Magic in the Making Exhibit

Magic in the Making Exhibit
Allied Faction:	Unknown
Allied Groups:	Unknown
Location Type:	Public Space
Grid Locale:	Pikarigaoka, Penguin Park, Penguin Park - Museum
	A temporary exhibit taking up the third floor of the Art Museum at Penguin Park, featuring art from five extraordinary museums, all centered around a single topic: representations of fantasy and magic in art, throughout time and space. Pieces from Le Louvre, the British Museum, Seattle Art Museum, the National Museum of China, and the Museum of Islamic Art, along with those temporarily loaned from private collections, have been selected by art historians and curators alike to make for a stunning, three hundred and fifty piece exhibit that will travel much of the world, starting from 2025 through 2030. The museum is laid out in such a way that the stairs and elevator open up right next to each other - this is beneficial for the exhibits security, as all visitors are, upon arrival to the third floor, greeted by one of the museum's staff members, who will promptly explain that visitors have to let their bags be examined, as the museum is taking the security of the art very seriously. Anything that could be damaging to the art - from lotion to lip balm to nail polish to hand sanitizer to pocket combs to nail clippers to heavy objects like a pocket watch or sharp edged items like a set of keys - risks being confiscated. All confiscated items (or bags, if one elects to just give up their whole bag) are placed in a plastic container with the owner's name written on it, to be returned upon exit from the exhibit. A limited number of people is allowed within the exhibit at one time - around fifty at the maximum. The exhibit is organized by style and era, starting from the most ancient of pieces to the most modern. There are different security measures for each piece - from glass cases, to protect sculptures, pottery, metalwork, and jewelry, all on pedestals to better view them from a 360 angle. Paintings, silk screens, woodblock prints, and more are mounted on walls, with ropes to keep people from getting too close. There have been multiple rooms appropriate for the exhibit's use, with even the hallways having art pieces on display. All of the art work is extraordinary, a true collection for the ages, but those with an awareness of magic will notice something else: that many of the works of art seem to depict true magic, in recognizable forms.

Associated Logs

Title	Date	Scene Summary
It Started to Get Weird Five Mahou Ago	April 6th, 2025	The Art Museum at Penguin Park is hosting a traveling exhibit, one showcasing magic and fantasy in various historical artforms. Only... the more the visiting mahoujin look around, the more they start to recognize signs of true magic, depicted in this collection. Is the history of magic on Earth stranger than they knew? Is the Fade what they thought it is? And... who did organize this exhibit, anyway?
Just Normal Between Us	April 12th, 2025	Madoka and Sayaka take a trip to the suspicious art museum exhibit to catch up on things. They talk about relationships, the future, and magical matters. They reiterate their mutual support for each other, and trust in one another no matter what happens.
Are Heists Best Served Cold?	April 14th, 2025	After "The Cat and the Spider" gets retrieved during 2471/Forgery and Principles, it finally finds its rightful place, and the demon plaguing it vanishes completely thanks to Snow Angel Mou Fubuki, the Princess of Sarek, Magical Rocket Girl Red, Goldenweb Yorotsuchi, Sailor Moon and the Shadow Shogun.
A Heist To Forget	May 19th, 2025	Riventon arrives at the museum to steal a newly added exhibit - the Jar of Memory. Though he gets away, and slight-of-hands the jar, important information may yet be recovered from the situation...
A Museum Heist! No Wait, It's Another Thing	November 30th, 2025	Tuxedo Kamen and Kunzite demonstrate their phantom thief chops when they break into Art Museum @ Pikarigaoka to investigate the magic exhibit artifacts. As they explore, they uncover more unsettling echoes within the artifacts and in a fit of desperation search the curator's office. The problem? She's still inside. The positive? She was hoping for the mahoujin to arrive.

Title	Date	Scene Summary
BBpost: AM@PP To Host New Exhibit, Entitled Magic in the Making: Representations of Fantasy Through Artistic Expression in All-Star Collaboration with Five of World's Greatest Museums	March 26th, 2025	A news article, describing a traveling exhibit on the subject of magic and fantasy coming to the Art Museum at Penguin Park.
The Liar, The Witch, and the whoaskedyou	June 11th, 2025	A new threat arrives in Tokyo. Riventon and her get along 'well'. Someone 'helps'.
Fade Worries (Coco Kiumi)	October 26th, 2025	After 2811/KTF: Focus Point A, Coco puts a warning up in the Shed.
Killing the Fade Notes (Mamoru Chiba)	December 1st, 2025	Mamoru contacts the Headmistress to vet museum curator Maryam Siddig after meeting her with Kunzite in 2762/A Museum Heist! No Wait, It's Another Thing, and then leaves a note in the Shed. This has the epistolery, such as it is.

