Magical Girl Thingumajig

I'm really not sure how much this counts as Magical Girl, but to explain it... Basically an eldritich abomination is the source of their powers, but they don't know that since the abomination knows it'll inveitably be defeated if people know it exists. Instead the majority of them believe it ends with their transformation trinkets.

Speaking of, said trinkets actually connects them to the abomination. Furthermore, their powers are "fueled" by their emotional potential which it feeds on. Once they used up all their emotional potential, their trinket(s) fuse with their flesh before turning them into lesser abominations as well.

However, they all come with ability to steal and give emotional potential. This is mainly so their suffering can continue, and those already turned into a "Boss"i(considering a gaming theme) cannot change back despite other Magical Girls being able to restore their emotions.

Finally, its specifically Magical Girls because the eldritich beast knows their biological importance to humanity is greater. Their flashy outfits and powers are also because it thinks that's cool. Not entirely sure about it, but the eldritich monster isn't doing this because of malice.

Though besides all that, I'm really not sure what would actually be going on. I got the core details fine, bur the rest of the world and the plot need work. Figured this would be the best place.

So, it's basically Claymore by way of Sailor Moon then?

edited 10th Jun '14 9:59:35 PM by dvorak

I have not read the manga or watched the animes, so no? They can use multiple trinkets at once if that helps and trinkets become reusable once a Boss is killed (they think trinkets are the Boss' leftover magic). Though that's pretty much everything I got.

edited 10th Jun '14 10:12:52 PM by Kkutwar

So, what happens if a male puts on one of these trinkets? Do the immediately turn into a Humanoid Abomination or do they just croak?

edited 11th Jun '14 12:09:52 AM by dvorak

Nothing, though I would say people would try to force the trinkets to work. Managing that, however, means it won't connect them to the abomination until or if it decides to connect with that trinket. Without using their emotions as fuel, the unconnected trinkets only give you transformations and emotion siphoning/giving. The transformations are mainly just comestic, though some may have parts that can function as weapons.

I was thinking Puella Magi Madoka Magica, myself. There are a lot of similarities in how Kyubey strings along the girls before and after they make their contracts, and then either die in combat if they're lucky, or turn into the very things they fight as they fall to despair, which is a lot more common. Incidentally option B generates lots more tasty energy for Bunnycat to use.

Now, you've got a very rough sketch of a setting down. Actually figuring out the plot to it is the traditional next step, and that includes a laundry list of issues to solve: how does the entity entice them into taking up the trinket? Once they do, what's their motivation for keeping it? What happens to veterans and survivors? How, if at all, do they piece together what's happening? What motivates the entity? And how do they interact with the outside world?

The idea came together after rewatching Madoka and oddly enough Digimon Tamers. Generally, its a combination of random happenstance and the trinkets mentally whispering to them. New trinkets are generally cast into a populated area, but they don't actively hunt down a host. The emotional consumpation is relatively unnoticed at first, and generally the power they get is the motivation. Though most veterans would have gone either power mad or abandoned all morals, since they would have to rob people of their emotions to survive. Those who all quit were the ones too terrifed or moral to continue, and their emotional potential would never recover unless another decides to help.

One way the magical girls would know something is up is if they ever witness one become a Boss, or even notice that they lose their emotions. The trinkets also stay the same no matter how many times it turned into a Boss, so eventually one would go "No way are these things leftover magic". Plus the fact it only works on girls, some are eventually going to know. Though the eldritich beast never reveals itself, so they only have so much.

The entity has gone through a couple changes regarding origin and motives. Outwardly, it seems to do everything it does for the evulz. Though its also rather distanced from humans, and the one time a magical girl stumbled across him it had a moral crisis of sorts. Basically I would its indulging in the suffering it causes only because it doesn't consider everyone real compared to itself. It would probably have a psychotic break if actually forced to unsderstand. Though I'm still refining that part, and have yet to decide on its origin. I want it so its understandable it reached this point, but I don't actually want him to be pure evil or some mastermind with a plan.

The abomination uses the trinkets to see the world, and dwells underground itself. It can also creates minions and avaters from itself to interact above, and infect things to control them. Speaking of, Bosses can infect and mutate things. They can also be controlled by the abomination, but the things a Boss mutates act on their own. Though getting back to motivation, not all of these magical girls are warriors. Plenty start out using them for mundane uses, but ultimately they go power mad or quit. Finally, even if one destroys a trinket the abomination will simply make a new one.

