Stars of the Silver Night

Stars of the Silver Night is the story of the Soeurs of the Silver Star, an ancient order of magical girls originating in Renaissance Europe. In the past, girls born under a silver shooting star rose and donned blessed masks forged by a heretic monk to battle an ancient demon and his army of dark-dwelling undead. The sealed evil, the Night Lord, has returned, and with him comes a new generation of Soeurs, led by the original monk - who has since become a turtledove.

Cast

• Seika Miuchi/Masque Feu

Background

At a very technical level, Stars of the Silver Night has its roots in the days of the Silver Millennium, when a powerful demon terrorized the Moon Kingdom. This demon joined in Queen Beryl's ravaging of the lands, turning people into vampires and liches and seeking to envelop Queen Serenity's kingdom in darkness. When Queen Serenity made her wish, the demon was sealed away, with the help of a number of priestesses. The sealing created a silver shooting star, which passes over the earth every decade and a half or so, appearing for just a minute before winking out - and whenever it passes, it casts its blessing onto any girls below born in that very moment. This information is not known even to the Soeurs, though the Night Lord knows it.

The Soeurs themselves, though, originate in Europe in the late 1400s.

The continent was flung suddenly into a spiritual crisis after a group of French academics got together and dabbled in witchcraft and occult magicks. The stuffy French students and professors managed to summon a demon. It was not just any demon, but the one sealed away during the days of the Silver Millennium. The demon quickly stole the life force of the academics, transforming the students into vampires and their professor into a lich, turning them into its servants. The group of them, deeming themselves the Midnight Circle and servants of the Night Lord, proceeded to terrorize the lands, calling forth terrifying creatures of the night, turning more citizens into vampires and seeking to shut out the sun and create a world of darkness and night where the sun shone - if at all - only upon emptiness.

Only a series of magic masks forged by a French monk, a dumpy man considered blasphemous for his belief in magic sent from God, gave the world hope. Guided by the memory of a shooting star he'd seen 16 years before, the monk, Augustine the Heretic, toiled in secret to create the Blessed Masques. Each one was shaped like a simple ballroom mask, but when girls born beneath the silver shooting star wore it, the Masques could be used to tap into a special reservoir of power left behind by the star's blessing and channel it into magical powers. Augustine gave the masks to several girls, each one tailored to the feelings in their heart, and created the Soeurs of the Silver Star, a mystical order of magical girls charged with defeating the Midnight Circle. Their leader was Masque Croix, a highly virtuous young woman of incredible power and equally incredible selflessness.

The Soeurs battled the vampires across Europe, even in the streets of Rome, and drove them out over the course of several dramatic battles. Somewhere during the course of events, the Night Lord targeted Augustine himself, laying a curse upon him that would cause him to live for all eternity - as a turtledove. Finally it came down to a huge, climactic showdown with the Night Lord. The battle proved immense and involved several Soeurs combining their powers, but it ended with the Soeurs sealing the Night Lord in a holy urn - a sacrifice which took the life of Masque Croix, as she locked her own soul inside the urn to ensure the Night Lord could never leave. The urn was cast into the sea, and the Soeurs quietly slipped out of the public eye, their jobs done.

Some vampires still haunted the land, whenever they rose again, girls born under the star donned the masques, which always seemed to be around when needed. For the most part, though, these outbreaks were sporadic and consisted mainly of freelance vampires either originating from Night Lord servants who laid low after the sealing, from self-created vampires seeking to bring the Night Lord back, or simply coming from other sources. As for the Night Lord, the urn lay for centuries at the bottom of the ocean, moved about by tides and currents and at one point by means of a shark carrying it for miles upon miles, eventually ending up in Asia.

However, the events of 2013 have proven quite another matter. On Sep. 6, someone found an ancient urn lying forgotten on a Japanese shore and opened it. When the urn opened, the seal was broken, and the Night Lord emerged, converting his unfortunate discoverer into a lich - and that first general went on to begin turning more people. The Midnight Circle is rising again, and they're hellbent on twisting the world into a place where all life exists at night and worships the Night Lord. It also means the soul of Masque Croix is also free - and if she could be found, she could be the strongest of all the Soeurs.

Thus, with the Blessed Masques tucked away in a turtledove-manageable bag of some kind, Augustine the Heretic, cursed by his enemy to live on as an immortal turtledove, flapped his way to Japan in search of a new generation of Soeurs of the Silver Star - all girls born when the silver star passed on July 7, 1997, at 6:07 a.m.

Soeurs of the Silver Star

The Soeurs of the Silver Star are a mystical order of magical girls originating in the 1400s, when Augustine the Heretic rallied several girls born in the instant a silver shooting star passed overhead, tapping the magic the star left behind by giving each one Blessed Masques to channel the power through. Today's Soeurs are much the same thing as the originals, though their uniforms have been somewhat modernized and they're by no means bound to the same powers as their ancestors - Augustine tends to make a new Masque once in awhile, tailoring each to the girls' personalities and attributes. They are also standing members of the Magic Association.

Practically speaking, the Soeurs tend to be Sailor Senshi with the seriousness ratcheted up a few notches, though they're not all serious business. They share the same uniform - a white sleeveless tabard slit from the hips down, with a bit of a halter-style neck, fur trim curving out to the shoulders and designs weaving through it, each with a Renaissance mask. The colours tend to differ; Masque Feu's motif is white with black, gold and rubies, while a hypothetical water-casting Masque Fleuve may do the white tabard with dark blue, silver and sapphires, and so forth. Gloves and boots are taster's choice. They all transform by setting the mask on their face and whispering, "I call upon the power of the _________" - ie. "blessed flame" or "sacred blade" or whatnot.

