Concept 1: Maomao (Apothecary Diaries)

My initial initial thought is AU, same as canon at the start, gets kidnapped and forced to work within the Imperial Palace, gets Noticed for being smart and apothecary shit,

then gets somehow roped into being a spy. for the imperials. by being sent to the rebels.

OK so while that works, there is something you can also do

A big way that people join the Crimson Corsairs is by being liberated

So it's entirely possible she was serving a lord or lady and got liberated

And it's like "welp I guess I'm here now"

that's choice number two for Maomao then lol

and prolly the easier one which lbh I prolly wanna go with

I'm going to also say I am developing a system specifically for characters like Maomao in mind

oh?

Where in the early part of the month you can prepare, say, a shitload of poisons

Which then become available to the operations team during the mission

o ho nice

I'm generally setting it up so that there will be two major phases of each month, a prep phase which Maomao would likely be part of and an operations phase

Although I could see Maomao doing double duty as a supplier and negotiator if it came to it or some madame in Elysium makes her get dolled up to go spy on clients

Concept 2: Linie (Frieren: Beyond Journey's End)

Linie is a demon,

whose magic is the ability to perfectly imitate weapons with her magic and movements with her body

the perfect mimic for fighting styles,

but of course that comes with the downside of being a demon

which is uhhhhhhhhhhh a whole big thing in Frieren

Mainly that she can't even conceptualize human emotion

and wants to kill humans for idk reasons

so you know,

issues

Thinking she would, specifically, be OU here rather than AU, because I don't know how you'd AU that into this setting and also I wanna play around with the way demons work in Frieren

Maomao slots in very easily to the game concept, Linie is more.... everything

but Linie could serve as a non-Imperial antagonist for a bit before plot either gets her killed or somehow joining up

Concept 3: Izutsumi or Marcille (Dungeon Meshi)

join the dungeon meshi cast that will no doubt be there

I'm...also looking at Marcille

So I think you should do Izutsumi

well, Maomao is still priority 1 atm

I'm just throwing out other ideas to see if one sticks

(Villain app Falin)

Concept 4: Cagliostro (Granblue Fantasy)

The founder of alchemy, who crafted immortality AND transitioning with her own two hands, the trans icon,

Transitioning is possible in this setting because I'm a transgal and I say so deal with it

she's basically Maomao in that she prepares a bunch of shit but is also a lot stronger than Maomao because she's fucking Cagliostro--

yeah but she invented it in her canon at least, she's canonically trans and created alchemy in order to transition

we love and support Cagliostro

We can actually work with that

The empire is repressive and shit so she would have had a major hand in developing the means in the Crimson Corsairs and making them available

Is about how that'd look

she'd be great in the game I think, she's basically like

an evil mad scientist, except a good guy

and also at the same time, always putting on a cute facade, which breaks away all the time to show the cackling madwoman underneath

So another Vault member, got it XD

Maomao I could see going to Flotsam or possibly even Elysium since she's used to living in the pleasure district

Concept 5: I have no idea how these would work in this game but Imma mention 'em anyway because I've wanted to play them

5.1: Hibari Oozora (Stop!! Hibari-kun)

Trans girl, heir to a yakuza family, but ultimately from a comedy canon and I'm not sure how I'd translate that over

5.2: Lum (Urusei Yatsura)

Same general feeling as Hibari, she might be too zany and comedic for the game

that's all I can think of

Maomao and Cagliostro fit the best though honestly

but also have too much overlap to do both

I think I'm still leaning Maomao

I think Maomao would be a fantastic fit

She just needs to find ways to avoid encountering splendid frogs XD