Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ax_iom) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
vulpeculaet2018-03-20 04:13 pm
ax_iom) wrote in vulpeculaet2018-03-20 04:13 pm
(no subject)
Setting Concept (Shamelessly stolen from Prof)
Modern Earth, but with magic-wielding humans called Mages who fight monsters to protect humanity. Mages can be magical girls, sentai heroes, or a variety of other kinds of flashy defenders of humanity, but the powers are fundamentally the same, and manifest at an early age - usually around 10-13. Mages fight monsters in savage battles of survival until they turn 18, at which time they surrender their powers so that magical energy can be recycled for the next wave of Mages to be able to defend humanity.
The thing is, this setup is a lie, perpetrated by a massive 300-year-old conspiracy. Its originators, the Elder Magi, are humans who hoard magical power to live forever as gods in the shadows of the world. Magic isn't actually a non-renewable resource - when a Mage offers up their powers, it's the power they were born with, not power recycled from others. The power taken from the Mages at age 18 is crystalized and put in the vaults of the Elder Magi so that they can continue to amass metaphysical wealth, living eternally in luxury and letting the youth do all the hard work of fighting the monsters drawn to Earth by its steadily increasing concentration of magic.
This story isn't named yet, but it's about young people realizing that they've been lied to by older generations about the form of a society built to exploit their suffering, and those kids getting mad and rising up to tear down the system that torments them to seize their own happy endings when the adults fail to help them.
Character Information
Lily is a disgraced mage, a former hero. Well-celebrated and well-loved, she had everything in the world.
She had gained her powers at six years old, and was fighting monsters ever since. Too young to keep her name or identity a secret, she grew up as a celebrity, and with her selfless and kind personality, and her all-encompassing love for everyone, she was loved by everyone as a hero. Her magic was ridiculously powerful, and she had started it so much younger than everyone else, she had control and experience leagues above other mages.
And as she approached her eighteenth birthday, she began to question giving up her power. She talked to her familiar, Flora, and decided that she wouldn't give up her power. After all, she had power, she had experience- She could fight. She could fight so others woudln't have to. If she fought, others wouldn't have to experience the same fear she did as a child. She could save people, she could save even more people...
The elder magi used their kill-switch on Flora, as they had on all familiars. And just like that, the familiar face of Lily's familiar transformed into a ravenous monster, bringing its claws and thorns to bear against her. And Lily, who lost her powers without her familiar, let her monster-fighting instincts take over... And with a nearby fire ax, she killed her own partner.
She broke. She soon discovered her power returned, as it was her own power. She found a boy named Marco, and learned the truth of the conspiracy. That everything she had done had been for nothing. And, when she showed herself to fight more monsters, the elder magi hit the killswitch on other nearby familiars, blaming her as the source of it, for not giving up her power.
Thoroughly broken down and despairing, Lily now fights the conspiracy of elder magi, doing as much alone as she possibly can. She doesn't have an end goal, past a vague plan to plant herself as a figurehead of the conspiracy and let herself be defeated, to bring about an ending that won't cause anyone else to feel as though their sacrifices were meaningless. Her life, as far as she believes, has no other use. So she'll fight it alone, and not take away anyone else's purpose. She'll do everything she can on her own, and not drag anyone else into her mess.
She knows her role. She is the villain of the story.
Prompt ideas
1) AU into Lily's setting! You're probably either a mage or a concerned civilian, and here's this famous criminal former-hero fighting a monster right in front of you. What are you going to do?
2) AU Lily into your setting! Well, I'll figure out an AU, but you just tell me what the setting is.
3) Jamjar setting! Pick a game, pick a non-specific jamjar, figure it out and we'll work with it! You can assume they know each other or are just meeting for the first time.
4) Wildcard! Shitty texting memes, bad life choices, seven minutes in heaven, whatever.
