Your name is Akemi Homura, or at least you're pretty sure it was until the most recent loop. Now you are the sixth head of the Emiya house, with all the boons and hindrances that this title brings, whatever they may be. You don't yet know what future holds, but you reckon it's nothing good.
Devil's Proof (Puella Magi Madoka Magica x Fate/Stay Night)
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2004.01.02:01
Your name is Akemi Homura and you've failed.
Again.
The pale white of the hospital ceiling greets you.
Again.
Your worthless heart beats in your chest, persisting in its pitiful attempts to keep your blood flowing.
Again.
Like a swarm of hungry rats your sins scratch and gnaw on your bones, attempting to devour their way out of your rib cage. You give yourself a few seconds to revel in the much-deserved suffering, and when the time's up, you violently clamp on your despair and hate and throw it into the unconscious depths of your mind, where it can simmer without interfering with your duty.
With a rote effort you impel your will into your eyes and your heart, forcing them to work as they should, and get out of your bed.
An effort so rote, it takes you a few moments to realize that it did absolutely nothing. It takes another moment to realize that your Soul Gem is nowhere to be found.
Your heart stops and then goes into overdrive. The heart monitor lets out a disgusting high-pitched scream before you manage to force your mind and body back into obedience.
Observing yourself more calmly and carefully, you realize that you weren't entirely correct. The back of your left hand, the place right where your Soul Gem should've been located, isn't empty. There's ...something. A clearly unnatural formation, half-emensed into the material universe.
It's not a Soul Gem. The object is far too crude, far too thin, far too ethereal. If a Soul Gem could be compared to a modern computer, then this thing would barely count as a collection of vacuum tubes.
Yet you still can feel a certain affinity between the structures, a certain convergence of purpose. A will, enclosed. A thought, endlessly looping on itself.
You carefully prod it, trying to determine its nature. The object doesn't surrender its secrets easily, but you're nothing but patient.
...
...You think you're starting to get a good a good idea of what its purpose is. It's a repository of impulses; something greater than a memory, something lesser than a desire.
You delve deeper and deeper, trying, if not to learn, then at least to catalog the half-deciphered recollections within. You find mostly incomprehensible formulae that you somehow know will produce underwhelming results, primitive attempts at enchantment and time manipulation. Deeper still, you see a coil isolated from the rest. It feels less solid, less... purposeful. You suspect that this makeshift structure was used to store actual memories, an ethereal journal of sorts, but the format feels completely impenetrable to you. A few momentary glimpses is the best you could manage for now. Faces and voices, lessons, experiment logs and ...a beach vacation?
Deep in a meditative trance, you do not notice the sound of the door opening.
"...Homura?"
You did not jump.
You whip your head to the entrance to find two new indistinct shapes in your room. Ah, yes, your eyes. You hastily grab your glasses from the nightstand.
The first shape resolves into a tall young man with wild, fiery red hair. Something about his smile puts you on edge, but you can't quite put your finger on it. The second one turns out to be a nurse. Her expression looks nervous and a little frustrated, and her eyes keep darting back and forth between you two.
"Sir, please, this is so sudden, we aren't sure what her state is, she should be resting right now, not taking visitors."
"I'm her brother, I'd be the first to see if she was straining herself. Besides, it's just a short visit, I'll be out in ten minutes."
The nurse opens her mouth to object, but the man doesn't wait for her. "And miss, shouldn't you be getting a doctor right now?" His voice is still perfectly friendly and polite, but the pressure of his gaze alone is enough to shatter the woman's pathetically weak resistance.
She gives a shallow shaky bow to no one in particular and darts out of the room.
The man moves to sit beside your bed. His unnerving expression shifts into a concerned, but still genuinely warm smile.
"Hey. How are you feeling? Does your head hurt?"
"I am fine..?" You reply carefully, not really sure what else to say. Such close attention to your persona at the very start of the loop feels disquieting, to say the least. And why is he concerned about your head, of all things? Weren't you hospitalized for heart surgery?
