[]Morning routine.
[]Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[]Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to hold off until everyone can go as a group again?
[]Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[]Like this.
[]Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[]Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[]How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[]Pick up science where we left off.
[X]Morning routine.
[X] Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[X] Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to wait for everyone to go as a group again?
[X] Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[X] Like this.
[X] Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[X] Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[X] How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[X] Pick up science where we left off.
[X]Morning routine.
[X] Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[X] Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to wait for everyone to go as a group again?
[X] Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[X] Like this.
[X] Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[X] Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[X] How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[X] Pick up science where we left off.
A nightmarish shape, plunges out of the smoke, six spikes of legs in harsh angles supporting a high stepping, arachnoid body, built along the same slender, serrated lines. Vicious, predatory mandibles hang from its head, jagged, and angular, perfect for ripping and tearing. The entire Witch seems to be roughly hewn of wood, scorched black. Trailing, bright coloured ribbons stream back, mingling with eddying wisps of noxious smoke.
A witch is brought about by the mindscape of girl at the moment of the death.
Hellfire and damnation. Arachne, Witch of Doom. Her last moments were despairing by self, in a run-down room full of bugs, being perceived as just another bug and having lashed out at her family with her powers. Her wish perhaps something like "To be able to burn this dirt from my body.", and she could cleanse her surroundings of all parasites and bugs - expect herself.
Aw Mami. You are so powerful, regular witches just don't stand a chance.
We're going to need to make our own walpurgisnatch if we want to have a witch that won't die so easily, I guess. Gattai the megucas and call it Noon of Despair.
I guess it is a change in Sabrina's means and direction. But most quest protagonist commit far worse, and I guess it is a viable way to rule the world. It isn't enough to just save it they'll kill each other they always fight.
And...An end to self-doubt and -loathing sounds nice. Though that need not mean being alone/committing to plans like one is Gilgamesh; as a true leader bolstered by being a leader is far nicer.
...Wonder how high a priority adding Mom back to our party should be.
Ok I promised to share my Science! notes so I better post this sometime soon. But first, today's scheduled and unscheduled items, although not everything need happen today; healing & Hitomi are just stuff leftover from yesterday really:
WEDNESDAY APRIL 6[TODAY]
Breakfast [SABRINA ISHERE barring Oriko-level midnight interrupts anyway]
- checkups on friends & acquaintances
Morning (3h)
- Warehouse-kun
Lunch
Afternoon (3h)
-
After-school (~2.5 to 3h)
- Meeting with Megane Ono
Dinner
After-dinner (~3h to 5h)
-
UNSCHEDULED ITEMS:
- Walpurgisnacht 'shopping' with Homura (inquire as to when. technically timeless)
- Investigate any book witches
- Finish healing Kyouske
- Talk to Hitomi about crush, indebtedness, Sayaka contract
- Possibility of: Witch Hunts, Enchantment & Other Magical Theory Lesson
[]Taking any necessary precautions, carefully observe the generation of grief in a soul gem. Then observe the process by which grief is removed from a soul gem and a grief seed, both by using a grief seed normally and through your powers.
This is literally the only grief-seed related item that got cut off from our last science session. The other one (study gem/seed/broken seed) we completed after lunch while making telepathy calls.
Here are items that didn't make it into our winning science vote but were touched on at the time:
- inspect a soul gem to see how it contains the soul. see if we can make a substitute container using magic or grief. Note that this presupposes we can determine if the soul gem is in fact a container at all, and is premised on the idea that the container "breaks" when a grief seed is formed. Not that that discounts the attempt.
- test how grief moves between aurora (normal level) and hildegarde (empty)
- make a body for a grief seed (from grief presumably. specifications not given)
Anyway,
I actually hesitate to call what we want to achieve today science at all. My opinion is that there are specific projects we need to progress to completion. In my view, science is discovering facts or rules about how and why magic, our powers, and other things magical work. Projects like unwitching grief seeds are more along the lines of research and development. There'd also be what I term grief engineering, which is basically 'can we make X?'. Grief engineering is useful in a handful of cases but in many others simply answering 'can we make X' does not actually achieve anything significant. These semantics aside, the key point is we want to achieve progress towards long-term goals today.
