Wisconsin's Drunkest Driver

Sometimes I worldbuild and make maps

[bluresm]

I'm really bad at maintaining creativity long term, huh? Ah well

[bluresm]

"I was told I would serve for 25 years. That I'd follow a contract, have everything paid for, be given full chrome, be allowed to live my life while serving the corporation, be given a generous retirement package. I walked their line in the sand, I listened to what they expected of me, I did everything I could to follow my contract. One tiny infraction, one so small that it might have well not have been the case. A flight booked with a different airline than I was told because it was cheaper, because it was more expedient, it got me there faster, and I was unplugged the moment I was on the ground. Twenty years down the drain, without a cent to my name."

Augmented personnel tend to live some of the harshest lives anyone can expect to commit to. They dedicate their heart, mind, and soul to their corporate master, all in the attempt to avoid liquidation and ruination at the hands of a vengeful and aloof master. Every action they take is monitored, many thoughts they had are read, their position is always closely monitored, and if they break any of the points in their contract? They are almost always liquidated. All of their augmentations are undone, and if the act of doing so would kill someone, they have the cheapest possible replacements installed instead, often leaving the offending party crippled and unable to recover.

Some augmented individuals either predate such harsh stipulations, successfully negotiated into more lenient contracts, or paid out of pocket for what they have. These individuals terrify the corporations, as it means that they don't need to adhere to their every whim, they have the motivation to further their own agendas, and they could benefit one of their competitors, should they so choose. Oftentimes they are pressured into accepting worse deals, yet if they refuse even that, they may sometimes be targeted, with the intent to kill if possible. It's cheaper to cover up a murder than it is to lose even .1% of their shares, after all.

[bluresm]

Corporations exist only for themselves. They do not exist for the shareholders, nor the workers, nor the politicians. In a way, they are the closest thing that exist to a man-made god. Vast, ever reaching, all powerful monopolies, who can decide who lives, who dies, and who gets fed. In all honesty, there is nothing more evil than a corporation, neither gods, nor demons, nor faeries, nor even the CEOs and shareholders guiding them. After-all, they can only guide these monolithic creatures, for no one person is strong enough to control a corporation.

Some exist in the guise of their mythic founder, preaching ideals that he or she believed in in life, while corrupting the very laws of the land to render those ideals impossible to ever reach again. Some exist as an idea of many, and will pursue that single objective to the destruction of all their competition. Some persist despite everything because they have their hooks in the minds of the politicians, who will prevent any misfortune from befalling their personal benefactor.

Truly, the only thing that can kill a corporation is itself. Poor management all the way through, allowing it to slowly bleed out as problems continue to amass. Sometimes this can be mended. Sometimes healthier corporations acquire their assets. Sometimes, they simply die a slow, painful death, while vultures circle around, pecking away at their still living carcass.

[bluresm]

Patrons are vile creatures, who feed upon the world and the innocent. They destroy all that they touch, and compel those that follow them into doing the same. They are vulgar and hateful, and derive pleasure in turning idealists into the very thing they swore to destroy.

Patrons are benevolent angels who empower those to protect the innocent. They believe in swift retribution, the utter destruction of those who violate their sacred laws, and the utter rejection of the notion of an age of reason.

Patrons are unknowable powers that can corrupt the very world itself where they afflict. They care not for what beseeches them for power, nor what they do with that power, only using their influence to seep into the cracks of reality, until it is far too late to dislodge them.

Patrons are mischievous spirits that enjoy chaos. They encourage worse behaviors for their own amusement, while empowering those who never deserved the power. They will even benefit those who oppose them, just to see what happens.

[bluresm]

I forgot to post today. Fuck. Alright, guess I'll do 3 tomorrow, doing one extra to make up for not doing anything today.

[bluresm]

Not going to do any worldbuilding today, instead going to lay out the next few days so I have a plan for myself.

I plan on revisiting the general ideas I laid out in that approximate order, generally delving into how they properly interact with each other, before moving on to countries, organizations, and specific patrons that I think are interesting or are tied to characters who may/will be relevant to future writings.

Personally, I cannot wait to share the Ever Blind King, he's a shitter, but that's likely a little over a week and a half away.

[bluresm]

I struggled far more with trying to figure out literally anything than I'd like to admit, but I at least did 1 the art.

Just. Ignore the fact I have like 10 variations total, most of which aren't being shared because it's me playing with layers like legos

[bluresm]

Technology is one of the most ubiquitous parts of life. The pavement upon which you step, the rubber soles of your shoes, the polyester fabric of your clothes, the steel springs of your bed, the silicon wafers in your phone. The more technology advances, the more all encompassing it becomes, to the point that the sky overhead may eventually cease to be entirely natural.

