You know what? Let's do this. I'll pretend to be the thread, and we can compose a nice library of arguments while we're all calm so we can shut down edgelords and chaos cultists without engaging with them and risking losing our cool.That's going to come off as a lot more disingenuous coming from a group we know raids and kills people, as opposed to someone who's motivations and actions were unknown and had Nadia and Oriko both vouch for them.
I feel the power of salt overtaking me.Ah, not waiting for the quest to catch up but starting a saltstorm a few in-game days ahead. Clearly, we are evolving.
This makes me very happy.This is something that I have privileged knowledge about, and suffice to say, if the Iowa group isn't weakened then they're about as much of a threat to a city as Walpurgisnacht is -- which is to say, that if they wanted to, they could level a city.
Another power they might have is wide area antimagic. Something that could cover a large section of a city (or the entire thing, even) when pushed to the limits, and selectively shut down any magic the caster doesn't approve of.The problem with difficulty seems to be that even Walpurgisnacht will only be a threat because of arbitrary narrative-related durability meaning that even if we spend two subjective weeks shooting everything at it from time stop, it can't die without a fight.
So the Iowa girls need not just city busting firepower, but a way around that. They'll probably end up having some kind of super speed user, because magical girls don't do the arbitrary durability thing in general. Add some mental power to make it so we can't bury them in magical girls, a main front tank, some very long ranged shooter to wreck our prepared traps from beyond our effective range. And some degree of conceptual weirdness is always in the table here, of course.
But the real problem is none of this will actually achieve anything if we find out who is who and bring specific counters at a time of our choosing (and/or wait for them to be in a deserted road and start dropping shit from space), so they need to have precognition on top of that. I'm really not sure how sustainable this group is, grief-wise? Considering they spend a lot of time either traveling through areas with little in the way of Witches and magical girls or getting in expensive fights with large groups of magical girls. So they might need a particularly tricky grief manipulator just to keep up with supplies.
On the whole, i'd say they can't be nerfed and still be consistent at all. They'd basically become the Nine in the 'only kept alive by author fiat' sense.
Only nonlethally. Homura can still snipe them or use artillery, and we still haven't tested how timestop affects our laser.But if she runs into a field of antimagic and can't be in timestop while being anywhere near the invaders, things get a lot tougher for her.
That's going to come off as a lot more disingenuous coming from a group we know raids and kills people, as opposed to someone who's motivations and actions were unknown and had Nadia and Oriko both vouch for them.
"Ah," Yuki says. "An excellent question. They are raiders, from America, as you might guess. They move into areas and demand Grief Seeds from the locals by dint of their powers. The locals typically do not have the firepower to fight back - the Iowa group knows to pick their targets. They stay for weeks to months before moving on."
Good point. On the other hand, there could be a power in there somewhere that can defend against stuff like bullets and artillery. I don't think antimagic defends against weapons made by magical girls (please correct me if I'm wrong), so there could be a member whose magic is good at protecting the group from physical attacks. Someone who can make magical armor, perhaps? An illusionist who makes everyone look like their position is slightly offset from where they actually are (wouldn't defend against artillery though unless it offsets them by a large amount)? Someone who can make everyone in the group invisible? Someone who can keep the group encased in forcefields?Only nonlethally. Homura can still snipe them or use artillery, and we still haven't tested how timestop affects our laser.
It seems like the solution is to carry Oriko and Kirika with us while we're running errands in other cities.The seer nods. "The deaths... Generally, you're away," she says. "It's close to Walpurgisnacht, and you feel the need to arrange for more allies."
"And if I stick close to Mitakihara?" you ask.
"Does not materially change the outcome," Oriko asks. "Your presence... I would hazard a guess that the, the, entity avoids your direct presence." She raises a finger. "I don't know whether it's an entity or not, merely that... it doesn't happen directly in your presence."
It seems like the solution is to carry Oriko and Kirika with us while we're running errands in other cities.
Make a Grief replica of their living space and have it float above us while we're doing stuff.
Here's an optimistic theory as to what Iowa group could be.
