Organization: The Tuner Organization

The Tuner Organization represents the new age. Where the Magic Association is a storied horde of scholars, with the occasional battle-wizard riding into the fray, the Tuner Organization rejects the old ways almost entirely. Founded by the heiresses of the then-new industrial class at the dawn of the new rise of magic, the Tuner Organization doesn't have the castles and ancient houses that are the domains of the Magic Association. The Tuner Organization is urbane and metropolitan, with private hospitals on contract and contacts lounging at Starbooks with a laptop and a lifetime supply of lattes.

The Tuner Organization is a collective of mages and magical girls, with one, simple goal: To bring the world into Tune. In other words, to destroy the darkness, to cast out the demons, and generally silence the discordant noise of fantastically-caused despair. This is a never-ending war and they all know it. But they also know that it isn't a war that they have to fight alone.

In practical terms, the Tuner Organization functions as a magical girl union; in exchange for individuals sharing information and, to the extent it's possible, resources, the Tuners will provide certain necessary services to both pave the way and cover the tracks of a long and storied career as a monster hunter. Mental and physical health care, legal support and Girls' Night Out (2nd and 4th Thursdays every month) are only the most mundane examples; the Tuner Organization has arranged for magical veils that function as witness protection for a magical girl's family if her secret identity has been exposed to the wrong group. They've blackmailed Vice Principals who are asking too many questions about their students' attendance records. Though it very much lacks the Magic Association's mystical nuance that comes from thousands of years of magical library collection, problem solving is what the Tuners do, and they draw from across their membership to match the right skillset to the right issue.

Day to day, the Tuners are also a bounty-hunting agency straight out of Dragon Quest: Monsters of a given type and strength are worth a certain value of cash, payable when proof of a kill is presented to one of various Tuner contacts throughout the region. Some particularly dangerous monsters may have a custom bounty set by the Organization's leaders, the Conductors. Monsters defeated by multiple Tuners generally have their bounty split evenly, unless some private arrangement is held by the involved parties. Such arrangements can be and often are determined by combat; the Organization doesn't particularly care if Tuners fight each other, as long as it doesn't cause problems with the mundanes or the Magic Association's meddling field agents.

Most Tuners have a pretty no-nonsense approach to this matter, focused on purging monsters over anything else. Their politics are generally simple affairs, with bi-annual conventions in which major, union-wide decisions are decided by majority vote. There is some accusation that the more moneyed girls receive preferential treatment, but the books are so opaque -- by necessity, lest they fall into the wrong hands -- that it's impossible to prove. But though they lack the thousand-year internecine feuds of the Magic Association's bloodlines, the organization as a whole is beginning to fall victim to its own measured success. Tuners take pride in their ruthlessness, but cynicism after managing the front lines of the war against darkness threatens the future of the organization; where the Magic Association would definitely seal an artifact of dangerous power, the Tuners might seek to use it in their battle. To save lives, certainly -- no one has a better record of the young blood spilled since the mid-1800s than the Tuners. But such slopes are slippery indeed.

On a similarly cynical note, the Tuner Organization's leadership has rather little interest in rehabilitating powers of darkness; although individual Tuners can (and do!) make those efforts on occasion, the archetypal Tuner and especially the Conductors tend to view redeemed demons as an enemy in the house rather than a new friend.

The Tuner Organization's central headquarters is in New York City, where the Conductors reside and oversee actions across the world. The leaders in Japan are...mostly unknown. Perhaps befitting the decentralized Tuners, the Conductor of Japan, if there even is one, keeps his or her head down. The closest thing to a direct line to the Organization most Tuners know of is an enigmatic man who goes only by Yamada, who maintains a private Tuner message board and serves as an informational contact. Similarly, although there are Organization-owned hospitals, gymnasiums and other services available to Tuners throughout Tokyo, the closest thing they have to a base of operations is a particularly shady-looking soda shop on Southern Cross Island. That, and every Starbooks in the region...

Example Character Concepts

Appropriate Tuner Organization characters include:

• A new magical girl recruited straight out of an early fight, who is happy to be included in the group but increasingly worried about the extremity of some of their tactics.
• A wizard tired of Magic Association politics who just wants to kick monster butt, trying to earn his way into the Tuner Organization despite a great deal of skepticism on their part as to his loyalties.
• An old hat at monster hunting, a sorority girl of Tokyo University's Mu Gamma Sigma, the Tuner Organization's chapter for its post-high school membership!

Example Theme Affiliations: Sailor Senshi (Venus, Neptune and Haruka Tenoh, Pretty Cure (especially Happiness Charge), Magic Knight Rayearth (Ferio), Mai-HiME (Natsuki), Oto x Maho, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Princess Tutu (Fakir), Senki Zesshou Symphogear (The 2nd Division Mobile Disaster Response Corps), Tokyo Mew Mew

• This list is not exhaustive, nor universally accurate for a given theme's protagonists, but exists to give an idea of typical themes (or characters within a theme) connected to the organization.

Cast of Characters

This list can be edited by players to add their characters to their appropriate organization. Feel free to add your name as a link to your character page!

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Michiru Kaioh, Haruka Tenoh, Minako Aino

DokiDoki! Pretty Cure: Makoto Kenzaki

Happiness Charge Pretty Cure!: Iona Hikawa

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Fate Testarossa, Chrono Harlaown, Lera Camry, Jad Werke, Nanoha Takamachi

Magic Knight Rayearth: Ferio

Mai-HiME: Natsuki Kuga, Georgia Jenks, Ai Yamamoto

Oto x Maho: Kanata Shirahime, Ruma Hino, Grace Chapel

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Eri Shimanouchi, Kyouko Sakura

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Shiori Takatsuki

History

When the world rattled under Clow Reed's miraculous despair, the very rules changed. The gates that held the other worlds - the great demon empires and mystic artifacts that had been cast out into the worlds by Serenity and honed to supremacy by Belka - at bay, had been sundered. The world was soon awash in new threats: Powers that had once been considered once-a-generation nightmares became common. It seemed like the darkness had finally won.

Hope is not so frail a thing. The world rallied and fought back, and soon a surge of new, ever more powerful magical girls rose to the challenge of bringing the world back into tune. At the time, a new wealthy class was taking its place amid the world's citizens, as the industrial revolution surged; it may have been destiny that these two things collided. New, wealthy magical girls, brimming with both power and the grim understanding of the magnitude of their task, set to work. Money disappeared into invisible coffers across the world, as they found a new name, and a new cause.

The Tuners were no new order; the sorority of magical girls, more interested in bringing the world into tune and protecting their home than the Magic Association's high ideals and bitter politics, had been an establishment for ages. But now they had funding; now they had power. Hospitals were quietly bought, gymnasiums leased, discretion purchased, loyalties acquired.

This awakened Tuner Organization declared its home to be in New York, where the most powerful and most dedicated among them claimed the titles of Conductors. There, they arranged for local chapters to be established wherever there were members to recruit. They made plain that they would leave the moral platitudes and ancient pacts to the Magic Association. They weren't interested in that.

The Tuners had Noise to fight.

And fight it they do, sometimes taking extreme measures in order to extinguish Noise faster, more effectively or more finally -- but at what price?

For more information, please see: Organizations, History: Clow Reed, History: Modern Times, Theme Primer, Theme