Research and Development (grief seed project):
Ideally we would completely resurrect the magical girl or even the pre-contract human, but I think everyone agrees that simply bringing someone to a not-witch conscious state would be progress, and something like the sorceresses wish might be a qualified success. My personal view is that the most productive approach is to attack from angles we've already gathered information about. What do we already know?
- A soul gem contains the human's soul, which is in turn a metaphysical construct that humans have (as confirmed by our latestdiscussions on the subject). Whether the soul gem is literally the materialization of the soul, or simply a container for said materialization, is currently not known.
- A soul gem contains a Witch-named entity, one we can't affect with our grief control.
She hovers near you as you accept the Soul Gem. You can see that it's shining gold, as it should, but obscured by a thin, filmy layer of darkness. The moment you touch it, though, you realize that you can do this. A lazy curl of the fingers of the hand not holding Mami's Soul Gem, and the layer of darkness flows out into the air, condensing into a malevolent, pulsing mass floating above your left hand. There's a deeper, more present feeling in the Gem you don't dare touch.
Candeloro.
- Grief is contained in a soul gem, and generated from the Witch-named entity.
- A magical girl's magic originates from the Witch-named entity.
- A magical girl's body is controlled using a network of magic originating from the soul gem.
You yourself are a slowly crackling storm of flickers of other, of magic, a network that outlines your body. Your Soul Gem is a tiny, abyssal spot of Grief that the network feeds into and derives from. Near you is a blaze of magic that outlines another human figure, and another swirling maelstrom of Grief, of a higher concentration than yours.
Standing further away are two ephemeral shades of barely-there Grief.
- A grief seed contains the same Witch-named entity. In fact, this is the primary similarity between a soul gem and a grief seed. Because of this and all the rest of the above, we speculate that this entity is in fact the soul itself.
- When we drained a grief seed of all its grief, we were left with a crystal clear seed and the Witch-named entity. Attempting to remove the Witch-named entity failed because we could not manipulate it. It seems likely that it is not grief.
- The Witch-named entity is the essential component of a grief seed. It is the grief seed.
After what feels like hours, you feel the massive river of Grief begin to dry up, slowly petering out over the next few minutes. All that's left in there is a quiescent Hildegard. And you try to remove that, too.
... it doesn't move. Your magical fingers simply slide right off a target that doesn't... quite seem to respond to your prodding. You go slightly cross-eyed - it feels like you're less trying to remove the filling from a doughnut, and more like you're trying to remove the concept of a doughnut from the doughnut. You give up on it after trying for a few more moments.
- The quantity of grief that can be contained in a soul gem and the quantity of grief in a grief seed is orders of magnitude different.
- (completely meta-narrative point) Sabrina at one point thought that by removing all the grief, what we ended up was more "seed" than "grief seed". No, it doesn't mean anything. Yes, I'm willing to read into that.
- Witches express the Witch-named part as a core body. When killed, a grief seed forms around the Witch-named part.
... the heart's anatomically accurate, you note as you dissolve the tricuspid valve, right down to the heartstrings. And...
You pause. Is that...
There's the barest echo of a Name. Hildegard. It comes from what you recognize would be the pacemaker cells of a normal heart, the cells which tell the heart to keep beating. You redouble your efforts, shredding the heart into drifting particles of fine ash, and leaving the pacemaker neurons to twitch spasmodically on the floor.
... you're not sure what you've done. Well. This is it, the barest core around which a Witch forms.
You look around cautiously, but all the fight seems to have gone out of everything. No Familiars, and the entire chamber is quiet save for the slow dripping of blood.
It's Hildegard. It is fundamentally the Witch, the tiniest mass of coherent Grief, slowly, constantly everting more Grief, stripped bare of the trappings of its form. Insofar as you can tell, this is the nexus around which a Grief Seed forms, the tiny wellspring of Grief you find in a Soul Gem. You can feel it stuggling to draw in more Grief from the Barrier, presumably to reform and fight back.