Currently Discovered Exhibit Pieces

1. A piece of papyrus depicts a young Egyptian woman wearing a spotted kalasiris and an object shaped almost like a simple star - many lines, extending at straight angles, with a spotted circle at thee end of each line - in one hand.
   The woman is Khepri, a warrior blessed by the gods, and is described in the papyrus as 'The Ladybug Goddess' despite her having been a mortal. The papyrus' tale describes Khepri's battle to stop the Pharaoh Akhenaten from sacrificing an innocent woman to Ra in an effort to resurrect his deceased wife, the Princess Nefertiti. According to the description, the story is believed by Egyptologists to have been spread by the enemies of Akhenaten, who sought to discredit his rule in the years following his death, given that the pharaoh's name and legacy were destroyed in backlash to his dismantling of traditional religious practices.
2. Among the older sculptures is one of Hercules, wearing a lion's pelt, a carved ring with a lion relief on one finger.
3. A sculpture of Cleopatra, as a young woman, standing in clothing distinct for the time period. She wears a jeweled headdress, though many of the jewels are missing - taken by grave robbers, the museum description suspects. A ring on her finger greatly resembles the shape that Homura and Amy's soul gems take as rings, though the sculpture is worn enough to make determining if there are runes difficult.
4. A silk painting featuring a man sat astride a horse, looking down an expanse of scenery, all very typical and normal, save for the egg floating beside him, with a wise, miniature of the man inside, gesticulating with a miniature sword.
5. A sculpture of Alexander the Great, with the description: 743 BCE -- Discovered in Roman ruins, this work is a copy of a Greek piece, as was the fashion of the time; depicted is King Alexander of Macedonia, with the traditional far-off gaze and planted spear commonly used to symbolize the legendary conqueror. Of note is the inclusion of a small being sitting on his shoulder, whispering into his ear. It is thought that the being is meant to symbolize the influence of the god Ares on the ancient king's campaigns.
6. Reine des Papillons ( alternatively titled Femme Noble Parmi les Papillons), a life-size painting of a young white woman in a long white sleeveless dress, with her dress and hair blowing in a breeze. She is standing in a dark forest with greenish light coming from the sky behind her. There is a gold tiara on her head in the style of a fifteenth century French women's headdress, and one arm is spread out to the side, while the other is reaching up to touch one of a kaleidoscope of glowing sea-green butterflies. The painting itself is an oil painting on canvas, set within a large wood frame, decorated with carvings of laurel leaves.
7. 'Leaena Effrenata', a large, standing ceramic urn, with a plaque that says it is from Venice. The figure depicted on the urn wears a tiara with a certain, Device-y look.
8. 'Évanescence: A Tender Goodbye', a painting by Basil Hallward. In the painting there is a woman close to her forties standing inside of a cave dressed just like Veronica, a russian blue cat on her shoulder. She is depicted opening the door to the hideout of Sarek.
9. Multiple paintings of Jeanne d'Arc, including but not limited to:
   One depicted wearing a soul-gem ring at her pyre, dubbed 'La tragédie de Jeanne d'Arc.'
   One depicted in battle, with a chara at her side, dubbed 'L'esprit rebelle de Jeanne d'Arc'.
   One depicted in a red-and-black spotted tunic over her armor, 'Jeanne d'Arc la traîtresse'.
10. A painting entitled 'A Glorious Excess of Talent', depicting a small contingent of fairies, each different in the task they were performing. One painting, another dancing, one posing dramatically with a blade-of-grass sword. All around a child holding a basket filled with eggs.
11. A reproduction of a temple mural, featuring Bai Suzhen/BaiBai, the fairy of Cure Suzhen. It depicts a time when the immortal Fuhai abducted BaiBai's husband and she commanded the floods to invade the temple he was hiding in.
12. Three paintings, all of them sharing the same characters: one showing the Witch of Delays looming over a girl, called 'Amies des Étoiles Contraires', one with the Witch of Delays getting kicked by the Legendary Pretty Cure, called 'Une Oasis Inébranlable', and the last one is about the Witch of Delays pushing back against the whale of the Marine Heart Ring, called 'Rejet d’un Cœur Marin'. They are weirdly angled, like whoever originally described the scene was doing so from a very low point of view, despite the first one being on the ground already.
13. 'Banishment to the Deep Sea', a painting divided in three parts, showing a scene underwater: the top part shows a woman dressed in white, holding a scepter from which brilliant white light is cast, and the bottom part shows shows a regal man looking down, and in between them a group of demonic creatures.
14. A painting entitled The Witch and her Kin in French. One of the more horror-themed paintings in the exhibit depicts a girl in a henshin much like Starfall Omen, a Barrier Jacket to those who can recognize it, but the face is not that of the Starfall of today. The girl is holding the Nightmare Chain high in her left hand, and holds the hand of a child with her right. Fire burns around them, with monsters that look not unlike youma dancing amongst the flames. There's an open wound where the Devicer's heart would be.
    The child is a young brown haired girl that doesn't quite look like Lana. Not enough to be recognizable through the Veil, but if one knew her henshin secret they might be able to connect the dots. Weird coincidence, right?
    The story associated with the painting is that of an orphaned girl who made a pact with an evil spirit to protect herself and her sister, the other depicted child. She became known as a witch, and summoned horrors of myth to do her bidding and destroy her enemies. As she grew in power by feeding off the fear of her victims, she became a destroyer of the weak and a monster in her own right. The wound in her chest is symbolic of the way that she was finally slain by an unknown 'spear maiden of light'. After the witch's death, her sister disappeared along with her staff. Legend has it that the sister, whose name has been lost to time, inherited her power and fled into the shadow world, never to be seen again.
15. The tales of Sun Wukong, or Wuwu, Cure Wukong's fairy, featuring the famous monkey clad in dark brown and golden armour and holding his signature staff, standing on his cloud and blowing a few enemies off the palm of his hand like leaves. The bottom right of the painting features references to a few of the Monkey King's other adventures.
16. An old painting of a russian blue cat and a spider, seemingly in a conversation. Artist unknown.
17. Le retour de l'implacable fille, a painting signed by the Princess of Sarek. It features a grand white and purple room with pink stained glass windows and a red carpet leading up to a golden throne, occupied by an alicorn with a white coat and a mane and tail that swirl with radiant colors of a rainbow, pink eyes, golden fleur-de-lis on her hooves, and a sun on her flank. There are a few pegasi at either end, holding spears and wearing golden armor. Present in the same room, mingling among themselves, are:

