Welcome back! No preambles this time, we’re diving right into some lore. For a while now I’ve been meaning to properly introduce the setting of what I call the Tabbyoko Saga, the universe which encompasses my game projects from the Kasha series to GigaMaidens. We are also going to formally introduce the main heroines of GigaMaidens – the Adore Stones. I’ll tell you all about them, who they are, what they do, and establish the backstory leading up to their adventures is in GigaMaidens.

Strap in and enjoy the read – we go over quite a bit today. There’s some new artwork to enjoy too!

Been trying to write this one since November 2023…

The Country of Tabbyoko

Tabbyoko is one of the two primary settings of GigaMaidens and the home country of its main heroines. Located in the northern Pawcific Ocean (hehe), it is a country where aging has been defeated, the paranormal is an accepted fact of life, and humanity has learned to put miracles to practical use.

Also, everything is themed and named after cats. (We’ll get to that.)

A long time ago, humanity developed thaumatics, the scientific study and application of magic. “Thauma” means miracle or wonder, although many researchers object to calling their work “magic.” Many academics do not really care for the word magic, as this is a clear branch of science that can be studied, understood, and put to use. But to everyone else, an apple that heals your wounds using a manifestation of video game logic is pretty damn magical.

Thaumatics has applications ranging from medicine and infrastructure to toys and entertainment. One particularly versatile field allows people to take the properties and concepts associated with something and apply them to reality. Thaumatics based around video game logic might make eating that apple heal your wounds and restore your stamina, while cartoon physics thaumatics could help an accident-prone child survive a fall without serious injury. These conceptual applications are only one part of a much broader science, but they give you an idea of how strange everyday life can become.

Almost everyone possesses a small innate ability known as a thaumatic gift. Most are modest, personally useful talents rather than spectacular superpowers. In Citrus Cove, the daughter of the town butcher can visualize the perfect spots to create “cuts” on meat or any object, visualizing them as dotted lines. Another child may flap his large ears to fly, and yet another may be a werewolf who carries a small full moon with him. They may build on these abilities as they mature.

Rare individuals have no thaumatic aptitude at all; medications intended to stimulate it and personalized aids that provide comparable functions help accommodate them. Anyone can use thaumatic products, regardless of their innate ability.

Thaumatic medicine has also eliminated compulsory biological aging. Old, grey-haired people are an uncommon sight, and looking elderly is generally a choice rather than an inevitability. Someone’s appearance may tell you very little about how long they’ve actually been around. This is something that is taught in schools – it is unbelievable to most of the population that at some point in history people were simply allowed to get old, turn grey and get mortally sick. A number of methods of population control exist and have been proposed, some elected to by the populace, and some more… forceful. A conspiracy theory exists that large populations of people may have been made to disappear by the ruling body of Tabbyoko in some way as a method of controlling the population’s numbers, through the help of thaumaterrorists (more on them in a bit), or even more sinister forces still.

Regardless, thaumatics has brought humanity considerable prosperity. Unfortunately, the ability to apply your imagination to reality also has some rather alarming implications.

The Babel Restitution

Among thaumatics’ most dangerous discoveries was vellethurgy: wish magic granting “admin-level access” to reality. Almost no one knew how to access it, and even a fraction of its power could change the world beyond repair.

Then someone used it to wish for worldwide “unity.”

Their intentions remain unknown. The result was the Babel Restitution, a prolonged catastrophe of upheaval, conflict, and cultural loss. In a reversal of the Biblical story that divided humanity by language, the world’s cultures were forced together. Most of GigaMaidens’ adult characters lived through it.

Japan bore the brunt and largely ceased to exist as a nation. Its people survived, but much of their heritage was lost; food, anime, and scattered traditions endured. Japan remains central to worldwide restoration efforts, aided by rumors of a lost archive containing enough knowledge to reconstruct the vanished cultures.

Other nations emerged diminished, their populations reduced and identities weakened. Mass migration (as well as being the world leader in thaumatics) transformed Tabbyoko into an economic and strategic superpower. Separate countries remained, but now shared a broad monoculture.