Your hands clench into a fist, and the sphere implodes, smashing the physical form of Hildegard into a pulp.
And-
With your sense focused as they are, you can feel Hildegard go quiescent, and a protective shall - the Grief Seed forming around it. The Barrier wavers, dissolving with the defeat of its Witch into its constituent Grief, rushing inwards in a torrent that pours endlessly into the Grief Seed. You release the Grief that forms your wings to go with it.
You're everted back into reality without ceremony, standing on the roof, with the Grief Seed near you, still encased in the sphere of Grief.
With a gesture, you move the sphere closer to you and let it crumble back into marbles, the Grief Seed falling into your outstretched hand. You hold it up to the light, squinting at it. It's... Grief. Very compressed Grief, into a tiny, inky black sphere embraced in filigree, and at the very center...
- Grief seeds can be active or inactive. A Witch drops an active seed, which is vicious and hungry. Draining an active seed of grief at some point breaks it and the thing inside goes inactive. Refilling an inactive seed fully does not reactivate it.
You grimace, looking at Irene instead. An obsidian black orb surrounded in silvery traceries, balancing on its point. In your Grief senses... as you'd expect, it's filled with Grief, tremendous quantities of it locked away within that crystalline structure. In the very center of it is Irene. From the Witch you get a sense of vicious, predatory hunger, muted and quiet - but there.
Finally, a perfectly clear crystal surrounded by similarly silver filigree, like Irene, balancing on a slender stem. Hildegarde. You smile ruefully at the Seed, the one that started this whole thing. It's a crystal clear gem -small 'g' gem, there- with a single, abyssal spot in the center, one that resonates in your senses. Hildegarde, quiescent and still.
- An inactive seed with no grief takes grief from a soul gem. An inactive seed with some grief gives grief to an active seed, or possibly, the active seed takes grief from the inactive one; in effect this is the same thing, but the cause would be different. We don't know how varying levels of grief in two inactive seeds would work, nor at what point if any an inactive seed stops giving up grief to an active one.
- A working soul gem is active. It's not hungry predatory evil like an active seed, but it's not quiescent either.
Soul Gem, Grief Seed, and... broken Seed. Yourself, Irene, and Hildegarde, spead out on your palm.
Yourself, your Soul Gem. A shining white egg-shaped Gem gleaming under the sunlight, wrapped in elaborately wrought gold filigree. In your Grief senses, it's practically aglow with magic, delicate traceries spinning across the air to merge seamlessly with the crackling storm of your body, magic running like leashed fire parallel to your veins. In the very deepest portion of your Soul Gem is a slowly bubbling effusion of Grief, a presence you shy away from touching.
- The soul gem of a girl with a dead body is inactive, but has a magical pulse that periodically attempts to reconnect to the body. Once the body was restored enough, it reactivated completely and re-took control, reactivating the magic network a magical girl uses to control her body.
In your other sight, Oriko's body is empty. It lacks the sullen, crackling storm of magic you've learned to associate with puella magi bodies - there is no animation. Even her Soul Gem seems quiescent, somehow curled in on itself in a way that makes your eyes water to look at too closely.
There is a shape, though, a shadow of how things should be.
You metaphorically stare at it, feeling, at the same time, Homura probe around it.
And then you see it - a tiny, nearly imperceptible flicker of magic. Just as quickly as you see it, it's gone again.
"Huh," you say out loud. Homura glances at you, brow crinkled in a frown. "Thought I saw something," you answer her unspoken question, gesturing at Oriko's body.
The time traveller shrugs, and returns her attention to the task. You focus on where you'd seen the spark.
Nothing, for a minute, and you begin to think that that had been wishful thinking.
... and then, there it is again, a pitifully weak crackle of magic. It fades away again, even as you jerk upright in surprise.
"There's something there," you tell Homura. "A... I'm not sure how to describe it. A little bit of magic, pulsing on and off."
"A heartbeat?" Homura suggests.
"Maybe? It's very slow," you say.
Homura shrugs. "Speaking of heartbeats, hers is almost stopping again."