    • a unicorn with a yellow coat and orange-and-red mane and tail with a flame on her flank
    • a merpony with pink hair, blue skin, a pink tailfin with a yellow heart and a yellow star with a succession of three gradually bigger silver pearls on her flank popping out of a floating blue perfume bottle with a conch dispenser
    • a pale yellow pegasus with a yellow mane and tail, and a yellow open shell with a yellow pearl inside on her flank
    • a unicorn with a white coat, pink horn and sheen, with a white circle colored purple inside layered under a black star with 8 rays set over dark white-dotted wings accompanied by a tiny breezy with a white coat and a pink mane
    • a purple pegasus with cold purple eyes, a long black mane and raven-like wings
    • a red-maned, brown earth-pony with a shining sun on her flank together with a pony
    • a pegasus with a pale azure coat, blue eyes and a blue mane and tail with a black tiara and a music sheet overlaid across it on her flank accompanied by a tiny breezy with a coat like a koi and a brown mane and grey eyes
    • a bipedal anthropomorphic cat with grey fur and blue eyes wearing a blue top hat with a light blue ribbon, a blue suit, a white waistcoat with a grey and blue ribbon at the end of her tail, a blue choker with a ribbon at the back of her neck, and holding a dark ebony cane with a cat handle
    • a cream-colored unicorn mare with red mane, eyes, and tail and with a smiley rocketship cutie-mark
    • a short peach-colored pegasus with blue eyes and a blond mane done up in signature odango and twintails, her tail flowing and lightly curled, with a pink circle with a golden star and five colored gems at the interconnecting lines of the star, plus a crescent moon at the center on her flank

