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Puella Magi Imperatrix Mundi, or: Wherein Half Of Japan Tries To Kill You

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FelOnyx said:
We're running a small handful of people right now, and even assuming we take over all Japan that's just a few hundred.
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A bit over two thousand meguca in Japan, actually. The Kanto region contains roughly a third of that, most of whom (400 to 500 or so?) are in the Tokyo metro area (which includes both Nagamioka and Mitakihara).
 
Echo said:
A bit over two thousand meguca in Japan, actually. The Kanto region contains roughly a third of that, most of whom (400 to 500 or so?) are in the Tokyo metro area (which includes both Nagamioka and Mitakihara).
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Not gonna lie, I don't think your numbers are compatible with PMMM canon. If that level of density was common, then it would be flat out impossible for Mami to be alone in Mitakihara.

Regardless of how powerful and skilled she is, her powers aren't the sort that lend themselves to an incredibly oversized territory - she wouldn't be able to patrol enough to claim the whole city.
 
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Echo said:
A bit over two thousand meguca in Japan, actually. The Kanto region contains roughly a third of that, most of whom (400 to 500 or so?) are in the Tokyo metro area (which includes both Nagamioka and Mitakihara).
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Huh, must have mixed up a number somewhere. Never mind most of what I said before then, but I still don't thing we should take the democracy vs. dictatorship thing too seriously. Yui's realm will end up being a cobbled-together mess of systems based on what the locals in a given area will agree to in order to join us.
 
Redshirt Army said:
Not gonna lie, I don't think your numbers are compatible with PMMM canon. If that level of density was common, then it would be flat out impossible for Mami to be alone in Mitakihara.
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Well... PMMM canon leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to issues of worldbuilding that would be relevant to a quest. A lot of the spin-offs seem to imply a much higher density of meguca than the impression given by Mitakihara's apparent size and it all being Mami's territory. On the other hand, Mitakihara is clearly underpopulated meguca-wise, given that Mami gave no indication that adding Madoka and Sayaka would be a problem.

In any case, the numbers I'm using would put Mitakihara as a whole (given where I've placed it) at supporting at least a dozen meguca. I've been thinking I might adjust things so that Mami's territory doesn't cover the entire city, just the largest chunk of it, so that her territory would be more at the level of supporting 5 or 6 meguca comfortably.
 
BTW, looks like a pretty clear bandwagon at this point, but votes will be open for another hour or two until I have time to start writing.
 
Echo said:
In any case, the numbers I'm using would put Mitakihara as a whole (given where I've placed it) at supporting at least a dozen meguca. I've been thinking I might adjust things so that Mami's territory doesn't cover the entire city, just the largest chunk of it, so that her territory would be more at the level of supporting 5 or 6 meguca comfortably.
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If you want to manage Yui's future opinion of her so that it isn't incredibly negative, that would likely be a good move. For all the goofy anime nonsense, Yui's pretty sharp- and together with her advisors has a keen awareness of political and economic logic. Mami sitting alone on a territory that can support a dozen girls and forcibly keeping out everyone else is roughly morally comparable to sitting on a giant pile of food and shooting at starving people who try to get some. At least with smaller numbers it wouldn't be quite as bad, though still bad.

Admittedly, given the timelines involved here and the fact that Mami is apparently still ignorant of the facts of the magical girl condition, as well as the canonical close relationship with Kyubey, it's apparent that she has been subjected to some serious manipulation and it's entirely possible that Kyubey is actively screwing with the demographics in her area for reasons of its own. But that doesn't particularly help the dead.
 
DarkLight140 said:
Mami sitting alone on a territory that can support a dozen girls and forcibly keeping out everyone else is roughly morally comparable to sitting on a giant pile of food and shooting at starving people who try to get some.
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I presume Mami's only neighbours are Kyouko-type girls.
Loners and familiar-farmers, too weak to defeat Mami single-handedly, too disorganised and mistrustful to unite against her.
Of course she refuse to let girls like this on her territory.
Of course, if she actually did it, they would probably stop familiar-farming. Or maybe not, it's probably too efficient to abandon it.
 
DarkLight140 said:
Admittedly, given the timelines involved here and the fact that Mami is apparently still ignorant of the facts of the magical girl condition, as well as the canonical close relationship with Kyubey, it's apparent that she has been subjected to some serious manipulation and it's entirely possible that Kyubey is actively screwing with the demographics in her area for reasons of its own. But that doesn't particularly help the dead.
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A lot of the deal with Mami's situation is that she wants to do things more like the way they were in Nagamioka, but doesn't have the knowledge to understand the actual trade-offs involved nor the raw power to force compliance in a large area the way Momoko could.

I mean, Mami is canonically well-intentioned, welcoming to strangers, and very lonely. The only way she could not have a team is if any former teammates left, and the most likely reason for that seems to be a conflict of ideals vs. practicality. Mami, for whatever reason, is talented and powerful enough that she can hunt familiars on a regular basis without running out of magic; my expectation is that she drove a lot of people away because they just couldn't keep up with her and it was easier to leave than have a conversation amounting to "I'm not good enough for you and I need you to accept that".

