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

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Echo said:
What needs explaining? Like, anything that's very clearly vital is going to have been bought up by Maiko, Minami, and/or Yumi. I file that sort of thing under the "Yui will not suffocate if you forget to vote for breathing" principle of characters doing obvious things on their own initiative unless you explicitly say otherwise.
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Good to know. Still probably going to have you say this in the future over different things because obvious being obvious can be quite subjective. So my apologies in advance.

And yeah the subvotes, well just me trying to establish a tone that made it clear it's bring wreck to controlled stop, keep presentation that Yui is actually someone competent to trust... and then go to lovable goof team building.
 
I would like to add that we should totally make the point that just because we are not saving this witch right this second, does not mean it can't be a future goal to work towards.

We have a way to keep them safe, an expert in witchy things, and a growing group of varied magical girls who, once we are done stabilizing the neighbors, will have a lot of free time.

There is no reason to think we can't come up with a bunch of useful stuff.

Make it into a callback on how we're working to make the soup of human kindness nice and easy to afford for everyone.

[X] Plan Not Entirely Oblivious to WitchBomb Defusal +
 
Echo said:
"Are there any other facts you elided for similar reasons?" she demands.

"None that could be considered pertinent--"

"Evasive," she interrupts. "For clarity: Facts that I personally would consider both pertinent and distressing."

"I do not understand human emotions well enough to be certain of--"

"Also evasive," she snaps. "You admitted the capacity for prediction a few seconds ago. Answer the question as intended."

"None that are unknown to this group," Kyubey replies.

"Reiko--" Maiko tries to interrupt, but gets ignored.

"Irrelevant. Sakue is demonstrably better-informed than most," Reiko says, her constant finger-tapping getting more energetic. "Yes or no, Incubator?"

"Yes."
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Hot damn. Reiko continues to be awesome.
 
Krika said:
I mean my default assumption as to "worst way to find out" is watching one of her friends Witch-out in front of her without anything she can do to stop it from happening
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Even worse, imo, is if there was something she could do to stop it but wasn't fast/strong/clever enough to manage it in time, like if she was panicking and that caused her to hesitate for a few critical seconds.
 
One way to try and have Maiko actually let the bomb drop is...

Well tell her that Yui appreciates what she's trying to do, and knows what she's trying to do. But Yui is going to need to know sooner rather than later, if only because Reiko could have lead to whatever terrible secret being dropped and Yui wouldn't have been able to help with the fallout because also blind sided. And the need for Yui to know to support the other MGs who are under her umbrella, in her city is not going to change.

And essentially ask for the two to set up a time and place so that Maiko can tell Yui in a controlled environment. And even if Maiko doesn't think Yui is ready. At least do her the courtesy of letting Yui know if any of her guesses as to what the secret is is correct.

Yui isn't stupid. And she's already knows that Soul Gem = Magical Girl. And the corrosive properties of Grief. And how Maiko treats grief seeds. She can probably figure it out if she actually tried.
 
Storyteller said:
Good to know. Still probably going to have you say this in the future over different things because obvious being obvious can be quite subjective. So my apologies in advance.
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Well, technically it's subjective in-universe as well, since it depends on what particular characters would find 'obvious'.

But at a meta-level it's mostly because I consider it anti-fun to punish Quest players for not obsessing over minutia. I've seen a few quests where a completely pointless "gotcha" popped up because of votes not micromanaging the protagonist's life and the QM framed it as "well, that's just what happens" which is, technically, correct, but also not conducive to enjoyment. For me, at least.

hugh_donnetono said:
Hot damn. Reiko continues to be awesome.
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Don't forget: Electric lightsaber swordcane. :V

Storyteller said:
Well tell her that Yui appreciates what she's trying to do, and knows what she's trying to do. But Yui is going to need to know sooner rather than later, if only because Reiko could have lead to whatever terrible secret being dropped and Yui wouldn't have been able to help with the fallout because also blind sided. And the need for Yui to know to support the other MGs who are under her umbrella, in her city is not going to change.
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I should probably point out that strictly speaking, Yui doesn't know for sure that this is about something she's unaware of. Yes, she suspects, because of how Maiko and Minami are reacting, that there's something more going on, but it would be consistent with observations that this was, e.g., all about the "actually you're a shiny rock now" part, which Yui is already aware of but assumes most of the others aren't.

