Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds (Kaguya Houraisan)

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
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Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds (Kaguya Houraisan)

Post by Levander »

Welcome! I'm new to this particular board, but I've spent way, way too much time building characters and reading Roll Call threads here and elsewhere, so I figured I'd finally make my own.

I'm building Touhou Project characters in Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition! Those familiar with the series might think this is a bad idea. I agree. For my other build thread, see Levander's General Gallery of Goons.


CHARACTER INDEX

Protagonists
Reimu Hakurei (PL 12)
Marisa Kirisame (PL 11)

TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
Intro
Rumia (PL 8)
Daiyousei (PL 5)
Cirno (PL 9)
Meiling Hong (PL 9)
Koakuma (PL 6)
Patchouli Knowledge (PL 10)
Sakuya Izayoi (PL 10)
Remilia Scarlet (PL 12)
Flandre Scarlet (PL 12/16)

TH07 ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom
Intro
Letty Whiterock (PL 8-11)
Chen (PL 8/10)
Alice Margatroid (PL 10)
Lily White (PL 5)
Lunasa, Merlin & Lyrica Prismriver (PL 8)
Youmu Konpaku (PL 10)
Yuyuko Saigyouji (PL 12/16)
Ran Yakumo (PL 11/12)
Yukari Yakumo (PL 13)

TH07.5 ~ Immaterial and Missing Power
Suika Ibuki (PL 12)

TH08 ~ Imperishable Night
Intro
Wriggle Nightbug (PL 8)
Mystia Lorelei (PL 8)
Keine Kamishirasawa (PL 9)
Tewi Inaba (PL 8)
Reisen Udongein Inaba (PL 10)
Eirin Yagokoro (PL 12)
Kaguya Houraisan (PL 11)

TH11 ~ Subterranean Animism
Yuugi Hoshiguma (PL 12)

TH13 ~ Ten Desires
Kyouko Kasodani (PL 8)

Side Materials
Intro
Hieda no Akyuu (PL 5)
Kasen Ibaraki (PL 12)
Kosuzu Motoori (PL 3)
Rinnosuke Morichika (PL 5)
Tokiko (PL 6)
Last edited by Levander on Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:41 am, edited 42 times in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Series Summary

Post by Levander »

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The youkai, gods and other fantastic creatures of Japan used to live alongside humans – not peacefully, mind you, as youkai in particular were dangerous monsters first and foremost. However, youkai are dependent on human fear and belief, and gods on faith and devotion: as science developed and people started believing in natural explanations as opposed to supernatural ones, they started to weaken and fade. To avert their impending doom, in the year 1885 some gods and youkai known today as the “sages” erected the Great Hakurei Barrier, a metaphysical boundary that sealed off a chunk of Japanese countryside into its own parallel dimension. The rest of the world could do whatever it wanted, but this little pocket would stay in stasis and become a safe haven for those who cannot exist outside it.

This world is known as Gensokyo, the Land of Illusion.

Touhou Project takes place in the modern day, though Gensokyo has seen little to no technological progress due to its isolation. The games primarily follow Reimu Hakurei, the shrine maiden tasked with maintaining the barrier and peace within Gensokyo, as well as Marisa Kirisame, a young witch and Reimu’s best friend or occasional rival. Each game typically features a new "incident" occurring and the girls heading out to solve it. Touhou is developed by a one-man studio named Team Shanghai Alice, manned by Jun’ya “ZUN” Ota. Despite him doing everything on his own – his drawing skills in particular have taken their time to develop – the series has become an indie game juggernaut over its 20 years of continued publication and one of the absolute largest, most prolific fandoms in Japan.

Even more so than the gameplay itself, people are drawn in by the characters, soundtrack and ZUN’s quirky brand of worldbuilding. And when I say prolific, I mean it: besides the heaps of fanart and comics (being the most popular series on most art sites by a massive margin), there are, for instance, several hundred artists and bands dedicated entirely to recording cover albums of the series’ extensive soundtrack and selling them at events.

In the West, Touhou is much more niche, partly because the fandom has been entirely dependent on piracy and amateur translations, but anyone who spends much time on the internet has almost definitely been subjected to it, whether they realize it or not. Recently it seems like the series might be breaking its way into the mainstream, having shown up on Steam and the PS4, with some fangames making it onto the Switch, but it still has a long way to go, and this has also opened the door for some fangames of… varying quality. We’ll have to see how that turns out.

Oh, right! As you may have heard, yes, almost the entire 100+ person cast is female. There are a few men with names, and a few men with faces, but the men with names and faces can be counted on one hand. However, even with Japanese media being what it is, it’s all handled very tastefully and fanservice in design or characterization is practically nonexistent. The fandom, uh, is a separate issue…


SERIES SUMMARY

Touhou Project consists of 27 games, including 16 “mainline” games and 11 spin-offs, with more coming out on a yearly basis. There’s a variety of official books and manga series, all written by ZUN but illustrated by more professional artists, not to mention the side stories accompanying a series of music albums. The games form the core of the series and introduce the vast majority of the characters, whereas the side materials provide more info about them and the setting.

The first five games were published on a now-obsolete Japanese operating system known as PC-98. Though the core gameplay developed in this period, the canonicity of these games is now questionable at best, receiving the occasional nod but having only a couple returning characters and little semblance to the setting of the later games. Though there are some hardline fans, I’ll admit that I personally don’t care too much about them and am mostly listing them for completeness’ sake.
  • TH01 ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers
  • TH02 ~ Story of Eastern Wonderland
  • TH03 ~ Phantasmagoria of Dimensional Dream (split-screen VS shooter)
  • TH04 ~ Lotus Land Story
  • TH05 ~ Mystic Square

The rest of the games were published on Windows, and underwent something of a soft reboot as ZUN abandoned most of what had come before and started actually building up his setting. As far as many people are concerned, this is where the series “actually” starts, and where it started getting really popular. Most of the games are top-scrolling bullet hell shooters. The games with integer numbers are the main ones, whereas the decimals are spin-offs that experiment with the formula in various ways but are still all canonical. Several of them are fighting games, developed in cooperation with fellow indie studio Twilight Frontier.

Most characters debut as bosses in the main games before showing up elsewhere (or, y’know, disappearing into the ether), though some are exclusive to spin-offs or other side materials.
  • TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
  • TH07 ~ Perfect Cherry Blossom
  • TH07.5 ~ Immaterial and Missing Power (fighting game)
  • TH08 ~ Imperishable Night
  • TH09 ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View (split-screen VS shooter)
  • TH09.5 ~ Shoot the Bullet (boss rush)
  • TH10 ~ Mountain of Faith
  • TH10.5 ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (fighting game)
  • TH11 ~ Subterranean Animism
  • TH12 ~ Undefined Fantastic Object
  • TH12.3 ~ Unperceiving of Natural Law (fighting game, expansion to SWR)
  • TH12.5 ~ Double Spoiler (boss rush)
  • TH12.8 ~ Great Fairy Wars (side character story)
  • TH13 ~ Ten Desires
  • TH13.5 ~ Hopeless Masquerade (fighting game)
  • TH14 ~ Double Dealing Character
  • TH14.3 ~ Impossible Spell Card (boss rush)
  • TH14.5 ~ Urban Legend in Limbo (fighting game)
  • TH15 ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom
  • TH15.5 ~ Antinomy of Common Flowers (fighting game)
  • TH16 ~ Hidden Star in Four Seasons
  • TH16.5 ~ Violet Detector (boss rush)
Last edited by Levander on Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:32 am, edited 7 times in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Build Challenges & Design Notes

Post by Levander »

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BUILD CHALLENGES

Both in-universe and in terms of gameplay, combat in Gensokyo is typically done by means of “danmaku”, the Japanese term for bullet hell games, literally meaning “curtain fire” but usually left untranslated. Danmaku consists of a huge amount of fancy but harmless magical projectiles of all shapes and sizes, and a hit is a hit, no matter how strong you are. A bit like paintball or something. The point in-universe is to narrow the power gap between people ranging from humans to youkai to gods and let them duke it out without having to kill each other, and indeed, only a couple very minor characters actually during the entire series (not including a couple regenerators who come back the next second).

