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leotheponderer · 1 month

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Original world (long) lore dump!

My first visualisation of the place where souls go after death, before they are ready to be brought into the underworld by the Boatman inspired by the Greek myth of Charon. Most souls who came before the Psychopomp's (inspired by Thanatos) revival have taken residence and formed a community of sorts who stays and helps the regretful souls who wander along the Liminal Pathways move on.

The Liminal Paths where souls wander through. Those who are troubled by unresolved issues easily get lost in the infinitely winding path, while the residents who have long since come to terms with their circumstances will take a leisurely stroll around the paths, never getting lost as their minds stay clear. Sometimes residents will meet lost souls trapped in the paths and help guide them through their obstacles.

These are inspired by liminal spaces, which are places where one is not supposed to stay at for too long like shopping malls, corridors, staircases, swimming pools, etc. Since this is the Border where souls await the boatman to take them into the underworld, I thought it would be fitting to represent that through liminal spaces as most souls are not meant to reside there, but to move on to their next destination.

Boats of Leisure and a Raft, perfect for souls to go sightseeing. Boat tours are great as they allow a clear view of the ever-shifting Planes of Liminality and the never ending Paths, allowing the viewers to never truly become bored of its sights. Soft yellow flowers seem to follow these water vehicles, but also be generated by the water ripples, creating a magical trail of flowers. More flowers bloom when the Boatman is near, due to his abilities relating to life.

A Giant Blue Dragon swims in these waters. Fear not, it is friendly and loves the flowers.

The Performers are people who go to the Border to entertain the souls there. They can come from both the Outside and Underworld, they are usually brought in by the Boatman or Psychopomp through an exchange program created by the World. Performances can be anything which is visual (magic, dance, song, etc.) or can entertain such as comedy skits or plays (souls can express emotion, and if they laugh, you'll know).

The Keeper is one who cares for all things living in the Border. They are easily recognised by their flaming robes and calming energy as they attend to their tasks of feeding the fishes, keeping the water temperature suitable for the Blue Dragon, checking up on their friend under the land, among other things. They can use his fishing rod to move the water around, creating flowers for the creatures to feed on. They have quite the sense of humour once you get to know them. Ask about their story and maybe you'll know some trivia about the World's history.

The World is here to greet some old friends of theirs. Seems like some older friends may be due for a visit soon.

The Psychopomp (the grey one with wings) is bringing souls over to the Boatman for transport into the Underworld. The Boatman (the blue one with swirls) brings life wherever he goes, and has a title corresponding with that aspect. The boats can phase through solid things and move through the water without much resistance.

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plantboiart · 20 days

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Magical girl designs for the bitb boys!!!! Yippee!!

+ some extra things and a long ass infodump under the cut

So! Long-ass infodump ahead! These drawings are like... set in/inspired by an original magical girl universe I have, and there's. Kind of a lot of backstory required for everything to make sense so I will first explain just general things about the world and then connect it to the bitb au thing

In the magical girl world, there are spirits with magical abilities that take on the appearance of animals. Nobody really knows where these spirits came from, or even what they really are, not even the spirits themselves because they don't fucking remember. All they know is that about like two millennia ago the first of them started showing up to earth but they don't remember where they were before that or even why they came to earth in the first place

An important thing to know about these spirits, though, is that while they have magical abilities, they can't actually properly use them on earth since they're not like from this realm and lack that connection or whatever. Now this is a problem because of monsters

Monsters are creatures from other worlds that leak into this one through what are essentially like. Small wounds in the fabric of the universe or some shit. They start off very small usually, but they have this very bad habit of draining everything around them of energy to get bigger and more powerful

This is, of course, kind of bad! And the problem is, when they're still very small, so before they become too much of a threat, humans can't see them! Because again, the whole 'not from this world originally' thing that also prevents the spirits from using their abilities! And so humans can't see the monsters until they've become big and therefore much more dangerous, and the spirits can see them but aren't powerful enough to fight against them in any meaningful sense!

You might be able to see how this problem is solved: Magical Girls

Magical girls (gender neutral) are humans that have entered basically a mutually beneficial relationship with a spirit. The spirits themselves can't use their own magic to its full potential, but they can give the ability to use it to someone else through a fairly simple process

Basically, each spirit has a fun little glass bottle that's also kind of their home. They don't remember shit once again, so they don't know where they got the bottles (spoiler kind of they're basically just made by Some Guy), but what these bottles allow them to do is transfer their powers to a human.