Storyteller said:
Yui isn't stupid. And she's already knows that Soul Gem = Magical Girl. And the corrosive properties of Grief. And how Maiko treats grief seeds. She can probably figure it out if she actually tried.
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Right now she's basically thinking of Witches as people, but not humans, as I think I've said before. There's still enough of a disconnect that I'd be iffy on a vote to have her figure it out unless a clear chain of plausibly in-character reasoning was presented. But no, not out of the question either.
 
Echo said:
Right now she's basically thinking of Witches as people, but not humans, as I think I've said before. There's still enough of a disconnect that I'd be iffy on a vote to have her figure it out unless a clear chain of plausibly in-character reasoning was presented. But no, not out of the question either.
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Witches seem to be female. The law states that you can only marry humans. Therefore if Yui is going to romance some Witches, well, Yui is going to have to convince herself and other people that Witches are humans. Hmm... Let's just claim they're former magical girls! :3
 
Echo said:
Well, technically it's subjective in-universe as well, since it depends on what particular characters would find 'obvious'.
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A big thing with "obvious" stuff is that people are really bad at determining if something they know is obvious or not, because they know what's signal and what's noise, but others might not.
 
[X] Something's obviously bothering Maiko, so go ahead and stop here.
- [X] Suggest doing something fun and non-magical-girl-related as a group instead.
-- [X] Hit up a fast food place for an early dinner
-- [X] You have a strict policy that angst requires ice cream therapy

I'm fine with either of these options, improving social bonds with and getting the new magical girls into the right mindset is way more valuable long term than pressing forward when people have problems.
also,
[X] Clean our soul gem
We have grief seeds to spare last I checked and its getting pretty high, honestly we should try to keep it as close to 0 at all times. Hell we can even use it as an educational lesson for the newbies.
 
You know, the whole witch ethics thing makes me want to see a hammy sadist magical girl who fully understands what witches are and treats grief seeds like they would treat people buried up to the head in sand. I.e helpless victims for thier amusement.

"Eat my depression, Witch!"
"Let me hear your soul scream!"
 
Echo said:
In the most densely populated areas of Tokyo, the only long-term stable territory "claims" are the hunting grounds of Witches that everyone is too terrified of to approach. :V As far as meguca are concerned it's a permanent free-for-all with a very high mortality rate.
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Alright, so I've been reading through the thread... lots of fun stuff, and this in particular sounds like a terrifyingly plausible reason about why Tokyo is as much of a neurotic hellhole as it is- mega-witches are wandering around randomly wrecking everyone's shit. How plausible is it that we would be able to clear out some of those witches? As I recall, the strongest witch we've ever dealt with is Lorelei, with a capacity of 12k. She probably gave us the most trouble of any witch so far except for possibly the creepy funeral witch, but if I recall correctly, the fact that we were able to defeat her at all was as much because of the fact that we had Maiko there to help us bypass her really strong familiars as it was because of the strength of the witch herself. How would we do if we ran into a witch that focused more of her power onto herself rather than her familiars, or if we run into another wish with soul gem-affecting gimmicks like the funeral witch had, except way more powered-up due to munching on witches for a century straight? A lot worse, I would imagine. We would probably be able to get out, depending on the exact situation, but... it definitely wouldn't be a fun time. Although in any of these hypothetical situations, we would still have Maiko there to warn us if the witch had a gimmick we couldn't handle, so I guess it's not too worrying. Not something we really have to worry about in the short-term, but I figured I would write out my thoughts as long as I was thinking about it.