However, no matter how varied danmaku may actually be, in M&M terms it’s impossible to make a meaningful difference between what amounts to a few different Area effects, even if you remove the part about them being harmless, so everyone would be ridiculously samey. Similarly, almost every character can fly through magical means. Besides, since the actual point of danmaku is to make all stats other than Dodge irrelevant, it wouldn’t make for very interesting builds, now would it?

In this thread, I aim to build my vision of how the characters are outside of their danmaku. It isn’t necessarily any sort of alternate setting where danmaku doesn’t exist and people just fight to the death instead, just that as I said, the danmaku is both unnecessary and dull to build in M&M. People’s spell cards (signature danmaku attacks with special names) still serve as inspiration, of course. For variety’s sake, characters can only fly if they have a separate justification for it.

Given the focus on danmaku as the only form of combat (outside the fighting games), ZUN’s writing is (in)famously vague when it comes to things like physical capabilities and how certain powers actually work, so there’s a lot of space for interpretation. Not only that, a lot of characters only really show up once, get a databook entry, and then disappear off the map. Any given build is a mix of extrapolation, gut feeling, “wouldn’t it be cool” and whatever canon material there is.


DESIGN NOTES

My favorite thing about reading this sort of thread is getting to learn a lot about series and characters I’d never even heard of, such as Jab’s Street Fighter builds, and since I highly enjoy rambling anyway, I’m trying to include a lot of background information about the setting. Since fanon and fanworks play such a large role in this series, I’ll also throw in some notes about the more central fan depictions, but keep them separate from actual canon.

Despite the exact power levels in Touhou being vague at best, the general pecking order is relatively easy to figure out, and with a few exceptions, most characters’ rankings tend to match their location in their debut game. Even though power is supposedly irrelevant in danmaku, more powerful people still seem to be better at it (read: harder bosses). The main shooters typically have 5 stages with a boss or two each, a final boss, and an extra boss, in roughly ascending order of power. In terms of PL, I’m thinking that this will match up to PL 8-12 with most of the playable characters at 10 or above. Keep in mind that they’re generally fighting solo, and are some of the strongest people in the region.

What we know about youkai physique is that they’re stronger than humans, can recover from anything if not properly exorcised, and are generally nigh impossible to take down with normal weapons, making them almost invincible against non-expert humans. However, after toying with a couple options, I’ve decided that most of them will just have high Toughness with a few ranks of Impervious and some Immortality; a finer distinction between physical and magical damage is unnecessary, because in this setting, almost any damage of a decent rank is likely to involve magic anyway. Also, even though all youkai can heal given enough time, actually having Regeneration fast enough to matter in combat is a rare exception.

Some trivia tidbits like Threat Level, Human Friendship Level and Main Place of Activity are copied directly from the official databooks. However, since they’re actually based on in-universe books known as the Gensokyo Chronicles, their author Hieda no Akyuu is reliant on research and rumors, and often misinformed about the more esoteric details. Most notably, the one-sentence descriptions of people’s special abilities are actually self-declared, and often uselessly vague or even entirely false.
Last edited by Levander on Tue Apr 21, 2020 6:55 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Rumia

Post by Levander »

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”Are you the sort of human I can eat?”


RUMIA
PL 8 (90)


Youkai of the Dusk

OPL: 7; DPL: 8
Ability: Manipulation of darkness
Species: Youkai
Threat Level: Medium
Human Friendship Level: Low
Main Place of Activity: Unknown
Other Titles: Youkai Hiding in the Darkness

Debut: TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Stage 1 Boss)
Other Roles: Shoot the Bullet (enemy)
Songs: A Soul as Red as a Ground Cherry (Stage 1, EoSD)
Apparitions Stalk the Night (Boss 1, EoSD)


ABILITIES:
STRENGTH 6, AGILITY 3, FIGHTING 6, AWARENESS -1
STAMINA 4, DEXTERITY 0, INTELLECT -1, PRESENCE 0

SKILLS:
Intimidation 6 (+6), Perception 4 (+3)

ADVANTAGES:
Close Combat 2, Daze (Intimidation), Diehard, Favored Foe (humans), Precise Attack 1 (melee concealment), Startle

POWERS:
“Youkai Traits”
Immunity 3: Aging, disease, poison [3]
Immortality 2: 1 week (Limited: not if exorcised -1, Uncontrolled -1) [1]
Feature 1: Regenerate over time [1]
Senses 1: Visual (Low-Light Vision) [1]
Impervious Protection 3 [6]

“Levitation”
Flight 1 (Subtle) [3]

“Sphere of Darkness”
Concealment 4: Normal Vision, Low-Light Vision (Attack +0, Burst Area +1 [30 ft.]) [12]

OFFENSE:
Unarmed +8 (Tough DC 21)

DEFENSES:
Dodge 9 (DC 19), Parry 7 (DC 17)
Toughness +7 (Imp. 3), Fortitude +8, Will +5

Abilities 36 + Skills 5 + Advantages 7 + Powers 26 + Defenses 16 = 90

COMPLICATIONS:
Alcohol: Despite their immunity to most poison, alcohol affects youkai normally.
Prejudice: Even weak youkai may inspire not-entirely-undeserved fear in those unaccustomed to dealing with them. Rumia's openly aggressive behavior doesn't help things.
Weakness: As primarily spiritual beings, youkai are susceptible to certain magic (mostly sealing and exorcism) that might not affect humans. In addition, their Immortality cannot revive them if properly exorcised after death.

Reputation: Rumia is unusually vocal about her desire to attack and eat humans, even if it can be hard to take her seriously. She's also known as a huge ditz, floating around in a sphere of darkness even she can't see through and bumping into things.
Weakness: Rumia's eyes are adjusted to dark conditions. Her vision is impaired in brightly lit environments and she suffers an extra degree of failure against sensory effects based on bright light.


Description:
Rumia is a low-level youkai stalking the woods at night. She has the ability to surround herself with a sphere of pitch-black darkness that suffocates all light, even torches. However, this is only a supporting ability, and she actually fights with brute force. She’s one of the relatively few youkai in Gensokyo who still threaten to eat humans they come across, and indeed, a defenseless human caught in her bubble is left completely open for her to tear apart.