The catastrophe began to subside when Tabbyoko’s Empress, secretly endowed with divine gifts, absorbed the unruly wish into herself.

The recovering world developed an inexplicable fondness for cats. Even countries acquired new names: the former United States became commonly known as the Mewnited States of Mericurl, or Mew-SA.

Somewhere amid all this, the Empress was expecting a child. Whether these things are connected is a story for another time.

Trouble in Paradise

Today, Tabbyoko is a prosperous country where people generally enjoy comfortable, productive lives. But prosperity hasn’t eliminated dangerous individuals who would perform acts of maleficence, and thaumatics gives them an extraordinary variety of ways to do it.

Among the most feared threats are the Tartareans, mysterious hostile beings connected to the human mind. They are said to inhabit the human noosphere, the collective mental world of humanity, and their presence has been linked to disappearances, cults, uncanny monsters, and nightmares taking physical form.

Their influence can be gradual. People become exhausted, apathetic, irritable, or unable to trust their own perceptions. A community may struggle to recognize what is happening even as its circumstances become increasingly bizarre. By the time someone realizes that something is terribly wrong, finding the will—or the help—to confront it may be difficult.

Tartareans can also live among humans in convincing human forms. One common giveaway is the same person apparently existing in multiple places at once, although that isn’t their only possible tell. Their exact nature remains poorly understood, and the scale of their designs on humanity is difficult to comprehend.

There are also thaumaterrorists: human evildoers who use thaumatics for coercion, conquest, and whatever particular ambitions drive them. Some operate through cults or secret organizations, kidnapping people and forcing them into service. Others seek the power to reshape reality itself, inspired by the knowledge that something like the Babel Restitution was possible.

The danger goes well beyond conventional violence. A person’s identity can become something to tamper with. Minds can be manipulated, personalities of people can be “overdubbed” with sanitized replacements, and ordinary objects (like, for instance, digital pets and video game lightguns) can be turned into instruments of control. Using illegally modified thaumatic devices, certain people could trap you inside a digital pet, or make you a toy in a gachapon. They could curse or trap you with purikura stickers – a thaumatically cursed sticker that says “COOL” could freeze you in place. An enemy with sufficient thaumatic ingenuity and resources can make it difficult to know what you’re even defending yourself against.

Protecting people from these threats calls for a remarkable class of heroines:

THAUMASOLDIERS

Thaumasoldiers are women empowered by the Vis Venatrix, a living, intelligent thaumatic energy that awakens extraordinary abilities within them. They are humanity’s first and best defense against paranormal threats and thaumaterrorists.

The people of Tabbyoko often liken these women to magical girls in anime, sometimes derisively. The resemblance is understandable, although Thaumasoldiers come in many forms, and their powers extend well beyond any single image of what a magical heroine ought to be.

All possess a baseline of superhuman physical ability, including strength, speed, reflexes, and heightened senses. These abilities don’t simply disappear when they’re out of costume – even in civilian life, a Thaumasoldier is considerably more capable than she might first appear.

Their individual range of powers and abilities are known as Thaumatic Arts, and their signature weapons are called Thaumatic Arms. Their abilities, weapons, and transformed outfits emerge from deeply personal aspects of themselves: instincts, aptitudes, and an embedded self-image they might struggle to explain in words. Each develops a thaumatic vocabulary that makes sense to her.

The results can be remarkably specific. There is a team of thaumasoldiers who work together at a mall food court called the Foodie Beauties, who wield powers and weapons inspired by the cuisines they serve at their restaurants. Another Thaumasoldier, ACM Etsu, is a car-themed cyborg thaumasoldier who channels a vocabulary of thaumatics themed around cars and driving, through abilities such as supersonic horn blasts, using her headlights to create hardlight highways in the air she can ride on, and even using the conceptual force of traffic signals. A red light can literally bring a target to a halt.

These aren’t merely decorative themes. A Thaumasoldier’s understanding of her specialty gives her different ways to apply it. Sachi, for example, doesn’t just wield lightning: she can grab, bend, and reshape energy in her hands. A familiar concept can become a weapon, a means of travel, or a solution to a problem, depending on the woman using it.