I'd start by setting a timeframe and location. Is it Next Sunday A.D. Big Applesauce or the medieval ages, Easter Island? Or the future on Mars? (names from a hat; best example generator ever). If you set it now; in your home country, 99% of the work is done for you.

Alternate universe based on today makes the most sense to me. Location is a different matter, as the trinkets are over the entire world. Probably just set it in a vague location that could be anywhere?

Let's go with that.

edited 11th Jun '14 10:26:33 PM by dvorak

This might just be me as a Cthulhuverse veteran speaking, but I reflexively assume the last step of anything orchestrated by an eldritch horror is "burst gibbering forth into our reality and eat all our brains". In this case, though, it looks more like the boy-with-an-ant-farm model of eldritch beastie. Which isn't to say it won't eat our brains if it gets bored, just that keeping the bugger entertained is something of a priority.

(Look, I'm used to planning for Case Nightmare Green.)

Assuming Kyubey-Under-the-Earth is around for a long time, it presumably understands humanity well enough to functionally interact with it, even if it might miss out on a few key facts. That means that something big is going to have to change for it to have a change of heart.

Also, you'll have to explore the ramifications of what these might mean outside the masquerade; people are going to notice when the girl they've only ever seen wearing jeans and a t-shirt goes bounding across in the street in an impractically frilly skirt. PMMM addressed it in a bare-bones but functional way; after a girl makes her wish she's usually KIA or WIA in a few weeks. Also, the thing is, knowledge survives. Once one meguca figures out the secret, she'll want to spread that information along, so proactive information management is going to have to be part of things, or else you'll have to arrange events to ensure it. (Again, PMMM handles this, although it never outright says how; nevertheless the answer is there if you think about it.)

My points have mainly been this: history matters. If you want this thing to have been active the world over for a long time, it means it's been interacting with humanity from the day it arrived, and you'll have to account for that.

edited 11th Jun '14 10:56:22 PM by SabresEdge

True on all accounts, and its a barely hidden fact really. The various governments and whatnot would of noticed for certain, spending time on researching/controlling/exploiting them. They likely do their best to manipulate public knowledge, since this really wouldn't end well on a public scale. Though regarding the beast, I wouldn't say it really interacts socially. It doesn't predate humanity's creation, but it has been around long enough its actions would influnce humanity's history. Magical girls that somehow learn of his existence are quickly beset upon until they either die or use up all their emotions. Though I would say the majority don't even know about the Boss thing, let alone an ancient monster is their power source. In fact I would say the abomination part would be a mid or late story twist.

I would probably say a lot of myth/legends/etc are a result of its actions. Oh, and this is pretty important, if a magi concieves in their transformated state the result is basically a child which has their own (weaker) powers. If the trinket is connected at the time, then they're more like a half-human hybrid. Though regardless their children would inherit the lack of emotions. That and there's not really an age cut off for trinkets (some probably even give shape-shifting or temporal manipulation).

Ach. Polisci signal activate.

I know the Men In Black trope is popular, but it turns out that governments are rubbish at keeping secrets. And the secrets kept by one government can be revealed by the next. (East Germany's Stasi spymasters never expected their files to be opened to the public, for instance.) Hence, that aspect of things is simply not workable.

To give you the example where it was actually be pulled off: Charlie Stross's The Laundry Series. Yes, there are Cthulhoid horrors; yes, there are secret espionage agencies tasked with monitoring and protecting against them. To do so, the Laundry and its counterparts in other countries must rely on several facts to keep the whole thing secret; without these factors, the secret would have been out.

