Worldbuilding
In our latest work TsukiRE, the worldbuilding inherited from the previous version has been updated to be deeper and more modern.
There are a few things that are not going to be revealed yet,
but I would like to introduce some things that were part of that update.
Setting
The city goes by the name of Souya.
In the old version, we used a provincial city as the setting, but now it’s been changed to an urban one. A fantastic place, neighboring a gigantic factory about four stations away, reminiscent of the Tokyo-Yokahama Industrial Area.
The protagonist’s highschool lies close to a residential area far from the station, so he does not hang out there on his way home from school. On the ends of this residential district lies a forest that has been there since ancient times, and by this forest’s entrance lies the mansion of the great landowner Tohno family.
Mystic Eyes of Death Perception
The peculiar ability possessed by the protagonist Shiki. Categorized as a psychic ability.
He can see the normally imperceivable ‘lines of death’, something akin to the point of collapse in all things.
These lines of death are like seams, which means all it takes to sever an object is to run a blade through them.
The strength and hardness of the object does not matter. No matter how hard or frail, the feeling is always the same. Perceivable = Cuttable.
In addition, as things dismembered by the lines of death ‘kills’ that specific part, no healing is possible. This is because the severed part has died on the existential level, even if it only looks like it has been cut.
Shiki is a living being and thus able to better understand the death of things that are alive just as he is—this is why he unconsciously perceives the lines of death of the living.
However, Shiki himself can stress his consciousness and overexert his eyeballs to visualize even the ordinarily incomprehensible lines of death on inanimate objects, through which he can perceive even the ‘death of space—death of existence’, as an ultimate locality. (Shiki’s brain is unable to withstand seeing the lines to this level)
In addition to the lines of death, there are the points of death, which stand above the lines.
If the lines of death are blood vessels, the points of death are hearts.
Those that have had their point of death pierced are killed in literally a single strike. Just as in the case with the ‘death of space’, Shiki has to overexert himself, or else he cannot see them.
An important point is that while the lines of death exist in all things, there are differences in how distinct they are.
Putting it simply: the lines of death are lifespan.
He can easily perceive the death of humans who only have the lifespan of about fifty to a hundred years, but it is difficult for him to perceive the death of existences who possess a lifespan in the hundreds or thousands of years.
Meaning, as long as he is trying to perceive the concept of death as a shape, he cannot quite so readily grasp it coming from things that are difficult to kill.
This is the reasoning behind why when Shiki is up against Greater Dead Apostles or Arcueid in the story, he has to push his consciousness to the limit if he wants to perceive their deaths.
(*Greater Dead Apostles are ‘hard to kill’, while Arcueid ‘cannot die’. Shiki’s murder of Arcueid in the beginning of the game made the impossible possible. In the Tsukihime world, things like Arcueid dying or Arcueid being killed were events outside of what was normal.)
Psychic Abilities
Special abilities endowed to the body from birth such as those possessed by Shiki, Kohaku and Hisui are known as physic abilities.
They are impossible to gain after birth through either training or study.
Through successive inbreeding, it is possible to pass on these psychic abilities to some extent, even if it is not possible to perfectly reproduce the ability possessed by the parent.
Shiki, who comes from a clan known as Nanaya that have passed along a mutant gene, could be seen as an even further mutation.
(*The Nanayas’ special ability is not associated with ‘death’, but rather concerns ‘karma’. The reason this altered into ‘death’ with Shiki is because of his near-death experience)
Mixbloods
Those that have inherited the blood of ancient purebloods, like the Tohno and Saiki.
Pureblooded species are non-humans (oni-kind), or alternatively those that have strayed from being human and turned into onis.
As they have inherited the role of nature’s sense of touch (output devices), they have abilities different from those of psychic ones.
Psychic abilities are ultimately something which the human performs on their own, while the abilities gained through mixed blood is natural interference/natural contact—not something manifested by just one’s own personal abilities (one’s brain).
In addition, psychic abilities (generally) abide by physical laws, while the abilities of mixbloods often do not. Fantastic stories, folklore, tales of old—in order words, unnatural phenomena which cannot occur in reality.
Psychic abilities and mixbloods have a relationship similar to that of magecraft and magic.
Magecraft and Hexcraft
Technology used by Ciel and Roa. Known as magecraft—spatial interference and application methods based on rituals (systems).
Anyone can use it with enough training, but the potency depends on the individual’s own qualities (the number and quality of their Magic Circuits).
In the story of Tsukihime, runes, kabbalah, hexcraft, witchcraft, wonderworking, etc, are all bundled together as magecraft. Xian arts and esoteric buddhism are also included in this, but as they are part of a different faction, they are not brought up in Tsukihime.
It is basically all-purpose, but cannot make the impossible possible.
At the end of the day, magecraft is a technique for abbreviating the processes of methods possible to the individual themselves.
Even if there was magecraft that allowed one to go to the moon, it would still require preparation with costs on par with—or even exceeding—that of actually creating a rocket.
“Sure, it’s amazing being able to shoot fire from one’s hands—but nothing more than just amazing. If all you wanna do is shoot some fire, wouldn’t it be more efficient to just bring a blowtorch?”
This is the simplest explanation you can give regarding magecraft in TYPE-MOON lore.