18. A Faberge Egg dubbed 'The Hunt', complete with the surprise inside. The egg itself is wrought gold, designed with delicate whirls, the egg portion of the piece about seven inches in length and four across at the widest point of its circumference. Thin gold bars are layered across the egg's enamel surface, as though caging in a jewel. Unmistakably, this egg is truly a soul gem. A shined tangerine-orange colored enamel creates an illusion of translucence, the color brilliant at the top, along the far edges, but an illusion of metalwork and contour demonstrates a darkening at the center of the 'jewel', as though corruption were seeping out from its very heart. The surprise accompanying this egg is a clockwork monstrosity with the head of a ceramic doll with a blown open skull. blown glass and shards of sapphire and ruby connected to the rest of the head by strands of sterling silver wire. The head is attached to a skeletal recreation of a horse's neck and body form of silver, each joint articulated by a minuscule black pearl. The legs are formed from the muzzles of hunting rifles, the hooves etched from bullets. The tail is the bladed edge of a knife. It is credited as having been created in 1921, artisan unknown, believed to have been one of many journeymen working within the House of Faberge.
19. A large, vertically oriented painting: "A Family Luncheon" by American artist Patricia McDowell. Six foot by three foot, oil paints on canvas enclosed in an elegant but simple golden-oak frame, it utilizes perspective to create the impression of the audience sitting at one end of a crowded dinner table.
    Depicted at the dinner table are four adults and three children, each accompanied by a floating miniature of themselves. The adults and children largely seem unrelated, save for a young girl captured in the moment a smiling woman wipes her mouth with a kerchief. The miniatures are clearly not toys or dolls, but are instead depicted as eating regular sized food on very small plates or chattering with the guests, very much participants in the gathering.
    Museum notes state that the young woman and smiling child are based on McDowell and her daughter, and the other guests were friends to each. It was painted in 1956 and acquired from the artist in 1976 by the Seattle Art Museum.
20. A large standee mannequin wearing the armor and regalia of 'Sir Dullahan', A knight who served an unknown Spanish lord, who was beheaded for his 'unspeakable crimes'. Along with a portrait depicting the man with slicked back black hair and a steely gaze in the thick armor.
21. a series of photos of graffiti spray-painted on the walls of the Seattle Children's Theatre in 1998. The photos were originally captured as part of a criminal investigation into the vandalism of the wall, and preserved by the Seattle Police Department and the Artistic Director of the Children's Theatre, who found the work striking, even if he didn't appreciate the spray-painting of his artistic home. Depicted in the art are three figures painted with a certain artistic blurriness masterfully achieved in spray paint.
    Among them is a warrior with a sword, their billowing pants wisping into blurred color where feet should be, the safflower of their jacket's detailing bold against the shadows and the vivid red. A veil flows from the gold spray of a hat atop their head. There is a defender bearing a shield, a deceptive playfulness in their leapfrog green dress and green-white-safflower sash, their twisted and layered hat leading into a safflower-fringed tail. The dress seems like it should hinder them - it doesn't. In the center, there is a wizard in dark blue, safflower yellow consuming their jacket, dark blue making up the trim of the jacket, the length of the pants, the curve of their magician's rod. They are bold and brilliant and fading, layers of grey and white and black seeping away the boldness of color, their hands and faces featureless, their identity vanished.
    Along with the photos is a note from the alleged original artist: 'the worst part is that you don't know what you're losing, and soon, neither will we.'
22. 'The Interplay of Impossible Shadows', a Baroque painting depicting in lush detail and broad color palette, a figure cloaked in light and shadow as they change into new clothes. To a magical eye, this would be impossible to miss as a figure captured in mid-transformation.
23. 'Girl With the Ribbon Dress' an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, often assumed to be a continuation of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring', due to the large pearl earring the depicted feminine figure is wearing. While the subject is described as wearing a ribbon dress, it is in actual depiction a figure draped in light ribbons that appear to be shifting in either an unnatural wind or of their own volition around the body of the subject, who's face is obscured. To the magically inclined, it would seem to depict a figure in mid-transformation.
24. A yamato-e painting titled 'The Guardian of Ooe', dated back to the Heian era and on loan from a private collection. It depicts a scene among very old-fashioned Japanese buildings, involving a woman locked in combat with what appears to be a giant black fox youkai. The woman wears a top that looks something like a black, sleeveless kimono, with a similarly colored hakama patterned with flames and bearing the kanji for 'Oni' in red; her hair is a wild mane of black with horns rising off her forehead, and her arms appear to be wreathed in fire. The fox is surrounded in a haze of what looks like black smoke, with a few orbs of black foxfire floating around it, and curled in an animalistic defensive posture. In the background there is a snow-capped mountain, and to one side is what appears to be a man in a Heian onmyouji outfit, watching from a rooftop.