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Becoming a Witch

Crossovers and Development

Creator Witches

[I say the more abstract, the deeper the root is to what sort of life they lived as a piece. Take Bern for example– she’s the Witch of Miracles, something highly abstract. Her life as Rika was endlessly searching for a miracle, for something to lift her out of her torture. A miracle is something she sought and achieving it granted her title. So dreams, I’d say would have to be cemented in say, an imaginary world. An unobtainable dream. Something to escape the shackle of what the piece’s world has forced upon them. A Witch of Hope would have to have clung to that hope, unfailingly, even if their entire world said otherwise and routinely punished them for believing. 

As for what kind of forms these abstract Witches’ powers could take, that’s up to you! There isn’t that much of a connection (certainty yielding explosive candies and small galaxies, for one). Bern’s kitties are linked with her host form as Ikuko’s cat, so perhaps think something along the lines of what tethers that Witch in their Piece reality. Say this Witch, when they were a Piece, damaged their eyes somehow. Their Witch form could project their eyes somewhere, or something along those lines. A Piece with a lot of freckles or moles could attack with constellations. You get the gist. 

As for the powers in GameBoards, or operating in reality... think of them as representations for their titles. Bernkastel represents the possibility of a miracle-- and just like miracles, she is highly fickle but extremely powerful when the circumstances call for it. Hope could be unrelenting but extremely weak if something goes wrong. Dreams could be powerful for short periods of time, or only operate within certain circumstances.

That floating competition is fated to float quietly and sink in loneliness. This world is boring. But, maybe those other worlds will do?

Ah, like a round, shining canvas of amber... It has nothing. Nothing is its equal. You can only run through the unknown sky. Don’t you want to go to the world you imagined?

Being alone is the worst.

Your unknown land is nameless. But, that’s it. The world is shaken, the night opens, but that town can’t continue.

You must write over my bloodline. Like a group without a direction. Like the frozen hands of a clock. Like a fruit that won’t sell.

[I think they all were at one point. Rika came first, of course, but as the time lop started, she had to be protected. Since she wouldn’t be able to handle all of the memories of being brutally murdered every time, so Frederica Bernkastel was created as an overseer. An archive, perhaps. Either way, she is the physical manifestation of all the Rikas that failed to escape the time loop. All of her cynicism, detachment, and bitterness comes from.

Later, when the game of Higurashi was won and the Logic Error was fixed, there was no need for Frederica to exist. Then when Saikoroshi-hen happened, Rika acknowledged that she had no more reason to keep Frederica, so she ‘let her go’. This translates to Frederica being set free from the Fragments of Hinamizawa, and then she was granted the title of the Witch of Miracles, and the rank of Voyager, and became Bernkastel.

Bernkastel is known to have become a Witch after a hundred years. However, one cycle of events in the Higurashi isn't a whole year, so that can only mean all of the weeks added up should make about a century. I'm assuming that the Higurashi timeline is about two weeks or so, since Watanagashi is around the 19th, and the events of the VN never go far into July. 

[Bern would be pretty upset, yeah, but moreso for Erika more than Lambda. Lambda would probably be pretty giddy about getting to read Bern’s diary and all of her amazing secrets!!! but in reality, Lambda doesn’t really need to read Bern’s diary to know Bern herself. She doesn’t really need to know the day to day and is already pretty attune with Bern’s most intimate thoughts, even without having access to something like that. Reading it would be interesting, but nothing new. Lambda’s pretty smart!

Erika, on the other hand, would read it and idolize it. Erika claims that she wants to be closest to Bernkastel, her master, but when you look at how she talks about Bern, it’s pretty obvious she has a very shallow understanding of Bern. Bern to Erika is something worthy of admiration as an authority figure, and less so of as a person (compared to say, Lambda, who wants to see everything about Bern!), so having access to Bern’s diary would probably just result in Erika being…Erika. She would laud it over Bern and probably use it to buffer her pride as ‘being close to her master!’, when it’s just Erika enjoying the fact that she has access to super secret information that wouldn’t be known to most people. And Bern would take that very badly and Erika would not go unpunished. 

A journal is a documentation of events in chronological order- there can be journals of scientific experiments, progression of the day to day activities, or something personal. A diary is something explicitly personal. 

[When it comes down to it, Bernkastel is a pitiful person who’s been so heavily traumatized by her past that the only way she can rationalize her situation is to be horrifically cruel to other people. That doesn’t mean she’s a truly tragic figure though, and her actions are still outrightly malicious. 

However, she has her form as a Witch as proof that she escaped her hell, so even her title itself is a reminder of her hell. So she does have a bit of self loathing towards herself and if she’s going to be killed for good, she probably wouldn’t fight it. That doesn’t mean she wants to be pitied, or regarded as a 'poor thing'. So I think she was partially behind that song, maybe wrote it down in her drunken melancholy stupor. But as a conscious writer? No. 

[Battler is a Witch, yes! As stated in Lambda’s TIP, ‘Witch’ is actually a gender neutral term, which is actually the case for the real word too! It’s just that the slant towards the term tends to involve females over males. 

Well, there are three distinct rankings of higher Witches: Creator, Voyager and Game Master. However, there are also those who don’t have any territory, and those who have lost their titles. So, with that in mind:

Creator: Featherine Augustus Aurora

Voyager: Bernkastel, Lambdadelta (both said to be equal in strength)

Ange

Game Master: Battler

Beatrice

Without Territory:

Virgilia (the former Endless Witch)

Maria (who is said to later become extremely powerful the moment she becomes a Creator Witch, though)

Eva-Beatrice (Successor to the title of Endless Witch, but not the Game Master)

Erika (strong because of her connection to Bernkastel, but not very strong on her own)

Kinzo/Goldsmith (who borrows his magic, said to have terrible potential for spells)

It's mentioned to be extraordinarily rare, so it's likely that Maria is the only Witch in existence at the time with the privilege to call herself that title. However, does this mean she could eventually make a proper title for herself, like Featherine did, and gain a new title?