All of which fits the idea that Kyubey is using her to train meguca to be skilled enough to not die against Witches but have enough of a moral center to not kill other meguca except as a last resort, i.e., increase the number of meguca who survive to witch out.

But that reasoning only goes so far, because:

Redshirt Army said:
Regardless of how powerful and skilled she is, her powers aren't the sort that lend themselves to an incredibly oversized territory - she wouldn't be able to patrol enough to claim the whole city.
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...which is why I'm leaning toward shrinking her territory to be only a large portion of Mitakihara, rather than the whole city.
 
Echo said:
...which is why I'm leaning toward shrinking her territory to be only a large portion of Mitakihara, rather than the whole city.
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I tend to think we may be viewing "territory" as being a bit more hard-and-fast than it actually is. Lines on a map rather than vague zones of control. Most magical girls probably have "places I go a lot" and "places I go every once in a while". If they see another magical girl in a "place I go every once in a while" then maybe it's worth confronting them and maybe it isn't.

If you asked Mami she might claim to be "protector of Mitakihara", but that doesn't mean that she has time to patrol most of it very much, nor that she necessarily has a very good idea of what's going on in a lot of it.

Similarly, I bet a lot of "familiar farming" isn't about deliberately feeding people to familiars but more about a bit of self-serving logic that it's easy to make sound good in your head.
1. Fighting even a Familiar is a little bit dangerous.
2. If I find the Familiar's witch and destroy it, then the Familiar will also be destroyed if it hasn't become a witch itself.
3. Therefore it's better that I don't waste time and needlessly endanger myself fighting familiars and instead focus on finding its witch and destroying that.
 
Okay, votes are closed. I think I'm gonna start posting just the winning vote when things get lengthy, because I like being able to refer to it while writing and single votes should be short enough to not be mistaken for an update. :V

If I do start getting 1k+ word votes I'm going to... I'm not sure what I'll do, but it'll be something.

I'd say take that sort of thing back to PMAS but I don't think Firn would appreciate it.

Vote tally:
##### 3.21
[x] Escort Chizuka back to the border, as planned.
-[x] Let Chizuka know that she can use her magic again, first.
-[x] Maiko and Minami keep to hidden-but-within-spying-range as backup.
-[x] Talk to her teammates a bit, if possible.
--[x] Cheerful introductions. Explain that you have for them a delivery of one (1) Chizuka, slightly scuffed but with no serious damage, following a terrible misunderstanding involving exactly where people who don't work for you are allowed to ambush others with high speed giant floating metal spikes. No hard feelings.
--[x] Make sure they know that they should really not be crossing the Tokyo-Nagamioka border without sending you a brainmail or text or something about what exactly they're up to and getting your approval.
--[x] In fact, Chizuka had some concerning things to say about recent events in their territory and you'd be very interested in hearing more about that, if they're willing to share. Try to figure out their team social dynamics while getting the news.
--[x] You have an interest in having a secure Nagamioka with stable border territories, and in making friends who share those interests- which they probably do. If some or all of them care to move, you're also in the market for reliable subordinates who don't mind living in Nagamioka. You'd like to see if you can cut some deals.
[x] Minami can keep scanning for calligraphy girl's new location if it's not a serious magic cost or distraction from supporting you in escort and negotiations. Otherwise, wait until Chizuka is gone and you can focus properly on finding her while working together.
No. of votes: 7
DarkLight140, magicdownunder, Nevill, Genial Precis, RubberBandMan, Muramasa, FelOnyx
 
I think we should carry some of the smaller grief seeds with us so we can bean new meguca with them.

"A new girl is in our territory!"
"Fire a killsat warning shot!" *Reticle*
"Roboteching laser spam!" *Screaming geometrically*
"Welcome to Nagamioka! We have boom and befriending!"
*Throws grief seed* "Join my har- team! My team!"
 
thamuzz said:
How widely known is the Witch-bomb?
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Mami and Kyouko were experienced girls who had a close prolonged association with Kyubey, and they didn't know. I'd expect that barring powers that directly let you know, or situations like throwing your friend off a bridge that make Kyubey explain, or another girl in the know weaponizing the witchbomb, it isn't known.
 
rkyeun said:
I think we should carry some of the smaller grief seeds with us so we can bean new meguca with them.

"A new girl is in our territory!"
"Fire a killsat warning shot!" *Reticle*
"Roboteching laser spam!" *Screaming geometrically*
"Welcome to Nagamioka! We have boom and befriending!"
*Throws grief seed* "Join my har- team! My team!"
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Maiko might cry. Or laugh. Or both :V.

Apropos of nothing, there are approximately 150,000 meguca worldwide, extrapolating from the japanese figure of approx. 20 meguca/million people. If the average lifespan of a meguca is two years, that's 200 deaths or witchouts per day, compared to a global population of 7.5 billion and approximately 160,000 deaths/day, of which about half are due to witch action. Not trying to make a point, just suddenly struck by the scale of this setting, even if the scope of this quest remains confined to Japan.
 
On the other hand, as depicted in this quest, the rate of witch-outs from seed deficit is probably high enough that there should be no shortage of witnesses. Half of Maiko's friends are on her shelves.
 