Their Thaumatic Arms are actual fighting implements, often exceptionally durable and capable of inflicting tremendous damage. Some can also be manifested again if destroyed, as is the case with Sachi’s sword. The unusual appearance of a weapon says very little about how seriously an opponent should take it.

That versatility has limits. A Thaumasoldier’s personal arts depend on her capacity, experience, and what she can meaningfully understand. Someone comfortable handling lightning may find car-based thaumatics utterly bewildering. General-purpose thaumatics can be learned and shared, but learning a useful technique isn’t the same as acquiring another woman’s entire personal specialty.

Consequently, Thaumasoldiers often develop their own strengths and form teams with friends whose abilities complement theirs. No single woman needs to have an answer to every possible threat.

Certain people who possess exceptional thaumatic aptitude are known as mukes. They are notable for possessing no clear ethnic traits apart from their extremely colorful hair. Most of the Adore Stones fall into this category.

Which brings us to…

The Adore Stones

The Adore Stones are the team of five Thaumasoldier heroines at the center of GigaMaidens: Sachi, Naoko, Mayuri, Hazuki, and Akina. Together, they protect Tabbyoko from paranormal threats, thaumaterrorists, and whatever else decides to make life difficult for its inhabitants.

The team came together gradually. As Sachi encountered the women who would become her teammates, their latent thaumatics resonated with hers, awakening their own abilities. Each brought a different personality, perspective, and set of powers to the group – Sachi became the leader of the team.

Defending humanity doesn’t make everyday life disappear. These women still need to eat. They have jobs to work, bills to pay, personal problems, and occasionally each other to put up with. Let’s meet them now.

Sachi

Sachi is the founder and leader of the Adore Stones, an experienced Thaumasoldier with an imposing physique and a serious expression. She’s disciplined, patient, and direct, with a habit of remaining composed when everyone around her has very good reasons to panic. When things go wrong, she’s usually the one taking a breath, assessing the situation, and deciding what needs to happen next. She is an incredibly competent and strong young woman, leading the charge into battles against some of the worst threats Tabbyoko can dish out. Yet even she cannot be an expert in literally everything, which is why she has her teammates to fall back upon.

Her most recognizable power is lightning, but that description doesn’t quite do her justice. Sachi can physically handle energy: catching a beam, bending it in her hands, or winding it into a ball. Lightning can become something she grabs and shapes into a weapon. Her abilities depend on what she can perceive and understand, giving her plenty of reason to study an unfamiliar threat before rushing to hit it.

Not that she’s short on ways to hit it. Her enormous broadsword, Untitled—yes, that’s its name—is a manifestation of her own thaumatics. The sword is exceptionally difficult to destroy, and even if something manages to break it, she can manifest it again.

Sachi can also change the physical and energetic states of both herself and her sword, turning either into lightning. She can become a bolt of electricity to propel herself forward or send Untitled streaking toward an enemy in the same form. Her control of the sword extends beyond its shape or state: through a technique called Spathikinesis, she can swing her sword from a distance even without physically holding it. Letting go of her weapon hardly means she’s finished attacking with it.

Underneath the stern exterior, Sachi is deeply caring. She tends to express that through practical things: showing up, making preparations, and being someone others can depend on. She’s also stubborn, and her teammates don’t always appreciate being on the receiving end of her judgment. But she cares for each of them and is always contemplating how she can help others or put herself where she is needed to make a difference.

Despite being a legendary superheroine, she still needs an income. Sachi works as a minimum-wage fry cook at a mall alongside the Foodie Beauties—a job for which she’s generally considered wildly overqualified. She’s comfortable with humble living, however, and doesn’t need much money to support it. She takes pride in doing an honest job properly, and having friends around makes the shifts more tolerable. At the end of the day, she returns to her rented bungalow and her cat, Tippy. Sadly, saving the world pro-bono does little to keep food on her table, necessitating her meagre earnings as a food service employee.

