And if that was the actual case being made, perhaps you'd have a point.
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
Flippant one-liners? Okay: you know what you call expanding too rapidly? Exploding.
The fact of the matter is that if we try to take all of Tokyo and divide it up among outside parties there will be a significant fraction of those who remain in Tokyo, at least 70 girls (10%) but probably more like 210-420 (30-60%), who will object to being forced to join and be subservient to a bunch of foreign meguca. What exactly do you plan on doing with these people? Do we conquer them by force? Assuming we can even do that, how exactly do you intend on subduing and enslaving a group of magical girls between two and four times the size of our newly-expanded group?
I don't really think that you're arguing that we can or should do any of these things, nor can we leave them alone to be conquered by random expeditionary forces fielded by the Junta or whoever else comes along. That leaves a NATO-like alliance:
- We take whoever wants to come to us, enough territory to support them, and a proportional amount of "free" territory from the empty border regions.
- Nagoya does the same.
- Heaven's Chosen also takes their share of empty territory, plus extra for whomever wants to join them.
- The Magick Company takes a bit of territory in exchange for Sachiko providing ironclad treaty documents.
- The rest of the independent girls get enough territory to sustain themselves, and are induced by peer pressure to be signatories to the Tokyo Accords or inevitably find themselves "intervened on".
Here, have a (draft, incomplete) charter, for if we go along that path. There are aspects that still need work, but we're a long way from needing to solidify it.
Commonwealth Charter
Membership
Declaration 1: Territory allocations during the creation of the Commonwealth will be fair and equitable, based on the size and makeup of each group applying for membership. Further growth management is the responsibility of each member state.
Declaration 2: The representative of each Commonwealth state that agrees to this charter does so on the behalf of her entire group. Enforcement of the charter will apply to all members.
Declaration 3: Amendments to the Commonwealth Charter may be made with the agreement of 3/4 of the Commonwealth states.
Declaration 4: A state's internal affairs are private, as long as they do not conflict with the agreed-to articles.
Declaration 5: A state may withdraw from the Commonwealth 60 days after giving notification of such to all other Commonwealth members. All privileges and responsibilities pertaining to the Commonwealth will be revoked.
Article 1: All members of the Commonwealth shall strive to ensure that demon strength never rises to a level that threatens to spawn youma (ie: Class 3 demons).
Article 2: No member of the Commonwealth will poach territory from any of its other members.
Article 3: The entirety of Tokyo should be considered a Safe Passage area for the populations of the Commonwealth states.
Article 4: Members of the Commonwealth will help defend their fellow members in the event of attacks targeting the Commonwealth, and provide aid and support in the case of any natural disaster.
Article 5: Conflicts between Commonwealth states (including violations of the agreed-to articles) may be resolved via a council formed from representatives of the senior members of the Commonwealth, who have the authority to assess judgements and penalties.
- Expected starting senior members: Nagoya Magocracy, Serenissima Imperium, Heaven's Chosen, Magick Company
Article 6: Members should be willing to provide to other members reasonable support and cooperation relative to their talents and specialties (for example, in areas such as training, protection, research, development, and business ventures).
Article 7: Members of the Commonwealth may collectively form a police force for the sake of public safety, if approved by a majority of the Commonwealth members.
Article 8: If a police force is created, laws and rules of enforcement must be developed and agreed to in a fair and equitable manner.
Membership
Declaration 1: Territory allocations during the creation of the Commonwealth will be fair and equitable, based on the size and makeup of each group applying for membership. Further growth management is the responsibility of each member state.
Declaration 2: The representative of each Commonwealth state that agrees to this charter does so on the behalf of her entire group. Enforcement of the charter will apply to all members.
Declaration 3: Amendments to the Commonwealth Charter may be made with the agreement of 3/4 of the Commonwealth states.
Declaration 4: A state's internal affairs are private, as long as they do not conflict with the agreed-to articles.
Declaration 5: A state may withdraw from the Commonwealth 60 days after giving notification of such to all other Commonwealth members. All privileges and responsibilities pertaining to the Commonwealth will be revoked.
Article 1: All members of the Commonwealth shall strive to ensure that demon strength never rises to a level that threatens to spawn youma (ie: Class 3 demons).
Article 2: No member of the Commonwealth will poach territory from any of its other members.
Article 3: The entirety of Tokyo should be considered a Safe Passage area for the populations of the Commonwealth states.
