Witches' Reign is a crossover roleplay hosted on Dreamwidth. It's premised on the characters from various worlds finding themselves in Balamb Garden twenty-one years after the events of Final Fantasy VIII, as a side effect of Ultimecia's attempts to make time one single moment at the climax of that game.
As either Cadets, Instructors, or SeeDs, characters are expected to learn the rigors and rules of a top-notch mercenary organization and accordingly work with it until they can find a way back to their homeworlds. That, however, is much easier said than done.
It is found here,
though the last update occurred in 2014.
Witches' Reign provides examples of:
- Academy of Adventure: Even without the shenanigans of time compression, Garden teaches kids how to use magic and mystical forces as well as the usual Spy School fare.
- All Animals Are Domesticated: Subverted: Claire is mildly weirded out by the fact that this world's chocobos are not, unlike the XIII world's.
- All Elections Are Serious Business: Grell threatens to kill people who don't vote for her for Homecoming Princess; Tom thinks something would have exploded if she or Sharpay hadn't won their respective titles. Subverted by all the other SeeD candidates, who didn't care about or want their titles.
- Amazon Brigade: The roleplay's roster consists of a disproportionate number of cute, friendly, capable girls.
- Bag of Sharing: If the school has access to one canon Guardian Force, every character can junction it.
- Big Brother Instinct: Espio. One reason not to mess with Tobias.
- Class Trip: While Garden is on break in Esthar, students are invited to the presidential palace and to Odin's laboratory.
- Competence Zone: Subverted. The minimum age for taking the SeeD field exam is 15, which many of the younger kids, heroes or deadly assassins in their own canons, are not impressed with. The maximum age for attaining SeeDship is 25, but the Headmaster seems to have turned a blind eye to several of the older characters, and some of the immortals are outright lying about their ages.
- Dull Surprise: Seifer-mun's reaction towards everything. Including you.
- Elaborate University High: Balamb Garden, reprising its role from its home series.
- Eyepatch After Time Skip: Tobias, though it's less a typical eyepatch and more of a medical one.
- Fantastic Racism: Many of the natives of the VIII world do not look kindly on off-worlders, most notably an NPC Girl Posse.
- Food Fight: During the superpowers event, fuelled by Zephyr's sudden ability to generate baked goods and Kiden's sudden invisibility.
- Fundraiser Carnival: Subverted: The carnival was originally just part of homecoming, but then the Garden Festival Committee decided to give the funds to charity.
- Global Airship: Besides the Ragnarok, Espio has donated his own airship to Garden. On the other side, an old-school Final Fantasy style airship — a literal ship with propellers instead of sails — has fallen into the hands of a different faction.
- Guest Fighter:
- Heroic BSoD: Espio goes through one when he sees his home reality implode.
- High-School Dance: Valentine's and homecoming dances are added to the graduation ball returning from the original game.
- Humanity Ensues: Temporarily achievable via a potion invented by Professor Slughorn.
- Hypocritical Humor: Sharpay breaks curfew to have a New Year's countdown with Tom, and clears out the secret area to do so by telling everyone off for breaking curfew.
- Incredibly Lame Pun:
- This being a spooky jamjar game, there was an event that involved a portal to the jam dimension.
- No one was happy when the mod revealed where the jam actually came from◊.
- This being a spooky jamjar game, there was an event that involved a portal to the jam dimension
- Informed Islam: Subverted with Damian Razem. Although he seems like a Muslim who's more show than tell, his constant use of Arabic and subtle obedience towards his religion indicates that he's more than just talk.
- Instant Fan Club: That same NPC Girl Posse happen to be Trepies, and also think Snow is quite good-looking.
- Leaning on the Furniture: If there is any furniture, it's Seifer's now.
- Military Superhero: Played straight for any of the characters from either the DC Universe or Marvel Universe, as they're superheroes who have graduated or will graduate and work for Garden as part of its mercenary force.
- Mistaken for Pregnant: Espio leaves his turnip stash in Marco's dorm room without telling him; Marco leaps to the conclusion that it is a message from Grell in vegetable language.
- The Napoleon: Zim, since his classmates are mostly normal-human-sized... and he ran into Snow not long after enrolling.
- Next Sunday A.D.: Despite being set twenty-one years after Final Fantasy VIII, it appears that science has not progressed.
- Organization with Unlimited Funding:
- Now that students are sponsored by outside groups, Garden has the money to quickly build an adults' lounge on a newcomer's request while they have the dorms renovated.
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Reality Subtext: When the game moved to Dreamwidth, the characters received wireless-capable laptops and much of the world outside Garden also got a technological upgrade. - Remember the New Guy?: Characters applied as SeeDs have at least a year of handwaved history within the setting, and including CR in this handwave is an option.
- School Play: The drama classes put one on every quarter, having so far performed Romeo and Juliet set in the first Sorceress War WITH LASERS! and Cats.
- Shipper on Deck: Did some characters talk to each other? Miss Tattler ships it now.
- Superpowers for a Day: The focus of a month-long event - some powerless characters received powers, some had new powers swapped for their old ones, some swapped powers with other people, and some unlucky sods were Brought Down to Normal. Powers received include:
- The Empath: Selphie absorbs the emotions of anyone she touches and can't turn it off.
- Flight: Joe, Dick; Danny Masters gets Clark Kent's flight.
- Friend to All Living Things: Squall and Sharpay, with the latter's friendliness extending to bugs and monsters. Equius also receives Tavros' friendliness.
- Intangible Man: Clark Kent gets Danny's ghost powers in return.
- Invisibility: Kiden, who also starts turning things she touches invisible.
- Playing with Fire: Rolo gets Zuko's Firebending; Espio also gets firepowers.
- Time Stands Still: Zuko gets Rolo's Geass, making people think this has happened.
- Winged Humanoid: Rinoa gets stuck with the wings from her Angel Wing Limit Break all the time.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Nothing has developed exclusively in the game, but Snow was the Martial Arts Instructor, and Serah was just a student.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Time compression is the cause of, and solution to, every issue that needs a handwaving.
- Trademark Favorite Food:
- Garden at large and baked goods.
- Espio has an obsession with turnips. He'll eat them, hoard them, steal them, talk to them, threaten people with them and generally takes it to a ridiculous level. Even the Headmaster has noticed that he loves the things.
- Welcome Back, Traitor:
- Seifer, after the entire events of Final Fantasy VIII, had no trouble getting back into the Garden and resuming his classes. Not everyone has welcomed him, though.
- Done again when Seifer takes The Slow Path to returning, as a gunblade-smith rather than a student.
- Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Applies to practically half the cast, but special mention goes towards Zim for publicly asking for people's DNA samples on the BBS where the teachers could spot him... and Damian for hitting a weapon at Souless!Colette and getting attacked with freaking Judgment in retaliation.
