“Wait. Are you telling me we’re killing eldritch monsters with cuteness?” [...Yes?] Mai to Selene, and reply, ch. 5.
The Different Species of Anathema
The Anathema are the main enemy of the story, and are a form of alien life that creates physical bodies from miasma. They are known to primarily attack living beings that have emotions, and produce mana.
Point Values
“Anathema have a relatively low level variance of five to ten levels before they evolve or upgrade into a new type. This results in a new name as well as a higher point value. Because the level variance in any one type is usually a fairly small range, it was decided to average the amount of points awarded between the threat posed by an Anathema type’s maximum and minimum leveled versions.” Selene ch.17
Experience Value
“The experience you earn for defeating an Anathema is not averaged like points are. Defeating a higher level Anathema will always give more experience than a lower level of the same type.”
Special Types:
Seed Bearer
Found in higher level usurpations they are Anathema that fuse with the Cursed Seed responsible for keeping the usurpation anchored in reality, this strengthens them significantly. Seed bearers can be made from the other special types as well as regular Anathema.
Elite
Higher level versions of regular Anathema.
Rare
Are normally not found among masses of Anathema, and tend to not have any standard level. Very dangerous do to unique abilities and intelligence. Similar to boss monsters.
Aberrants
“Aberrants are everything a Rare is but worse. They have intelligence that can equal a human's along with powers and magic that can rival a Magical Girl’s. If an Aberrant is found, usually multiple squads of Guardians are called in to deal with it. Aberrants are some of the most deadly creatures, and where one shows up, disaster usually follows. If you ever encounter an Aberrant alone, you run. No exceptions. It doesn’t matter what or who you are trying to protect, if you stay to fight an Aberrant alone, all you will accomplish is losing your life along with whatever you were fighting for, and the world cannot afford to lose Magical Girls in hopeless battles. If you are at least a hundred levels above the monster, you can probably fight on even ground.” Selene ch. 19
Other Information:
Anathema first came to earth 21 years prior to ch.1
“The Anathema take corrupted forms based on fears, myths, and legends. There’s plenty of choices for them, so consolidating into certain types has interesting implications.” Selene ch.35
“The Anathema are a blight, a malice that seeks to cause the most destruction possible. This malice may be best described as a vague and nebulous hive mind, showing at least some coordination in order to effectively accomplish its goal.” Ever ch.29
Some anathema can use normal magic. A much smaller number can use curse magic. ch.37
“Some higher level Anathema are capable of commanding and coordinating others of their kind, but we’ve never seen one capable of operating on this scale. Theoretically, it isn’t impossible, but we have yet to discover any real leadership or command network behind the Anathema’s actions.” Ever ch.29
“Miasma is negative mana, that is, magical energy with a negative alignment. It is what the Anathema are made of, and they have trouble surviving without it. Usurpation Zones are bubbles of that miasma, and the more Anathema in the area or the stronger they are, the more miasma there is. It has the side effect of interfering with things such as long-distance magic.” Selene ch.23
The vast majority of Anathema will die when outside of Usurpation zones.
“The Anathema are an existential threat. As in, a threat to ALL existence, not just humanity’s. To let humanity fall without a fight would be to give the Anathema another foothold to use in their never-ending quest of consumption. They are predators, and reality itself is their prey” Selene ch.5
“The Anathema feed on negative emotions. By fostering positivity and ideals of joy, peace, love, and serenity, it makes the Anathema weaker and diminishes their ability to tear rifts in reality” Selene ch.4
“Anathema feed on mana, and while humans are unable to use mana, they still generate small amounts. Their bodies would have been devoured as a source of strength. That, or taken to a nest where their biomass can be converted more directly.” Selene ch.17
During a Usurpation event Anathema attack by creating rifts in space.
“After Anathema enter through their rift, they work in a preset search pattern. Only the stronger and more intelligent deviate” Selene ch.4.
Generally a Usurpation will last less then 7-8 hours in Arcadia.
Low level Anathema generally have poor senses, such as hearing and smell.
Some Anathema are capable of sensing ‘life force’ with varying degrees of accuracy.
Specialized types of Anathema can sense the small bursts of mana used in communication devices that can penetrate into usurpation zones. This makes coms blackouts necessary especially in higher level usurpations.
Anathema have tend to have repetitive behavioral patterns. Each type will generally use specific attack, and dodge patterns, similar to video game characters, especially the lower level and or less intelligent ones.
Anathema instinctively delegate tasks even at low levels meaning that while the some will head toward something such as loud noises a part of their force will be left behind.
“Rebellions are much more dangerous than a normal Usurpation. Instead of opening a rift from their side, the Anathema create one from this reality. It lets them bring in stronger forces from the beginning, and with a nest, they already have a base of operations to form more Anathema” Selene ch.16
Anathema species can be very difficult to identify with two very similar looking ones having very different levels.
It hasn't come up in the main story yet (probably will in a few chapters) but they [anathema] are basically scavenged for resources. Everything has to be cleansed of Miasma of course, but the bodies of Anathema can have some pretty amazing resources (especially higher level ones). There's usually a bunch of politics and stuff regarding who has the rights to scavenge, but in Sanctuary Cities, any and all Usurpation scavenging rights belong to the city for various reasons. They might subcontract the actual scavenging to MG Guilds or companies and offer them a small portion, but most goes right to the Association. In the rest of the world, entire companies and stuff have formed around scavenging/harvesting Anathema bodies. There's a bunch of other stuff going on with this (even a whole faction of normal humans who make gear out of Anathema to fight in kind of like in the Monster Hunter games), but it'll get explained later in the story. Mika, spacebattles, 11-30-2024 5:09 PM