Article 4: Members of the Commonwealth will help defend their fellow members in the event of attacks targeting the Commonwealth, and provide aid and support in the case of any natural disaster.
Article 5: Conflicts between Commonwealth states (including violations of the agreed-to articles) may be resolved via a council formed from representatives of the senior members of the Commonwealth, who have the authority to assess judgements and penalties.
- Expected starting senior members: Nagoya Magocracy, Serenissima Imperium, Heaven's Chosen, Magick Company
Article 6: Members should be willing to provide to other members reasonable support and cooperation relative to their talents and specialties (for example, in areas such as training, protection, research, development, and business ventures).
Article 7: Members of the Commonwealth may collectively form a police force for the sake of public safety, if approved by a majority of the Commonwealth members.
Article 8: If a police force is created, laws and rules of enforcement must be developed and agreed to in a fair and equitable manner.
We want to grab as much territory as possible. The question is, how much is possible?
This is an unprecedented opportunity for territory expansion. Territory is the primary limiter in what you can do- almost everything else can be gained relatively easily over the course of a few months, but territory is becoming very scarce very fast. When we started it was mostly 1-3 meguca per group, easy to do diplomacy on. Now though, everyone is forming larger and larger power blocks, and we're still a very small fish thanks to our incredibly slow growth rate. (Diplomacy-only expansion, 0% hunting casualties, etc.)
We are on relatively good terms with most of the parties who will initially be in Tokyo, particularly Nagoya. They have seen that we put in a lot of effort to clear out Tokyo, and should be willing to give us a corresponding piece of the pie. It'll be expensive to bring such a massive area up to our standards, but we can take out a loan. If there aren't enough girls available, QB is always willing to contract more. Yes, they'll be greens. But soon our refugee group will soon be vets, and a bunch of the natives in Tokyo are going to be vets already.
---
I think that we can actually support a massive expansion in size. Right now the natives are desperate for any option and we're on relatively good terms with the neighbors. After Tokyo is done, we're not going to be able to grow our territory unless other groups want to join us or another crisis happens. I'm pretty sure that borders are starting to stabilize, and right now, ours are far too small to be anything on a national stage.
In the worst case scenario from taking too much territory, someone invades us and we're forced to consolidate our forces. Aside from a slight morale loss, it's not really a huge difference from just not taking that territory in the first place.
I think we can grab a lot of territory. We'd lose a bunch to inefficiency as we do a reorganization to deal with the changes, but it'd be worth it in the end. It's a very solid trade to do a few turns of restructuring and training followed by a doubling of our capabilities.
edit: removed hard numbers. I don't want to commit to anything yet, but we want to take as much as we can. ~400 at a minimum, IMO.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for territory expansion. Territory is the primary limiter in what you can do- almost everything else can be gained relatively easily over the course of a few months, but territory is becoming very scarce very fast. When we started it was mostly 1-3 meguca per group, easy to do diplomacy on. Now though, everyone is forming larger and larger power blocks, and we're still a very small fish thanks to our incredibly slow growth rate. (Diplomacy-only expansion, 0% hunting casualties, etc.)
We are on relatively good terms with most of the parties who will initially be in Tokyo, particularly Nagoya. They have seen that we put in a lot of effort to clear out Tokyo, and should be willing to give us a corresponding piece of the pie. It'll be expensive to bring such a massive area up to our standards, but we can take out a loan. If there aren't enough girls available, QB is always willing to contract more. Yes, they'll be greens. But soon our refugee group will soon be vets, and a bunch of the natives in Tokyo are going to be vets already.
I really doubt that. The natives are currently fighting for their lives in a horribly hostile environment. I'd bet that the number who hate being forced to join to the point of taking any sort of action will be in the single digits, at least in the short term. If there is bad mismanagement I could see that number rising over time, but right now they're desperate for anything better than death or a gem-coma.
---
I think that we can actually support a massive expansion in size. Right now the natives are desperate for any option and we're on relatively good terms with the neighbors. After Tokyo is done, we're not going to be able to grow our territory unless other groups want to join us or another crisis happens. I'm pretty sure that borders are starting to stabilize, and right now, ours are far too small to be anything on a national stage.
In the worst case scenario from taking too much territory, someone invades us and we're forced to consolidate our forces. Aside from a slight morale loss, it's not really a huge difference from just not taking that territory in the first place.