Modern Earth, but with magic-wielding humans called Mages who fight monsters to protect humanity. Mages can be magical girls, sentai heroes, or a variety of other kinds of flashy defenders of humanity, but the powers are fundamentally the same, and manifest at an early age - usually around 10-13. Mages fight monsters in savage battles of survival until they turn 18, at which time they surrender their powers so that magical energy can be recycled for the next wave of Mages to be able to defend humanity.
The thing is, this setup is a lie, perpetrated by a massive 300-year-old conspiracy. Its originators, the Elder Magi, are humans who hoard magical power to live forever as gods in the shadows of the world. Magic isn't actually a non-renewable resource - when a Mage offers up their powers, it's the power they were born with, not power recycled from others. The power taken from the Mages at age 18 is crystalized and put in the vaults of the Elder Magi so that they can continue to amass metaphysical wealth, living eternally in luxury and letting the youth do all the hard work of fighting the monsters drawn to Earth by its steadily increasing concentration of magic.
This story isn't named yet, but it's about young people realizing that they've been lied to by older generations about the form of a society built to exploit their suffering, and those kids getting mad and rising up to tear down the system that torments them to seize their own happy endings when the adults fail to help them.
Character Information
Lily is a disgraced mage, a former hero. Well-celebrated and well-loved, she had everything in the world.
She had gained her powers at six years old, and was fighting monsters ever since. Too young to keep her name or identity a secret, she grew up as a celebrity, and with her selfless and kind personality, and her all-encompassing love for everyone, she was loved by everyone as a hero. Her magic was ridiculously powerful, and she had started it so much younger than everyone else, she had control and experience leagues above other mages.
And as she approached her eighteenth birthday, she began to question giving up her power. She talked to her familiar, Flora, and decided that she wouldn't give up her power. After all, she had power, she had experience- She could fight. She could fight so others woudln't have to. If she fought, others wouldn't have to experience the same fear she did as a child. She could save people, she could save even more people...
The elder magi used their kill-switch on Flora, as they had on all familiars. And just like that, the familiar face of Lily's familiar transformed into a ravenous monster, bringing its claws and thorns to bear against her. And Lily, who lost her powers without her familiar, let her monster-fighting instincts take over... And with a nearby fire ax, she killed her own partner.
She broke. She soon discovered her power returned, as it was her own power. She found a boy named Marco, and learned the truth of the conspiracy. That everything she had done had been for nothing. And, when she showed herself to fight more monsters, the elder magi hit the killswitch on other nearby familiars, blaming her as the source of it, for not giving up her power.
Thoroughly broken down and despairing, Lily now fights the conspiracy of elder magi, doing as much alone as she possibly can. She doesn't have an end goal, past a vague plan to plant herself as a figurehead of the conspiracy and let herself be defeated, to bring about an ending that won't cause anyone else to feel as though their sacrifices were meaningless. Her life, as far as she believes, has no other use. So she'll fight it alone, and not take away anyone else's purpose. She'll do everything she can on her own, and not drag anyone else into her mess.
She knows her role. She is the villain of the story.
Prompt ideas
1) AU into Lily's setting! You're probably either a mage or a concerned civilian, and here's this famous criminal former-hero fighting a monster right in front of you. What are you going to do?
2) AU Lily into your setting! Well, I'll figure out an AU, but you just tell me what the setting is.
3) Jamjar setting! Pick a game, pick a non-specific jamjar, figure it out and we'll work with it! You can assume they know each other or are just meeting for the first time.
4) Wildcard! Shitty texting memes, bad life choices, seven minutes in heaven, whatever.
no subject
So - let me see your arm, okay?
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
[ She doesn't reach for her arm again, she's not inclined to if there's no consent in the matter, but her expression is plainly skeptical despite knowing what she's done. ]
no subject
[She grimaces.]
Monsters are born because of me. People have lost their powers because of me. I've killed my own familiar with my own hands. What does that make me, if not an enemy?
[... Though she says it, she sounds more like she's just angry at herself. Like she's trying to list her own crimes as some sort of weird form of self-flagellation.
If she hates herself so much, surely you should too.]