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New World is a completed Touhou Project Fan Fiction series written by Iced Fairy, relating a look at the possible future of Gensokyo in which local chessmistress Yukari Yakumo is long dead.
Just as Neo-traditionalism of Japan ends, inquisitive college student Maribel Hearn opens a portal to the True Moon, followed by her loyal friend Renko Usami. However, mere moments after materializing, the Watatsuki sisters confront them, banishing them to Gensokyo, whose borders have been severely tightened following the death of Yukari three hundred years before. From there, the girls seek their place in the decaying wonderland, as the shadow of Yukari hangs overhead. Death has not stopped the Phantasm of Boundaries' plans, and it all somehow ties with the civil unrest in the True Moon and the expansion of the human world into its surface.
An epic fic in three parts, it uses a cavalcade of Continuity Porn with some original characters, many of the latter descendants of named characters of the original games. The setting is darker in many places than the original canon, yet it feels like a seamless continuation of Gensokyo's story as it considers the implications of the death of one of its most powerful characters, brilliantly developing one-note characters into fully-developed people, deconstructing Yukari's myth and the consequences it has for Maribel, and an unspeakably ambitious Batman Gambit that closes the trilogy in a dramatic finale.
Iced Fairy also has written a mini sequel series detailing other characters and how they were affected by the events of the main fic, and a number of standalone stories, most of which can be considered as extra worldbuilding for this one.
A New World provides examples of:
- Alternate Continuity: Because this fanfic was made when Magical Astronomy was the latest Secret Sealing Club CD Drama available at the time note , the events of Trojan Green Asteroidnote and the subsequent CDs don't happen.
- Apocalypse How: Class 3A, with the human genocide at the hands of the Lunarians.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Flandre's power is interpreted along these lines. More specifically, what it does is find a thing's (or a person's) point of maximum stress, then take that point to Flandre's hand, where she can effortlessly overload it, blowing it to kingdom come.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: Following Momiji's victory against the Lunarian assassin Jiyuwan, not only is she recognized as the new Great Tengu, but Kanako, acknowledging her as the ruler of the greatest nation remaining in the country, officially declares her the new Shogun of Japan.
- Batman Gambit: Yukari plays a frightening one. First, long before the second Lunar Invasion, she had the old Tachibana head killed by Suika. This ensured the family would harbor a deadly grudge and seek to kill her at all costs. When they successfully killed her, she made sure her soul would reincarnate with her powers intact, so the grudge would not cool. Her reincarnation Maribel continued the chain of falling dominoes by reaching the Moon, cluing the surviving members of the family as to her identity and whereabouts when the Watatsukis kicked her to Gensokyo. This eventually culminated in the coup d' etat that killed the Watatsukis and resulted in attempted extermination of humanity. This resulted in Gensokyo's boundaries fading and the greatest Lunarian weapons unusable, ensuring war on Earth. And that was merely a colossal feint to distract Acala, the watcher god of the North Star, to allow the Great Dragon of the Big Dipper to attack him. With Acala dead, the youkai ceased to be subject to mortal thought, completing all of Yukari's goals. Yukari herself lampshades how impractically complex the plan would have been had she not had the complete certainty everyone would be dancing to her tune, and how the only ones who could have stopped it... were the Watatsukis, by leaving Earth in complete peace.
- Big Damn Heroes: Once Momiji gets past her reservations and finds the strength to call for help, Kanako appears to stall Jiyuwan, allowing Momiji to deal the killing blow.
- Break the Haughty: Eiki, while very critical of Maribel's use of Yukari's power, agrees with her, as she has been waiting to judge the Lunarians for a very long time...
- Call-Back: The animosity between the Scarlet Devil Mansion and the Moon is referenced multiple times.
- Combat Hand Fan: When helping Momiji against Jiyuwan, Kanako combines a katana with a heavy metal tessen.
- CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: After changing the rules at Eientei, after suffering radiation exposure, Maribel suffers a heart attack. Ran punches her in the chest to restart her heart. It's not particularly pretty, but Mary does get off a lot lighter than she should have.
- Cruel Mercy: Tenshi gives Heaven's Mercy to the Lunarian warrior who killed Suika, stopping her suicide attempt and instead cursing her never to die until all of the damage the Lunarians inflicted upon Earth is healed, ordering her to aid others even at her own detriment.
- Dawn of an Era: The end result of Yukari's plans is a merged world where magic and science can peacefully coexist and youkai are no longer slaves to human thought.
- Dead All Along: Yukari. Her Thanatos Gambit hinges entirely on the Lunarians being moronic enough not to accept it.