Luckily for everyone, she’s rather dim (heh), and can’t actually see through her own darkness. Most of her time is spent carefreely flying around and bumping into obstacles. It’s entirely possible to walk through her bubble without her even noticing, and she’s quite easy to fool even if she does. Pesky darkness notwithstanding, she’s a mere speed bump to any actually skilled combatant.

The red ribbon in her hair is in fact a magical charm, one she’s unable to touch or take off. Its purpose is unknown.

Rumia appears in the 1st stage of EoSD, encountering the heroines in the woods where she engages in some light banter, threatens to eat them, and is unceremoniously shot out of the sky. Standard fare.

Build Comments:
I could have started with the main characters or something, but nah, it’s gotta be Rumia. It’s said that a lot of Rumia fanart only exists because someone decided to draw every Touhou character in order but got bored after the first one – let’s hope that doesn’t happen to this thread, too. As the first boss of the first (modern) game, she has a special place in people’s hearts, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s a one-note throwaway. ZUN has stated that he gave her a dramatic-sounding ability and man-eating reputation as a comical contrast to her actual power level and unimportance.

In fanworks, Rumia is basically everyone’s designated jobber. A human running into the woods and getting attacked by Rumia, only to be rescued by someone stronger, is one of the most iconic clichés. Early fanworks that didn’t go the edgy route and depict her as a vicious monster liked to play up her childish idiocy to absurd levels, but people seem to have gotten tired of that after a while. She’s often seen hanging out with other similarly weak bosses. One source of speculation is the unexplained charm in her hair: people like to imagine that it’s suppressing her power somehow, and she’d be much more threatening if it were removed, but ZUN never elaborated on it. In any case, Rumia’s fanbase is disproportionately large.

Sentimental value aside, Rumia’s not very impressive as a build. It'd be something if she could actually see, but nope, just as blind as everyone else. She at least has Precise Attack for a small edge, but that’s it. Since she’s always in the center of the darkness, it should be trivial to just back out of it and blast her with an area attack. Honestly, she’d be better off not using it. If I were trying to make her a bit stronger, I’d add some classic darkness-control staples like shadowy tendrils she can use for attack and defense.

I wasn’t originally planning to build every character in order, but now I think it might not be a bad idea. It’d give a nice sense of progression, stop me from prioritizing my favorites and then getting bored, and besides, the characters of each game are usually connected to each other. (Not Rumia, though. The first two stages tend to be pretty much unrelated.)
Last edited by Levander on Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:49 pm, edited 26 times in total.
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KorokoMystia
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Re: Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds

Post by KorokoMystia »

Touhou is a really interesting franchise to me- While the games are fun bullet hell shooters (but mostly innaccessable unless you're really good at them), what really shines about the series is the characters (and there's many of them) and the MUSIC. ZUN may not be the best artist, but his character designs are quite good (and usally look a lot better in fanart) and he usually hits it out of the park with the songs. And of course, the fandom is much bigger than would be expected, though it's waned over the years. And yeah, PL 8-9-ish is where I see the early-stage jobbers like Rumia, Mystia, and Wriggle fitting. Cirno is more debatable, since her power levels tend to be all over the place. I'm interested to see how many characters you actually bulid, since after all, there's hundreds of them, and that's even if not including the PC-98-exclusive characters. So I'm looking forward to this. And even if most of the PC-98 characters that didn't make the transition to the Windows series are pretty forgettable, there's a few standouts like Shinki and Mima, so they should deserve some love at least.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Re: Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds

Post by Levander »

Oh hey, nice to see other fans popping out of the woodwork. Do say if you see anything weird. ;)

And yeah, I acknowledge that it's unlikely I'll actually get through the whole series, but hey, I'm in the mood for the time being, so might as well see how far I get without setting too intimidating goals. Good point about Shinki and Mima, too; I might build them at some point, even if I'll probably pass on most PC-98s due to lack of info and interest.

I'm thinking I'll get Reimu and Marisa out of the way and then start going chronologically, but if anyone happens to have specific requests, I'm happy to hop around a bit.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Reimu Hakurei

Post by Levander »

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Reimu – "Normally if I just go and fight people at random, the culprit will show themselves in no time!"
Marisa – "That's not something to brag about, though."


Remilia – "Looks like it's going to be a fun night."
Reimu – "Looks like it's going to be a long night..."



REIMU HAKUREI
PL 12 (205)


Wonderful Shrine Maiden of Paradise

OPL: 12; DPL: 11
Ability: Flying in the air
Species: Human
Occupation: Shrine maiden
Residence: Hakurei Shrine
Other Titles: Eternal Shrine Maiden, Freewheeling Human, Wonderful Shaman of Paradise, The Advocate of the Myriad Gods, Arcane! Shrine Maiden of Barriers, Carefree Shrine Maiden in the Spring Sun

Debut: TH01 ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers (playable)
Other Roles: Playable in almost everything, boss in LLS, IN, DS, GFW, ISC, VD
Songs: Maiden’s Capriccio ~ Dream Battle (Stage 4 Boss, IN)
Spring Lane ~ Colorful Path (PoFV)
Mystic Oriental Love Consultation (SWR)
Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Ancients (UNL)


ABILITIES:
STRENGTH 0, AGILITY 5, FIGHTING 5, AWARENESS 6
STAMINA 3, DEXTERITY 2, INTELLECT 1, PRESENCE 4

SKILLS:
Acrobatics 2 (+7), Athletics 4 (+4), Expertise (Magic) 2 (+3), Expertise (Nonhumans) 6 (+7), Expertise (Shrine Maiden) 2 (+3), Investigation 6 (+7)

ADVANTAGES:
Benefit (Status – Hakurei Shrine Maiden), Defensive Roll 3, Equipment 3, Evasion*, Fearless, Improved Initiative*, Jack-of-All-Trades, Move-By Action, Ranged Combat 8, Ritualist, Takedown 2, Ultimate Effort (Toughness), Uncanny Dodge*

POWERS:
“Flying in the Air”
Flight 3 (Subtle) [7]
Enhanced Dodge 6 [6]

“Intuition”
Senses 5: Mental (Danger Sense), Precognition (Uncontrolled -1) [3]
Enhanced Advantages 9: Evasion, Improved Initiative, Luck 6, Uncanny Dodge [9]

“Fantasy Nature”
Insubstantial 4 (Subtle) [21]