They are a group of scared people who do not want to fight Witches in non-optimal cases, a group who have powers suited to meguca on meguca combat, a group that is reluctantly doing all they can to stay alive, as they know how rare it is for meguca to live past 20, and how absolutely terrifying fights against Witches can be. They know that having a 99% chance of surviving a Witch fight will kill you within a year, and they are determined to not lose a group member.
(Though I'll admit there is a small part of me that wants to see us fight alongside Homura by making a battleground for her to fight in, filled with munitions for her use, while we through buildings at people for artillery support. Because "WPN and Homu have teamed up to fight you" is just such a wonderful mental image.)
"Great," Mami says, beaming. She passes teacups around the table, carefully balancing one on Sayaka's forehead. Sayaka goes cross-eyed staring at the cup, and you go misty-eyed staring at Mami, because Mami being happy and confident enough in her friendships to tease someone is amazing.
Mami is always best, don't forget that.
You know what? Let's do this. I'll pretend to be the thread, and we can compose a nice library of arguments while we're all calm so we can shut down edgelords and chaos cultists without engaging with them and risking losing our cool.
"Yes, and look at how accurate the information about Rionna was."
"And? Rionna was worse, and we were still wrong to execute her."
"They're just Thanos on a smaller scale, and he was totally in the right. Not even kidding; if anything, the whole witches thing makes their position even more correct."
"By gaining a monopoly on violence and using it to centralize grief seed distribution they are actually doing exactly what they claim they are - they are in fact saving lives. And similarly, of course kyubey drags their name through the mud by blaming literally every death in the state on them; they're guaranteeing that fewer magical girls witch out. We should be having them run our government, not fighting them."
"We're not the world police. We should just demonstrate that they can't hurt us, probably by showing off some griefhax, and tell them to leave."
"Oooh, that's a useful power, and they're willing to talk. They have to be at least somewhat able up be diplomatic if they actually sit in places for as long as we've heard. And we can fulfill literally any demand they make, so why are we even fighting? Homura won't want them in Mitakihara, but we can totally set up in a nearby city. I mean, if you really think about it they're just refugees from you horrible system, just like a bunch of other people we've fought. Hell, don't we have some magical girls on our team that actually killed muggles right in front of us?"
"Yes, and we're also friends with Kyouko. We have no authority or high ground from which to judge them."
Perfect synchronization tends to make one look like an uncanny robot clone dance machine. Add a bit of variance. (Groans at the number of multi-member animated dance videos that just copy paste the dance moves and make it look a lot worse than if they just had one)We should totally plan out an absolutely spectacular group dance routine, performed with perfect synchronization and meguca-level agility.
How hard would it be to get a professional addicted to PMASBut Sabrina is not a professional. She hasn't studied for it, she has no medical degree in psychological therapy involving such heavy trauma as
Are you sure you didn't mean "Delegate"?
Umm... you saw nothing.
Huh. I assumed you meant to delineate what their powers might be...Umm... you saw nothing.It couldn't have possibly been that I brain farted and swapped the words by mistake @___@.
If you can't handle those arguments now, raised by someone that's running them as an exercise and otherwise is disgusted by what they wrote... what makes you think you'll be able to deal with those arguments for real, in the middle of a vote, when they're being advanced by people that believe every word they're saying? It doesn't matter how many of the weak arguments you can handle when you leave the strongest arguments completely uncontested.
You missed the second half of that argument: They aren't actually doing any of those things. They move in, make everyone play nice for a while, deal with the city's worst situations - people like Anri, inevitably ending in casualties because they aren't us and don't have infinite power - and leave when the city's stockpiles are getting low. After all, most cities don't actually have enough death-deserving villains for the Iowa Group to need to kill enough people to balance out their own presence. The problem is that this strategy works, so Kyubey's fucking over their PR by misinterpreting everything they're doing.Invasion, Occupation, and Extortion at Spellpoint till resources have been dried up is...
Hmm. There's no chance that Madoka leaning over Homura like that indicates interest from Madoka's side, right? Say that Sayaka had been sitting in the middle there; would Madoka have leaned over her like that?
and madoka doesn't have the years of trauma that could make her represent her emotions like homura doesI mean, we know for a fact from a ton of PMMM materials that Madoka totally has a crush on Homura. We don't need to speculate, we know for a fact it's true.