You lay a finger against Oriko's deathly cold neck, feeling for her pulse. It's slow, and weakening again - at a guess, magic powered or not, hearts aren't supposed to work with what you'd guess is about half the body's blood outside the system, and nor is Oriko actually breathing, since her brain isn't even working.
None of these are actually necessary to keeping a puella magi alive, you figure, what with the Soul Gem and all, but you suspect it would contribute to how
Another gleam of magic, guttering away into oblivion, and you frown. It's getting weaker, fading faster.
You think you could simply brute force that faint flicker back to full power.
As you heal, you pay attention to the guttering spark of magic centered in Oriko, still strobing with excruciating slowness. It flickers a little more strongly as you heal her body, until-
The spark suddenly ignites into a conflagration, the maelstrom you expect of an active magical girl. You sit back, and glance at Homura. "We're done."
- We have not observed a soul gem that was 100m+ separated from the girl's body in our grief/magic senses.
Given the above, here's what's on my science list:
1. confirm that the Witch-named entity is the soul - Check to see if potentials or even regular humans have a Witch-named entity. Since the soul is not materialized on regular humans, this test is only useful if the result is positive, as a negative result could be simply because we can't see the entity.
2. determine if an inactive soul gem is similar to an inactive grief seed - Knock out a volunteer via gem/body separation. Compare and contrast the state of the soul gem with that of an inactive grief seed.
3. determine how an inactive soul gem reactivates a body - Observe what happens when an inactive soul gem is put in contact with its magical girl's body using our magic sight.
4. replicate the above process using an inactive seed - Create a body similar to the girl's original and using magic, replicate the process by which an inactive soul gem reactivates, except with the inactive grief seed. Alternately, create a body of any sort and using magic, brute-force the reactivation by imitating the process by which an inactive soul gem reactivates.
5. re-evaluate after all the above fails
Other mysteries about the soul gem / grief seed that might not be as useful:
- The grief seed stores grief by converting its form into a compressed form. But it also hides this form's "witchy" feel. How?
-- Pure speculation: Is it because of the presence of a soul?
- A drained seed is clear. A soul gem has color. What makes the difference?
Here are the approaches I've gleaned from the thread so far:
- Attempt to 'heal' the grief seed. Healing is an instinctual magic, so we don't need to have any special training here. This approach pre-supposes two things: that something is wrong with the seed/soul, and that healing magic can fix that thing. Which are fine assumptions to base a theory on all things considered, but could still be incorrect. I would also be careful not to assume it doesn't work quickly, since healing magic takes us forever and fixing a soul or soul container or even attempting to regenerate a body from a soul is probably as high as you can get in difficulty/time taken.
- Modify the grief seed into a soul gem. As far as I can tell, this involves high proficiency in magic use, possibly enchantment, which we don't have. We don't have the theoretical underpinnings to know under what assumptions this might succeed, either. We haven't analyzed a soul gem to figure out what makes it a soul gem, and we don't necessarily have the skill or powerset to do so. In short, we better get practicing if we want to achieve this within months.
- Re-insert magic to the grief seed. This kind of blurs with the above enchantment idea, but the basic idea stemmed from the theory that a soul gem is the way it is because it's filled with magic or does magic? Which aren't exactly confirmed ideas either. We take the grief out of a grief seed, then we have to put the magic back in, is the basics here. Again, magical skill takes time.
- Study the various states of seed we know of more closely until something occurs to us. I think this is an excellent science project, but for R&D, something better occur quickly.
Grief Engineering (just a list of projects for now):
barrier creation
- Using our observations of the witch barrier two days ago, make one of our own.
- Potential obstacles: None. We already think we can replicate this.
- Usefulness: Minimal to Moderate. Pocket dimensions would be neat if they were rope trick. Barriers are not. Hammerspace can apparently be accomplished by non-grief methods, which don't have the problem of detectability. I will admit I am not the kind of person who thinks with portals, however, so I'll give this a Moderate to cater to those who do.
remote viewing / creation of information
- This would involve grief-crystal-balls or grief-books or similar to attempt to gain information. Either facts, or information about the present. I hope for grief-scrying, basically.