"I see. You really gave us all a big fright, you know. Fuji-nee especially. I barely convinced her to not involve Raiga off the bat and let our healthcare system work as it should—"
He continues to speak and you continue to scrutinize his face. Who is he? Is he really who he claims he is? You know that your isolation isn't perfect, that your shift still can affect the events outside of the fragment of time you have ripped out of the proper timeflow. But these deviations usually manifest as deviously subtle changes, blindsiding you and ruining your carefully cultivated plans at the worst possible moment, not... whatever this is.
Could an aberration manifest so far into the past as to create you a new sibling? If he is your sibling, that is. Right now you see very little familiar resemblance. As you continue to scan his face again and again, searching for any trace of deception, a name reluctantly crawls out of the stolen memories.
"..."
Deep in your thoughts, you hadn't noticed that the man in front of you had stopped talking a while ago, and now an awkward silence fills the room.
"...Homura?"
You should reply something quickly.
[] "...I'm sorry, but who are you?"
Blunt and to the point, better not to test your social skills.
[] "...Shirou?"
For some reason, the name feels right on your tongue.
[] Write-in
- Goals
- Ascertain the nature of the anomaly.
- Get out of the hospital.
A/N: Hello everyone. It's my first time running a quest, so please tell me if I'm doing something wrong, and when I do inevitably fuck up, please don't bully me too much.
I'll be in your care.
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Character sheet
A bit about the system
A bit about the system I'll be using.
Attributes work off a simple dice pool, with each dot representing one d10 you can use against a difficulty check or an opposing check.
Attributes represent a combination of natural characteristics and acquired skills, with the levels roughly mapping to
Magic works a little bit different.
You have a magic dice pool, which represents how much can you cast without completely depleting your Od or overheating your magic circuits. Once a die is rolled, it is gone until the next scene, where the pool is completely restored. You can go in debt, but the consequences for that will be severe.
You can acquire levels of proficiency in different Thaumaturgical Foundations by spending time and passing progressively more difficult checks, as long as you have texts or teachers associated with the given Foundation. Proficiency goes from 1 to 5 and represents the maximum amount of magic dice you can use for a spell of the respective system.
Every spell has a DC you have to pass to cast it. You can't roll more dice than your proficiency level allows, but you can choose to roll less.
You can acquire spells in two ways: either by learning existing or researching new spells within the confines of the Thaumaturgical Foundations you're proficient in, or by cataloging your newfound Magic Crest.
You can always use up to 5 dice to cast a Crest spell, regardless of your proficiency with the associated Foundation, but without the understanding of their fundamentals you won't be able to use them in research.
Bonus magic dice (such as granted by the Nature of Closed Circuits) do not get used up and do not count towards any of the limits, but to use them you have to use at least one normal die alongside them.
Attributes work off a simple dice pool, with each dot representing one d10 you can use against a difficulty check or an opposing check.
Attributes represent a combination of natural characteristics and acquired skills, with the levels roughly mapping to
- 1 - someone exceptionally unsuited for the activity,
- 2 - an average person,
- 3 - a talented professional,
- 4 - a one-in-a-billion genius,
- 5 - E-rank Heroic Spirit,
Magic works a little bit different.
You have a magic dice pool, which represents how much can you cast without completely depleting your Od or overheating your magic circuits. Once a die is rolled, it is gone until the next scene, where the pool is completely restored. You can go in debt, but the consequences for that will be severe.
You can acquire levels of proficiency in different Thaumaturgical Foundations by spending time and passing progressively more difficult checks, as long as you have texts or teachers associated with the given Foundation. Proficiency goes from 1 to 5 and represents the maximum amount of magic dice you can use for a spell of the respective system.
Every spell has a DC you have to pass to cast it. You can't roll more dice than your proficiency level allows, but you can choose to roll less.
You can acquire spells in two ways: either by learning existing or researching new spells within the confines of the Thaumaturgical Foundations you're proficient in, or by cataloging your newfound Magic Crest.
You can always use up to 5 dice to cast a Crest spell, regardless of your proficiency with the associated Foundation, but without the understanding of their fundamentals you won't be able to use them in research.
Bonus magic dice (such as granted by the Nature of Closed Circuits) do not get used up and do not count towards any of the limits, but to use them you have to use at least one normal die alongside them.
