are magical beings created of the concentrated despair of the girl that they were born from. They live in little extra dimensional hidey-holes called Barriers, or Labyrinths. The inside of the barrier is a trippy place, based off of the girl's own personal hell. For example, a girl who loves cheese has a barrier filled with sweets and candies, but not a single bit of cheese in sight. The Witch can draw people into her barrier to eat their souls or whatever it wants to do by putting them under a hypnosis spell called a Kiss. This is visible, and is marked by a small tattoo somewhere on the person's body (often the neck). In the barrier are also little monsters called Familiars, who are created by the Witch and sometimes leave the barrier. If a Familiar consumes enough people, it can become a copy of the Witch that created it.


Why does Kyubey make contracts? Entropy. The universe will eventually succumb to entropy and become a dark, cold place of nearly nothing after enough time. The Incubators found that emotions were able to magically defy entropy, but since they possess none themselves, they had to find other races to get energy from. They found that the despair of young human girls to be the most effective at entropy reversal.

The Incubators also assisted with human development in this setting. Incubators have been around for many thousands of years. The many Wishes made by magical girls slowly added up and improved the overall quality of life for all humans over time. As such, PMMM's world is rather nice looking. Mitakihara's middle school is a huge complex with glass and sculptures and heavy electronics integration, for example. The show takes place in 2011, as far as anyone knows.

Since this is a magical girl show (and because nobody would approve of the system as it is), the masquerade is in full effect.


So how does Homura factor into this? She's a time traveling magical girl, who Wished to save another girl from death. Mitakihara is scheduled to be attacked by a giant city-flattening Witch named Walpurgisnacht, or All Witches' Night, on May 1st. The girl she wants to save is Madoka Kaname, a pink-haired middle schooler who is really, really nice. Way too nice, actually. Self sacrificing to the point of possibly having a bit of a martyr complex. Homura has tried to save Madoka dozens of times, but every time she tries Madoka either dies at some point during the loop, contracts and dies fightng Walpurgis, or contracts and falls into despair, turning into a Witch. The kicker is that every time Homura tries to save Madoka, she increases the potential power Madoka has, which makes her a bigger target for Kyubey and makes the Witch she turns into more powerful. This is because of some complex stuff about how fate and multiple timelines tie into magical potential, which I won't get into here. By loop number 3 or 4, Madoka's Witch (Kriemhild Gretchen, one of many Faust references) is powerful enough to consume the world. Homura loops about a hundred times, so by the end it could probably nom on most of the solar system.

Homura's primary combat ability is time stop combined with her shield of infinite storage. She uses these to great effect, unloading oodles of firepower from stolen weaponry into her enemies from the safety of stopped time. She is the ultimate ganker, but has a weakness. Her timestop pulls any object below a certain size into timestop with her on contact, and she isn't physically strong for a magical girl. This means that she could be stopped in her tracks by a strong hug.

There are other magical girls in and around Mitakihara. Mami Tomoe, an experienced veteran (but still not as experienced as Homura) with highly versatile ribbon control powers. Kyouko Sakura, an ex-partner of Mami's who left for a nearby city due to personal issues after having a fight with Mami. Kyouko uses a segmented spear to great effect, and has the ability to create barriers of chains. One of Madoka's friends, a girl named Sayaka Miki, has the potential to contract, and if she does, she usually gets cutlasses and a healing power.

So that's the world of PMMM in a nutshell. Or not a nutshell, that's like 1100 words.

TL;DR magical girls turn into witches, witches drop seeds that clean gems when they die. Homura's a time traveller who's trying to save her waifu. Walpurgis is coming (and she's a tough nut to crack). There are other magical girls around too.
 
Last edited:
I'm assuming you're willing to be spoiled on a lot of important plot points of the show, but in case you aren't, I'll spoiler tag the info. Warning, wall o' text incoming.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a dark pseudo-deconstruction of the magical girl genre. In the show's setting, there are little alien creatures running around called Incubators, or Kyubey. Ruby calls the Incubators parasites, which is kinda hilarious for reasons you'll see later. They offer wishes in exchange for becoming a magical girl and fighting monsters called Witches. When a Witch dies, it drops an object called a Grief Seed, which a magical girl can use to refresh their magical powers.

