Dark times lie ahead.
Don’t forget.
Always, somewhere,
someone is fighting for you.
As long as you remember her,
you are not alone.
That's a lie.
Always, somewhere,
someone is fighting for you.
As long as you remember her,
you are not alone.
That's a lie.
Your name is Homura Akemi.
You held on. You've held on the longest. Just how many months has it been? Probably a couple of years. While everyone went about their lives as if nothing had happened, you alone remembered. You remembered her smile, her voice, her touch and her warmth... It's just you and the pretty little ribbon she gave you as a keepsake.
And in the time since Madoka sacrificed herself to change the world, you gradually came to terms with the new state of things. You grew close to Kyouko and Mami. You become used to this world without witches. You continued to uphold your promise to her, to protect it. And you still held onto hope that one day, no matter how impossible it seemed, you would see her again.
And you were at peace.
But then you received an odd text message. And everything went to hell.
Veritable is a quest run by AnonymousRabbit on Sufficient Velocity.com. In it, you play as Homura, in an alternate universe set after the events of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, but during the events of Rebellion. Which, unfortunately for you, affected the Law of Cycles in all dimensions, not just the one they happened in. Cue the Law of Cycles no longer functioning properly, familiars reappearing, and an evil eye showing up in the sky. And that's on top of the Wraith swarm that's going to happen in three days. And that's just the start of things.
You can read the quest here
. It continues in a second thread here. Or, if you'd rather just read the story posts, a story only thread is here. It ran for a year before being abandoned in October 2015.
Veritable contains examples of:
- Alternate Universe: This is set in an alternate universe where the events of Rebellion didn't happen. The events of Rebellion affect it anyway.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Quest briefly switches to follow Ruki instead of Homura. It switches back later.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite everything they've seen as magical girls, Mami and Kyouko assume Homura's stories about witches and Madoka are pure fantasy (or possibly insanity). This gets annoying when they continue this assumption even after witches start appearing again.
- An Arm and a Leg: Homura and loses an arm during her fight with Sayaka.
- Armor Is Useless: Armor has been considered and dismissed by most magical girls as too heavy and restricting to be useful. Instead, they use magical barriers.
- Awful Truth: Yuu lays out a rather appalling one at the end of the first thread. Walpurgisnact isn't there because of Homurcifer; it was brought back by the Law of Cycles to force Homura to side with it.
- Big Bad: Homucifer reprises this role from Rebellion, only this time she is up against her non-evil Alternate Self.
- Big Damn Heroes: Homura arriving just in the nick of time to purify Ruki's soul gem.
- Breakout Character: Ruki the Rookie. Intended to be a one-off character to heal Homura after a battle, the players kept voting to drag her around everywhere and check on her until the QM decided to just make her one of the main characters.
- Broken Angel: Homurcifer tears Homura's wings out, then corrupts her magic, permanently removing her Wings of Hope ability.
- Came Back Wrong: Despite being torn in half, the Law of Cycles is still around. But something is very, very wrong with it.
- De-power: Sayaka's sword has the ability to rob magical girls of their abilities. Which Homura finds out the hard way, losing a handful of abilities during their fight. Permanently.
- Discard and Draw: Between Sayaka and Homurcifer, Homura loses most of her post-Madoka wish power set. Then Homurcifer injects her with some of her own magic. The result is Homura effectively being converted back to her pre-Madoka wish powers.
- Enemy Mine: The players try to pull this with the Sayakanator, but she isn't interested. This leads to the first bad end of the quest.
- Forged Message: Someone sends fake telepathic messages to disrupt coordination between Homura, Kyouko, and Mami.
- God Is Evil: It turns out the one behind Walpurgisnact's return isn't Homurcifer, but the Law of Cycles.
- Heel–Face Turn: Oriko is convinced to try to help out after Homura defeats her, with the logic that if she can't kill Homura, she can at least help her try to avoid the bad future she foresaw.