You could say that magecraft is something which modern science can substitute for.
But you could also say that magecraft can substitute for science.
Seperate from this, that which can perform things impossible to realize through modern human technology is what is called Magic.
By the time of Tsukihime’s story, that which can be called Magic have decreased to five.
True Ancestors
Those treated as the ‘original bloodsuckers’ in the Tsukihime world.
They are the cause of the vampires who run rampant among the public, even if the True Ancestors themselves are a far cry from the common perception people have surrounding vampires.
They are few in number and exceedingly close to immortal.
Even if they are exposed to sunlight, it would only ever give them slight anemia, and they are not affected by the cleansing rites employed by any religions either.
True Ancestors are not individuals independent of the natural world like humans, but an older species still at one with nature.
That they’re often misunderstood as undying and eternally youthful is because they are the planet’s sense of touch. In the first place their time-scale is different from that of humans.
Their lifespan is naturally immense; its limits, so to speak, are only those of nature itself. True Ancestors and fairies are something akin to the planet’s white blood cells. So they possess abilities sufficient to exterminate any of the various factors which would do harm to the planet.
However, at the time of their birth, a singular error occurred within them.
Probably due to the influence of that after which they were modeled.
They turned out to possess the desire—the primordial, survival-oriented desire—to ingest the blood of intelligent lifeforms.
Moreover, because they were incarnated as protectors, their objectivity was diluted. They gained autonomy, as one of the many species living on the planet. Basically, they came in possession of a sense of values closer to that of a human’s.
As they have ceased to be free of self-interest—such as noncorporeal elementals ought to be—they have lost sight of their role as protectors, to the point that among them some have even become like humans, and gained independence from the natural world.
Those known as the True Ancestors have no limits.
As a result of being provided back-up from the planet, if the need should arise, they can strengthen their abilities until that need is met. (However, the amount and speed that each True Ancestor can increase it by differs per individual)
In addition, the power of their will is enough to take actual form, meaning that the thoughts of the True Ancestor becomes a weapon on its own, influencing even the world.
Fantasy Materialization—also known as Marble Phantasm—the reformulation of the world through probabilistic fluctuations.
However, they cannot directly interfere with individuals that have become independent from the world like humans or animals. Humans have weakened by distancing themselves from nature, but at same time, will not perish even if nature itself does—obtaining absolute freedom. At the end of the day, Marble Phantasm can only freely exert change unto the environment and the situation.
As a slight digression, if the ridiculous situation of a castle appearing in the middle of a city at night was to occur, this is thought to be because the vampire (True Ancestor) suzerain of it willed it into creation.
The True Ancestors are a species which are practically gods, but they do have a flaw.
Though True Ancestors, they are still bloodsuckers. It is the very act of sucking blood itself which serves as their silver stake to the heart.
Though they are the cause that created the vampires (Dead Apostle) on Earth, they themselves have absolutely no need for drinking blood to continue living. The energy they need for that they can get through the ingestion of calories.
That said, they cannot go against their instinct as a species (to ingest and partake in the information of intelligent life = bloodsucking), which results in them sucking the blood of humans.
They execute humans in order to bring harmony to nature—though in actuality, they need them more than anything else in order to fulfill their own desires.
This contradiction causes the minds of these proud beings to collapse in on themselves. The more blood these proud elementals suck, the more they degenerate into beasts, craving pleasure the same as any human would.
This degeneration is rightly called ‘falling to evil’.
True Ancestors which have this happen to them forget the consciousness they have birthed for themselves and become a powerful vampire who begins corrupting the world.
As they do not have lifespans, ‘to lose sight of their values’ is the same as their ‘death of self’.
In order to prevent this death of consciousness, True Ancestors use a large part of their abilities to inhibit their vampiric urges.
The longer they withstand their desire to suck blood, the more it grows, yet they keep suppressing it—an unending battle of perseverance. By slamming the tremendous power of their will up against their own mind, they can control their desire to drink human blood.
Invariably, as they hold back on sucking blood more and more, the time eventually comes when they realize that they cannot suppress their vampiric urges any longer and so they enter into an eternal sleep by their own will. This is the activity threshold for those with an endless lifespan—one could perhaps say it is what humans would actually call their lifespan.
Dead Apostles
Something much like what the public at large imagines of a vampire.
Weak to sunlight, sucks human blood, transforms into beasts or mist and is immortal.
Called vampires in the game out of a consideration to make things easier to understand.
*However, the creature known as the vampire started being talked about in the 1900s. In real folklore, they are actually the monster with the least pedigree. In contrast, werewolves, who are often seen as their henchmen, are a monster passed down from days of old—in fact, parts of what the vampire was modeled after was taken from the characteristics of werewolves.
That’s why in the world of Tsukihime, they are more properly treated as bloodsuckers—the general term for things that suck blood from their own kind.
Dead Apostles are—just as one would imagine from their name—dead. They are divided into those that have been transformed into one by some kind of magecraft, and those that have had their blood sucked by a True Ancestor, and become its puppet.
Unlike True Ancestors, both of these kinds have to suck human blood in order to survive. Blood is considered a necessity for their vital activities.
They are also weak to sunlight, and as they are unable to completely rid themselves of the shared awareness of being human, they are defeated when faced with religious cleansing rites.
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