I think we can grab a lot of territory. We'd lose a bunch to inefficiency as we do a reorganization to deal with the changes, but it'd be worth it in the end. It's a very solid trade to do a few turns of restructuring and training followed by a doubling of our capabilities.
edit: removed hard numbers. I don't want to commit to anything yet, but we want to take as much as we can. ~400 at a minimum, IMO.
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So you're saying that we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators, huh? I can pretty confidently say there is no chance of that happening for 99% of the Tokyo population, which is what you'd need for independents to be "in the single digits". I would be pleasantly surprised if we get more than 80% of the remaining hard-cases to fall in line behind one or another member of our little Grand Alliance, and given that there are 700 girls remaining in Tokyo that's a lot of hold-outs.
We're not fighting an ideological group in a foreign county with a very different culture, we're in our own country fighting a bunch of giant monsters. Those are very different situations.
For now, the number of Tokyo magical girls that will be willing to join us is a complete unknown. I have absolutely no problem with accepting all of them and expanding to an appropriate territory size to match, whether that's 50 or 500 girls. Anything beyond that is another matter entirely, but is nothing but speculation at this point in time. It's not something we can resolve until it actually happens and helix gives us hard numbers.
Really, this argument is mostly about chewing up time while waiting for an update. There's no way to reach any actual definite conclusions.
Really, this argument is mostly about chewing up time while waiting for an update. There's no way to reach any actual definite conclusions.
It really doesn't take much to create a sectarian divide. Being born in two different towns is enough. Being born in the same region and being rivals for the same resource is enough. Living a few blocks away and wearing different clothes is enough (see Bloods-Cryps). So long as there is the ability to draw a distinction, that's enough to create a sectarian divide bitter enough to cause generational wars.
Invading "their" city and taking it over? You can bet that's going to be enough.
Heh, well yeah; what else are we going to do. Real work?
But it still has to be a group, rather then a collection of individuals. Tokyo isn't nearly unified enough for it to become a point of division. Even before the collapse, they would have cared about individual groups rather then about Tokyo vs. non-Tokyo meguca and now they don't even have that.
It takes more then just living in a city to make people think of it as their city. We can't be taking it from them, because at this point only the delusional could believe they control it.
There are differences here. Primarily:
1) Similar culture (Japanese), so less of a culture clash between the natives and the outsiders.
2) The threat is a greater other. You're not going to see anyone proclaim that things were better under Demon control.
3) Worse current conditions. Iraq still mostly functioned as a country, and a large amount of the population wasn't really targeted. Tokyo, on the other hand, has literally everyone who could be affected by our control as currently in a desperate life-or-death situation.
4) No unified group. The different Tokyo groups were doing massive amounts of fighting before the collapse. They wouldn't think of themselves as Tokyo-ians, they'd primarily identify under whichever group they were a part of (or just working as an independent).
Admittedly, we can't be certain of this. If the Tokyo natives band together and form their own group, we'd basically be forced to back down and accept it. Right now, however, they're scattered, and probably still don't like each other. The far greater problems, I suspect, will be forcing cooperation and dealing with outside forces. If we don't have the solid loyalty of the natives (and we won't) it'll be hard to fend off attacks and poaching from other groups.
I'm working on it I am. There's a lot of contemplation involved.
I've even added your group's current in character belief as to extent of other major groups holdings to the map. (Sendai appears to be ridiculously massive, but population wise it's not nearly as impressive because population density in that region is far lower.)
I've actually been shuffling around sizes a bit over time. Which is fine because in character your information (with the standard disclaimer that no side in this quest has perfect information) is total swiss cheese so obviously your estimates change over time.
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Actually I was thinking more along the lines of the United Nations Trustee formulation.
Basically there are zones of influence that the custodial power is responsible for. Inside that zone, the custodial power can annex, vassalize, or promote independent states, etc. All according to whatever approach the custodial power thinks best.
I figure a bunch of the Tokyo Girls will want to actually formally join up. Perhaps as many as 2/3rds but possible as little as 1/3. Either way, the remaining girls that want to remain independent are going to be starting from ground zero because of the devastation of resources. No jobs, no apartments, etc.
So what we do is push those girls into a free association with us (this will then be our competing model for the Nagoya vassal program).
We do this with a combination of sticks and carrots, mainly carrots.
1: We institute effective Safe Passage and Business is Business through out our zone of influence. Justified by insistence that we intend to prevent future internal Tokyo conflict.
2: No fighting over territory either. Hunting territory is established based on the size of the initial group. Justified by insistence that we intend to prevent future internal Tokyo conflict. Potentially we might even insist on not re-establishing old groups, have to get a feel first for how hard that would be to get girls to agree to and how risky it would be to allow.