- Defector from Decadence: Everyone from Eientei save Tei. Kaguya even lampshades she's come to love Earth's beautiful impurity in contrast to Luna's pretentions.
- De-power: Eirin hoped to keep Lunarian revenge in check by ensuring her weapons would all suffer this when used by an impure wielder or in war against humans. When Maribel changes the rules, every Lunarian weapon of mass destruction and most of their best technology stops working, heavily hindering Tenshou's plans.
- Determinator: Mokou. Kept in place by an anti-Hourai immortal poison and paralyzed with a high-voltage taser, she literally explodes in rage when the Lunarian attempting to seal her makes the mistake of saying she won't manage to help Keine.
- Do Not Go Gentle: The Lunarians who refused to leave the True Moon are comparable to the Eldar in their ruthlessness and desire to stay alive, killing countless billions of humans to ensure the survival of two hundred and twenty Lunarians.
- Dragon with an Agenda: Lord Shimeri. Unlike the other Lunarians, he's interested in ruling Earth, and intends to establish an empire with Eientei as its capital and Kaguya as his wife.
- End of an Age: Yukari's death locked Gensokyo's boundaries, cutting off the premier source of human meat for the local youkai, slowly dragging human-youkai relations back to the more brutal combat styles before spellcards. For the Scarlet Devil Mansion, following Meiling's death of age, Sakuya challenged Youmu to a Duel to the Death out of grief. It ended in a Mutual Kill. The grief of the death of two of her friends struck Remilia badly, so she entered torpor and put Flandre in charge of the mansion, having added Marisa, Alice, Huian (Meiling and Sakuya's daughter), Dinah (Alice and Koakuma's daughter) and Juri (Marisa and Alice's daughter) to the Mansion's roster.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The Lunarians outright commit genocide in an effort to remain "pure".
- Exact Words: Ellen's prophecy states that, out of the main powers, only the Moriya Shrine, the Myouren Temple, and Eientei will remain in Gensokyo after the battle. The Scarlet Devil Mansion is accidentally shunted into Makai; Hitomi Hakurei dies while her daughter Kanon moves to Former Hell with Orin following her transformation into a kassha, leaving the Hakurei Shrine to be occupied by Maribel and Renko; and the Mountain rises as the new ruling house of the entire country.
- Facepalm: Ran does a facepalm when Renko of all people suggests an extremely simple solution to her current dilemma. Ran wants to keep Maribel in Gensokyo, since if she gets out it's extremely unlikely she will ever be able to return due to the hardened boundary. Renko simply suggests moving to a third location first and from there to Gensokyo. Ran's very frustrated that the idea never occurred to her, in spite of Makai filling the requirements to a T.
- Fantastic Racism: The Lunarians' obsession with purity leads them to commit unthinkable acts against Earth due to thinking it inferior.
- Fate Worse than Death: A rival of Eirin takes a Hourai Elixir prototype that only blocks violent death, thinking that her natural Lunarian purity will protect her against natural death. Eirin reveals said prototype, like Hourai itself, is intrinsically flawed and impure, and that it destroyed said purity when taken. Marisa uses the moment to trap the Lunarian within the burning core of her Hakkero, ensuring she'll burn and regenerate continuously for the rest of her natural life.
- Feed It with Fire: The Lunarian in charge of cowing the fairies into submission keeps using high-level spellcards against Cirno, not realizing the conceptual energy he's using to power his spells, unlike heat, could be absorbed by the fairy. By the time Aya points it out, Cirno has gorged on enough energy to almost consume the power of a spellcard invoking the spirit of fire itself.
- Finger in the Mail: As a response to the Lunarians' offer of "pardon", Flandre sends back a box containing three scrolls (one involving bestiality, another with a rabbit stew recipe, and another stew recipe
with a different main ingredient) and the ears of the messenger. Who actually accepted the offer to join the SDM's staff and later had her ears healed. - The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: It takes literally less than a minute after Remilia awakens from centuries of torpor to start an argument with Flandre.
- God's Hands Are Tied: A literal case, in that Kanako and Suwako would dearly love to help against the Lunarians, but they are unable to do so unless someone calls for their help (otherwise they can be banished with zero effort). Both are tremendously frustrated that the main factions in Gensokyo refuse to call them for fear of looking weak when the much more physical threat of the Lunarians is literally knocking down the door.