• Reliable magic only became a thing after the 1940s, after Alan Turing's discovery of the secret Turing Theorem. (Basically, magic is math. Computers are very good at math.) Before then, nobody really had to worry, although the Nazis came close. The only groups that had widespread access to computers after WWII were nation-states; hence the recent computing boom means that the occult secret services are kept very, very busy.
• Widespread access to magic would be extremely dangerous; in the worst case anybody who stumbles on the wrong mathematical theorem could potentially summon a world-devouring horror with their laptop. 90% of what the Laundry does is to try to find the people who come too close to the truth and stop them from accidentally becoming the possession vector for a demon (if they're lucky) or summoning Nyarlathotep and ending the world (if they're not). (Then they proceed to make a job offer the recipients are legally not allowed to refuse; it's quieter and less risky than a murder.) This provides strong incentives for the governments to keep computational magic out of the hands of the public.
• The occult intelligence agencies have access to an extensive array of glamours, geasa, and other such magic to compel forgetfulness and to keep themselves hidden and to detect magic, and it helps that they tend to be well-trained in tradecraft and have the full power and resources of the state behind them. Employees of Her Majesty's Occult Service cannot talk about their job to any passing journalist.
• The Benthic Treaty, signed post-WWII by all major powers and by the Deep Ones; in it, signatories undertook not to develop occult weapons of mass destruction, not to allow the secret of computational demonology to leak, and a range of other binding legal factors. This ensured the Cold War stayed a competition of nukes and missiles instead of elder gods; it also came with a very potent enforcement mechanism: if humanity buggers it up, the Deep Ones get to sink us, and when they talk we listen (since they are technologically millennia ahead of us, and could easily wipe us out if so inclined—fortunately they're a fairly reasonable lot).
• Case Nightmare Green—when the stars come right and when the Elder Gods return to eat mankind's brains—is approaching, meaning that the different occult services of the world—even the ones competing with each other—have strong incentives to cooperate. Nobody wants to see their neighbors screw up and accidentally invoke Yog-Sothoth; "it wasn't our fault, the French did it!" plays poorly in front of Parliament when the beret-clad monstrosity comes slumphing across the Channel.

Now, you can see why I brought all of this up: without them, the whole literary device of keeping magic a secret simply would not have worked. If you're going to mention that nation-state governments are aware of it, you've got the whole question of "how do they stop it from leaking?" which opens up several huge cans of worms. In turn, they'll affect the political power and structure of society to a huge degree—not to mention your magical girls! After all, the occult secret service would certainly know more about the being than the girls would, since it's been around much longer, and it could easily spill the beans

All that in mind, you may need to reconsider how well-kept a secret this is. I'd strongly advise it, in fact. After all, the state would have strong incentives not to let monsters run around, and while a helicopter gunship laden with fully-prepared troopers from the 22 SAS would be an awesome backup for a meguca, it probably wouldn't play well with your plot.

edited 12th Jun '14 2:26:00 AM by SabresEdge

In the end, they're simply too obvious to ever be a long kept secret. Though one of the main reasons magical girls and "Bosses" aren't common knowledge is that past generations effectively got rid of them for a time, allowing those events to fade away or become myths/legends. However, the governments wouldn't exactly want superpowered vigilantes/criminals running around. I would also say the Magical Girl/Boss thing has vanished and resurfaced numerous times throughout history. They're probably in the midst of the latest resurfacing...

Regarding the Eldritich Abomination, I have two general ideas in mind. Either its an alien with a blue and orange morality leaving it to believe its the good guy, or its a former human mage whose basically been playing make-believe due to despair and power madness leaving him to condemn humans as "black-hearted monsters".

Yeah, see, whether or not it's kept as a secret or is more or less in the open, if the government notices, the government will act, one way or the other. You've got to chart out what it knows, what it will know, and how it'll act, bearing in mind a government is a whole bunch of somewhat-confused people pulling in more or less the same direction. Remember Max Weber's dictum: governments seek to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in their territory, meaning that it'll try to harness or control the magical girls in your setting so it doesn't get accused of sitting idly by while some teenager in a skirt wrecks a city block. Unless you're planning for that to be a factor, which would quite frankly be an interesting take on the matter but would be very easy to get wrong, you'd better maintain it as a secret.

It'll be interesting seeing how well you handle the eldritch horror, although the whole "children of magical girls" angle—well, think out the consequences of that one. If the last time the beastie surfaced was many generations ago, long enough for things to have faded into myth, there may be a very small number of superpowered individuals going about, considering that this wouldn't be inherited beyond the first generation, and any such would have to be the first-generation kids of megucas. Okay, you could have one or two investigate what happened to Mommy. And it seems like the monster takes a rather proactive approach to maintaining its own secrecy? That's understandable, but you'd have to work out the rest of the monster's characterization with that in mind—that's it's willing to kill to preserve its secrecy. That bespeaks a certain kind of mind.

(Yes, I'm aware I'm using terms and story concepts more often found in superhero stories than in MG stories, but megucas are basically superheroes in skirts instead of spandex, once you think about it.)

edited 12th Jun '14 9:02:08 PM by SabresEdge

That would depend on weather or not you intend to make your audience sit and philosophise afterwards.

So what happens if that world's version of Gimli takes an axe to a trinket? And then another, and another, and another...

Until the abomination is either blind or incapacitated. I would make that an 'alternative faction' - the magic hunters or something.