Naoko

Naoko is the Adore Stones’ big, burly, foul-mouthed powerhouse. She’s blunt, irreverent, and quite willing to tell Sachi when she thinks she’s being a pain in the ass. The two argue, but their trust in one another is well earned. When things get dangerous, Naoko is someone you want beside you.

Growing up around biker gangs and organized crime gave her an unconventional education. She was born into a family of hired muscle for cartels and mafiosos, inheriting her imposing presence from a long line of extraordinarily tough thugs, before an incident had her lead her family into a change of careers where they lived as bounty hunters for a time. She had little opportunity for any formal schooling, but developed considerable mechanical aptitude, dexterity, and practical judgment. She’s resourceful, good with her hands, and accustomed to making herself useful under difficult circumstances.

Her signature weapon, Uncle Jack, is a colossal war hammer approximately as tall as she is, with a head that makes its intended purpose abundantly clear. Naoko has the strength to wield it and the coordination to make that strength count. There’s nothing particularly clumsy about her approach, however alarming the property damage might be.

Her tattoos are another part of her arsenal. Through thaumatics, she can make the artwork move across her body, leave her skin, and spread over nearby surfaces as glowing sigils. She can then give those images physical form. The roses on her arms, for example, can travel across the ground and rise into heavy, thorned metallic vines that bind an opponent like metal cables. She can also create new tattoo artwork directly on a surface and bring it to life. And when she really needs to get serious, she can grow a full-body tattoo and turn herself into a metallic demon-like being with incredible strength.

Naoko can even use her thaumatics to solidify sound, one of several abilities that make getting close to her a hazardous proposition. This combines with a unique property of Uncle Jack to deploy a sound cannon from its two faces, after which all she needs to do is simply strum air guitar on the hammer to produce ungodly, weaponized noise. Music is a substantial part of her life outside combat, too. She’s played guitar for most of her life and is genuinely skilled, with tastes spanning metal, punk, and grunge.

She supports herself through an assortment of delivery and odd jobs, especially work that calls for strength and dexterity. Hauling, repairs, moving heavy objects—being a superheroine certainly helps, although it hasn’t freed her from the gig economy. Officially, she lives in an armored personnel carrier. In practice, it’s often parked outside Sachi’s bungalow while Naoko is inside using the shower or helping herself to something from the kitchen. Sachi complains, but the two don’t appear to mind each other’s company.

Despite her upbringing, Naoko does have a tender and sociable side, though it still tends to come with crude language and unsolicited opinions. She’s particularly fond of Akina, (more on her in a little while), whom she regards as a little sister, and hopes Hazuki makes the most of opportunities she never had herself. She takes pride in her teammates, even if she is sometimes abrasive towards them.

Mayuri

Mayuri is the Adore Stones’ self-appointed “team mom” and professional psychologist, and sometimes field medic. Warm, perceptive, and openly flirtatious, she carries herself with an easy confidence that makes even her more imperious moments feel playful. She enjoys attention and is quite happy to return it, often noticing more about someone than they realize they’ve revealed.

She sometimes describes herself as having “one and a half doctorates.” She completed her doctorate in psychology and was studying medicine before her responsibilities as a Thaumasoldier forced her to leave that second qualification unfinished. Her interest in the mind has particular relevance in a world where Tartareans prey upon human thought. Understanding how people become vulnerable to their influence became an important part of learning how to protect them.

Her thaumatics revolve around wind and springtime. Breezes, gales, rain, storms, flowers, migrating birds and dragonflies become parts of a versatile and surprisingly forceful repertoire. Her movements have a balletic quality: measured turns, graceful extensions, and precise gestures that can produce far more power than the apparent effort would suggest. She can even move through and disappear into the wind itself, turning herself into a cluster of blowing petals on the breeze, and reappearing wherever she wishes the wind to take her.

Her weapon, Aphrodite, is a large two-handed polearm with a bladed head resembling a dragonfly’s beating wings. Mayuri guides it through sweeping arcs, combining weapon technique with thaumatics as though conducting the weather. She’s can make the enormous weapon look almost weightless.