- Godzilla Threshold: Kanako, when she sees the Lunarian invasion is imminent and that nobody is going to fight them head-on, asks Suwako to release the Mishaguji.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Turns out Renko's abilities, with the proper focus, can become lethal Game Breakers. Inspired by the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception and Flandre's power, she gives herself the ability to find the "pressure point" of objects.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Mystia. Keine tries to save her by transforming her into a protective spirit for the village, but Mystia refuses, on the grounds that she wasn't helping the humans - she just hated the Lunarians, and as a free youkai, she finds the idea of being bound to a single place intolerable. Keine accepts her decision, acknowledging even youkai would need heroes in the new era.
- Higher-Tech Species: The Lunarians. This lasts until Maribel's changes render the vast bulk of Lunarian tech useless, per Eirin's designs. While they remain fearsome enemies to Gensokyo, they can no longer be considered on the same league as they were once, and their tiny numbers and their virulent hatred for humanity and youkai all but doom the species.
- A House Divided: Gensokyo's denizens, if they were capable of working together, could theoretically launch a Zerg Rush to curb stomp the Lunarians; Kanako notices their focus in attacking Eientei means a decisive sweep could outright wipe them out. However, of the main ruling houses, the kappa would not fight alone, the oni chose not to enter the fray (except for Suika), and the Tengu have problems with their Might Makes Right leadership (there's no clear successor and there would be likely a Succession Crisis). This works until Tenshou's assassin kills the Great Tengu, allowing Momiji to become the new Great Tengu by right of battle by killing said assassin. This averts the problem entirely, allowing her to order full mobilization of the Tengu and Kappa armies. After that, it becomes a battle of attrition the Lunarians simply can't win.
- Humans Are Insects: Lord Tenshou's opinion. Eirin disagrees, if only to grant some minimal value to a mortal's life.
- Hypocrite: Many Lunarians. Toyohime even ponders tossing a Hourai branch at one to see what would happen.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Ran, after Yukari's death, had to take very difficult decisions that resulted in the end of Gensokyo's golden era, and was partly responsible for Hitomi Hakurei's hate for her job, but she feels the needs necessitate the means. She hates every second of it and is desperate to change things to the good old days, but is largely powerless to change things, leaving Gensokyo in a slow decline, until Maribel arrives and the boundaries start weakening to their "normal" levels. Even then, she's willing to sort of help her... by forcing her to transform into a youkai, so she can have time to fix Gensokyo without worrying about her mortal lifetime. When confronted with incontrovertible evidence of her manipulations, Ran collapses and begs Maribel to help, forgoing the aloof attitude she'd kept until then.
- In the Back: Mima was apparently killed this way.
- Daiyousei shanks the Lunarian sent to keep the fairies down with an icicle before he can unleash his final spellcard.
- Ironic Echo: "Why?"
- Killed Off for Real: The Watatsuki sisters, an enormous fraction of all humans worldwide, Suika, Mystia, Hitomi Hakurei, Yuuka, an enormous amount of low-level youkai, most of the remaining Lunarians, and, in a sense, Yukari - she's been Deader than Dead for more than three hundred years before the story even starts, it takes the Lunarians that long to realize and acknowledge it.
- Last of Its Kind: After the Earth gets nuked and most of the humans on Earth die, amongst the billions of casualties are Maribel's family, meaning that she's (save for one cousin who also manages to survive) the last of the Hearn family still living.
- Lodged-Blade Recycling: Kanon Hakurei takes the knife lodged in Mima's back and uses it to kill the Lunarian assailant who just killed her mother.
- Magic Feather: Byakuren tricks Maribel into invoking a mantra so she can unlock the vast bulk of her power. Truth be told, all she needed to do was to believe.
- The Man Behind the Man: The supposed Big Bad, and indeed, every character in Gensokyo, Luna and Earth, is shown to be a puppet to Yukari.
- Man Bites Man: Momiji tears out Jiyuwan's throat out with her teeth.
- Manipulative Bitch: To absolutely no one's surprise, Yukari. Three hundred years after her death and everyone's still dancing to her tune.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: After Acala is attacked by the great dragon, a downpour of dragon blood washes over Gensokyo, granting youkai power to normal people and increasing the power levels of normal youkai. Kanon Hakurei, one of the few remaining direct descendants of Reimu's, is soaked in the blood and is transformed into a kassha.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!":
- Everyone from Gensokyo, even Ran, gets frightened out of their minds when Yukari's fully revived, apparently at the expense of Maribel.
- Mere instants after Yukari is revived, she triggers another one from everyone, from both sides, when she reveals the sheer extent of her master plan.
"That's right. I started a war with the moon, wiped out half the youkai in existence, assassinated your father, arranged my own death, and set the stage for this bloody, terrible war that's already killed billions. And it was all just a diversion!" - Merged Reality: Yukari's ultimate triumph - the successful fusion of the worlds of magic and science.
