AU Information Post (In-process)

[zenithrewinder]

This is a catch-all for all History deets, character changes, racial commentary, worldbuilding, and whatever else comes to mind. That said, this is going to be a disgustingly huge post, so read at your own risk. To those who don't want to read a disgustingly huge post about stuff you don't care about, here's the important bits.

In Emerald, Sakuya has recently finished the Imperishable Night storyline and returned with her gaggle of idiots. Everything after that has not occurred. Yet.

Now for those who do want to read a disgustingly huge post, it starts off with general large-scale changes - locations, races, the PC-98 era, etc - followed by everyone's favorite main characters, then each comment after will be about the specific game.

Links below if you're looking for something specific and you're lazy.

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• Locations

• Races
    • Demons and Spirits
    • Lunarians, Magicians and Familiars
    • Gods and Vessels

• History: The PC-98 Era
    • Highly Responsive to Prayers
        • Characters

Comments

Locations

[zenithrewinder]

For starters, specific places (the Scarlet Devil Mansion, the Forest of Magic, Hakugyokurou, etc) will be mentioned in their respective games and gone into detail here at a later date.

Next big one. There's no Gensokyo - At least not as the canon makes it. It's been common knowledge for centuries that magic is real, demons can be summoned, nightmares exist around every corner, et cetera. There was never any denial of "illusions", so they never had to hide.

There is still a place called Gensokyo in Japan, where a barrier is erected around the whole town to protect it from the toxic influence from the universe around it. The Hakurei shrine maiden enforces this barrier and eliminates any threats to it. However, with the rise of Pro-Lovecraftian cults and the dwindling political force of the Hakurei, the need for the barrier has grown less desired from Gensokyo's citizens. They give less donations, Reimu grows more bitter and does more mercenary work, the barrier grows weaker, and the citizens give less donations because the barrier weakened. It's a vicious cycle.

Each of the Games takes place in a different area of the world, following Reimu's adventures (that will be explained in her section) and follows an over-arching story as the world's morals get further and further ruined. There will still be happy drunken festivals at Reimu's house, but be prepared. It's Lovecraft, there's no happy endings here.

Races: Demons & Spirits

[zenithrewinder]

As this version of Earth is populated by crazy cultists and book nerds, every non-human entity ever has its own family-genus category. The "youkai" term doesn't fly anymore (except with Reimu because she's old-fashioned as hell), so here are some splits.

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Demons:
By far and large, the biggest category most tohos will be falling under are Demons. A very broad term to refer to any being that is all of the following: generally malevolent, have no 'soul', sign contracts in exchange for payment, total mastery over their domain, and have a specific rite for summoning them.

Any and all demons have been categorized in a book. Somewhere. Not the same book, as cults tend to be very picky and choosy about who they share their knowledge with or just generally play favorites, but any and all demons can make a contract with a human. What they take varies - souls, blood, sex, money, booze, books, anything - but there's always something.

This ends up with most characters getting something of a Solomon's Ars Goetia treatment. However, certain demons are strong enough where they don't need a contract to exist in the physical plane and use their own power to do so. Lesser demons can also feed off existing power in an area and use that to manifest - which means during incidents Reimu has to go through the Stage 1 boss like everyone else.

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Spirits:
The second-largest category and, depending who you talk to, they might get lumped in with demons anyway. Or demons get lumped in with them. The biggest changes here is that they're generally not malevolent and require far less energy to sustain a form, as their power is more "abstract".

In short, goddamn fairies.

However, fairies are not the only spirits here. For example, the tengu would count as Spirits, as they're wind elementals. Iku would also be a spirit, as she brings warnings of ill omens - it takes far less energy to warn of existing omens than to make them.

Weaker spirits that can't even have forms are no better than ghosts. These kind of spirits tend to converge to humans and blur themselves into their soul or blood. These humans actually still qualify as humans - they're not poisoned enough like Magicians - and outside of that one strange ability, they get no other perks.

Of note is ghosts are not spirits. Human souls are still a completely different being and spirits still do not have souls of their own. However, they find no need to go about eating them to keep up their end of a contract.

History: The PC-98 Era

[zenithrewinder]

The PC-98 games are actually somewhere between historically accurate and legends, and are all about Reimu's predecessor. Like the later games, they all follow one over-arching plot, starting with the first break through the Hakurei barrier in history and ending with the predecessor's death.

And things to keep in mind while going through this - Marisa, Alice, and Yuuka are the exact same people as they were in PC-98. Marisa and Alice were adorable little kids and Yuuka is still a huge monster. The predecessor Hakurei tended to solve things through physical violence rather than Reimu's magical. Additionally, she never told her first name to people, as she wanted to be known as the super-stoic badass Hakurei maiden, not some type of mortal with a human side.

So in legend-style stories, she's known as the Hakurei Maiden of Resolution (Reimu is 'of Paradise'). To the people who actually knew her - Marisa, Alice, etc - they affectionately call her Miko. Sounds like a name when it's actually just her position. She was cool with it. For simplicity's sake, she will be called "Miko" for the rest of this segment.

Now for the fun parts.

Your Protagonist:
The Predecessor Hakurei, and considered by many in Japan to be the last "true" Gensokyo protector. Her eventual death signified the loss of a woman who tried to revive the Hakurei's lineage, and Reimu would just give up on it entirely and migrate to find a new paradise. The legends of her godlike power and miracle-like solutions are myriad, but most of them are fake with only five still holding any truth.

The first game takes place when Miko was still a teenager and takes her ascension into ass-kicking. The latter four are in her elder years, after having a daughter and the escalation of the Makai incident. Her token weapons were the Hakurei Orbs, which she had eventually taken to throwing at things that needed to die. In her later years, she trained to be able to use them in tandem with martial arts to beat down her opponents with brute strength. The exorcism blessing helped a bit too.

As an adult, she took to being a mother figure to most of the village and helped reintegrate humans who were corrupted by the world's outside influence. The most relevant of these being Marisa, who would spend her youth driving her insane, babysitting Reimu, and helping Miko out whenever she required help with something that couldn't be solved with a fist to the jaw.