Also, on an unrelated note... whatever the hell Kyoufu and Muhou did to the max capacity of us and Maiko is rather extremely worrying. I mean, I suppose it's not the biggest deal, since whatever it was only took a miniscule portion, but how did it even work?! And also, that 9 at the end instead of the 0 is really ticking me off, I suppose that's the main issue :V
 
HelioA said:
How plausible is it that we would be able to clear out some of those witches? As I recall, the strongest witch we've ever dealt with is Lorelei, with a capacity of 12k. She probably gave us the most trouble of any witch so far except for possibly the creepy funeral witch, but if I recall correctly, the fact that we were able to defeat her at all was as much because of the fact that we had Maiko there to help us bypass her really strong familiars as it was because of the strength of the witch herself. How would we do if we ran into a witch that focused more of her power onto herself rather than her familiars, or if we run into another wish with soul gem-affecting gimmicks like the funeral witch had, except way more powered-up due to munching on witches for a century straight? A lot worse, I would imagine. We would probably be able to get out, depending on the exact situation, but... it definitely wouldn't be a fun time.
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Lorelei had a very risk-averse personality; she separated out all her offensive power into the train familiars while constructing the entire barrier as a way to disguise her presence, specifically to avoid having to fight directly. Even when found, she chose a fighting retreat in her extremely durable primary form; any meguca without Yui's raw power would likely have been unable to destroy her there and been forced to either abandon the fight as a bad job or stubbornly follow Lorelei to the bottom of the shaft. Said bottom would have been a rusted-out train depot to which she'd recalled all her familiars, which she would have then temporarily reabsorbed. Lorelei's second, true form would have resembled an armor-plated Beholder 60+ feet in diameter except with mouths instead of eyes and ranged attacks consisting of spewing high-pressure jets of insanely corrosive vomit from each of the dozens of tentacle-maws. Yui and Maiko could possibly still win that fight in theory, but not easily, not while protecting Asami, and probably not at Yui's current skill level. Of course, Maiko would have forced a retreat somewhere in there, so you would've gotten away (but only barely).

In central Tokyo, Lorelei would be bottom-tier among the Witches capable of actually surviving as predators rather than prey.

HelioA said:
Also, on an unrelated note... whatever the hell Kyoufu and Muhou did to the max capacity of us and Maiko is rather extremely worrying. I mean, I suppose it's not the biggest deal, since whatever it was only took a miniscule portion, but how did it even work?! And also, that 9 at the end instead of the 0 is really ticking me off, I suppose that's the main issue :V
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Minami, too! :V
 
Echo said:
In central Tokyo, Lorelei would be bottom-tier among the Witches capable of actually surviving as predators rather than prey.
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Yeah, so it probably wouldn't be prudent to go on a fun day trip to Tokyo for witch-clearing duty, I see.

...I am very curious about the kinds of witches that actually do well in Tokyo now, though. They've gotta be absolutely terrifying.

Also, is the kind of situation in central Tokyo typical for very dense cities worldwide, or is this a weird situation? I read another comment upthread where you said that this is something that only arose within the past couple of decades or so, and that Kyuubey is actively trying to mitigate the situation because of how bad it is for maintaining magical girls there, so I suppose it can't be that common, since the Incubators presumably try and prevent themselves from making mistakes that they've made before, but how common is it overall?
 
[X] Plan Not Entirely Oblivious to WitchBomb Defusal

Crimson Doom said:
The one person I know who doesn't like ice cream IRL doesn't like it because of the cold, so those wouldn't work for him. If it's just texture or something that's the issue, your suggestions would work fine, but we should have a backup plan in case they're just not into cold desserts in general. I'm wondering if there's a cupcake shop nearby or something that we could open friendly relations with.
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Clearly we go the other direction and get them fresh baked piping hot pies/cakes.
 
HelioA said:
Yeah, so it probably wouldn't be prudent to go on a fun day trip to Tokyo for witch-clearing duty, I see.
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Clearing out Tokyo's Witch problem was explicitly intended as an endgame scenario. As in, once you can pull that off I'll be ready to declare victory and wrap things up with an epilogue at any point. Not that I'd stop you from aiming higher and continuing the Quest, but I'd be satisfied at that point.

That said, untransformed magical girls who don't go looking for trouble will generally be okay. The Witches mostly fight each other while passively snacking on the sheer mass of urban angst generated by that many people in one place.

HelioA said:
Also, is the kind of situation in central Tokyo typical for very dense cities worldwide, or is this a weird situation?
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Yes. :V

...which is to say sort of both. It's not typical, but it is a self-reinforcing trend, so if multiple "apex predator" type Witches become entrenched despite the bunnycats trying to prevent it, they'll switch to trying to manipulate high-potential girls into making wishes specifically designed to fix the problem. Given the very real risk of an amalgamated Witch becoming a danger to society as a whole, the Incubators are pretty aggressive about dealing with it. Tokyo probably isn't the only city currently in that state, but I doubt there's more than two or three others.