- Mind Rape: Utsuho's taken out of commission after her divine abilities instead feed her the pain of countless innocents screaming for mercy as they die of the nukes.
- My Death Is Just the Beginning: Yukari tries to warn her executioners. They don't listen.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: None of the Eientei residents finds the Lunarian plan to be anything less than utterly repulsive.
- Next Sunday A.D.: Being a fanfic based on the Secret Sealing Club, it takes place sometime in the future (which according to Alice was 3000 years from her point of view). Despite that, Maribel seems to own a music player.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Lord Tenshou is the leader of the Lunarians and primary antagonist, but is no good in combat. Unusually, he's fully aware of his status as such and his glaring deficiencies as a military leader, and would very much prefer to play second banana to a better commander; however, the nature of his power ensures he'll be named primary tactician anyway. Yukari uses this trait to utterly screw him over.
- Not So Harmless:
- Tei kills a Lunarian commander by tricking him into a pit trip... lined with bamboo spikes.
- The fairies, but especially Cirno and Daiyousei. The Lunarian warrior sent to keep them down refuses to believe them a credible threat and dies like a chump.
- Nuke 'em: The Lunarians fake enormous amounts of telemetry data in order to trick the world governments into annihilating Earth in nuclear war. And even then the humans refused to launch the missiles, so the Lunarians did it for them, dooming both humanity and themselves.
- Only the Worthy May Pass: Jiyuwan's personal energy shield only allows pure beings to pass. Momiji manages to clear her heart in time to kill him.
- Portal Network: Maribel repeats Yukari's trick of opening a portal through the moon's reflection shining in a pond to reach the True Moon.
- Psychic Powers: Sareseno Watatsuki is a psychometer. He uses his power to record the history of the rise and fall of his race.
- Pure Is Not Good: Youkai can never be pure no matter how good they behave. Celestials and most gods can never become impure no matter how vile they behave, while Lunarians have to work to mantain their purity. Killing impure beings such as youkai or humans for the benefit of pure beings is considered a pure act, no matter the reason. For the sake of an utterly hypocritical "purity", the Lunarians almost annihilate humanity and remain pure. Until Maribel changes the rules and kicks them off their high pedestal.
- The Purge: Many moon rabbits refused to execute the order to eradicate humanity. For their moral integrity they were executed as traitors.
- Reality Warper: Maribel changes certain rules of reality to ensure the Lunarians cease to be pure.
- Rewriting Reality: After being soaked in dragon blood, Keine starts wielding her hakutaku powers to literally rewrite history, turning the entire battle against the Lunarians with hundreds of little actions that cumulatively ruin their offensive. She also ponders using the power to save Mystia, but ultimately decides against it given she chose death of her own will and that in the new era, even youkai would require heroes.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The Watatsukis and Lord Tsukuyomi, the de facto Lunarian rulers are fairly resonable people. Jiyuwan, under Lord Tenshou's orders, assassinates the Watatsukis as they're returning from a visit to Eirin, so the blame will be pinned on Gensokyo, and since Tsukuyomi has no wish to enter a direct war with Earth (and already doubts their place in Luna, given the humans are already beginning to colonize the False Moon), he leaves with the less extremist part of Lunarian society to Another Dimension, leaving Tenshou and his cronies free to unleash hell upon Humanity.
- Reincarnation:
- Maribel is Yukari's. Initially, Patchouli gives her a 55% chance of being Yukari's reincarnation and 30% of being her descendant. Byakuren confirms the former, and she and Maribel chat as to what means to Mary and the afterlife that awaits her. Yukari is apparently resurrected entirely at the climax through Maribel, but it turns out Mary's just projecting some dim memories and her own vision of Yukari.
- Yuyuko implies the Lunarian warrior Akiyoshi is Youmu's reincarnation.
- Retirony: Hitomi Hakurei dies a short time before she was due to retire and pass on her duties to her daughter.
- Revenge Before Reason: The Lunarians use a centuries-old murder to justify their attempt at extermination. Lunarian warrior Shoutoku gets it particularly bad, so when Tenshi decides to stop fooling and show her what her revenge really means, she doesn't take it well.
- The Right of a Superior Species: The excuse the Lunarians use to justify destroying the Earth is that it's their right as superior beings to humans and youkai. It doesn't do them much good, especially when it's pointed out that the Lunarians should then have no reason to resist if a society superior to them destroyed them for the latter's own sake.
- Screw You, Elves!: Even Eientei's resident Lunarians are horrified with Tenshou, which should give you a good idea of how despicable they find his actions.