- Potential obstacles: Range?
- Usefulness: Moderate. Any kind of information gathering ability would massively reduce reliance on precog or thread speculation.
persistence
- Test theories on getting grief constructs to persist out of our range. Long before we started with SCIENCE, Mami made this comment:
"Cool," you say, poking at the barrier, which holds firm against your finger. "Is there by any chance a way of making something bigger on the inside?"
"There should be," Mami says thoughtfully. "I have no idea what happens if the enchantment runs out, though."
"Does it run out when it's out of magic or something?" you ask.
"Exactly," Mami confirms. "Watch, I only put a little bit of magic into the cup." She holds the cup upright, and as she said, the enchantment fades a minute or two later.
My thought is that we are currently maintaining grief constructs in "real-time" so to speak, using our special wish-granted magic. If we want them to maintain past our range, we need to be able to supply them with magic somehow. That means figuring out how to supply them with a reservoir of magic.
- Potential obstacles: Mami's personal tutelage would be extremely helpful. Within capabilities?
- Usefulness: Moderate. It really depends what we can cause to persist, but for grief so far, imagination's been the limit.
automagical grief absorption
- Create a grief construct that siphons and stores grief out of a soul gem (or anything, even the environment) without our controlling the siphoned grief.
- Potential obstacles: Danger to user? Within capabilities?
- Usefulness: Curiosity unless we break the range barrier, in which case it becomes Crucial for obvious areasons.
railgun
- Fire non-grief projectiles using grief.
- Potential obstacles: Collateral damage?
- Usefulness: Minimal/Combat. There are dozens of ways to bypass our range restrictions if all we want to do is shoot non-grief projectiles past it. The rose bush experiment already proved that this is possible. I'm personally interested in non-lethal combat beyond our range, which a railgun is decisively not.
special grief effects
- Selective antimagic fields, mind protection, selective attractive/repulsive forces, etc.
- Potential obstacles: None?
- Usefulness: Combat. End the threat of mind control and basically any close-range meguca forever? Handy but doesn't really hit any goals.
uncontrolled grief
- What happens when grief outside our range coalesces?
- Potential obstacles: Danger?
- Usefulness: Curiosity. We don't need to know this today. Supports no known goals.
If you listen ...fuck.Fuck.FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK You hear the stars whispering F̢̀ư̴c̷͠ḱ͢͞͏f̢͢u͘C͜k͜͠f͜҉̡͜U̵̕c̡̕҉̀͞k͠҉͢҉̴҉́f҉̴̡͠ú̧c̨̧̛̕͟K҉ If you remember