3: All independent organizations are invited into our massive expansion of the courier business throughout the whole zone of influence. This then provides them with a monetary source very early and quickly so it will be our main early carrot.
4: We forbid criminal activities by magical girls on the grounds that the masquerade is more important, and hey, we are providing a legal way to earn money so you don't need it.
5: We also provide training in hunting techniques. This is another carrot, because it allows the building of large cube reserves, which is always appreciated.
6: The Serenes manage relations with other organizations not within the Serene umbrella.
That's the basic package.
Then we add access to research and other benefits as higher, closer levels of association.
I suspect that the Elites are the most likely source of problems, as they would likely be the ones to be in power in a new Tokyo group, they are the most likely to resist outside control.
To the vets and greens, does it really matter if their boss lives in Tokyo or Osaka? As long as they are treated well and the territory is properly managed and things are good, why would they rebel? What would they gain?
@inverted_helix something just occurred to me: given her wish, shouldn't Kyouko have (possibly latent) magic centered on inspiration, mind control, or forcing people to listen and actually consider arguments without dismissing them outright?
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- Location
- South Africa
Apparently, before she rejected her wish, Kyouko could magically enhance her charisma to charm others.
Also, I just wanted to note here that I'm not trying to imply that. There was no railroading, only warnings when things were getting a bit far out of IC behavior limits. Essentially, warning when proposed actions went outside the comfort zone of the people who would actually be performing the actions, with the understanding that the characters in game are not just puppets.
For example, telling Serena to go wipe out the Junta is technically something we could put in a plan, but putting it there doesn't mean it's going to happen. That doesn't mean it's railroading to point out that that's not going to happen. Barriers that have grown organically over the course of the quest are not the same as rail lines that force you to only go in one direction.
- Location
- Head in the clouds
Would this correspond to at least an above average ability to notice such techniques, at least with a vet, maybe an elite?
Turn 34
Turn 34
Tokyo Operations
0.5 Taya and 1 Clairvoyant Vet on Tokyo Dispatch service, based on Mt. Hakone. Keeping an eye out for any youma incursions into the area as well.
Ask Kuybey to keep us informed if the beholder starts to move.
Hunting in Minamiashigara and Odawara (leaving Hadano as a buffer):
2 Elites and 2 Vets Pair Hunting (paired 1 Elite with 1 Vet) w/ teleport and w/ 4 sets of Kevlar armor
Each girl is always equipped with an emergency teleport charm (back to rear lines where dispatch service is), as well as barrier, illusion, and healing charms. Teleport out if warned that a youma is entering the area.
If they meet any magical girls while hunting, refer them to our gossipmonger.
Expected Gross Harvest: ~27.5 cubes
-1 cube for teleport transport
Expected Net Harvest: ~26.5 cubes
Serena & Co. (7 girls)
Based on Mt. Tanzawa. Training the two new girls to not be liabilities in the full aura, learn to communicate, training to fight youma based on what we learned. (Therefor Serena is expected to be transformed the whole time). On standby to attack any youma entering the Minamiashigara, Odawara, Hadano area from Tokyo. Each girl is equipped with full kevlar set, barrier, illusion, and healing charms. Don't pursue youma if they retreat back to Tokyo. If the youma decide to fight, Serena can make the decision on whether to retreat or not (can even call on Minamiashigara hunters for backup if needed).
2 vets on teleport support at the dispatch station. (For deploying Serena and teleport transport for the hunters.) Also creating teleport charms back to the dispatch station for the hunters to have. Equipped with full kevlar.
Ask Kuybey to keep us informed if the beholder starts to move.
Hunting in Minamiashigara and Odawara (leaving Hadano as a buffer):
2 Elites and 2 Vets Pair Hunting (paired 1 Elite with 1 Vet) w/ teleport and w/ 4 sets of Kevlar armor
Each girl is always equipped with an emergency teleport charm (back to rear lines where dispatch service is), as well as barrier, illusion, and healing charms. Teleport out if warned that a youma is entering the area.
If they meet any magical girls while hunting, refer them to our gossipmonger.