- Seers: Lord Tenshou has a variant of this power: he can ask how many people (and who) to assign to a specific task in order to maximize the probability of a particular result. While normally a priceless skill, Tenshou is not the brightest commander and is dependent on the wording of the results he wants. Yukari is able to effortlessly fool him so he will always ask for her death, when in reality she has been long dead, and even Maribel can do no more than channel a halfway-realistic Yukari at best.
- Shatterpoint Tap: After some thought, Renko classifies Flandre's power as a variation that has the additional game-breaking benefit of moving an object's point of maximum stress to her hand, where she can easily overload it with her magic, blowing them up. She later manages to manipulate her own visual powers to give herself a similar ability.
- Shout-Out: Yukari uses many of GLaDOS' lines from Portal 2. Each line fits perfectly in context, and really, only adds to Yukari's status as The Dreaded.
- In Chapter 8, she is also implied to have gone through an Obi-Wan Moment, quoting Obi-Wan word for word to her murderers' faces.
- Sibling Rivalry: Between Remilia and Flandre. After Flan got her turn to lead the Mansion for a couple of centuries and matured a bit, both sisters start butting heads on authority issues.
- Strongly Worded Letter: The Scarlet Devil Mansion's denizens have a brief discussion on how to best respond to the utterly insulting offer of the Lunarians to "spare" them when they come down to raze Gensokyo. Marisa espouses a Cluster F-Bomb-laden answer, while Patchouli prefers something more subtly insulting.
- Succession Crisis: The Tengu have a relatively functioning meritocracy as government. This worked pretty well for them until they realize that the Lunarian attack means their bureaucracy would have no time to set a legitimate successor in case the Great Tengu was killed. The ancestral option is to invoke Might Makes Right, but the idea of a civil war in the middle of said attack is so unthinkable, the Great Tengu prefers to stay put, let himself die, and declare his assassin's killer his successor. Thankfully, between this and the assassin's Only the Worthy May Pass force field, Momiji's rise becomes indisputable.
- Telepathy: The property of lunar rabbits to communicate mentally is shared by Lord Shimeri, one of the Lunarian generals, who uses it to coordinate his attacks. He tries convincing Reisen to surrender via this method while attempting to infiltrate Eientei himself. Distracted, he gets knocked into a pit trap and killed by Tei, bellowing telepathically, first to be released, and at the end, begging for mercy.
- Tempting Fate: Koakuma mentions at the first dinner she has with Maribel and Renko that they probably will never have to deal with Lunarians again.
- Thanatos Gambit: Yukari's plans included her death as a key requirement. Three hundred years later, they were completed without a single hitch.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Lunarian assassin Jiyuwan struggles with his loyalty to the Lunarians versus his personal morals, and is immensely proud when his son Akiyoshi makes his choice to Good without the same hangups.
- Took a Level in Badass: Cirno's powers are massively boosted when she eats most of the power of an attacking Lunarian's spellcards. Daiyousei kills the Lunarian before he can complete the final card, as she's terrified of what Cirno could become, fully knowing that fairies aren't meant to hold that kind of power.
- Trapped in Another World: Renko and Maribel are trapped in Gensokyo in the first place as a punishment by the Lunarians for trespassing on their territory during Magical Astronomy.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Yukari confided part of her plan to Yuyuko. Keeping perfectly in character for both, Yuyuko spilling the beans might have been part of said plan.
- Unstoppable Rage: Mima unleashes hell on Hitomi Hakurei's killer for murdering the descendant of one of the two people who believed she had any right to exist.
- Unwitting Pawn: Lord Tenshou gets played like a cheap kazoo by Yukari.
- Villainous Breakdown: Lord Tenshou gets to enjoy the success of his plan for less than five seconds before Yukari shows him just how thoroughly she's owned him, which causes him to break down.
- Was It Really Worth It?: Tenshi asks if the Lunarian that killed her Only Friend thinks doing so was worth it. The answer (no) and the response (a suicide attempt) so enrage her the silly ditz decides to get serious.
- Who Dares?: "Who are you to judge me?". Said by Mary to Eiki Shiki, Yamaxanadu, Chief Judge of Hell. Kaguya's left paralyzed with laughter.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Sareseno Watatsuki moans about the utter disgust he feels towards the unchanging stillness of the True Moon and the attempted amortality of its residents.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: A particularly bloodthirsty Lunarian gets in a brutal fight with Yuuka, who she barely manages to kill. Moments later, as she's luxuriating in her victory, she starts choking on Medicine's poisons and suffers a Neck Snap for her troubles.