̕͠F̱̰̖̝̺ͨ͐̀u̺̪̫͔̻̬̮̇̄ͭͤ͒Ċ̯̝͇̖̞̱̳͎͛͌̾͋ͧ͊ͧk̥̙̣̻͙͙̟͉̻̾ͮ̀̀̏̋̉ͣͪͮ͑͛̋F̣̳̒̃͋ͨ́͋̏U̗͈̰̺̓ͦͬ͑̋̓ͫͨͤc͚̦̠̣̊̈́́͆̉̀ͫͯk̘͍̹̟̜͛͐ͪ̐̏ͣf̩͈̳͗͌̃̿U̼͔̭͉̫̠̰͓̳̳̹̖̟̬̙̜ͮ̽̓ͯ̐ͪͥ͑́͒͐̏c̫͓͖͉̝̺͙͎̺̳̖̬̋ͤ͒ͦͫͥͭ̚K͉̺̰͉͓̪̙̯͕̞̲̪̻̭͚̮̻͖͋͋ͧ̆͗ͭ͗͋ͬͫ̌̋͋ͩ̀̈ͪͪ̊ͅͅf̗̠̼͓̭͎͖͚͔͍͖̜̥͉̈͆̓͋͂ͭu͚̰̩̳̫̫̟̫͈͚̲̦̺̗̩̔̂͛ͥC̺̬̝̮̺̳̖͚̯͖͐ͯ͛̈̓͆ͭ̂̆̃̐͂̊ͦ̀̋̃ͅK̥͕͓̻̘͎͚̱̺̦̩͕ͩͥ̓͌͛̽̄͂̀ͨ̓ͯ̐̓ͩ͑̚ There's magic everywhere F̉̒̋͒͂̈́̔̚͏̠̳̠͉͇̮͟U̝̫̫̟̥ͦ̉c̞̱̘͙̳͌̿K̈ͯ̂ͯͩͬ̑̊҉̴̡͙̭̠̩̟̹͔̣̬̼͍͙͒̏͗̉́͢F͈̜ͦ͆͊ͮ͌̈̕͞ų̷̞͈̼͙̦̜̈ͨ̏͒͋̌ͪͅC̹̦ͨͭ͞K̘̲͖̜̦̟̣͈͍ͨ͆̄̑̽ͣ̍̾͐̅̅̃̏͢͜͜f̶̧̧̡̳͔̮̰͉̪̗̫̼̔̆͛̈ͧͯ̾ͧ͑̇̆̄̏͠U̴̧͍̺̙̘̻̪̬͖̺ͩ̔̑̋ͥ̏̍̿͐̅ͫ̋͋͌ͤ̒́̃̐͜ͅC̟͖̬̯̼̮̘̼̼̮̝̣̺̗ͨ͋̈́̓ͬ̓̽̐ͮ͑͘ͅĶ̶̴̡̻̹̜̰̠̣̬̣͔̫͕̭̼̝̙̖͍̰͔̱̤̞̪͇̊̌̋̋̅̉̀̒̓̄̉ͦ̽̽͛͌ͨͨͮ̿̈͑̒͊ͬͣ̽̓̽ͥ̕̕͜͜F̵̧͖͍͓͍͙͍̻͕̓̓ͮ͑̀̀Ü͂̋̆͑͂̄͊ͬ͏̛̪̰̤̺̲̰͞C̼̖̼̼̈́̂̇͐́̀͘͝͞ḵ̶̛̼͉͈̪̞̹̃ͨͩ͑̇̾ͧ̚͠ .... FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK And in the night *despair* You hear a lullaby
Desperate science now, or extortion/moneymaking now, science later? The stars shine bright
*sigh* If you believe, you can fly out to the sky
Science, I guess. This is art! Also bit fun..Though it hits harder than Homura giving us the "You're just somebody I know" treatment
See you tomorrow, Warehouse-kun ♤
Vote tally: ##### 3.19
[x]Morning routine.
[x]Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[x]Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to hold off until everyone can go as a group again?
[x]Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[x]Like this.
[x]Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[x]Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[x]How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[x]Pick up science where we left off. No. of votes: 8 Ugolino, Jackercracks, Muramasa, AnonymousRabbit, landcollector, EtchedSteel, Gadjo, MrLZRS
[x]Morning routine.
[x] Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[x] Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to wait for everyone to go as a group again?
[x] How are the Sendai groups doing?
[x] Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[x] Like this.
[x] Walk with Mami and friends to school. -[x] Ask Mami if you can borrow two seeds to do some experiments on. You'll bring them back at lunch.
[x] Go visit warehouse-kun. Pick up science where we left off. No. of votes: 1 boonerunner
[X]Morning routine.
[X] Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
-[X] Mention to Sayaka that we might try and finish off Kyosuke's healing during the day. Does she want us to wait for everyone to go as a group again?
[X] Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[X] Like this.
[X] Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[X] Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[X] How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[X] Pick up science where we left off. No. of votes: 2 noahgab1133, Sereg
[x]Morning routine.
[x]Wake up calls for all of your friends. Including Sayaka.
[x]Call Ono. Ask how she's doing, if she's used the seed, and where she wants to meet up today. Bring up telepathy.
-[x]Like this.
[x]Walk with Mami and friends to school.
[x]Go visit warehouse-kun.
-[x]How are the Sendai groups doing?
-[x]Pick up science where we left off.