Expected Gross Harvest: ~27.5 cubes
-1 cube for teleport transport
Expected Net Harvest: ~26.5 cubes
Serena & Co. (7 girls)
Based on Mt. Tanzawa. Training the two new girls to not be liabilities in the full aura, learn to communicate, training to fight youma based on what we learned. (Therefor Serena is expected to be transformed the whole time). On standby to attack any youma entering the Minamiashigara, Odawara, Hadano area from Tokyo. Each girl is equipped with full kevlar set, barrier, illusion, and healing charms. Don't pursue youma if they retreat back to Tokyo. If the youma decide to fight, Serena can make the decision on whether to retreat or not (can even call on Minamiashigara hunters for backup if needed).
2 vets on teleport support at the dispatch station. (For deploying Serena and teleport transport for the hunters.) Also creating teleport charms back to the dispatch station for the hunters to have. Equipped with full kevlar.
It ironically also cuts into Serena's group's time spent training and trying to learn Japanese. They mostly have the typical commands for combat down at least: withdraw, hold, shield, attack, and the like. Though any real conversation is still running through Hainako or broken English. Acclimating the two new girls to the aura effects is also going more poorly than Serena would like, they're still pretty heavily impaired, though less prone to randomness. Serena also notes that accommodations could use improvement, and she's spending so long on the mountain that there's some concerning civilian behavior. She's had to keep pretty mobile as human hikers seem to have begun flocking to the area.
You have trouble assessing the relative demon strength as well since it's below anything you ever encountered in your own territories or in Kyouko's. You're guessing the starting value was around -30 or -40, your system of measurement was not designed for demons so weak. They're at a level where they're so highly optimized towards siphoning off humans that they're more similar to fungus than animals.
Kyuubey does report that the Beholder has been on the move around the Tokyo area, but it has yet to come close to your border.
You mostly detect girls traveling through the area on their way out of Tokyo, and in sufficient numbers you can't really gauge how many are living in the area.
Money Actions
Pay for welcome packages for the refugees ($250 x 40 = $10,000)
Acquire apartments for the refugees (2 vets, $12,000 for 48 capacity)
You had to buy a huge amount of new supplies for all the girls you decided to accept from Tokyo, and apartments for them as well. While there's no significant difficulty in doing so, your cash reserves took a big hit, particularly with grief cubes seriously devalued as the probability of Tokyo actually being cleared affects the NM's willingness to buy them.
Purchase 6 bulletproof vests and 5 sets of kevlar clothing from Nagoya ($8,600) [brings totals to 34/34]
You purchase additional armor through the NM as well this month to restore the losses you took last month. You're going to need them when you dive back into the fray.
Pet Whisperer (1.0 Nagisa): Now that Nagisa has her basic certification, she needs to actually get some experience. Spend the month volunteering at pet shelters and such to help gain experience and reputation. Be sure to mention to people that you are thinking of starting your own business as a pet trainer.
Nagisa's efforts go fairly well this month. Being able to communicate with the animals is certainly an advantage in taking care of them even if they have no obligation whatsoever to listen. She's definitely noticeably better at calming animals down than just about anyone else, though animals at shelters can be rather depressing.
Second Restaurant (2 Vet): Identify a good second location for our restaurant. Fill out loan applications, plan to get a $600,000 loan for the new restaurant.
Hunting for a restaurant location doesn't go as well as you'd like. The location is crucial to a restaurant's performance and none of the spaces that those you assign the task find are really ideal, there are serious flaws in each of them. The amount of potential customers, zoning, water and gas hook ups, potential competition; all factor into the quality of a location.
Getting a loan on the other hand should be relatively easy once you have the location and permits prepared. Lending is tightening up due to recession, but your business is still performing well.
Training
General Training: 3 Vets and 13 greens
You barely finished training the last batch of new recruits and you're right back into mass training again. This time the batch of trainees is nearly as large as your whole group. Just running herd on them is an adventure in of itself. It's pretty hard to drive the nature of your group into their heads when their experience with magical girl life has been so radically different from your girls it may as well have taken place on another planet.
Fusion casting training:
At present with the difficulties involved this is less assured then other forms of training. 1 veteran/elite + 1 GCU per pair to be trained. Base success chance ~75% subject to modifiers.