That hasn't quite yet happened here, despite the attempts of some. It's difficult to keep a large structure like that intact when the occasional comet slams into the world and erases half of a city. Every time, however, it gets closer and closer to becoming an inevitability that even the wrath of space cannot destroy. Firearms have become compact enough that large anti-vehicle weaponry can be operated by individuals. Nearly the entire body can be replaced by cybernetics, with even the brain being extremely well understood, capable of being laced with silica to enhance how quickly it can process, store, and recall information- assuming that you have the exorbitant wealth necessary to pay for them. Even the flu has been nearly exterminated, with anyone contagious being mandated to remain isolated or risk large fines, even if this means mandating near universal security infrastructure within cities.

Perhaps that's the most incredible and horrifying aspect of technology. Satellites can determine whenever and wherever magic is used, local infrastructure can narrow in on the block, and various street cameras can typically get a clear image of the individual, before often being capable of tracking them as they move. Local law are armed with military grade augments, weaponry, and exosuits to combat vigilantes and criminals both, and corporate executives pay handsome sums to whomever can feed them information about the true identity of those whom can put them at risk. Any crime committed can be pursued by the law, with the enforcement dictated by petty individuals who are motivated by anything but justice.

Technology is extremely advanced, yet unless you have the money to afford it, you're stuck using technology that even our modern age might find primitive on occasion.

[bluresm]

Magic is something that hardly anyone understands, yet many try to control despite that. It allows for the transmutation of monsters into men, grafting skin to steel, the creation of seemingly free energy. By its very nature, it can benefit the lives of everyone whom seeks it out and can control it, yet those whom bestow power upon those beneath them tend to have strict stipulations.

A life, or a soul, or eternal servitude, all of these tend to be common payments for magic, and the magic bestowed tends to feature tremendous restrictions. Many believed this to be a curse for a very long time, that those who could utilize magic were in cahoots with devils and monsters and deserved painful death.

It was only with the rationalization of spirituality that magic was able to properly begin being defined. The benefits it could bestow, the temptations it may cause, the agony that could be brought by those misusing it. People began experimenting with the magic, negotiating with patrons, and little by little they began to figure out how magic worked. That was, of course, until magic girls broke it.

Superheroics and a carefully negotiated contract allowed for what everyone thought to be the upper limit of magic to be utterly smashed, with people now believing that magic doesn't have a limit, but it does have a personality, and a very strong one at that. Whether or not magic is a patron, is influenced by the patrons, or is something entirely different, that remains to be known, and those who delve too deep in their pursuits of knowledge usually end up dead, malformed, or broken in some way.

The universe may be cold and uncaring, but the underlying principle of power coursing through it has a twisted sense of humor, and loves to see people despair.

[bluresm]

It's either magic or technology and I don't know how to talk about either so I'm talking about the global situation.

Generally speaking, nations of the world can be defined as those more influenced by technology, those more influenced by magic, and those very few that try to find a balance. While there are far more nuances than that, those tend to be the main deciding factors for how various nations define themselves.

Various agencies exist to try and control the spread of both magic and technology, to try and control the flow of destabilizing elements. Some of these are international, some of them exist within few exceptionally powerful nation, none are funded or powerful enough to properly be able to enforce any legislation unless the nation they are presently operating in allows them to. This fact alone has allowed for various corporations to remain unregulated, as well as for powerful individuals, political or otherwise, to avoid any repercussions for their actions.

While some of these agencies can apply to magical girls, the issue comes in that many magical girls are adolescents, which allows for them to easily hide behind a number of local laws to prevent these organizations to actually investigate them. Older ones can also use similar excuses, as unless individuals wish to stalk the individuals in question, it's impossible to decide just who they are. Some organizations have gone this far, of course, yet oftentimes they face heavy public backlash the moment one of the individuals they are watching ends up being underage, especially in more magically aligned countries.

Some countries have banded together to form a number of small unions or trade federations, yet no major organization akin to the EU exists. Likewise, due to the nature of the world being fundamentally different than Earth, the geopolitical situation is far different than people might initially expect. Magic might be more highly regulated after a small comet was pulled into the planet, yet the sporadic nature of where it manifests, as well as how it's nature depends on the patron granting it, it tends to be rather difficult to enforce any sort of rules on it.