One particularly striking technique involves holding Aphrodite like a rifle and firing a magical seed. Planted in the ground, it produces spear-like shoots that erupt upward before blossoming into sunflowers. Planted in a cloud, it brings down a rain of blue spears, with pink flowers blooming beneath their impacts. Spring is beautiful, as long as you’re not in the wrong place when it arrives.

Within the team, Mayuri is someone the others can turn to when the strain of their lives catches up with them. She wants to know how their day went and is willing to listen to the actual answer. Her affection and patience give her teammates room to admit when they’re frightened, frustrated, or simply tired of everything.

Mayuri herself enjoys a comfortable, decidedly expensive lifestyle. Raised by a loving family of accomplished professionals, she moved away to pursue her mission and reduce the danger her enemies might bring to their doorstep. She now lives independently and works as a hostess at an exclusive club, surrounded by powerful patrons, immaculate service, and bottles of wine priced well beyond the average joe’s lunch budget.

The work suits her. She enjoys the glamour, the company, and the opportunity to observe people whose public confidence may conceal all sorts of private troubles—including signs of Tartarean influence. Mayuri takes helping others seriously, but sees no reason why that should prevent her from enjoying herself.

Hazuki

Hazuki (nicknamed “Zook” by Naoko) is a teenage prodigy whose research almost single-handedly revolutionized thaumatics for the benefit of mankind. One of the world’s foremost minds in the field, she is the Adore Stones’ researcher, analyst, and resident expert on things that really shouldn’t be happening. Her knowledge of mathematics, anthropology, and applied thaumatics makes her invaluable when the team encounters a threat that can’t be understood by looking at it.

Her dedication has a personal origin. As a child, Hazuki encountered a frightening entity that she managed to defeat through her own ingenuity and the newly discovered proto-thaumatics she had developed. Surviving it left her acutely aware of the things that might be lurking in the dark. Her work against the Tartareans is driven by a persistent concern that humanity is in an arms race against the supernatural it cannot afford to lose. Every breakthrough is another opportunity to give people a fighting chance.

That scientific approach extends to her own equipment. Her crystal-studded suit contains what amounts to an integrated development environment for thaumatics. Working through her scepter called Verdant Pearl, and the crystals distributed across her armor, Hazuki can compose and store runic phrases that can output a wide variety of unique effects, sort of like encoding and compiling thaumatics in real time. Written in a confidential script she devised on her own, the instructions she writes in her runes remain active until she rewrites them, allowing her to prepare and revise how her abilities behave.

For a simple example, one rune might specify the energy being manipulated, another an operation such as dividing or redirecting it, and others the conditions under which that operation occurs. Combining them could produce a projectile shot that splits upon impact, or homes in on the opponent, or a defensive technique that redirects or shields from an incoming attack. The runes act as components of an instruction, allowing Hazuki to build different effects from a shared vocabulary – literally “coding”, “compiling” and “executing” thaumatic attacks on the fly.

Verdant Pearl can also store, duplicate, and amplify magical effects, as well as counter hostile thaumatics. Even a hex intended to alter Hazuki herself can become something for her to examine and counter directly through runes and the pearl itself. Her combat instincts aren’t as strong as those of some of her teammates, but her ability to understand and manipulate thaumatics gives her an extensive set of options.

For all her accomplishments, Hazuki has had little opportunity to enjoy an ordinary childhood. Strict parents, professional responsibilities, and a life spent surrounded by authority figures left her with few opportunities to make friends. She is quiet and often absorbed in her own thoughts, and being recognized as an expert hasn’t made casual conversation much easier.

She does like being listened to, however. As she grows comfortable with people, more of her personality emerges—including a dry, sometimes surprisingly acerbic sense of humor delivered with otherwise impeccable politeness. The Adore Stones are her closest friends, and she particularly looks up to Sachi, who worries about how much responsibility Hazuki carries. Akina also is a valued peer, and the closest thing to a friend her own age, although she sometimes has to dumb down complicated concepts for her.

Outside her research, Hazuki enjoys mineralogy and keeping fish, frogs, and turtles. Tending her paludarium gives her a peaceful way to unwind, with her favorite pet bullfrog, Prince Phillip, receiving particular attention. Even one of the world’s foremost thaumatic minds has to make time for royalty.