The spirit will go to rest inside the bottle for around a century, during which they will absorb and then expel the energy of the world around them to transform it into a magic liquid that basically contains the essence of their powers. Then, once the bottle is full, they will start to emit a magical energy that basically subconsciously draws humans towards it so a person can find it

Now even if a person finds the bottle they don't like. Need to become a magical girl. This is all fully consentual they can say no. But if they say yes, basically by opening the bottle and transforming for the first time, they will now have a magical connection to the spirit in the bottle they found. They will be able to communicate with it telepathically and stuff, and, of course: will be able to use the magical liquid inside the bottle to transform into a magical girl

Now magical girls are actually very interesting on the whole 'not from this world originally' scale. Obviously the person is from this world, but their powers aren't, which makes it impossible for like... the world at large to really understand them. Which is great, because it basically gives them a built-in secret identity mask

Basically, spirits don't actually look like just. Regular animals. That's just how they appear to humans and the world at large because their true forms can't really be made sense of. And magical girls get some of this when transformed, where even if their face and such are on full show, nobody can actually like... connect them to a person

Like people's minds will literally not allow them to connect the dots between 'this person looks like this' 'this magical girl looks like this' and 'this person must be this magical girl'. Like it is not physically possible. Unless you straight up see someone transform in front of your eyes from not a magical girl into a magical girl, or vice versa, or they just tell you their identity, you will not be able to identify them. Even if you're a magical girl yourself!

However, this also comes with a pretty big drawback. No person will be a magical girl forever, because eventually they will either want to quit, the spirit will get tired of their shit if they're really bad at their job, or they will simply run out of the magic juice. And when this happens the now former magical girl will become just another person, fully of this world and stuff

Which means their own brain can't connect themself to being a magical girl. And to avoid frying their brain with that, the way it basically works is just... they lose their memories. Not all of them of course, just from whenever they were transformed. Basically all of their memories get removed or changed to fit into a world where they weren't a magical girl and instead all the fights they were in or things they did were just things they saw or heard about

Now, once the magical girl has become not a magical girl, the spirit they were connected to will basically just start the whole process again from the beginning. They'll go to sleep inside their bottle, and rest until it's full again. Like I said before, it takes about 100 years for it to be filled entirely if it was completely empty, but it will obviously take less time if not all the magic juice was spent up (either because the magical girl chose to stop being a magical girl or. uh. you know. death is a thing. the monsters are dangerous okay)

And then, when the bottle is full again, a new person will find it and take up the role of a magical girl!

Now, fucking finally:

The blood in the bayou AU of this

A lot of magical girls work in groups. Both for the power of friendship and to have someone help them in a fight and just. Because. Sometimes these groups will form because the magical girls just have similar goals outside of just defeating monsters and sealing the wounds in the fabric of the universe (a lot of them will also have personal reasons for being magical girls, like fixing problems in society or what have you, the spirits know this and are fine with this (however. the spirits are completely amoral creatures on their own. they don't care if a magical girl uses their powers to just straight up kill people as long as they still do their job. so a lot of magical girls also end up opposing each other)), or sometimes they'll just want people to hang out with, or because their spirits have often historically worked together, or: sometimes they were just... already friends

And the last option is the one that the bitb guys have going on! Basically they were already friends, and then when they were like... 14 or 15 or something, they found, as a group, the bottles in pic 5. And they obviously went 'fuck yeah this rules' and became magical girls together!

Now a little bit on their specific details :)

Rolan's spirit is a little beetle guy. He has like a theme of, pretty obviously, a knight and his magical ability thing is creating shields. I took mostly inspiration from just like actual knight outfits as well as just pretty basic paladin characters for his look.

Kian has a lop bunny as a spirit, and his theme is basically just a princess thing mixed with some music elements. He can create soundwaves that do damage :) the main inspo for his look were pretty typical magical girl outfits mixed with prom dresses from the 60s (when they were magical girls) to go for more of a prom queen look rather than an exclusively like disney princess one

Rand has a pigeon :) his theme is a wizard thing, and his power is creating like false images and illusions. I tried to make him look 1. more aligned with Rand's maybe own personal current tastes and 2. kind of look just like. a homeless wizard. For lore reasons

Speaking of which! The lore!