[bluresm]

Synthetic organisms, sometimes known as synths, androids, or golems, are entirely artificial lifeforms. While not all of them are entirely inorganic, with the earliest forms of them being made with wood and bone as little more than animated dolls, they were never considered to be alive, merely being assisted labor, too dumb to properly think for themselves.

As magic became more powerful, and as machines have become more and more complex, people started trying to make their golems more intelligent, trying to get them to learn how to do tasks more and more autonomously. Initially is was carrying things without constant supervision. Then basic chores such as sweeping. Then cooking. Then they were used for mathematics and alchemic practices as scribes. At some point they began formulating basic thoughts. For a long time, they have been capable of fully rationalizing thoughts.

Despite their sapience, they are still treated as second hand citizens, incapable of forming complex thoughts or functioning without supervision. Most require consent from a different species to modify themselves, and may not even require giving their consent to be modified by others. Some may be given specific modifications to announce that they are fully independent and can legally enforce their rights, yet this process oftentimes requires months of waiting time, and consent from the individual deemed as their caretaker. Many synthetics complain that this is explicitly against their rights as sapient beings, yet the process to accommodate them in the modern world has been painfully slow.

After all, who cares about a soulless machine, who's thoughts and feelings are all artificial anyways?

[bluresm]

Monster folk are distant descendants of mythic creatures. Some are relatively common and expected. Descendants of mythic felines oftentimes take on the form of more archetypal catgirls, with obvious exceptions to how human or monstrous they are. Those touched by fae spirits may appear rather elfen and long lived, those related to ancients priests of divine snakes often appear to have serpentine features or lower bodies.

This has been a fact of life for long enough that monsterkin are almost entirely integrated into society by this point, as they can be extremely useful for their unique traits. This does not mean that they are all treated quite as well as their human counterparts, however. Their 'exotic' appearances drive a vicious human trafficking ring, their stronger instincts than humans lead to them being seen as savage beasts, or less intelligent than their counterparts, with only a few species being seen as better than humans in more "civilized" fields. Most damningly, their different biology leads to most medical advances to questionably work on them, as they aren't human, yet that fact is oftentimes ignored.

Monster folk tent to have a rather strange relationship with both patrons and corporations. While their innately magical nature makes them appealing targets to recruit, the fact that they are looked down upon makes it a difficult prospect for more benevolent patrons to wish to reach out to them, while patrons have to deal with the fact that many of the notable monsterkin are renowned for just how violent they are, when more malevolent patrons tend to favor them for how easily manipulated they can be.

Desperate people always seek for ways to escape desperate situations, after all. Why offer them a good deal, when you can instead give them the worst possible deal that you know they'll accept?

[bluresm]

I have no idea what I'm going to end up writing about tomorrow. That's a tomorrow me problem.

Cyborgs, borgs, enhanced individuals, corporate dogs, these individuals go by many names, many derogatory in nature to to their very existence being the technological counter to the growing power and influence of magical girls, and their meddling in corporate interests. The first augmented humans were those who were subject to heavy amounts of eugenics, to the point that even still some of their descendants look uncanny and wrong as they move, with the initial project being deemed a failure.

Later project aimed to learn from the initial failure and implement the lessons learned to improve what they could, utilizing heavy amounts of steroids and surgeries to reinforce bones and fix tissue necrosis. These were marginally successful, yet still suffered from the issue of the human body itself not being strong enough to handle everything that they were doing as magical girls kept growing stronger and stronger.

It was innovations in the prosthetics fields that allowed for augmented personnel to become far more effective. Legs too frail to land from heights they could fall? Replace them with legs that can handle the strain. Arms too weak to effectively use weapons necessary to kill magical girls and other cyborgs? Replace them with weapons. Spine risking collapsing because the added weight and strain of all the enhancements? Replace that with a far stronger one.

Very few career cyborgs have more than their brain and the few organs that weren't worthwhile to replace as their remaining wetware, and most of those have been partly remade with medical enhancements to allow them to more easily fit and integrate with their new bodies. Some are explicitly only a brain stuffed full of silica shoved into a metal container, while most at least attempt to appear human, with synthetic skin and relatively small parts in comparison. It's easiest to spot these cyborgs by how they walk, as they almost never appear to be fully comfortable with their size.

[bluresm]

Magic girls are universally known phenomenon, to the point that there are multiple organizations that track their movements, attempt to identify their identities, and sell this information to the highest bidder.