Akina

Akina is the youngest Adore Stone, a fiercely earnest defender of justice who intends to give evil a thorough power wash. A young yet determined teen, she approaches her responsibilities with enormous enthusiasm, dramatic declarations, and some very unusual ideas about how the world works. She means every word of it.

Her thaumatics revolve around water, plumbing, and cleanliness. Pressure, temperature, drainage, and flow give her a surprisingly versatile vocabulary for confronting trouble. To Akina, water is something that cleans, comforts, sustains life, and carries unwanted things away. Applying those principles to superheroism seems perfectly reasonable. Evil has been allowed to accumulate, and someone needs to flush it down.

Her primary weapon is Mr. Kittybath (or K.B. for short), a cat-faced showerhead and plunger-wand capable of firing highly pressurized water at scalding-hot or freezing-cold temperatures. She also carries bath bombs and liquid hand soap among her equipment. The hand soap is just hand soap. Cleanliness is a responsibility that extends beyond fighting villains.

During her adventures, a strange thing happened where someone’s soul happened to flow through a metaphysical pipe into Akina’s weapon, which caused Mr. Kittybath to become rather more talkative than one normally expects of bathroom fixtures. Bestowed with a former football player’s personality and a fondness for motivational speeches, he becomes Akina’s partner and confidant. His advice tends to involve teamwork, commitment, and giving a hundred and ten percent. Between her heroic conviction and his sporting enthusiasm, the two can work themselves into quite a pep rally. Fortunately, the person giving the pep talk is also a hydro cannon.

Akina’s imagination sometimes gets ahead of her judgment. She can construct elaborate conspiracy theories that begin with a reasonable observation and end somewhere completely absurd. Occasionally, she’ll identify the real problem and find a useful solution while being entirely wrong about why any of it happened. Other times, her theory is simply nonsense. She delivers both with the same unwavering conviction.

But Akina is also an instinctive thaumatic prodigy. Where Hazuki works through equations and carefully constructed instructions, Akina can arrive at an answer through an intuitive connection that seems obvious to her and baffling to everyone else. She learns quickly, improvises boldly, and can recognize possibilities her more experienced teammates overlook. Her courage and ingenuity give her opportunities to solve problems on her own, even if Sachi sometimes has to stop her from picking a fight she’s not ready for.

At home, that potential receives little recognition. Her parents underestimate her and give her little of the emotional support she needs. She frequently visits Sachi’s bungalow and often asks to stay overnight, finding welcome and companionship among the women who have come to regard her as a little sister.

Akina still has plenty to learn, including that being brave doesn’t require being unafraid, and that she doesn’t have to prove her worth every time danger appears. But her desire to help people is entirely her own. Give her a problem, a little encouragement, and a talking showerhead, and she’ll put everything she has into making things better.

A Bigger World Awaits

Protecting Tabbyoko is already a demanding job. But the events of GigaMaidens will take the Adore Stones far beyond familiar territory, into Peramundus – a strange world where they find themselves separated, surrounded by unfamiliar dangers, and thousands of feet tall, awakening as mythical titans.

For Sachi, finding her friends is the first priority. What follows will draw them into the affairs of goddesses, monsters, and tiny people for whom the arrival of another giant woman is usually cause for alarm. Their status as superheroines will be put to the test when entire townsteads can be accidentally wiped out just from not being careful where they walk, and they meet some cruel goddesses who seem to be inimical towards human life…

But that’s a subject for another post. For now, these are the five women at the heart of GigaMaidens. I’ve spent a long time developing their world, their powers, and the ways they get on each other’s nerves, so it feels good to finally give them a proper introduction here.

Thanks for reading! There are still details to work out and plenty more to share, but I hope this gives you a better idea of who you’ll be playing—and what they’re fighting for.

NEXT TIME: There will be news! There will be updates! Maybe even… ANNOUNCEMENTS!

And, of course, it will (hopefully) be not as long of a wait as this update. -PJ