The three of them were basically a magical girl group as teens, doing all the basic defeating monsters and helping people things. Until tragedy struck, wow, can you guess what it is, Rachel disappeared

Now here's lore that the guys themselves don't know but you get: monsters also have a similar thing as spirits where they have powers but can't use them fully. And so sometimes monsters, to use their powers, will basically forcefully connect themself to a person, and use them as a way to use their abilities

This is rare, because it requires both that the monster has managed to grow somewhat powerful without getting destroyed by a magical girl to be able to just hijack a person, and that the monster is actually smart enough to think to do so. Most of them aren't very smart, they're on the level of like regular animals in terms of intelligence. But! Some of them are smart

And unfortunately one of these smarter and didn't get killed on time monsters found and hijacked Rachel, using her a conduit to actually use their powers. Now to make matters even worse: this specific monster's powers are mind manipulation, where they can basically alter your perception of reality. Which. Uh. Also works on magical girls. And their spirits. And so what's stopping this monster from using its abilities to make it impossible to detect and spending almost two decades slowly draining the energy of the world and people around them and growing impossibly huge, all while being impossible to see or hear or feel?

...yeah. You might be able to see where this is going

back to the boys for a bit though, after Rachel's disappearance, things just kind of went to shit. Rolan got way too overwhelmed by everything and decided to quit being a magical girl. Kian also quit after graduating from high school so he could you know move away and become a rockstar and shit

And. You know. The memory thing. Obviously they didn't just like fully fucking forget their friendship or something since they were friends before and outside of being magical girls but still, they did both forget a lot. And now Rand is the only one that still has memories of them being magical girls together

(For extra angst: I'm kinda imagining that the three of them might have dated as magical girls. It wouldn't have been safe for them to do so outside of it, but since nobody could recognice them while transformed, they could be together without any risk of like. Ruining their own lives with it. But since Kian and Rolan don't remember being magical girls, and they wouldn't have ever done anything romantic outside being transformed, they literally don't remember the three of them dating. They remember having feelings for the other two but from their own pov it was like a crush / unrequited love thing that was never confessed and never went anywhere)

Rand is still a magical girl, though. He never quit, even if he barely does anything with his powers anymore. This is also why his outfit is the only one that fits his current style more, Kian's and Rolan's still look the same they would have when they were teens

Now the actual like story of the campaign fitted into this: The monster that hijacked Rachel has been basically draining Galloway, as well as hijacking more people but like in more subtle ways to drain them of energy. Basically imagine bitb but literally the entire hive is a single organism, including the like. force field around the town.

Rolan still comes back for his parents' funeral, except they are just like actually dead after being drained of all their life energy or whatever by the monster. (Also, instead of the whole faces in the water thing, Rolan was also hijacked and drained after quitting the magical girl business as a teen before he moved away. He kind of just thought he had very bad depression or something)

While Rolan and Kian are back in town, though, the monster kind of finally decides to actually start doing stuff not from the shadows, namely: kill the fuck out of Rand and also these other bitches and drain literally the entire town to become extremely big and powerful. Not great! Especially since Rand is absolutely not powerful enough to defeat a monster the size of an entire town by himself (most monsters are literally the size of like. a small mammal. the more powerful ones might be the size of a wolf or a bear. so. yeah. this thing is BIG)

However! Not all hope is lost! Because Rolan and Kian end up finding their old bottles since even though they're not magical girls anymore some of that link still remains. Now this doesn't bring back their memories from being magical girls but hey at least now the three of them aren't completely fucked! (They still are. Kian and Rolan both still die and Rand is left traumatized. But at least the world doesn't get destroyed!)

That's basically all, sorry for the long post but I did warn you. Also the pictures are, in order:

Rolan magical girl (as an adult but the outfit is from his teenage years)

Kian magical girl (also adult but old oufit)

Rand magical girl (adult, his outfit has kept evolving and changing throughout the years)

Their weapons

Their magic juice bottles (Rand's is obviously way emptier since he's been using it for over a decade longer than the other two did)

The monster but like it's actual main body that's connected to Rachel

The full fucking monster covering the entire town and basically how the hijacking works, it connects to people with tiny string-like things that it uses to drain their energy and control them

And just a cute lil thing of (teenage) Kian with Rand's magical pigeon spirit sitting in his hair because. Cute.

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