When a girl makes a contract with Kyubey, they are given an object called a Soul Gem. This name is literal, and their soul is literally in the gem. This has the upside of them being resistant to body damage, but it means that when the gem is broken the girl dies. Kyubey does not tell the girls that he does this.

The magic a magical girl can use is related to their wish. A girl who wished to heal someone gets enhanced regeneration, a girl who wished for guidance gets precognition, etc.

When a magical girl uses magic, they build up a bit of corruption, or grief, in their gem, proportional to the amount of magic they used. This corruption looks like ink staining the gem, but starts going interesting colors when the gem gets covered completely. If a Soul Gem gets filled with corruption entirely, the gem breaks and a Grief Seed is created from the remains of the girl's soul. A Witch then "hatches" from the seed. Grief Seeds are used to clear corruption from girl's gems. So yes, the magical girl economy is pseudo-cannibalistic. Kyubey does not tell girls this.

Corruption is also built up by strong negative feelings, and can also have negative effects on the magical girl's psyche, which causes further despair, which causes more issues. This is has the unofficial term grief spiral, as the girl's own despair makes more of itself in a feedback loop which only ends when the girl either gets a Seed to cleanse with or turns into a Witch. Or smashes their own gem, if they know about that detail.

Witches are magical beings created of the concentrated despair of the girl that they were born from. They live in little extra dimensional hidey-holes called Barriers, or Labyrinths. The inside of the barrier is a trippy place, based off of the girl's own personal hell. For example, a girl who loves cheese has a barrier filled with sweets and candies, but not a single bit of cheese in sight. The Witch can draw people into her barrier to eat their souls or whatever it wants to do by putting them under a hypnosis spell called a Kiss. This is visible, and is marked by a small tattoo somewhere on the person's body (often the neck). In the barrier are also little monsters called Familiars, who are created by the Witch and sometimes leave the barrier. If a Familiar consumes enough people, it can become a copy of the Witch that created it.


Why does Kyubey make contracts? Entropy. The universe will eventually succumb to entropy and become a dark, cold place of nearly nothing after enough time. The Incubators found that emotions were able to magically defy entropy, but since they possess none themselves, they had to find other races to get energy from. They found that the despair of young human girls to be the most effective at entropy reversal.

The Incubators also assisted with human development in this setting. Incubators have been around for many thousands of years. The many Wishes made by magical girls slowly added up and improved the overall quality of life for all humans over time. As such, PMMM's world is rather nice looking. Mitakihara's middle school is a huge complex with glass and sculptures and heavy electronics integration, for example. The show takes place in 2011, as far as anyone knows.

Since this is a magical girl show (and because nobody would approve of the system as it is), the masquerade is in full effect.


So how does Homura factor into this? She's a time traveling magical girl, who Wished to save another girl from death. Mitakihara is scheduled to be attacked by a giant city-flattening Witch named Walpurgisnacht, or All Witches' Night, on May 1st. The girl she wants to save is Madoka Kaname, a pink-haired middle schooler who is really, really nice. Way too nice, actually. Self sacrificing to the point of possibly having a bit of a martyr complex. Homura has tried to save Madoka dozens of times, but every time she tries Madoka either dies at some point during the loop, contracts and dies fightng Walpurgis, or contracts and falls into despair, turning into a Witch. The kicker is that every time Homura tries to save Madoka, she increases the potential power Madoka has, which makes her a bigger target for Kyubey and makes the Witch she turns into more powerful. This is because of some complex stuff about how fate and multiple timelines tie into magical potential, which I won't get into here. By loop number 3 or 4, Madoka's Witch (Kriemhild Gretchen, one of many Faust references) is powerful enough to consume the world. Homura loops about a hundred times, so by the end it could probably nom on most of the solar system.

Homura's primary combat ability is time stop combined with her shield of infinite storage. She uses these to great effect, unloading oodles of firepower from stolen weaponry into her enemies from the safety of stopped time. She is the ultimate ganker, but has a weakness. Her timestop pulls any object below a certain size into timestop with her on contact, and she isn't physically strong for a magical girl. This means that she could be stopped in her tracks by a strong hug.

There are other magical girls in and around Mitakihara. Mami Tomoe, an experienced veteran (but still not as experienced as Homura) with highly versatile ribbon control powers. Kyouko Sakura, an ex-partner of Mami's who left for a nearby city due to personal issues after having a fight with Mami. Kyouko uses a segmented spear to great effect, and has the ability to create barriers of chains. One of Madoka's friends, a girl named Sayaka Miki, has the potential to contract, and if she does, she usually gets cutlasses and a healing power.