- 4x Teleport/Barrier (0.5 Seto, 3.5 vets, 4 cubes)
--- Have 1 group try to develop a long distance deployment of a barrier
- 1x Telepath/barrier (0.5 Taura, 0.5 Kaoru, 1 cube)
--- Try to develop a way to block telepathic communication
- 1x Clairvoyant/telepath (0.5 Taya, 0.5 Taura, 1 cube)
--- Try to develop a way to extend telepathic communication further (to clairvoyance distance)
- 4x Teleport/Barrier (0.5 Seto, 3.5 vets, 4 cubes)
--- Have 1 group try to develop a long distance deployment of a barrier
- 1x Telepath/barrier (0.5 Taura, 0.5 Kaoru, 1 cube)
--- Try to develop a way to block telepathic communication
- 1x Clairvoyant/telepath (0.5 Taya, 0.5 Taura, 1 cube)
--- Try to develop a way to extend telepathic communication further (to clairvoyance distance)
Fusion casting is an intensely magical endeavor, and enough magic is wasted trying to manage it that it would once have been an atrocity. Even now it's a bit worrying with your hunting even with rotating tactics below your monthly cube usage.
Seto struggles with the process quite a bit, blocking the transfer more than most and unbalancing the mix with her magic as well. In the end she manages, but it doesn't really increase the strength of the field much. If she adds much more magic than the vet the result destabilizes. Your two other pairs of teleporter and barrier trying for the teleportation barrier manage just fine. The pair trying for a new variant involving long range barrier projection just can't manage to achieve results though.
Taya and Taura spend much of the month failing terribly at mixing their magic at all. You don't think they ever got more than 2 successful passes in a row the whole month and the level of bickering between the two of them is pretty shocking for two of the most grounded girls in your group.
The telepathic barrier goes a little better. "Can you hear me now?" is a much repeated question as they attempted to tune it just right. They manage to generate pretty significant interference in telepathy. It's more of a garbling than a total shutdown though. And Taura can't maintain the field and test it against her own powers at the same time so she's not sure how effective it would be against a dedicated telepath.
Research
Research, teleport barrier: Further refine the teleport barrier. Have Shinobu and Aiko continue trying to strengthen the effect.
Shinobu and Aiko try their best with occasional thoughts from Keiko and help from another teleporter to test the barrier, but their best isn't nearly enough. They don't even really have a model for what they're doing. They don't know if teleportation transmutes you to energy and you travel to the target at the speed of light, or if you pass through another shorter hyperspace route, or open a wormhole or any number of even odder options. Lack of understanding of basic principles severely inhibits making the barrier more efficient. They're mostly letting instinct and natural flow of magic in response to their desires form the teleportation barrier as it is, which makes it very hard to improve. Maybe if they had some more ideas they'd have a better chance.
Tokyo Analysis (3 Vets): Time to analyze the after action reports and the Youma behavior and adaptations. See if we can figure out anything to ease the killing of them, or make it safer. Determine any signals that a teleport youma is about to teleport. Develop training procedures, etc.
What you've learned from your analysis of the Youma of Tokyo is that they're disturbingly intelligent, perhaps more so than the NM believed. The adaptations that you saw were largely behavioral adaptations, changes in their strategy rather than their biology. Though it's hard to say since you don't have the best grasp on what their traits were individually and collectively to begin with. The certainly have some sort of long range communications capable based on the behavior you saw, though the degree of content to that communication is uncertain.
Something along the lines of determining when they're going to teleport is pretty much impossible though, the delay between a teleporter either meguca or youma wanting to teleport and it happening is basically nonexistent for short range teleports. Not to mention it's not like you can ask a youma how long it was charging up its teleport.
Something that you suspect based off the vorpal sword youma combined with the Beholder is that at least some of them have powers that neutralize meguca powers. It's a significant warning to not take your powers for granted when facing an unknown opponent.
The amount of damage each youma can sustain without death is also quite impressive. Your alpha strike style of engagement seemed effective in general when it could connect with the target, though even those without teleportation were quite capable of dodging.
There's no clear weaknesses across the species that you can exploit in general, at best you can intensify your training and simply be aware of the degree of threat to minimize the effect of momentary surprise from unusual abilities.
Ask Kyubey for the incubator assessment of our Tokyo hunting efforts.
Your culling of the Class 3 population has been sufficient that planned sterilization of the region has been delayed pending results. Of course if you fail the Incubators have sterilization of the area in reserve. The adaptive measures noted in the Class 3s are themselves an interesting and dangerous phenomenon. While they are similar to those observed in lower classifications of demons there have rarely been a sufficient number of Class 3s for such a problem to arise. Only a few similar cases existed in history prior to recent events and this offers a rare opportunity for observation as opposed to theoretical models.
Diplomacy
Gossipmonger
- Keep Nagoya updated about our current plans. We are reviewing results of last month and making plans for next month. This month we will have far fewer actions in Tokyo, and do not require any interdiction teams from Nagoya.