The other common failure mode is an aggressive lockdown by veteran meguca ruthless enough to deliberately farm familiars and kill off competition, but that's usually easier for the bunnycats to resolve and much less likely to be catastrophic.
 
Echo said:
Lorelei had a very risk-averse personality; she separated out all her offensive power into the train familiars while constructing the entire barrier as a way to disguise her presence, specifically to avoid having to fight directly. Even when found, she chose a fighting retreat in her extremely durable primary form; any meguca without Yui's raw power would likely have been unable to destroy her there and been forced to either abandon the fight as a bad job or stubbornly follow Lorelei to the bottom of the shaft. Said bottom would have been a rusted-out train depot to which she'd recalled all her familiars, which she would have then temporarily reabsorbed. Lorelei's second, true form would have resembled an armor-plated Beholder 60+ feet in diameter except with mouths instead of eyes and ranged attacks consisting of spewing high-pressure jets of insanely corrosive vomit from each of the dozens of tentacle-maws. Yui and Maiko could possibly still win that fight in theory, but not easily, not while protecting Asami, and probably not at Yui's current skill level. Of course, Maiko would have forced a retreat somewhere in there, so you would've gotten away (but only barely).
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So wait, Yui and Maiko only beat Lorelei because they didn't let her assume her TRUE, FINAL FORM? I keep saying this, but Lorelei! Best! Girl! :rofl:

Echo said:
In central Tokyo, Lorelei would be bottom-tier among the Witches capable of actually surviving as predators rather than prey.
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...Okay, now I want to watch a shonen-style battle anime starring Lorelei, set in an au where she escaped from the Yu Crew but ended up having to flee to Tokyo, following her journey from "garbage-tier bottom feeder" to "strongest witch in the city" 👀
 
Echo said:
Clearing out Tokyo's Witch problem was explicitly intended as an endgame scenario. As in, once you can pull that off I'll be ready to declare victory and wrap things up with an epilogue at any point. Not that I'd stop you from aiming higher and continuing the Quest, but I'd be satisfied at that point.
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At that point, maybe we could do a To The Stars (a very very good Madoka Magica fanfic) MSY thing and try to create a world spanning organization. I think at that point once Yui gets the snowball rolling on absorbing magical girls into her organization, we would have to move on to a different character on the lower rungs of the organization if you want to keep the narrative style going, though if you find a way to keep the style with Yui at the top, I'm more than happy to keep following the adventures of Yui.
 
hugh_donnetono said:
...Okay, now I want to watch a shonen-style battle anime starring Lorelei, set in an au where she escaped from the Yu Crew but ended up having to flee to Tokyo, following her journey from "garbage-tier bottom feeder" to "strongest witch in the city" 👀
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Lorelei isn't really shounen protagonist material, personality-wise. She could maybe manage "petty asshole rival that the protagonist grudgingly respects" on a good day. The kind of antagonist who temporarily teams up with the good guys in the dubiously-canonical movies as a way to show just how much the movie's villain is Seriously Bad News.

DeclanDSI said:
At that point, maybe we could do a To The Stars (a very very good Madoka Magica fanfic) MSY thing and try to create a world spanning organization. I think at that point once Yui gets the snowball rolling on absorbing magical girls into her organization, we would have to move on to a different character on the lower rungs of the organization if you want to keep the narrative style going, though if you find a way to keep the style with Yui at the top, I'm more than happy to keep following the adventures of Yui.
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To The Stars is good stuff, yup. Setting up an MSY-equivalent organization was another potential endgame scenario I had in mind; jumping to a different primary protagonist would be more of a sequel than a continuation, I think.

Incidentally, my current thoughts on how things would go for the PMIM crew in a post-Madokami timeline include Yui being involved with something like the MSY despite never actually becoming a meguca herself. :V
 
Echo said:
To The Stars is good stuff, yup. Setting up an MSY-equivalent organization was another potential endgame scenario I had in mind; jumping to a different primary protagonist would be more of a sequel than a continuation, I think.
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I have to admit, I am having trouble imagining how an MSY equivalent would work with Witch rules still in place, even though its a very cool idea.

