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Aug. 22nd, 2021
WITCH BUSTERS
Aug. 22nd, 2021 11:14 amMagic is a fragile thing.
To hear most mages tell it, magic exists in the cracks in human reasoning, wedged in fractures within science and knowledge that grows increasingly slim as humanity advances. To know something totally and completely, to quantify it down to its last integer, is to strip bare every last iota of magic it has. What little is left in the world is fiercely guarded and protected from the wider human population, safe in its secrecy.
Which is made difficult when monsters ranging from the size of a small hill to a skyscraper appear and begin wreaking havoc.
These "Witchlings," named for the ancient adversaries of mage society, have been hellbent on destroying mage society inch by inch with their disastrous attacks on the institutions that form its backbone. Since they first appeared with the advent of the walking calamity Paradisio Witchling two years ago, mages have been losing the war. The destruction of the witchlings is barely contained within the moments shattered by the veiling organization Night's Hood, and even their great temporal power is losing ground inch by inch as the witchling attacks increase in strength and frequency.
A solution must be found before magic and mage society totally collapses under the weight of the witchling attacks. To that end, adaptable fighters capable of learning the very peak of combat magic must be trained from a young age to optimize their ability to fight witchlings... and so Archon Academy was formed.
And of course, once you've been contacted, enrollment is not optional.
Witch Busters is a four-season Valor tabletop campaign run on Roll20 about the eponymous busting of witch(ling)s by the Witch Buster squads of Archon Academy, inspired by the Fate/ series and other works by Kinoko Nasu, the early parts of the Bleach manga, and assorted webcomics such as Scoob and Shag* and much more loosely Kill Six Billion Demons.
Expect: Weird magic! Wacky school life shenanigans as the shadow of all-out war looms larger over your life! Asshole mage organizations and conspiracies! Road trips! Ancient secrets and world-shattering revelations! Fighting cool monsters! Being and meeting dumb queer teens with big queer feelings!
The campaign is for four to five players, running characters that are teenagers of ages 15-20. As far as scheduling goes, Monday, Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday, Thursday evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sunday could be squeezed into my schedule if necessary.
Witch Busters is also under consideration to be run in Valor Alter OR Valor. While Valor would better represent the ways magic works in this setting, Valor Alter has a number of new and interesting tools and less numbers for all of us to keep track of, so I leave the decision up to the players.
Your character doesn't necessarily have to know about magic before being "invited" to Archon Academy, but they have it whether they were aware of it or not and they sure as hell know now. A more in-depth look at the magic of Witch Busters and the organizations that hold it are here and here, but for a quick and dirty overview...
Interested? Then go ahead and comment below with the following!
1. Name and pronouns
2. Where to contact you, preferably Discord and/or Plurk
3. Character concept
4. Anything in particular you'd like to see in the game
5. Valor or Valor Alter
6. Questions about the game or setting
7. Favorite time you watched/read/played/etc. someone punching God
8. What days and times are you available?
*Yes, I mean this wholeheartedly. No, Witch Busters is not a crossover campaign or directly based on any existing property; Scoob and Shag is simply a shonen masterpiece whose stylings greatly influenced the campaign.
To hear most mages tell it, magic exists in the cracks in human reasoning, wedged in fractures within science and knowledge that grows increasingly slim as humanity advances. To know something totally and completely, to quantify it down to its last integer, is to strip bare every last iota of magic it has. What little is left in the world is fiercely guarded and protected from the wider human population, safe in its secrecy.
Which is made difficult when monsters ranging from the size of a small hill to a skyscraper appear and begin wreaking havoc.
These "Witchlings," named for the ancient adversaries of mage society, have been hellbent on destroying mage society inch by inch with their disastrous attacks on the institutions that form its backbone. Since they first appeared with the advent of the walking calamity Paradisio Witchling two years ago, mages have been losing the war. The destruction of the witchlings is barely contained within the moments shattered by the veiling organization Night's Hood, and even their great temporal power is losing ground inch by inch as the witchling attacks increase in strength and frequency.
A solution must be found before magic and mage society totally collapses under the weight of the witchling attacks. To that end, adaptable fighters capable of learning the very peak of combat magic must be trained from a young age to optimize their ability to fight witchlings... and so Archon Academy was formed.
And of course, once you've been contacted, enrollment is not optional.
Witch Busters is a four-season Valor tabletop campaign run on Roll20 about the eponymous busting of witch(ling)s by the Witch Buster squads of Archon Academy, inspired by the Fate/ series and other works by Kinoko Nasu, the early parts of the Bleach manga, and assorted webcomics such as Scoob and Shag* and much more loosely Kill Six Billion Demons.
Expect: Weird magic! Wacky school life shenanigans as the shadow of all-out war looms larger over your life! Asshole mage organizations and conspiracies! Road trips! Ancient secrets and world-shattering revelations! Fighting cool monsters! Being and meeting dumb queer teens with big queer feelings!
The campaign is for four to five players, running characters that are teenagers of ages 15-20. As far as scheduling goes, Monday, Tuesday afternoons, Wednesday, Thursday evenings, Saturday afternoons, and Sunday could be squeezed into my schedule if necessary.
Witch Busters is also under consideration to be run in Valor Alter OR Valor. While Valor would better represent the ways magic works in this setting, Valor Alter has a number of new and interesting tools and less numbers for all of us to keep track of, so I leave the decision up to the players.
Your character doesn't necessarily have to know about magic before being "invited" to Archon Academy, but they have it whether they were aware of it or not and they sure as hell know now. A more in-depth look at the magic of Witch Busters and the organizations that hold it are here and here, but for a quick and dirty overview...
- Cartomancy: A generalist type of magic that defines different cards within a deck of any kind according to specific meaning and imbues them with power, either firing off each card individually as a spell when they're drawn or woven into a part of a spread with more powerful and complex effects.
- Glyphistry: Through creating any kind of art, the creator can find a complex glyph (unique to and only usable by them) within its patterns that gives them a unique, oddball, and highly specific power when inscribed on an object they hold or on their body. The more of a glyph is discovered and inscribed, the more their power evolves.
- Historical materialization: By studying a specific period or event in history back to front so they're more familiar with it than with their own life, a historian can cast spells that literalize the effect their object of study had on history, creating a concrete, magical effect within the world.
- Archaism: The discovery and use of artifacts belonging to great figures in history (direct descendants can count as artifacts) allows for an arcanist to borrow their power and heighten it to legendary, symbolic levels, manifesting effects similar to that of historical materialization that still play by different rules.
- Spiritual invocation: Spirits dwell in systems of any kind as long as they're not completely quantifiable by human measure, from a vast, ancient forest to a particularly unoptimized and tangled computer program. They make contracts with humans, giving them powers and lending them a fragment of their manifested self in exchange for their contractors making their birth system larger and more complex as to avoid quantification.
- Miracles: An ill-understood discipline that spontaneously manifests in people whose prayers and wishes to a higher power are consistently answered, giving abilities according to the strictures and structures of their faith.
- Witchcraft: [REDACTED]
Interested? Then go ahead and comment below with the following!
1. Name and pronouns
2. Where to contact you, preferably Discord and/or Plurk
3. Character concept
4. Anything in particular you'd like to see in the game
5. Valor or Valor Alter
6. Questions about the game or setting
7. Favorite time you watched/read/played/etc. someone punching God
8. What days and times are you available?
*Yes, I mean this wholeheartedly. No, Witch Busters is not a crossover campaign or directly based on any existing property; Scoob and Shag is simply a shonen masterpiece whose stylings greatly influenced the campaign.