Magic & How It Works

Magic on Radiant Heart MUSH

The Magic of the Heart

Everyone (Well, most everyone.) has a Heart on Radiant Heart MUSH. And we don’t mean the body organ, but the metaphysical conception of one, and it has two sides.

The Light Side of the Heart’s main components are emotions like Compassion, Charity, Love, and Hope. It’s what makes you get up out of bed smiling, it what makes you say good morning to your family and give your younger sister a hug on the way out. It’s what makes you help the stranger that just tripped up to his feet and ask if he’s okay. It what makes you believe in wonder and curiosity and pushes you to learn. It’s what helps you stick up for people who have a harder time finding their own light.

The Dark Side’s main components are Hate, Greed and Despair. It’s what makes you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and wonder why you bothered. It’s what makes you ignore the person who tripped because you have better things to do. It’s what makes you want to walk out of school because what’s the point? It’s what makes you see people as weak and not worth your time or effort: better that effort be used on you and you alone.

The Darkness knows not the light, and its Heart is a complete organ of Dark. It is hard for a being born of the Darkness to understand concepts of the Light.

Everyone on Earth has this concept of a heart with both sides, beating inside them, and sometimes they are given a name -- a Linker Core, or a Heart Flower or some other term -- but they’re all the same thing in the end. To properly use the magic contained within though, a Magical Girl, or Boy, or even an Antagonist, requires a Focus of some sort for the power. A Mascot. A Valued Friend. A Special Artifact. This connection is based on their Origin.

When a Magical Hero or an Antagonist uses their Focus to access and bring forth the true nature of their heart, they gain the ability to transform into something amazing, and are able to utilize the magic inside their heart and understand the world around them as something more. Beings native to the Dusk Zone, on the other hand, do not need a focus and are generally always powered; it's keeping that power constrained that takes the effort of transformation, instead.

When a Magical Girl or Boy lets True Despair overcome them, they lose their ability to fight. It’s very important for a Magical hero to keep the Dark Half of their heart in check, lest they lose the ability to transform and express the Light Side of their Heart and help their friends and allies on a magical level. Similarly, positive emotions and energy can chase away the darkness, and leave an antagonist's powers weakened if they cannot keep their primary emotions tending darkly.

Magic in the World

Magic has existed on Earth for a while, and small pockets of it sometimes surfaced here and there in Earth’s long Modern Age, Those that had magic knew to keep it secret, as those around them were not as understanding about the powers they obtained with their heart and sometimes branded them as witches or warlocks.

In previous eras, magical girls and their opponents were rare; one or two ongoing small scale occurances somewhere on the planet, and were generally of the Pretty Cure or Puella Magi form. It's only as the game opens that a large number of Magical Heroes will awaken at the same time; to battle an equally large number of magical Villains.

In terms of present-day interactions, people directly exposed to magic, especially Dark magic, often forget the finer details of these encounters. For example, if person gets attacked by a youma, but Sailor V shows up to stop it, the person does remember that they were mugged and the costumed hero that saved them, but won’t describe the monster. A Stop light Zakenna wrecks havoc on the morning commute and Pretty Cure saves the day? The average person remembers being stuck in traffic and there was some kind of severe accident. Doctors don’t know how to diagnose someone afflicted with a dark magic illness and will blame a mundane ailment instead, looking in vain for scientific causes. The government does not (currently) employ any Ministry of Magic and the average police officer sees these cosplay fighting girls as silly vigilantes. Any sort of big cosmic event that would force the average person to believe in magic has not occurred, and as the start of the game, all magical girl activity is basically “street-level” conflict.

Some of these heroes that are remembered do make the newspaper and online blogs. How your character is perceived by the masses is up to you. Certainly the public is aware of Sailor V and eventually, Sailor Moon, but the public may not be aware of the antics of your Puella Magi as you protect people from the predation of witches. Or perhaps you are another ‘costumed girl crime fighter’ in the world… and maybe there are even dolls of your character in the claw machines at the Game Crown Arcade! How important fame and secrecy are to your character can be decided on a case by case basis. However, children are more apt to believe in magic than adults. It’s certainly possible that nobody notices the power of your henshin, as well.

Where Magic Is, And Where It Isn't

Intentionally, at some point in the distant past, Earth's ley lines were moved to converge at a limited number of spots on the planet, and in those places, magic is easiest to access (including things like travelers from other worlds, monsters, and all sorts of magical stuff being easier to achieve.) By far the largest of these locations is Tokyo, Japan - but the other two minor convergence points are Seattle, Washington, USA and Paris, Il-de-France, France. Each of these locales has a tower that was erected on the exact point of convergence - Clover Tower, The Space Needle, and the Eiffel Tower.

Away from these places, magic rapidly gets less easy to access - the farther you are from the tower, the more work you have to do. Natural magic phenomena and portals to other worlds almost never happen anywhere but Tokyo itself, and anything happening outside of the three cities is a true rarity. While magical girls sometimes arise in other locations, the biggest fights - and truly, the fight for the future of the world - all occur largely in Tokyo.

The Fade

Why are magical girls and boys... Not magical women and men? The answer, like many when it comes to magic, can be found in emotion. The emotional height for most people can be found around the same ages the presence of magical boys and girls tends toward - 14-16. Some start earlier or later, but never beyond 18. The reason for this is something called The Fade.

The Fade is the term used for what is a simple concept - the reason why the world is not full of veteran magical women and men still fighting the fight, why new warriors must be raised up from the middle-and-highschoolers of the planet to defend it.

On their 18th birthday or later, almost all magical heroes will slowly start to lose their powers. By the 21st birthday only the most powerful and positive will retain any of their powers. Someone beyond 23 being able to henshin is a miracle (or the result of nearly divine intervention like the Arbiters of which there are at most two, and only one that wields positive energy.)

If you're not picked as a warrior of light before your 19th birthday, it's pretty much guaranteed you never will be.

It requires a truly rare and miraculous situation for an adult to henshin into their magical girl form - the sort of once in a lifetime moment. Some who are affected by the Fade remain in the magical world and aware of it, but some even slowly slip back behind the veil, remembering their exploits as childish imagination and their now-dull henshin item as a toy they have a supreme affection for.

Does The Fade Affect Dark Energy?

Put plainly, no. Adults can weild Dark Energy with just as much effect as teens - and more so in many cases. The core reason for this is simple - the corruptive nature of Dark Energy can push you to emotional levels beyond your norm. Someone suffused in Dark Energy is capable of malice and cruelty beyond what they could normally feel. Light energy does not force feelings like Darkness does.

Darkness welding adults who are then redeemed or healed do not have any special resistance or immunity to The Fade and are actually more likely to slip back behind the Veil and regard their actions as a bad nightmare than former heroes.