Magical girls, for their parts, are those that serve a patron of some sorts, benefiting from them and gaining powerful abilities. Some of them have transformation sequences to access their powers, others simply can use their abilities whenever, and others require specific emotions to fuel their magic. Oftentimes the specific conditions are set by their patrons, yet sufficiently powerful or influential magic girls are capable of rewriting aspects of their contract.

Magic girls can gain influence through a number of ways. Some require the love and devotion of those close to them, others thrive on the adoration of the masses, and some still the chaos and fear that they cause. This influence oftentimes translates into the power of their magic, yet sometimes it can be more vague in what it does. Sometimes it empowers those around them, sometimes it directly feeds their patron, who then empowers their pawns in turn, and other times it can be used explicitly only to negotiate their contracts.

The earliest magical girls were often called oracles, with later ones being deemed as witches and heretics, with populations being small enough for them to be localized incidents. Nowadays, with billions of individuals being capable of knowing individual magical girls, their feats of power are far more impressive- and far more dangerous as a result. A magical blast at one point was only capable of blowing through a wall, whereas nowadays some are capable of removing entire city blocks effortlessly.

[bluresm]

Yesterday was patrons, may as well talk about their main counterpart.

Mega corporations, the great monster of the modern world, are extremely powerful entities. While they aren't fielding private armies, they are funding and equipping them, with their own privatized security only being too small to be considered a private army.

While nearly every member of a corporation is augmented in some way, typically with the means to track locations and activities, they tend to be relatively unaffected bodily. In fact, most have clauses in their contract that forbids further augmentation if done without explicit corporate permission, due to the fact that this can allow for modifications of tracking implants.

Some individuals, of course, try to get around this. If the corp finds out, they will levy heavy fines against the individual, either forcing them back into compliance through bankruptcy, or through the individual backing down and bowing back into compliance.

Proper cyborgs, those augmented beyond tracking, tend to be those most loyal to the corporation in question. They are often augmented in ways that further their capabilities in their specific roles, locking them into that position. Some, however, show aptitude and loyalty beyond others, and if they are capable, they may be turned into private enforcers, highly militant cyborgs who will enforce the will of their overlord. Some cyborgs exist beyond these constraints, yet those tend to be exceptionally wealthy clients, as corporations are loathe to allow anyone to purchase high end augments.

[bluresm]

I was technically asked about patrons so I'm going to just ramble about that for a second before I forget tonight.

Patrons are any entity that can grant powers to another. In some cases this is powerful monsters that can be found within the waking world. Other times it's great beings that lurk within the nightmares of every child. Sometimes it's little more than vague concepts.

Power of Friendship is a patron. No one knows if it's an entity, a collection of entities, or a natural force, but the corporations hate it because it will randomly empower whomever.

Patrons tend to empower those that align most with their ideals, yet some enjoy the act of corrupting others to be more akin to their vision of the world. I don't have a full list of patrons because I don't think I ever will, but. Can always work on expanding what I have in the future.

More tomorrow when my brain is functioning.

[bluresm]

I'm trying to figure out how to organize my thoughts into something that's slightly coherent and not just the ramblings of a crazy person, but I appear to be failing at that, so I guess we're getting a ramble today.

The difference between a magical girl and a corpo borg is ultimately the expression of the self.

Both are beholden to masters far greater than them. Both strive for a better world, despite how often they damn those around them. Both are slaves to systems of power and oppression, even if one hides it better than the other. Truly, the only real difference is how they express themselves.

Wish granting entities on the whole tend to be more benevolent than corporate overlords, yet can also be vastly more cruel than an uncaring spreadsheet. The difference between benevolent and malevolent patrons is impossible to tell from the outside.

Due to corporations adhering to local governmental legislature, and patrons refusing or being incapable of doing such, magic girls and cyborgs tend to be frequently at odds. One is a vigilante or terrorist, the other is an enforcer or sanctioned killer. They may perform very similar tasks, yet even with cyborgs being inherently less powerful than their magical contemporaries, they are vastly more supported by states and companies, whereas magical girls are oftentimes outright criminalized.

It is the will of patrons and corporations that oftentimes forbids a magical girl from being augmented, or an enhanced individual from forming a pact. There is nothing about the magic or cybernetics that actively clash with one another, it is merely an agreement that any one man cannot possess two masters.

Monsters do exist, and due to some having been redeemed or integrated into society in one way or another, many citizens possess monstrous traits, to the point that monsterkin has become considered as little more than a particularly dangerous ethnicity, due to supposedly being stronger and more volatile than other citizens. Whether or not this is widely applicable is difficult to state, as most surveys taken have been strongly biased, or have lacked funding necessary to perform widespread tests.