In terms of powers, the Soeurs tend to have a wide variety of spells, often geared specifically towards fighting creatures with the Power of Darkness flag set. It is not uncommon for them to carry a couple of Purify attacks. All the Soeurs have a secondary Banish finisher suitable mainly for reverting vampires and banishing liches and servitor demons. They also tend to have a couple of named moves on top of their finishers.

By way of example, Masque Feu's primary workhorse finisher is the Crossfire Ignition, which will hurt vampires more with its sacred flame but will generally burn anything. When she needs to cure a vampire or vanish a servitor demon, she will use the Sunfire Halo, the only purpose of which is to strip the dark magic from a creature entirely. She also has a couple of regular go-to moves - the Blessed Spark, which is a highly-focused, high-speed sacred fireball, and the Purespark Barrage, which involves a defense-shattering Gatling-gun blast of fireballs. They do not always yell attack names; Masque Feu will call "I call upon the blessed flame... Crossfire Ignition!" when using that move and "Blessed Spark, burn bright!" when calling that one, but for Sunfire Halo she'll simply call "Sacred flame, burn like the sun!", and for Purespark Barrage it's just "Become light!"

Naming conventions

The Soeurs' civilian identities may refer to some extent to their powers. Their Soeur names always follow the convention of "Masque Frenchthing" - ie. "feu" for fire, "fleuve" for flow, "croix" for cross, et cetera.

Augustine the Heretic

Once a stuffy French monk, Augustine, the Soeurs' mentor from the 1400s, was locked into the form of a dove by the Night Lord for all eternity as a mocking shot at his piety. The "for all eternity" part slightly backfired because now he can't die of old age until the curse is broken. He's still stuffy, and he's kind of weird because now he thinks about bird things like roosting and seeds alongside keeping his magic masks safe. His wisdom about all things Midnight Circle is off the charts. Essentially Augustine functions as the Soeur's exposition machine, and he is essential in creating new Soeurs because he is the one who can magick new Masques into existence as well as being the one who tracks the shooting star's influence to girls born beneath it who can use the Masques.

Generally Augustine is intended to be somewhat less open to lovebeams than the Girls are. He is in some ways highly stratified and represents the protective, entrenched interests of the Magic Association, and he is not above frumping or being unhappy when the megucas under his watch do things like forgiving the witch or not setting Runealy Waldia on fire.

Shooting star addendum

The silver shooting star was created during the Silver Millennium as one of the keys to the Night Lord's sealing. It's a physical manifestation of that wish, and it appears every few years to grant a few girls the power to fight the Night Lord. It is not always necessary, and sometimes entire generations of potential Soeurs live and die never knowing their power because either no vampires appear or a new generation of Soeurs has come of age in time to deal with it - no sense having a bunch of Soeurs in their 40s, after all.

Midnight Circle

The Midnight Circle consists of those badniks who serve the Night Lord, an ancient demon from the Silver Millennium. While some of the Night Lord's servants - typically the regular vampires - are unwilling mortals who have been turned to the side of evil, others are loyal servants created from darkness or warped so far from their human selves that they are beyond saving. Together, their goal is to invert the natural order of the world - to transform all living things into night-dwelling undead and to leave the sun to shine on nothing but a barren world, while all life comes out at night and worships the dark. In a perfect world the Night Lord would love to destroy the sun outright. The Midnight Circle is aligned with Dark Fall but don't so much want to end the world as invert its natural order.

There are a few tiers of Night Lord servants to worry about.

The most common enemies our heroines will face are the vampires and their servitor demons. Both fill the role that youma do in Sailor Moon, but they are of somewhat different types.

The servitor demons are the most directly analogous to youma. They are simply embodiments of darkness created by the more advanced servants of the Midnight Circle, demons of the dark given physical form and sent to terrorize the world. They tend to have very little by way of conscious thought - perhaps rudimentary intelligence or just enough to adopt a human form and be covert for a little while - but they have the advantage of the most diverse variety of forms and powers. Maybe one could be a giant bat and the next could be a gargoyle of some kind - they could be anything. These creatures can be destroyed by any means.

The vampires are of similar stature but present a more complex problem for the Soeurs because they are inevitably humans infected by the Night Lord's servants and transformed. Their wills are stripped away and their blood is chilled by the Night Lord's magic, and they become brooding servants of his will. They may have a range of powers but typically appear as pallid or otherwise gothy-looking humans, and they are more dangerous than the servitors because they have the same cunning and intellect as a human being. This isn't so bad when the Circle turns a big oaf with no subtlety, but many of the vampires are extremely crafty and prone to playing tricks on the Soeurs. In order to cure a vampire, the Soeurs must use their Banish moves to dispel the vampiric curse and cleanse the individual. They can use their go-to attacks, too, but those will only damage the vampire, ensuring that a dose of blood will allow them to recover - or worse, they could kill the vampire, and with it the poor cursed soul the vampire was before being turned.

The Night Lord's generals are the liches. These are his most powerful servants, created from humans who turned to his side willingly and surrendered their souls wholesale in return for incredible power. A lich will typically take on a form much like a Death Knight, being basically a skeletal or heavily decaying figure in armour or robes, though they are capable of disguising themselves with illusions and they'll often have a human form they can adopt as a facade. That said, the lich's body is in many ways a shell, and even when destroyed by a Soeur's Banish maneuver, the lich will regenerate with time and be back the next night. This is because the lich's soul is kept separately in a phylactery guarded by one of the Night Lord's servants. Only by destroying the phylactery can a lich be killed.

Joining

Seika Miuchi/Erythrite is the one to contact if you want to join this cast.