History: Modern Times
Lord Dune
In the century and change since the formation of the Tuners, the world has faced many new dangers. It is a new age of magic, a new war against darkness, and in every battle, the world is at stake.
On December 23, 1958, Tokyo Tower was opened to the public. It's not recorded in normal history, but the inaugural Christmas broadcast was interrupted by a vision of sand: A warning from an imminent god. Lord Dune broadcast to all the world from his castle far away, and declared that all the Earth would become his desert kingdom. As proof, he unleashed his Desert Devil on London, and soon the whole UK was an empty wasteland - and with it, Merdiana Magic Academy and the Welsh Gateport, instantly isolating Earth's mages from their support structures in Mundus Magicus. Soon, the other Gateports followed; swallowed in a sea of sand.
But it was the new age, and the Magic Association's weapons stores were not the only power to be had. A Pretty Cure of the Heart Tree, Cure Flower, was one of their powerful allies. She rose to the challenge, and went out to defeat Lord Dune - but she was defeated. While she recovered and retreated to Pretty Cure Palace to gain new strength, the King of Sands was met by a new force; the Tuners mobilized for war. Before New York was engulfed, the Conductors issued a bounty to every operating Tuner, past and present, to fight the Desert Devils with all the power they had.
The advance halted. In the cities, the Devils were beaten back, by Pretty Cure, by Puella Magi, surging against the terrible power of the King of Sands. But they could only hold his power in check; somebody had to go up to face the Desert King on his own ground. That was when Cure Flower rose up with the aid of her comrades - her loyal fairy Coupe, and a black-haired Cure still unknown to this day, and Madoka Mano, 107th heir of the Mano Devil Hunters. Each of her allies battled a Desert Devil, holding the King's most powerful servants at bay while Cure Flower went into the King's throne, to face the tyrant himself, alone.
She won, but at great cost; Cure Flower's power was burned away in full to seal away the tyrant's might, and cast his Castle Planet back into the stars. She would never be able to transform again; the Earth had lost one of its most stalwart defenders, at least on the front lines.
And so the world limped on. The Tuners mourned their losses and swore to avenge them, while the Magic Association huddled up within itself to consider the consequences of such godlike forces descending on their world.
Bellum Schismatica
Throughout the rest of the century, demon tyrants came and went, testing the boundaries of the world. Noise assaulted human hearts and fed on their emotions, demons stole the Leafe of the innocent. In the corners of the world, jealous figures stalked the halls of power - never satisfied with enough. If anything nearly collapsed the worlds in this period, it may have been human greed and pride.
In the 1990s, a war broke out in Dimensional Space, starting on the Wizarding world known as Mundus Magicus, between the native Beastmen and the nation of wizards. This war is war now known as the Schism War, Bellum Schismatica. The politics of the situation were complex, but those with clear eyes could see that there was no special inciting incident; no reason why now, after thousands of years of peace following the creation and founding of this wizardly dimension by an ancient magical genius, war should ignite so furiously. And so they acted. The leader of this troupe was the bombastic Nagi Springfield, and together he gathered up a misfit band of magical girls, gladiator fighters, swordsmen, mystics, and whatever else he could find to pierce the mysteries. Their names are now legends: Yelan Li. Konata Shirahime. Melanie Brown. Many others answered their call, sooner or later. Together, this band was called Ala Rubra: The Red Wing.
In time, this group recruited even indomitable Arika, princess of Vespertatia, the central kingdom of the Mundus Magicus; whose power, in its own way, surpassed even Springfield's own. They discovered that the ones moving the Wizarding world’s nations were the powerful internal threat known as Cosmo Entelecheia - the Perfect World. But their enemies would not allow such an easy victory, and the Tuner Organization was alerted to Ala Rubra - not as an ally, but as traitors and spies to the Darkness, corrupted by the Noise. From Mundus Magicus to Earth their names were sullied, their families questioned by mundane authorities for terrible crimes; their Tuner accounts, frozen on suspicion of treachery.
Hunted, Ala Rubra did as they must: They fought. They battled Tuner hit squads and Beastman dragon gods, they hunted Senators and Kings, and they discovered their enemies were not alone either: In the penthouse of the Tuner skyscraper in Manhattan, they found a monogrammed letter, signed by Ends of the World, demanding their extermination.