"Yin-Yang Orbs" [Easily Removable: 20 total, -8 cost]
“Hakurei Relic”
Feature 1: Restricted to Hakurei shrine maidens [1]
“Spirit Bullets”
Ranged Damage 5 (Affects Corporeal, Affects Insubstantial 2, Multiattack +1) [18]
  • AE: “Youkai Extermination”
    Damage 14 (Affects Corporeal, Affects Insubstantial 2, Accurate 1, Penetrating +1; Limited to youkai -1) [1]
Shrine Maiden Array
“Fantasy Seal”
Ranged Damage 10 (Affects Corporeal, Affects Insubstantial 2, Multiattack +1); additional 4 ranks Limited to youkai [40]
  • AE: ”Evil-Sealing Circle”
    Ranged Affliction 10: resisted and overcome by Will, Hindered+Vulnerable/Immobile+Defenseless (Affects Corporeal, Concentration +1, Extra Condition +1; Limited Degree -1); additional 4 ranks Limited to youkai [1]
  • AE: “Duplex Barrier”
    Ranged Damage 10 (Affects Corporeal, Affects Insubstantial 2, Burst Area +1); additional 2 ranks Limited to youkai
  • AE: “Expanding Barrier”
    Create 12 (Affects Corporeal, Affects Insubstantial 2, Impervious +1, Movable +1; Limited to barriers -1) [1]
  • AE: “Dimensional Rift”
    Teleport 5 (Change Direction, Increased Mass 3 [400 lbs.])
    Linked to Movement 1: Dimension Travel (Gensokyo & Outside World; Portal +2; Quirk -1 (must be at border))
  • AE: “Dispel Seals”
    Nullify 14: Seals and barriers (Concentration +1)
  • AE: "Channel Spirits"
    Comprehend 2: Spirits [1]
EQUIPMENT:
“Throwing Needles”
Ranged Damage 3 (Multiattack +1) [9]
  • AE: “Sealing Talismans”
    Ranged Damage 4 (Accurate 1, Multiattack +1; Limited to youkai -1) [1]
  • AE: “Purification Rod”
    STR-based Damage 1; additional 5 ranks Limited to youkai [1]
Headquarters: “Hakurei Shrine”
Size – M, Toughness – 6, Features - Living Space [2]

OFFENSE:
Purification Rod +5 (Tough DC 16/21)
Youkai Extermination +7 (Tough DC 29)
Spirit Bullets +10 (Tough DC 20)
Throwing Needles +10 (Tough DC 18), Sealing Talismans +12 (Tough DC 19)
Fantasy Seal +10 (Tough DC 25/29), Evil-Sealing Circle +10 (Will DC 20/24)
Duplex Barrier (Dodge DC 20/22, Tough DC 25/27)

DEFENSES:
Dodge 15 (DC 25), Parry 10 (DC 20)
Toughness +3 (D.Roll +6), Fortitude +7, Will +11

Abilities 50 + Skills 10 + Advantages 22 + Powers 104 + Defenses 19 = 205

COMPLICATIONS:
Power Loss: Reimu is unable to use her shrine maiden magic if deprived of her tools of the trade, especially the Sealing Talismans.
Responsibility: As the Hakurei shrine maiden, Reimu is tasked with maintaining Hakurei Shrine and taking care of any youkai who get too uppity and try to cause incidents. Despite grumbling about it and lacking in motivation at times, Reimu has proven very determined to do her duty.
Relationships: Reimu seems to have a natural talent for making friends, especially unwanted ones. Even though she’s always foiling everyone’s plots, no one seems to hold it against her, and former opponents often start visiting her shrine uninvited or even moving to live there for a while. Everybody loves Reimu, but some of her closer contacts include Marisa Kirisame, her best friend and occasional rival; Yukari Yakumo, her pseudo-employer she has a grudging work relationship with; and Rinnosuke Morichika, whose shop she often crashes at.
Reputation: Due to getting along with youkai a little too well, Reimu is sometimes known as the “Youkai Shrine Maiden” and humans are reluctant to visit her shrine, which they see as being infested by youkai. They’re not entirely wrong.
Financial Trouble: Receiving little to no human visitors, Hakurei Shrine also doesn’t get many donations and is thus constantly low on funds. Reimu is always eager to hop onto yet another harebrained business scheme to make a little more money, most of which fail miserably or just get abandoned after a while.


Description:
The Hakurei clan doesn’t appear to be an actual family; rather, Reimu was selected by youkai as a child to become the next shrine maiden, and should she die, another would take her place. She lives alone at Hakurei Shrine, but is constantly surrounded by friends and supernatural visitors, so the place is rarely actually empty.

Hakurei Shrine is located near the creatively named Human Village (the only one of its kind in Gensokyo) and also straddles the Great Hakurei Barrier. The shrine is key to the barrier’s integrity, and actually exists in both worlds at once, having an identical but abandoned copy in the Outside World. Largely due to Reimu’s presence, the shrine seems to be a central hub of Gensokyo’s supernatural society, such as serving as the location for their frequent drinking parties. On the flipside, humans seem to avoid the place, and Reimu has to work hard to attract any paying visitors at all.

The god of Hakurei Shrine is unseen and unnamed, but its blessing is one of youkai extermination, and that is what Reimu specializes in. Besides her blessed needles and magic talismans, Reimu wields the Yin-Yang Orb(s), which hold the the Hakurei God's power, and most of her magic is especially effective against youkai.

Reimu is a lazy, easygoing person with little concept of danger. She often comes off as grumpy and aggressive, especially on the job, but is actually rather kind and caring when it comes down to it. She might seem a little simple and air-headed, which is… true, but not the whole story. It's said that the secret to her popularity is her ability to treat everyone the same, be they human, youkai or god. Apparently people respect someone who can give them a bit of sass.

Build Comments:
She’s not locked in here with youkai. Youkai are locked in here with her.

Reimu is the main protagonist and one of the top dogs of Gensokyo. Against most opponents she’s only PL 10-11, but she’s absolute murder on youkai. The true purpose of the nonlethal danmaku rules isn’t to protect humans from youkai; it’s to give youkai a fighting chance before being casually blown up by Reimu. No, seriously, that’s canon. If not for the danmaku system, most fights in the series would be a curb-stomp in her favor. Despite her ability of “flying in the sky” being pretty unassuming, the way Reimu achieves this is by detaching herself from reality. The most ridiculous application of this is her Fantasy Nature, the ability to become absolutely immune to all possible harm. In-universe she’s actually been banned from using it because it’s just too unfair, though in M&M terms it can be overcome like any other Insubstantial 4.

In addition to the Hakurei God’s power, Reimu is blessed with insane luck and “intuition”, related to the above. Not only can she do things like reliably predict die rolls, but attacks seem to miss her for no reason and she can solve incidents by going in the right direction on sheer gut feeling. Probably the most blatant example shown is unwittingly walking across a river by happening to step on random fish. This gives the constant impression of succeeding by dumb luck (which it is), and with Luck 6, she can really punch above her weight and be an absolute pain in the ass.

Apart from extermination, Reimu’s actually pretty incompetent when it comes to her work as a shrine maiden: other people often know more about her job than she does, and though she’s displayed the ability to channel various Shinto gods (Ritualist), she may need to be told what those gods are. She barely trains at all and all her powers come from sheer natural talent.

Fanworks usually depict Reimu as a real Knight in Sour Armor, complaining about her job but doing it anyway, and hiding a heart of gold. There are those who instead exaggerate her aggressive tendencies and make her a nigh-genocidal or at least unnecessarily violent youkai extermination machine, but this version is still niche at best. Her perpetual poverty is another common joke, but at least that one's closer to canon, even if it really gets run into the ground at times.

Note: Though Reimu also has the ability to pass into the Outside World, she only ever does so in order to drop off people who managed to stumble inside.