The main problem I can see, other than Kyuubey possibly having a motivation and ability to disband somehow through some convoluted plot due to it being an entrenched entity maybe, is that unlike wraiths, witches inherently only come from magical girls, so sustainability caps out faster, and is dependant on some level on failing to save some people, with success of a worldwide scale reducing resources which reduce the cap and so on with girls still needing the resources. And with no godlike Madoka wish...

I do think a global group is a worthwhile idea, but I don't know how universal, or long-term it could actually be.

Though maybe this is pessimistic or a limit on my imagination. It is interesting to discuss in any case.

Edit: I also have to say, the idea that Yui is only contracted in a Witch based universe and nor in a relatively benign one, is kind of tragic and sad to me, as she would be much happier that way as I understand her character.
 
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Valkhir said:
I have to admit, I am having trouble imagining how an MSY equivalent would work with Witch rules still in place, even though its a very cool idea.

The main problem I can see, other than Kyuubey possibly having a motivation and ability to disband somehow through some convoluted plot due to it being an entrenched entity maybe, is that unlike wraiths, witches inherently only come from magical girls, so sustainability caps out faster, and is dependant on some level on failing to save some people, with success of a worldwide scale reducing resources which reduce the cap and so on with girls still needing the resources. And with no godlike Madoka wish...

I do think a global group is a worthwhile idea, but I don't know how universal, or long-term it could actually be.

Though maybe this is pessimistic or a limit on my imagination. It is interesting to discuss in any case.

Edit: I also have to say, the idea that Yui is only contracted in a Witch based universe and nor in a relatively benign one, is kind of tragic and sad to me, as she would be much happier that way as I understand her character.
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You might be able to farm familiars in a controlled manner by restricting them to passively absorbing ambient emotions, but of course that kind of thing would be tricky to say the least.
 
Valkhir said:
I have to admit, I am having trouble imagining how an MSY equivalent would work with Witch rules still in place, even though its a very cool idea.

The main problem I can see, other than Kyuubey possibly having a motivation and ability to disband somehow through some convoluted plot due to it being an entrenched entity maybe, is that unlike wraiths, witches inherently only come from magical girls, so sustainability caps out faster, and is dependant on some level on failing to save some people, with success of a worldwide scale reducing resources which reduce the cap and so on with girls still needing the resources. And with no godlike Madoka wish...

I do think a global group is a worthwhile idea, but I don't know how universal, or long-term it could actually be.

Though maybe this is pessimistic or a limit on my imagination. It is interesting to discuss in any case.

Edit: I also have to say, the idea that Yui is only contracted in a Witch based universe and nor in a relatively benign one, is kind of tragic and sad to me, as she would be much happier that way as I understand her character.
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It's basically going to be a girl making hard choices sort of thing. Though another thing to remember is that Witches can rehatch from grief seeds, and besides, in both scenarios a certain amount of people are thing to have to die. Also, Witches might be able to be bred to just eat emotions instead of people like Wraiths can do. If the theory about Grief Cubes being something Kyubey introduced is correct, he might just introduce Grief Cubes if he sees the long-term stability in energy production from the formation of a world wide organization.
 
Echo said:
The other common failure mode is an aggressive lockdown by veteran meguca ruthless enough to deliberately farm familiars and kill off competition, but that's usually easier for the bunnycats to resolve and much less likely to be catastrophic.
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So looking at the situation of repeating unrest, with multiple groups getting unsettled and what appears to be waves of girls fleeing, and how the quest started with Momoko being killed...

Look I'm suspicious that outside of the inter core death zone with all the witches is that an aggressive lockdown has started surrounding said zone. Because one reason to kill Momoko without bragging about it... It removes the known enforcer who'd be called in by the Incubators if someone started going too ham in the kill everyone else respect. And someone doing that would have the effect of a large stone being plopped in the center of a pond as all surrounding territories deal with the disruption.

As to the long term Grief Seed situation... Well that I think would be something we'd only have the ability to constructively consider after making inroads with the mg group at the University.

Constructive science takes Time and resources in addition to luck. Also individuals who survives long enough given the two year average that's a problem
 
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