Just removed the Kyosuke line. IMHO we should only talk about that if we're committed to it if not objected to. (I don't think Sayaka would object, since she'd think it'd be better for him to be healed sooner.)
You root around in your pocket, and withdraw Aurora's Seed. "Alright, give me a minute or two and I'll trade you the Grief Seed you have for this one?" You focus on the Grief Seed, dredging deep into it to withdraw the masses of Grief within. Miniature planetoids coalesce out of the billowing Grief, vectoring out into the backyard. Driven by your will, the Grief Seed empties slowly clearing out.
You hold it out to Oriko, looking at the Grief Seed to be sure.
Aurora.
The Witch, Aurora, is inert, torpid within the clear, glassy sphere of the Grief Seed.
We haven't yet tested this conjecture. We have anecdotal evidence, but it's possible that the siphoning happens extremely slowly when the grief levels are similar, so no one has ever noticed before. But it's not a difficult thing to test one way or the other; all we need is to temporarily borrow two seeds to try it out.
Right, but it's a lot of work to for something that can be safely managed with a small padded wooden box to keep the clear seed in. Useful, yes. Important in the long term, yes. Critical, not really.
- Grief seeds can be active or inactive. A Witch drops an active seed, which is vicious and hungry. Draining an active seed of grief at some point breaks it and the thing inside goes inactive. Refilling an inactive seed fully does not reactivate it.
Are you quite sure that's the right conclusion from that quote? You might want to re-read it. It looks like you though she was putting the grief back in as opposed to taking it out.
That's a thing: Mami'll get tired if we have Homura timestop and we tell her to fire a bajillion Tiro Finales at WP. Now she's mentioned she "can't really make them that big, normally", which I assume means she's not used to having infinite magic, but maybe it'll be worthwhile to have Mami practice her finishing move a little more?
With your sense focused as they are, you can feel Hildegard go quiescent, and a protective shall - the Grief Seed forming around it. The Barrier wavers, dissolving with the defeat of its Witch into its constituent Grief, rushing inwards in a torrent that pours endlessly into the Grief Seed. You release the Grief that forms your wings to go with it.
- Grief seeds can be active or inactive. A Witch drops an active seed, which is vicious and hungry. Draining an active seed of grief at some point breaks it and the thing inside goes inactive. Refilling an inactive seed fully does not reactivate it.
I used to think this was true, but I'm not so sure lately. I don't think we've tried emptying a seed, then restoring it no 'nominal' capacity. What's to say there's a distinction between normal seeds and de-griefed seeds, aside from their current grief total?
About this part, we should examine whether a 'normal' witch acts just the same when killed, or if there's any difference.
I'm of the idea that that's the Incubator's work. They made the Soul Gems and the Grief Seeds, right? The don't seem to have any problem controlling 'wild' grief: When we give grief to KB, that grief immediately exits Sabrina's range, so it would dissipate since it doesn't have a container, but KB never had a problem with it.
That's a thing: Mami'll get tired if we have Homura timestop and we tell her to fire a bajillion Tiro Finales at WP. Now she's mentioned she "can't really make them that big, normally", which I assume means she's not used to having infinite magic, but maybe it'll be worthwhile to have Mami practice her finishing move a little more?
Who wants to bet we could calm Homumom down some by scheduling some practice sessions soon for getting people comfortable with going crazy with infinite magic?
Who wants to bet we could calm Homumom down some by scheduling some practice sessions soon for getting people comfortable with going crazy with infinite magic?
We could make a 'WP practice run'... Actually, now I want to test raw grief's and witchy grief's durability by having Mami blast them with Tiro Finales. If either grief form porves strong enough, we could take all the grief we could and make a Dummy Walpurgisnacht. Then we practice our so far kind of only idea for killing WP.
Just get into a Barrier, degrief the witch until it can't move, and use it's Barrier for practice, so as to avoid collateral damage: We make a grief construct as though as we can out of all the grief in all the Seeds, we have Homura timestop with Mami (leave them with the Clear Seeds), earlier having make sure Homura's got some tea so she has something to do while she waits while Mami goes to town on our grief construct. Once she gets tired of shooting at the dummy, they finish the timestop and we watch the fireworks.