---

As a bit of a nod to the games, I’m giving all the main playable characters Takedown 2 to represent their ability to sweep a screen full of minions in mere seconds, and Ultimate Toughness to represent “deathbombing”, the ability to use a bomb (i.e. spell card) at the exact moment they’re struck by a bullet in order to negate the hit and thus avoid death.
Last edited by Levander on Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:50 am, edited 28 times in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Marisa Kirisame

Post by Levander »

Image Image

Image


“Okay, fine. I give up. You're right.
The endless night, that broken, warped moon, hiding the Human Village, and putting hats on the stone statues; it was all Alice’s fault.
Now, get outta my way!”

”Move and I'll shoot!!
No, wait.
I mean, shoot and I'll move. In a flash.”



MARISA KIRISAME
PL 11 (175)


Ordinary Magician

OPL: 11; DPL: 11
Ability: Using magic (specialized in light and heat)
Species: Human
Occupation: Magician
Residence: Forest of Magic
Other Titles: Oriental Western Magician, Ordinary Black-Magic Girl, Boldly Timid Human, The Magician Passing By, The Human-Representative Magician, Magician Shivering in the Arctic Cold

Debut: TH02 ~ Story of Eastern Wonderland (Stage 4 Boss)
Other Roles: Playable in almost everything, boss in LLS, IN, DS, GFW, ISC
Songs: Love-Colored Master Spark (Boss 4, IN)
Oriental Dark Flight (PoFV)
Magus Night (Extra Boss, GFW)


ABILITIES:
STRENGTH 0, AGILITY 4, FIGHTING 5, AWARENESS 2
STAMINA 3, DEXTERITY 2, INTELLECT 3, PRESENCE 3

SKILLS:
Athletics 4 (+4), Expertise (Alchemy) 6 (+9), Expertise (Magic) 6 (+9), Expertise (Nonhumans) 2 (+5), Insight 4 (+6), Investigation 4 (+7), Ranged Combat (Magic) 6 (+11), Perception 4 (+6), Stealth 2 (+6), Vehicles 8 (+10) [Limited to broom]

ADVANTAGES:
Agile Feint* (using Vehicles), Artificer, Defensive Roll 3, Improved Initiative*, Move-By Action, Quick Draw, Ranged Attack 3, Ritualist, Skill Mastery (Vehicles), Takedown 2, Ultimate Effort (Toughness), Well-Informed

POWERS:
“Acquired Resistance”
Immunity 1: Poison [1]

"Magic Broom" [Removable: 17 total, -4 cost] [see Power Loss]
“Whack”
STR-based Damage 1 [1]
“Flight”
Flight 4 [8]
“Trick Flying”
Enhanced Dodge 6; Enhanced Advantage 2: Agile Feint (using Vehicles), Improved Initiative [8]

"Mini-Hakkero" [Easily Removable: 35 total, -14 cost]
“Master Spark”
Damage 11 (Line Area +3 [120 ft.]; Distracting -1); Extraordinary Effort for +2 ranks [34]
“Air Conditioning”
Feature 1: Produce warm or cold air [1]

Witchcraft Array
“Meteonic Shower”
Ranged Damage 10 (Multiattack +1) [30]
  • AE: “Earthlight Ray”
    Ranged Damage 9 (Multiattack; Indirect 2 [from the ground]) [1]
  • AE: “Non-Directional Laser”
    Damage 10 (Cone Area +1, Selective +1) [1]
  • AE: “Deep Ecological Bomb”
    Ranged Damage 10 (Burst Area +1, Ricochet 1; Diminished Range -1) [1]
  • AE: “Blazing Star”
    Damage 11 (Accurate 1; Quirk -1 [must Charge on broom]) [1]
  • AE: “Satellite Illusion”
    Damage 6 (Accurate 2, Triggered 6 [anyone enters close range]) [1]
  • ”Clothes Beam”
    Feature 1: Quick Change (Affects Others +1, Ranged +1) [1]
EQUIPMENT:
Headquarters: “Kirisame Magic Shop”
Size – S, Toughness – 6, Features – Laboratory, Library, Living Space, Workshop [4]

OFFENSE:
Whack +5 (Tough DC 16)
Blazing Star +7 (Tough DC 26), Satellite Illusion +9 (Tough DC 21)
Meteonic Shower +11 (Tough DC 25), Earthlight Ray +11 (Tough DC 24)
Non-Directional Laser (Dodge DC 19, Tough DC 24), Deep Ecological Bomb (Dodge DC 19, Tough DC 24)
Master Spark (Dodge DC 21, Tough DC 26)

DEFENSES:
Dodge 14 (DC 24), Parry 8 (DC 18)
Toughness +3 (D.Roll +6), Fortitude +8, Will +10

Abilities 44 + Skills 24 + Advantages 16 + Powers 71 + Defenses 20 = 175

COMPLICATIONS:
Power Loss: If deprived of her broom or knocked off by three or more degrees of Damage, Marisa can call it back to herself as a free action, but only as long as it's within line of sight and not restrained somehow. She also requires various natural ingredients for her magic.
Motivation: Marisa’s power is based entirely on practice and experimentation. She’s often driven by her desire to acquire more magical knowledge, or simply loot wherever it is she's supposed to be investigating.
Rivalry: Marisa has a long-running rivalry with Reimu Hakurei, hoping to surpass her and often competing to solve incidents before her. However, this usually takes a backseat to the fact that they're also best friends who have no trouble hanging out on a daily basis, or cooperating when necessary.
Reputation: As an accomplished incident solver, Marisa is expected to get involved whenever something happens, and she's happy to oblige. However, she's also known as a compulsive burglar, though she seems to have kicked or at least reduced this habit as of late.
Relationships: Marisa is good at making friends, though her personality can be annoying to some. Besides Reimu, she has a working relationship with her fellow magicians, Patchouli and Alice; the kappa engineer Nitori; and the Three Fairies of Light, to whom she's like a big sister. Rinnosuke Morichika worked for her father when she was a child, and remains something of a brother figure to this day. However, she's pretty much cut contact with her parents, who still run a shop in the Human Village.


Description:
Marisa grew up in the Human Village, where her family runs a successful second-hand shop. However, for unknown reasons (hey, that’s kinda private), she’s cut off contact with them and set out to live in the Forest of Magic instead. The forest is full of fairies, youkai, poisonous miasma and strange mushrooms, but the latter are actually vital for her magical research. She lives in the so-called Kirisame Magic Shop in the middle of the woods, but the place gets even fewer visitors than Reimu’s shrine and is really a business in name only. It's a huge mess most of the time, and also has her pet tsuchinoko crawling somewhere in there.

Marisa has managed to become one of Gensokyo’s top magicians, incident resolvers and youkai exterminators through sheer grit and panache. All her magic is based on extensive (if often haphazard) research, yet she’s one of the very few humans able to tangle with the most powerful creatures in Gensokyo – or, depending on your view, able to call herself one of them. However, she can never quite shake the title of “Second-Strongest Human”, always a step behind Reimu.

Even though it's said that her natural affinity is with the water element, she specializes almost exclusively in light and heat-based magic; that is lasers, explosions, stars and rainbows. It's pretty straight-forward, but clearly it gets the job done.

Compared to the lazy Reimu, who usually waits for someone to come knocking, Marisa is much more hard-working and proactive in seeking out trouble. She presents herself as a reckless, rowdy tomboy, but actually puts a lot of thought into her words and actions. She can come across as condescending and a bit abrasive, but much like Reimu, doesn’t seem to have trouble making fast friends.