- Keep in contact with the Tokyo natives. Review the impact of recent activities on their situation, as well as keeping track of how things go over this month.
- Process any girls we meet in the Odawara area, try to find out their condition and if they are interested in joining the Serenes.
- Discuss the current situation with all the surrounding area's groups that we're in contact with that are not being contacted elsewhere this turn (14/13, and any other known minor groups). Try to get a handle on how they're dealing with any Tokyo refugees, and if they might be willing to take any in.
- Keep in contact with the Tokyo natives. Review the impact of recent activities on their situation, as well as keeping track of how things go over this month.
- Process any girls we meet in the Odawara area, try to find out their condition and if they are interested in joining the Serenes.
- Discuss the current situation with all the surrounding area's groups that we're in contact with that are not being contacted elsewhere this turn (14/13, and any other known minor groups). Try to get a handle on how they're dealing with any Tokyo refugees, and if they might be willing to take any in.
From what you hear the NM's vassal groups have already been queried for any desire to host extra meguca particularly with the implementation of rotating tactics, and any that were willing to take any have been supplied from cold storage.
You made sufficient progress on the problem that they consider it a good investment in some senses, but there's some dissent on that as punching a hole is causing problems elsewhere. They're already having to put dozens more meguca on ice for at least a few months in efforts to stabilize the Gifu, Nagano, and Toyama prefectures against chain reacting into Youma breeding grounds from the refugees barging into those areas. The influx of additional meguca into those areas is causing some serious problems. And not everyone they're having to put on ice is willing at this point, but they lack other options.
The NM are still interested in hiring a few of your girls to help them manage their hunting operations though. Not as hunters but rather as organizers and quants as you've put it. They could pay you $2k for each of them and they're looking to hire in the range of three to five veterans experienced with managing your hunts. They're expecting them to be useful for at least a few months. They will be provided with access to the data they need though supervised.
From what you can gather from your contacts in Tokyo actual predation activity is significantly down, but large numbers of girls are shuffling around and fleeing now that gaps in the cordon have appeared.
Diplomacy (Kofu): (1 Vet)
- Talk with Kofu about our recent success in Tokyo, and discuss the recent outflow of refugees. See how they are doing, and if they have any space, could they take in a few girls? We are training them in our hunting techniques.
- Discuss possible research/resource trades
- Feel them out about possible cooperation in future Tokyo operations
Contact with Kofu this month isn't a very good situation, from what you gather they've barely held together in the face of a tide of refugees that's basically left them in a total combat mode. They took in the first couple that came by with the open arms they could afford at the time, but quickly were overwhelmed. The rampant hunting of their territory and the flow of girls through the area has basically left them reliant on their reserves as they focus on keeping others out of their territory and trying to keep the demon strength below critical levels. They aren't really sure what they intend to do but the general opinion puts this as your fault.
Diplomacy (Magick Corp): (1 Vet)
- Talk with Magick Corp about our recent success in Tokyo, and discuss the recent outflow of refugees. See how they are doing, and if they have any space, could they take in a few girls? We are training them in our hunting techniques, and would make a copy of our Hunting Manual available.
- Discuss possible research/resource trades
- Do they handle loans for magical girl enterprises? While we could get a loan from a normal bank, we wouldn't mind giving preference to a magical girl business instead. If viable, see what their offers are.
Masaki Sachiko is a bit of an odd character from what you've seen of her. She runs her group as a business, and is undoubtedly very intelligent, but her ruthless businesswoman façade could really use some work. She even tells you straight up what her unique ability is.
Contracts made by her are magically binding. You must agree to the contract of your own will without being forced, but once it is agreed to both sides are bound to the spirit of the contract as they understood it regardless of whether they originally intended to follow through or not.
This is how she can have non-magical staff without causing masquerade issues. Her staff members signed non-disclosure agreements and now are physically incapable of revealing what they agreed not to. They of course have normal employment contracts and receive business standard pay and benefits and normal ability to quit, but their NDAs are decidedly non-standard and continue to apply indefinitely.
She'd be willing to take a two or three more girls if they were willing to agree to her employment terms. The sample copies she sends to you are actually quite lacking in legalese, very straightforward, and succinct - only a single page long. From what you've seen they aren't that bad, mostly it sounds similar to a normal employment agreement: pay in money and cubes in exchange for their work and agreement not to sabotage the company through theft, poaching, or espionage; it even includes employment termination options for both sides, though it would include a continuing but fairly specific NDA about research, dispositions, and the like for a number of years.