*pant* *pant* Nearly 2000 pages of brain damage, microwavable tea, GIANT GRIEF MECHS, homu-sads, mumi-sads, sabrina-sads, everyone-sads, botched social interactions, regrettable decisions, Kirika cuteness, and general craziness later, I finally catch up. I know there was the story only mode, but the comments section and occasional thread derailment was too hilarious to skip.
*pant* *pant* Nearly 2000 pages of brain damage, microwavable tea, GIANT GRIEF MECHS, homu-sads, mumi-sads, sabrina-sads, everyone-sads, botched social interactions, regrettable decisions, Kirika cuteness, and general craziness later, I finally catch up. I know there was the story only mode, but the comments section and occasional thread derailment was too hilarious to skip.
*pant* *pant* Nearly 2000 pages of brain damage, microwavable tea, GIANT GRIEF MECHS, homu-sads, mumi-sads, sabrina-sads, everyone-sads, botched social interactions, regrettable decisions, Kirika cuteness, and general craziness later, I finally catch up. I know there was the story only mode, but the comments section and occasional thread derailment was too hilarious to skip.
OK, so the overwhelming majority of voters appear to be voting that we are not going to do any research on clear seed safety at the moment. Does this mean that you are okay with the idea of distributing clear seeds (like Muramasa is) or are there still reservations? Earlier today we were worried about safety (which is why we didn't give a clear seed to Kyouko or Ono), so have we changed our minds since then? If so, then I'm okay with that (I thought that clear seeds were safe enough to distribute from the beginning). But I would like to get a feel for whether or not we (as a whole) think that clear seeds are safe for distribution.
The 'test' proposed was very simple: Separate Sabrina's body and Soul Gem; move grief out of range for each item.
I don't remember what was the point of it other than checking whether we could control grief 100+m away from ourselves by moving our Soul Gem away from ourselves that + distance, or whether it would collapse do to not being close enough to Sabrina's physical body.
EDIT: As a curiosity, Sabrina can control grief during timestop, but that same grief doesn't count as 'connected' to her unless she's controlling it, as shown by the grief not dissipating that time Homura disconnected Sabrina from her Soul Gem during endless timestop.
OK, so the overwhelming majority of voters appear to be voting that we are not going to do any research on clear seed safety at the moment. Does this mean that you are okay with the idea of distributing clear seeds (like Muramasa is) or are there still reservations? Earlier today we were worried about safety (which is why we didn't give a clear seed to Kyouko or Ono), so have we changed our minds since then? If so, then I'm okay with that (I thought that clear seeds were safe enough to distribute from the beginning). But I would like to get a feel for whether or not we (as a whole) think that clear seeds are safe for distribution.
We have managed to turn an actively grief-spiralling Witch that sucks up any Grief nearby, into what appears to be a pure soul that gives up its Grief like a healthy soul... and people are arguing to not study this further?
We have managed to turn an actively grief-spiralling Witch that sucks up any Grief nearby, into what appears to be a pure soul that gives up its Grief like a healthy soul... and people are arguing to not study this further?
OK, so the overwhelming majority of voters appear to be voting that we are not going to do any research on clear seed safety at the moment. Does this mean that you are okay with the idea of distributing clear seeds
If this is the consensus that the voters have come to, then our ability to help people by giving them clear seeds is severely limited. Which is why I have been lobbying to do more research on clear seed safety. Muramasa's objection to doing more testing was that we already "know" that clear seeds are safe, so we don't need to do any more testing. What do you think?
Right now, I am the only one with any suggestions about how we can perform further experiments to verify the safety of clear seeds. If you have any other suggestions for experiments relating to clear seed safety that I have not thought of, then I would be eager to perform them.
Also the only seed on hand is one we're trying to avoid tampering with to see if anything happens. Not touching something is also a form of studying.
Agreed. Which is why I want to borrow seeds from Mami to test with. If we don't do this then we won't be able to do any testing on clear seed safety at all.
Oh no! They're going to tear down Warehouse-kun!