Build Comments:
The secondary protagonist of the series, or “deuteragonist”, if you will. In terms of power and actual skill she’s pretty much equal to or even above Reimu, but no amount of hard work and study can surpass Reimu’s cheating bullshit, uh, natural talent and intuition. Just like her, Marisa’s playable in every mainline game since her introduction and shows up at least as often in the side materials too.

Her signature technique of course is the Master Spark, perhaps the most iconic attack in the series (and one of the best theme songs, I might add). It’s one of her two PL 11 attacks, though Meteonic Shower comes in at a solid 10.5 and is likely to be her staple for the most part. She can only use the Master Spark through the handheld furnace known as the Mini-Hakkero, which also works as an air conditioner! It was actually crafted by Rinnosuke, one of my favorite characters and only guys in the series. He only shows up in side works, but I’ll definitely build him at some point. Should be simple.

And yes, Blazing Star is just a full-speed ramming attack. There’s still fire involved, though.

Ricochet on an area attack might be a bit unorthodox, but I think it's a fun way to represent a grenade sort of thing you can bounce off a wall, especially if it's in an array and you can spare the points.

Older fanworks in particular have liked to exaggerate Marisa's thieving tendencies, but later canon has downplayed them and the fans have gotten a bit tired of the joke as well (that’s going to be a running theme with most early 2000’s memes). Overall, though, people like both Marisa and Reimu because they’re heroic personalities who still have their own quirks, and are easy to throw into any given story. One more specific plot point that shows up in newer fanworks is the potential of Marisa becoming a youkai, and how this would conflict with Gensokyo’s strict rules against it, which Reimu is obligated to enforce. By force. Or is that implied by “enforce”?

Oh, right: Marisa has used the unnamed Clothes Beam only once in a throwaway panel, but it’s become enough of a joke with me and my friends that I couldn’t just not include it. It’s a pretty rare example of her using non-blasty magic, too.
Last edited by Levander on Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:50 pm, edited 27 times in total.
Thorpocalypse
Posts: 3239
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2016 8:52 pm

Re: Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds

Post by Thorpocalypse »

Welcome to the boards, Levander. I'm not familiar with the franchise but these are some cool builds. I'll have to read up on it.

A question on Marisa build, though. The broom you have as Removable. Like I said, I'm not familiar with the franchise but it seems like it would be Easily Removable. If not, you could probably give Flight the platform flaw since I would assume she could be knocked off of it.

Keep up the good work. :)
Me fail English? That's unpossible. - Ralph Wiggum
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Re: Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds

Post by Levander »

Hi, Thorp, and thanks for the compliment! J-Mart is one of the threads that inspired me to do this. :D

The idea with the broom was something similar to what I've seen with some Thor builds for instance, i.e. Easily Removable isn't really appropriate when she can recall it to her hand as a free action, but Removable is a decent compromise because it can still be taken away from her. Similarly, Platform felt a bit overkill - I don't see her falling off of it every single time she gets hit - but I made it so she can fall off if she gets 3 degrees of failure.

Those are written under Power Loss, but I'll add a little note on the broom.
Last edited by Levander on Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

TH06 ~ EoSD

Post by Levander »

TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

Released: August 11th, 2002

“During a peaceful summer in Gensokyo, an unnatural scarlet mist appears without warning and covers much of the land. It is strong enough to block out the sun, causing the affected areas to become dark and cold. Reimu Hakurei, the shrine maiden working at the Hakurei Shrine, is aware that if left alone, it could possibly spread across the border to the human world; in other words, it is her duty to find the cause of this unnatural weather. Relying on intuition, she heads towards the Misty Lake. Marisa Kirisame, a magician, hopes that the person casting the spell will have some interesting items to collect…”

Image

Playable
Reimu Hakurei
Marisa Kirisame

Opponents
Boss 1: Rumia
Mid 2: Daiyousei
Boss 2: Cirno
Boss 3: Meiling Hong
Mid 4: Koakuma
Boss 4: Patchouli Knowledge
Boss 5: Sakuya Izayoi
Final: Remilia Scarlet
Extra: Flandre Scarlet
Last edited by Levander on Fri Aug 24, 2018 1:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Daiyousei

Post by Levander »

Image


DAIYOUSEI
PL 5 (58)


Unnamed Great Fairy

OPL: 1; DPL: 5
Species: Fairy

Debut: TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Stage 2 Midboss)
Other Roles: -
Songs: Lunate Elf (Stage 2, EoSD)


ABILITIES:
STRENGTH -1, AGILITY 3, FIGHTING 2, AWARENESS 1
STAMINA 2, DEXTERITY 1, INTELLECT 0, PRESENCE 0

SKILLS:
Intimidation (-2), Stealth (+7)

ADVANTAGES:
Animal Empathy, Diehard

POWERS:
“Fairy Traits”
Immunity 3: Aging, disease, starvation and thirst [3]
Regeneration 1 (Persistent +1, Regrowth) [3]
Immortality 7: 8 hours [14]

“Child-Sized”
Shrinking 4: +2 Defenses, +4 Stealth, -1 Strength, -2 Intimidation (Innate; Permanent +0) [9]

“Wings”
Flight 2 (Wings -1) [2]

"Blink"
Teleport 1 [2]

OFFENSE:
Unarmed +2 (Tough DC 14)

DEFENSES:
Dodge 7 (DC 17), Parry 4 (14)
Toughness +2, Fortitude +2, Will +4

Abilities 18 + Skills 0 + Advantages 2 + Powers 33 + Defenses 5 = 58

COMPLICATIONS:
Oblivious: As avatars of nature, fairies have the second-most reliable immortality in Gensokyo, and many of them seem oblivious of any danger to themselves or others.
Reputation: Fairies in general are seen as vacuous, compulsive pranksters, leading many to consider them pesky kids at best and dangerous pests at worst. This probably extends to Daiyousei, whether she's actually done anything to deserve it or not.


Description:
A slightly above-average fairy who lives near the Misty Lake. She appears as the midboss of the 2nd stage of EoSD, doesn’t even offer any banter, and is unceremoniously shot out of the sky.

Build Comments:
An unremarkable midboss with no proper portrait, spell cards, lines, known abilities or even a name, but I guess the early fandom was hurting for characters, so she was nicknamed Daiyousei (“Great Fairy”) and generally accepted to be a friend of Cirno (the stage boss). This was later canonized by a manga cameo or two, but she still has no lines. Or name. She’s seen less and less use as other fairies and potential pals for Cirno were introduced.

Generic fairies are the absolute lowest cannon fodder of Gensokyo, and she’s only slightly above average. Completely useless in non-danmaku combat. In her grand 15 seconds of screentime she does show the ability to teleport short distances around the screen, so I gave her that much. A bit of a breather after those massive protag writeups, huh? I’ll give a better description of fairies as a species in the next entry.
Last edited by Levander on Sun Oct 14, 2018 3:50 pm, edited 16 times in total.
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Woodclaw
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Re: Gensokyo Chronicles - Levander's Touhou Builds

Post by Woodclaw »

I admit I'm completely ignorant about this franchise. Up puntil now, I didn't even know it existed.
"You're right. Sorry. Holy shit," I breathed, "heckhounds.”