It was only with a difficult fight, rooting out dozens of spies and traitors, that Ala Rubra was able to bring the Tuners and the nations of Mundus Magicus together in the skies over Vespertatia, at the Palace of the Gravekeepers, and prevent the destruction of that whole dimension at the hands of Cosmo Entelecheia.
But it was not without cost. The magic cancellation spell integral to Cosmo Entelecheia's plan knocked the flying nation of Vespertatia out of the sky - and here, too, Ends of the World snuck its daggers, ensuring that the blame was pinned squarely on its Princess, Arika. Now dubbed the Queen of Calamity, she was executed publicly, although some say Ala Rubra surely would not have allowed such a terrible fate to befall their friend.
Those who survived of Ala Rubra also bore scars both physical and emotional from these terrible battles; and all the magical defenders of Earth and the many worlds were battered badly. It would take decades to recover in full from these scars, mind and body; trust destroyed heals as a bone does -- slowly and never quite the same. Shrewdly, these governments covered their being misled by Ends of the World by exalting the heroes of Ala Rubra; now, Nagi Springfield and his allies are household names in Mundus Magicus, and those who live on Earth are equally known to the mage community there. Just as Ends desired; now, the public would track these magical warrior superstars on Ends' behalf. All they had to do was follow the blogs.
The Book of Darkness
Even after engineering the Bellum Schismatica, Ends of the World was not finished setting the stage for the fruition of centuries of plans, and so, only a few years later, they released the Book of Darkness on an unsuspecting magical world. The Time-Space Administration Bureau, aware of the magnitude of this repeating threat, immediately called in its chips with the Tuners and Magic Association -- just as Ends of the World had planned. The best agents and best ships in the multiverse were lured in to deal with the potential calamity. A few survivors of the battles in Mundus Magicus even attended.
The Book went wild. All hands had to sacrifice themselves to prevent it from seizing the tremendous magical energy that had been gathered to contain it. The many worlds shuddered under the loss of their best and brightest. It would take years to replace the strength of heart that was lost that day. Ends of the World was now unfettered to do its work without meddling from the genius strategists and wondrous magical girls who had once stood in their way.
They were not the only ones thus liberated.
Now: The Long Dark Night
Two weeks ago: September 6, 2013, already called the Long Dark Night by the victims of this tragedy. It came in a terrible rush - darkness surging suddenly out of every corner of dimensional space. Monsters and demons smashed into and through TSAB patrols; they found Magic Association barriers and broke them with a laugh, just passing through on their way to a far greater destination than any mortal world. And once they arrived, local defenders were powerless - for what use is a fairy warrior against demons?
In one night, the demonic army called Dark Fall swept into the heart of the magic worlds, the Fairy Realms, and dislodged their masters. They possessed Time-Space Administration Bureau ships and crashed them into fairy castles, and they sealed fairy queens away in teacups. They shattered souls, and remade worlds in their own dark image. And so the cries went out - all of them, drawn by some unseen force, to the same blue ball.
And so it is that today, on Earth, the consequences of centuries, millennia, of planning and battles have come to fruit, as Dark Fall and World’s Edge alike descend not as one, but at once. The greedy fingers of corporate masters tear the dreams out of children's chests in the hunt for the miracle-granting Embryo. The Princess of Disaster stalks the streets, seeking the life energy called Leafe to awaken the Great Tree of Fenrir. A coterie of Belkan Knights root in the shadows for the Linker Cores of the innocent - leaving them half dead and bereft of magic. Orphans stir on Southern Cross Island, finding victims to feed on, as their master's mark blazes in the sky. Underground, the Order of the Glittering Crux seeks to release the seals that will allow them to summon their magitechnological wonders into the real world, and seize it for their own. Witches throng in the shadows, their attention called by the despair of those who see how bleak the world is, their Kiss drawing still more into that trap. Above, the Castle Where Eternity Dwells silently waits to see whose heart will next be savaged by the Duels it oversees. And in the North, Queen Beryl's empire rises again, to finally and absolutely conquer the Earth and therefore the crown jewel of the universe...
But the guardians of Earth are rising. Tokyo is where that battle will be fought; as Pretty Cures are found by the refugees of the Fairy Worlds, and HiME once more flock to the Land of Fuuka, now called Southern Cross Island, and the Silver Millennium’s Sailor Senshi stir at last from their millennia-long slumber. The darkness is deep; but once, a great queen wished for a light to outshine any darkness.
She will not be disappointed.
She has you.
For more information, please see: Timeline, History, Theme Primer