- Her Heart Will Go On: Homura is, while not completely over Madoka, no longer the nigh suicidal wreck she was after Madoka made her wish.
- I Never Got Any Letters: Turns out someone's been blocking telepathic messages while sending out fake ones.
- Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Because the Graviton Beam Emitter is so powerful, Homura cannot safely use it in the city. Also, Arty's strongest attack has such a wide range that she very nearly kills her companions with it each time she uses it. This doesn't stop her from using it repeatedly, much to the chagrin of her allies.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Homurcifer erases some of Homura's memories after she kills Walpurgisnact.
- Literal Split Personality: Due to the events of Rebellion, the Law of Cycles is no longer the Madoka that Homura once knew.
- Magic Enhancement: Homura likes to magically boost the output of her firearms. Up until Sayaka removes this ability, anyway.
- Muggles Do It Better: Despite now having a powerful magical bow, more often than not, Homura falls back on non-magical weaponry. Although she tends to enchant it for extra damage.
- Mysterious Backer: Yuu seems to be getting information she can't possibly know. Turns out it's from the Law of Cycles.
- Mysterious Note: Homura repeatedly receives mysterious text messages throughout the quest.
- Naïve Newcomer: Homura thinks Ruki is this, although Ruki has actually been a magical girl for two months (which, sadly, is a long time for a magical girl).
- Phlebotinum Overload: During the fight with Walpurgisnact, in a bid to defeat it, Homura absorbs a massive amount of magical energy from the other magical girls in the city, cracking her soul gem in the process.
- Plunder: Homura steals Oriko's hat after beating her in combat. It is still sitting in her inventory.
- Poor Communication Kills: Homura and Kyouko are terrible at communicating with each other early on. It doesn't help that Kyouko and Mami seem convinced that Homura is off her rocker. It really doesn't help that they're kind of right. This is subverted when it turns out someone is sabotaging their telepathy and sending fake messages to them to cause the miscommunications.
- Power-Upgrading Deformation: After Oriko is restored from being a witch, parts of her body take on a doll like appearance, indicating that the reversion wasn't quite complete. On the upside, it's implied that being part witch has made her stronger. Likewise, Ruki grew tails after Homurcifer started to possess her.
- Resist the Beast: Ruki says she can hold out for about one more hour. And that's all she holds out for.
- Schmuck Bait: Sub-goal - Kill a Level 5 Wraith with your bare hands! Cue the players trying to come up with ways to render a powerful monster Only Mostly Dead so they can finish it with their bare hands. It doesn't work.
- Screw Yourself: A mild version, but AnonymousRabbit has stated that it is possible to have Homudox as a love interest.
- Shout-Out: The Sayakanator's abilities are very similar to those of Sayaka from Sayaka Quest.
- Super-Empowering: After Homudox dies, her soul merges with Homura's, granting her a powerful shielding ability and boosting her grief limit by half.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Often, this seems to be the case, as Mami and Kyouko repeatedly seem to be actively hindering Homura with bad decisions on their part. And then it turns out that someone has been impersonating them in the telepathic network, manipulating them into making the bad decisions and sometimes outright making the bad decisions while pretending to be them.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Good thing, too. There have been several instances where the players wrote in long speeches at really inappropriate moments. Occasionally averted when the QM got sick of it and had another character interrupt.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The players attempted to pull this on Sayaka, throwing an entire battleship at her. But then she caught it...
- Too Dumb to Live: As is often the case with Quests, users will often make decisions which ultimately fall into this category. For example, the attempt to diplomance Sayakanator which resulted in the thread's first Bad End (in the Tutorial Thread no less!)
- Warts and All: Due to a combination of Homura's lack of interaction with most of the other magical girls, her high degree of competence, and her nickname of "the Angel," a lot of the other magical girls in the fic see Homura as The Cape. And as a few of them find out, she's really, really not.
- Wrecked Weapon: Homurcifer destroys the Dominator.