WareHouse W (main build thread for M&M)
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Cirno

Post by Levander »

Image Image


”Man, I've NEVER been this powerful before! I'm gonna charge onward and conquer Gensokyo! I shall create the future of us fairies with my own two hands!”


CIRNO
PL 9 (133)


Fairy of the Ice

OPL: 9; DPL: 9
Ability: Manipulating cold
Species: Fairy
Threat Level: Low
Human Friendship Level: Normal
Main Place of Activity: The Misty Lake
Other Titles: Ice Fairy of the Lake, Unnatural Chill, Unmelting Ice Fairy Under the Blazing Skies

Debut: TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Stage 2 Boss)
Other Roles: PCB (Mid 1), PoFV (playable), StB (enemy), UNL (fighter), GFW (playable), DDC (Mid 1), ISC (enemy), HSiFS (playable)
Songs: Tomboyish Girl in Love (Boss 2, EoSD)
Adventure of the Lovestruck Tomboy (PoFV)


ABILITIES:
STRENGTH 0, AGILITY 4, FIGHTING 4, AWARENESS 0
STAMINA 4, DEXTERITY 1, INTELLECT -1, PRESENCE 2

SKILLS:
Close Combat (Cold Manipulation) 3 (+7), Intimidation (-2), Investigation 4 (+3), Perception 4 (+4), Ranged Combat (Cold Manipulation) 5 (+9), Stealth (+8)

ADVANTAGES:
Benefit (use Freezing Touch for Smash attempts), Defensive Roll 3, Diehard, Fearless, Improved Smash, Move-By Action, Ranged Attack 3, Takedown 2, Ultimate Effort (Toughness), Weapon Break

POWERS:
“Fairy Traits”
Immunity 3: Aging, disease, starvation and thirst [3]
Regeneration 1 (Persistent +1, Regrowth) [3]
Immortality 7: 8 hours [14]

“Child-Sized”
Shrinking 4: +2 Defenses, +4 Stealth, -1 Strength, -2 Intimidation (Innate; Permanent +0) [9]

“Wings”
Flight 2 (Wings -1) [2]

“Chilling Presence”
Immunity 6: Cold damage, environmental cold [6]
Feature 1: Always surrounded by noticeable cold [1]
Environment 2: Cold 2 [extreme cold in 60 ft. radius] [4]

Cold Manipulation Array
“Freezing Touch”
Affliction 9: resisted and overcome by Fortitude, Hindered+Vulnerable/Immobile+Defenseless/Paralyzed (Extra Condition +1) [18]
  • AE: “Perfect Freeze”
    Affliction 9: resisted and overcome by Fortitude, Hindered+Vulnerable/Immobile+Defenseless/Paralyzed (Cone Area +1 [60 ft.], Extra Condition +1; Distracting -1) [1]
  • AE: “Icicle Fall”
    Ranged Damage 9 (Inaccurate) [1]
  • AE: “Diamond Blizzard”
    Damage 9 (Cylinder Area +1 [30 ft.]) [1]
  • AE: “Frost Columns”
    Damage 9 (Line Area +2 [60 ft.]; Limited to along the ground -1) [1]
  • AE: "Create Ice"
    Create 9 [1]
  • AE: “Freeze Bullets”
    Deflect 11 [1]
OFFENSE:
Unarmed +4 (Tough DC 15)
Freezing Touch +7 (Fort DC 19)
Icicle Fall +7 (Tough DC 24)
Perfect Freeze (Dodge DC 19, Fort DC 19), Diamond Blizzard (Dodge DC 19, Tough DC 24), Frost Columns (Dodge DC 19, Tough DC 24)

DEFENSES:
Dodge 10 (DC 20), Parry 7 (DC 17)
Toughness +4 (D.Roll +7), Fortitude +7, Will +6

Abilities 30 + Skills 8 + Advantages + Powers 67 + Defenses 14 = 133

COMPLICATIONS:
Quirk: As avatars of nature, fairies have the second-most reliable immortality in Gensokyo, and many of them seem oblivious to any danger to themselves or others.
Reputation: Fairies in general are seen as vacuous, compulsive pranksters, leading many to consider them pesky kids at best and dangerous pests at worst. Cirno herself goes beyond “prankster” and straight into “belligerent punk” who enjoys doing things like freezing frogs for fun.

Weakness: Despite her ability to create cold, Cirno doesn’t handle heat very well. In conditions of intense or extreme heat her Environment and related Feature cease to function and she is impaired. She suffers an extra degree of failure against any effects based on heat, and hesitates to approach even smaller heat sources like torches, which make her uncomfortable.
Idiot: Cirno is childish and thick as a block of ice. Regular fairies may treat her as some sort of leader, but any with half a brain can see it. One of the recommended ways to avoid dealing with her is to ask her a riddle and run off while she’s distracted thinking about it.
Motivation: Cirno believes she is the strongest there is and wants to be recognized as such. She’s always looking for a chance to prove herself, and doesn’t hesitate to challenge people she’s already lost to a million times before.


Description:
Fairies are a ubiquitous species consisting of embodiments of natural concepts. They represent such things as cold, heat, rain, wind and the seasons themselves, and as long as those things exist, so will fairies. This renders them effectively ageless and immortal. However, they rarely have power to match, and thus have a habit of swarming up on people only to end up being swatted aside in droves. Most of them are childlike (or even smaller) in body and behavior, yet enjoy alcohol just like everyone else in Gensokyo.

Cirno is a fairy of ice who dwells near the Misty Lake. Her powers of freezing are quite impressive, allowing her to stand up to many weaker youkai, whereas normal fairies would probably lose in a fistfight to a preschooler. Even then, when she attacks the heroines over the lake in the 2nd stage of EoSD, the best she can do is some light banter before being unceremoniously shot out of the sky. With her out of the way, they finally spot what they were looking for.

She doesn’t give up, though, and continues to challenge them over and over again. Even though she loses every time, she keeps growing in power, and is even warned that if she keeps it up, she might upgrade into a youkai, with the side-effect of losing her fairy immortality. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t deter her in the slightest.

Build Comments:
Cirno is generally a PL 9, which is convenient, given the “Nineball” meme associated with her. Long story short, the manual for PoFV included a screenshot with her visible next to the other UI elements and labeled “⑨: Idiot” as a little gag. The number thus became associated with her, especially in contexts where she’s, well, being an idiot. Another point of mockery is her Icicle Fall attack, which on Easy difficulty has an unusually large and obvious safe spot right in front of her.

Anyway, she somehow became a massive dark horse after her inconsequential appearance in EoSD and ended up being a recurring character in later games, usually as a Stage 1 midboss (guess that makes her Gensokyo’s greatest jobber?), but also in a fighting game and even as the main protagonist of Great Fairy Wars. She probably started around PL 8 but worked her way up to 9. In HSiFS she finally got to be playable in a mainline game, receiving a temporary power boost (PL 10), megalomania (see quote) and a sweet tan to go with it.