Nevill said:
On the other hand, as depicted in this quest, the rate of witch-outs from seed deficit is probably high enough that there should be no shortage of witnesses. Half of Maiko's friends are on her shelves.
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Mami and Kyouko are both loners, which explains how they don't know despite that. They don't have friends so they could never have seen them witch. Upsides!
 
Genial Precis said:
Apropos of nothing, there are approximately 150,000 meguca worldwide, extrapolating from the japanese figure of approx. 20 meguca/million people. If the average lifespan of a meguca is two years, that's 200 deaths or witchouts per day, compared to a global population of 7.5 billion and approximately 160,000 deaths/day, of which about half are due to witch action. Not trying to make a point, just suddenly struck by the scale of this setting, even if the scope of this quest remains confined to Japan.
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Is it wonder Madoka was willing to become a Concept and remove that system?
 
FelOnyx said:
Mami and Kyouko are both loners, which explains how they don't know despite that. They don't have friends so they could never have seen them witch. Upsides!
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Well, 'prolonged association with Kyubey' may have something to do with it too. Momoko was kept in the dark for 9 years, which has to be some sort of a record?
Genial Precis said:
of which about half are due to witch action.
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Where does that come from?
 
rkyeun said:
Mami and Kyouko were experienced girls who had a close prolonged association with Kyubey, and they didn't know. I'd expect that barring powers that directly let you know, or situations like throwing your friend off a bridge that make Kyubey explain, or another girl in the know weaponizing the witchbomb, it isn't known.
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Nevill said:
On the other hand, as depicted in this quest, the rate of witch-outs from seed deficit is probably high enough that there should be no shortage of witnesses. Half of Maiko's friends are on her shelves.
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Yeah, it was pondering those two facts that made me curious.
Given Tokyo's cuthroat environment, I'd figure that Witching out would be common enough that most meguca could pull a six degrees of Kevin Bacon to a Witch.
 
Nevill said:
On the other hand, as depicted in this quest, the rate of witch-outs from seed deficit is probably high enough that there should be no shortage of witnesses. Half of Maiko's friends are on her shelves.
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I think Maiko's friends are not typical case.
They were part of the team that did not fight other megucas thanks to their absurdly lethal fearsome leader.
They were working together for years, so I don't think they have troubles with Witches.

Therefore, two of three main causes of death (killed by meguca and killed by Witch) were much lower for Momoko's group than for other megucas.
Not surprisingly, third cause of death (Witch-out) happened more often amongst them.
 
Sorry, real life stuff has kept me busy lately so no update yet and probably not until this evening. (Evening in Echo Standard Time, that is. Which may or may not correspond to the better known EST time zone.)

Nevill said:
On the other hand, as depicted in this quest, the rate of witch-outs from seed deficit is probably high enough that there should be no shortage of witnesses. Half of Maiko's friends are on her shelves.
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Given that a desire to be alone seems to be inherent to Witch-ness, I suspect a lot of girls actively run off somewhere and witch out alone, and that any freshly witchbombed witnesses that do exist are prone to dying or witching out themselves in short order.

FelOnyx said:
Mami and Kyouko are both loners, which explains how they don't know despite that. They don't have friends so they could never have seen them witch. Upsides!
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Kyouko totally has friends!

She's friends with anybody who'll sell her food without questioning where a teenage hobo got that much cash.

Nevill said:
Well, 'prolonged association with Kyubey' may have something to do with it too. Momoko was kept in the dark for 9 years, which has to be some sort of a record?
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Momoko was a very unusual case, but yeah Kyubey put a lot of effort into keeping her in the dark.

Nevill said:
Where does that come from?
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The earlier discussion about population dynamics and what it takes to support a given number of meguca, I think.

thamuzz said:
Yeah, it was pondering those two facts that made me curious.
Given Tokyo's cuthroat environment, I'd figure that Witching out would be common enough that most meguca could pull a six degrees of Kevin Bacon to a Witch.
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It's no doubt pretty widely known in Tokyo, but not universal. For example, Rio and Fuuka know but Kiyomi doesn't. (She hadn't even been lichbombed until she saw Yui disconnect Kaede and Naoko, in fact, though that was mostly because she didn't really pay attention to other barely-less-obvious clues.)

It's admittedly a bit of a handwave, but I see a lot of meguca regarding "weaponizing the witchbomb to distract an opponent" as the kind of underhanded tactic that even the unrepentant murderers will look down on you for using.
 
Echo said:
It's no doubt pretty widely known in Tokyo, but not universal. For example, Rio and Fuuka know but Kiyomi doesn't. (She hadn't even been lichbombed until she saw Yui disconnect Kaede and Naoko, in fact, though that was mostly because she didn't really pay attention to other barely-less-obvious clues.)

It's admittedly a bit of a handwave, but I see a lot of meguca regarding "weaponizing the witchbomb to distract an opponent" as the kind of underhanded tactic that even the unrepentant murderers will look down on you for using.
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I was not aware that Kiyomi was lich bombed? Well, I was of the impression that Kiyomi never actually saw Kaede and Naoko get disconnected and she assumed something else happened.
 
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