So that's the world of PMMM in a nutshell. Or not a nutshell, that's like 1100 words.

TL;DR magical girls turn into witches, witches drop seeds that clean gems when they die. Homura's a time traveller who's trying to save her waifu. Walpurgis is coming (and she's a tough nut to crack). There are other magical girls around too.
thx for the info
 
One soothing nap and cup of tea later;
Niether rain nor snow nor glom of nite shall cease this messenger about his duty.

[Update rewrite now in process, thank you for not being as cancerous an audience as I'm used to. Then again, my bar was set by chanistan and the Worm fanbase on SB, so perhaps I've just been partiuclarly masocistic in site choices]
 
Just a slightly amused note, that in the revised update the questioning leads onto the subjectt of does Great One/Exalted One = Magical Girl, and Ruby has to inform Homura how (dimensionally transcendant) babies are made.
 
[X] Yes, let's hunt

Because I imagine neither of our gems are probably in great shape right now. Hers more than ours.

... I am correct in assuming this is the "Hunt first, questions later" option basically, correct?
 
[X] Yes, let's hunt

Because I imagine neither of our gems are probably in great shape right now. Hers more than ours.

... I am correct in assuming this is the "Hunt first, questions later" option basically, correct?
Yep, though no-hunting does mean that you get to tag along to a Madoka supervision session earlier, bumping into some of the others a bit earlier.
 
Yep, though no-hunting does mean that you get to tag along to a Madoka supervision session earlier, bumping into some of the others a bit earlier.
*Shrug* We'll either be confused she's obsessed over a fragment of herself, think Madoka is where she sealed most of her power, and/or feel even worse for Homura because it looks like she forgot that these are her Messengers/Figments of her Dream.

I think I prefer confused Flower noises over completely mistaken Flower noises.

Oh. And I love the Homura pics.
 
I think I prefer confused Flower noises over completely mistaken Flower noises.

Oh. And I love the Homura pics.
You may find the aftermath of Ruby's first Witch fight interesting then. Interesting is certainly one of the words I'd use to describe it.

~Don't think too hard about all of this. Just go out and kill a few beasts. It's for your own good, you know~ - Great-Uncle Gherman's helpful advice for young Great Ones having existentail crises
 
Last edited:
If I understand correctly. This is Homulily. That was her barrier and holy shit, magical girls are infant great ones and die in their metaphorical cribs.

Madokami may very well be the Great One who fathers magical girls. In a sense she loses her children after all.

Also got to love those sensory descriptions about being a flower made of sensory organs. Probably my favorite part of this quest honestly!

For things to do, hunt sounds fun? I'm curious if there's an analogue to the beast plague at work and or if we might find any magical girls.

Of course the bloodborne hunt lasts until the infant Great one is slain...walpurgisnatch perhaps? Would Homura reset the hunt? Perhaps allow us to memory bleed/blood-echo train the other magical girls? Perhaps even make them amendable to befriending that way?

Perhaps when the hunt ends we might return to our original place. Homura screwed PMMM's cosmology something fierce and the Incubators certainly don't help. Then again, perhaps I should follow the example of another Young Great One.

Sweet child of Kos, returned to the ocean. An infinite curse, an infinite sea, accepting all that is and could be...
 
[X] Let's not hunt. We can offer to help her tonight
 
Madman's Knowledge - consume to gain 1 insight.

This, at the very least, is how Ruby sees what is happening. I can say definitively that she isn't all wrong, but she is definitely looking at things from a slightly warped perspective.

Hours isn't homulily yet, but with temporal shenanigans, that isn't so much of a problem. Why should the devil care about the integrity of the universe if it might mean she never gets to come into existence?

[X]Also I found a lovely song

That is a lovely song. I think you've found Ruby's sad theme. Her combat one was always going to be Thing That Should Not Be by Metallica, and I'm still looking for her happy one.
 
Last edited:
to kill some time while I'm on the train, I've threadmarked all the waffling and question answering I've done in the infoformative index.

Hopefully it'll save some time for anyone trying to look up where I said things, and you never know, it might even make this quest comprehensible for newcomers.
 
Back
Top