Even without the boost, though, she’s leaps and bounds ahead of most other fairies in Gensokyo, which is acknowledged by the other characters. Unfortunately, it seems that the strongest specimen of the weakest species is still… average at best.
Last edited by Levander on Tue Apr 30, 2019 10:58 am, edited 19 times in total.
Levander
Posts: 91
Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2018 9:49 am
Location: Finland

Meiling Hong

Post by Levander »

Image

Image


Marisa – ”So you are the guard, after all?”
Meiling – “No, I'm just a normal person who guards.”



MEILING HONG
PL 9 (160)


Chinese Girl

OPL: 9; DPL: 9
Ability: Using chi
Species: Youkai
Threat Level: Low
Human Friendship Level: Normal
Main Place of Activity: Scarlet Devil Mansion
Other Titles: Colorful Rainbow Gatekeeper

Debut: TH06 ~ Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (Stage 3 Boss)
Other Roles: IaMP (fighter), StB (enemy), UNL (fighter)
Songs: Shanghai Teahouse ~ Chinese Tea (Stage 3, EoSD)
Shanghai Alice of Meiji 17 (Boss 3, EoSD)


ABILITIES:
STRENGTH 5, AGILITY 8, FIGHTING 10, AWARENESS 4
STAMINA 5, DEXTERITY 4, INTELLECT 1, PRESENCE 2

SKILLS:
Acrobatics 4 (+12), Athletics 4 (+10), Close (Unarmed) 3 (+12), Insight 4 (+8), Intimidation 3 (+5), Perception 4 (+12), Ranged (Tai Chi Chuan) 3 (+7), Treatment 5 (+6)

ADVANTAGES:
Agile Feint, Assessment, Defensive Attack, Diehard, Great Endurance, Improved Critical (Unarmed), Improved Defense, Improved Trip, Move-By Action, Power Attack, Skill Mastery 2 (Acrobatics, Athletics), Trance, Uncanny Dodge

POWERS:
“Youkai Traits”
Immunity 3: Aging, disease, poison [3]
Immortality 2: 1 week (Limited: not if exorcised -1, Uncontrolled -1) [1]
Feature 1: Regenerate over time [1]
Senses 1: Visual (Low-Light Vision) [1]
Impervious Protection 3 [6]

“Great Agility”
Speed 2 [2]
Leaping 2 [2]

“Sense Chi”
Senses 6: Mental (Detect Chi 2; Acute, Accurate, Analytical) [6]

Tai Chi Chuan Array
“Rainbow Taichi”
Damage 7 (Burst Area +1) [14]
  • AE: “Intense Rainbow Fist”
    Multiattack 5 on STR damage [1]
  • AE: “Glorious Morning Star”
    Ranged Damage 7 (Diminished Range) [1]
  • AE: “Roc-Killing Fist”
    Linked to STR damage: Move Object 5 (Close Range -1, Instant Duration -1, Quirk -1 [maximum Power Attack only]) [1]
  • AE: “Rainbow Brilliance Palm”
    STR-based Damage 0 (Triggered 1 [at end of Affliction])
    Linked: Affliction 5: overcome and resisted by Fortitude, Dazed+Vulnerable/Stunned+Defenseless/Paralyzed (Extra Condition +1; Instant Recovery -1, Quirk -1 [maximum Power Attack only]) [1]
OFFENSE:
Unarmed +13 (Tough DC 20)
Roc-Killing Fist +8 (Tough DC 25, Str DC 20), Rainbow Brilliance Palm +8 (Tough DC 25, Fort DC 20)
Glorious Morning Star +7 (Tough DC 22)
Rainbow Taichi (Dodge DC 17, Tough DC 22)

DEFENSES:
Dodge 10 (DC 20), Parry 10 (DC 20)
Toughness +8, Fortitude +10, Will +8

Abilities 78 + Skills 17 + Advantages 14 + Powers 40 + Defenses 11 = 160

COMPLICATIONS:
Alcohol: Despite their immunity to most poison, alcohol affects youkai normally.
Prejudice: Even weak youkai may inspire not-entirely-undeserved fear in those unaccustomed to dealing with them. Meiling's friendly demeanor and human-like appearance help alleviate this, though.
Weakness: As primarily spiritual beings, youkai are susceptible to certain magic (mostly sealing and exorcism) that might not affect humans. In addition, their Immortality cannot revive them if properly exorcised after death.

Responsibility: Meiling is the gatekeeper of Scarlet Devil Mansion, and quite loyal to her post, including her superiors Sakuya Izayoi and Remilia Scarlet.
Reputation: Word has spread that Meiling is willing to take any challengers who wish to spar with her, including humans confident in their skill. Presumably she still goes a bit easy on them.


Description:
Meiling the unassuming Chinese Girl is the first boss in EoSD to have any connection to the actual incident at hand, being the gatekeeper of Scarlet Devil Mansion by the lake, where the scarlet mist seems to originate. Neither Reimu nor Marisa are familiar with the mansion, which has been transported there from the Outside World. Meiling tries to stop them from entering, of course, but inevitably fails.

Meiling is weak for a youkai in terms of innate power and magical might, having no special abilities to show for it, so she has instead honed her body through good old-fashioned training and become a master of martial arts, Tai Chi Chuan in particular. Her ability to sense and channel chi, the energy that flows through all living beings, is learned rather than inborn. As a youkai, she’s presumably had a bit more time to train than most humans.

She’s said to be very friendly to passersby, softening the mansion’s public image, as long as they don’t try to force their way in. She regularly receives challengers, human and possibly youkai as well, who wish to test their martial arts against her. Sometimes she seems to be sleeping on the job, but is still perfectly capable of detecting trespassers with her eyes closed.

Build Comments:
Meiling is often cited as an example of early ZUN not really knowing what he was going for, being pretty much a human with nothing youkai-like about her. A bit like with Rumia, he figured that giving a Western mansion, in a Japanese setting, a Chinese gatekeeper for no reason was a funny, unexpected contrast. It wasn't until later on that he started really thinking about a cohesive setting.

Her sleeping on the job, being utterly useless and getting punished by Sakuya is an old and pretty tiresome meme, at least partially based on Japanese stereotypes of Chinese people. However, there’s been a lot of pushback against this one-note characterization, and since the idea of a weak but still badass youkai who works as the sole guard of one of the strongest people in Gensokyo is kind of intriguing, theories abound of her true nature. Many people like to think she’s somehow related to (Chinese) dragons, being associated with rainbows and having the word “dragon” written on her hat. She got some love from the fighting games, but now seems unlikely to do much beyond brief cameos.

Mechanically, Meiling is one of the best melee combatants in Gensokyo, making up for her lack of fancy powers with top-notch mastery of martial arts, which also includes some of your usual anime energy blasts. She hits all her caps as a PL 9 fighter and can use Power Attack to deal pretty decent damage, which I also used as a neat (?) way to simulate those stronger but less accurate attacks that she has to use with maximum PA. However, at range she’s only PL 7 and can’t even fly, so against anyone who can, she’s screwed.

I’m particularly happy with Rainbow Brilliance Palm. It’s a “You’re already dead” sort of deal where you’re paralyzed for a round and only take the damage at the end of it. Pretty handy on its own or in a group fight, but if Meiling were to use Extra Effort for a bonus action, she could even follow it up with a sure-hit Intense Rainbow or Roc-Killing Fist.
Last edited by Levander on Tue Apr 30, 2019 11:06 am, edited 20 times in total.
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