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Hm seems like there might be a typo here. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to say Chaotic Madoka
True Madoka, more like. Why decide between Law and Chaos, when you can choose Madoka?Hm seems like there might be a typo here. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to say Chaotic Madoka
I am curious about how much she remembers of previous!Homura...not sure it's worth pretending we remember more than we do though. If we're ever going to admit to our "amnesia", we probably need to do it now. On the other hand, that could trigger Shirou's overprotectiveness and make it difficult to gather information on this timeline.
Honestly I'm just gonna vote to see what happens.
[X] "...Shirou?"
For some reason, the name feels right on your tongue.
Honestly I'm just gonna vote to see what happens.
[X] "...Shirou?"
For some reason, the name feels right on your tongue.
Truuuuue. I bow to your superior wisdom lol
Homura can "remember" only the memories previous Homura had recorded in her Crest. You can recover quite a lot of important information and infer even more from the context, but there is no guarantee that what previous Homura considered important and what you would consider important are the same things. And obviously, spending time deciphering the memories comes at the cost of not spending time deciphering the rest of Crest, or doing something else equally important.
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- Location
- The End of Glory
[X] "...I'm sorry, but who are you?"
0th Law
The Promethean Rose
- Location
- 5 Minutes into the Future
- Pronouns
- They/Them
What about the magical energy in the atmosphere, leylines, and/or the environment? Are we able to draw upon it, or no?
[X] "...Shirou?"
For some reason, the name feels right on your tongue.
For some reason, the name feels right on your tongue.
- Location
- Laniakea
[X] "....Sorry, I think whatever happened to my head may have affected my memory. I can't remember how I got here and almost forgot your name."
That's just about the understatement of the century, but it's probably the gentlest way of breaking this news to poor Shirou.
That's just about the understatement of the century, but it's probably the gentlest way of breaking this news to poor Shirou.
Yes you can, but either way, you have to both initiate the spell with your own od, and then run atmospheric mana through your circuits. Magic pool isn't a direct measure of your od reserves or how overheated your magic circuits are, it's just an abstracted measure of how much you can cast in a relatively quick succession without serious damage to your health.
Or are you asking whether or not you will be able to use Formalcraft? Then yes, as long as you find someone or something to teach it to you.
0th Law
The Promethean Rose
- Location
- 5 Minutes into the Future
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Refined Magical Energy, the sort circuits produce for actual spellcasting, can be produced from both external and internal magical energy. You don't use internal energy directly. The ability of a Mage, generally, is more determined by throughput: if they can store X amount of magical energy, they can emit X amount of magical energy. The more energy they can gather from the world around them, the faster they can do it, the more quickly they can fire off massive spells. Take the Sakura vs Rin fight at the end of Heaven's Feel, for instance.
(Basically, just leave the Greater vs Lesser source vague and things'll make more sense)
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Well yes, that was kinda the point. Magic pool describes some abstract bottleneck to your casting ability, it doesn't really care about the nature of said bottleneck at any given moment.
I agree that in 90% of cases the bottleneck will be the throughput of the circuits (which is why magic pool is tied to circuit quantity and quality), but I didn't really want to create an individual system and stat for every situation when it won't be the case, so it is what it is.
[X] "...I'm sorry, but who are you?"
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] "...Shirou?"
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] "...Shirou?"
ModerationSeer
Never gonna Give you Up!
- Location
- The Moon
- Pronouns
- Nevergonnaletyoudown
[X] "...I'm sorry, but who are you?"
We won't be doing the other one.
We won't be doing the other one.
[X] "...I'm sorry, but who are you?"
Sure... Neutral. The miss I will end the world if it makes my crush survive is neutral.
[X] "...Shirou?"
0th Law
The Promethean Rose
- Location
- 5 Minutes into the Future
- Pronouns
- They/Them
This is still in the loops, so it's not like Homura has reached Rebellion stuff anyway. Besides, if you examine what she actually does in Rebellion it's not actually that bad: people can live happily and normally, while the burden of curses is placed on the back of the Incubator, a more than acceptable target.
[X] "...Shirou?"