She could indeed give you a loan on positively favorable terms. After all she doesn't have to account for default or fraud risk in the same way a normal bank would.
Diplomacy (The Enlightened): (1 Vet)
- Talk with the Enlightened about our recent success in Tokyo, and discuss the recent outflow of refugees. See how they are doing, and if they have any space, could they take in a few girls? We are training them in our hunting techniques, and would make a copy of our Hunting Manual available.
- Discuss possible research/resource trades
- Feel them out about possible cooperation in future Tokyo operations
Talking with the Enlightened is weird and somewhat creepy is how it's described to you by the girl assigned to handle it this month. They went well at any rate. Refugees from Tokyo seem to have begun reaching them, but in sufficiently small numbers that they can handle accepting them rather than turning them away like others have. If your hunting methods increase yields though they could take in a few more, but it's likely to just let them take in a few more of the girls reaching their borders rather than give them such leeway that they could take some off your hand.
They could see offering support but they don't likely have much to offer. Outside perhaps some intelligentsia support.
Diplomacy (Coalition): (1 Vet)
- Talk with the Coalition about our recent success in Tokyo, and discuss the recent outflow of refugees. See how they are doing, and if they have any space, could they take in two or three girls? We are training them in our hunting techniques.
- Discuss other possible research/resource trades
- Feel them out about possible cooperation in future Tokyo operations
While relations between you and the Coalition have certainly thawed they are still not comfortable taking in girls from you, it would give far too much potential intelligence away to integrate them fully and having to compartmentalize everything would render it more trouble than benefit.
They don't really have much in the way of resources that they could trade with you beyond cubes and money, nor further research they're willing to trade. While the fate of Tokyo is of some interest they're not sure what sort of support they could actually provide for you besides perhaps scouting.
Open Formal Relations (Republic of Japan): (1 Vet)
Your efforts to establish relations with the Magical Republic of Japan (MRJ) go poorly. Your previous contact information for them seems to have lapsed. (Failed)
Diplomacy (Area 15/16): (1 Vets)
- Discuss our recent success in Tokyo, removing the youma threat from their boarders. Discuss the recent outflow of refugees. How are they handling it? Suggest they refer refugees to us, as we are attempting to distribute them.
- Ask how many refugees they can absorb considering the added benefits on our Hunting Manual, and the new territory in what used to be a buffer zone.
- Try to get a feel for how receptive they are to the idea of joining the Imperium.
They've barely survived fighting off the flood of refugees that you triggered. They've essentially been fighting other girls on nearly a daily basis to protect their territory, and they categorically refuse to take anyone in. This is their land they've bled to protect, you need to handle your own mess.
Negotiations with the Heaven's Chosen (1 Mami)
Resolved in Negotiation Miniturns
Morale
Mixer day - Lots of time with people getting to know each other. Pick up some board games and card games. Have a picnic at the park. Make sure to organize things so that the new girls are intermingled with the older Serenes.
Trying to mingle so many girls is rather difficult. You try to organize games between random people in order to give them a chance to associate with each other better, but you're definitely seeing a lot more clique formation than you've dealt with in the past. You're not sure that's avoidable as your group grows though.
General
Production (1 Vets, 0.4 cubes):
67 Tandem Barrier charms for 1 meguca (barrier vets) + .4 GCU
Considering last month this month felt quite sluggish really. There weren't any promotions from Green to Veteran, and no major disasters. Your business ventures have been suffering a little from the recession, but still manage to hold things together.
The amount of new girls is resulting in a tremendous increase in your paperwork generation though as you struggle to deal with scheduling, settling them in various places, shuffling supplies. Generating new routes to handle reduced efficiency of greens, trying handling new reports. Your desk is literally buried in a paperwork. The desk may have been magically transmuted to paper and you're not sure you'd discover it for some time.
What's most surprising of all is that no one spiraled this month, which is honestly shocking given the amount of screaming nightmares experienced by the refugees you took in.
Another 27 girls from Tokyo came upon your forward operations looking for refuge this month. Still no elites, but this group at least had 8 veterans.
8 veterans (1 clairvoyant, 1 healer, 1 translator)
19 greens (4 barrier, 3 healer, 2 stealth, 1 clairvoyant, 1 teleporter)
Rumors
From what you've gathered from rumors the Enlightened work on a hierarchy where your magic determines your place. But they're distant and you have little to go off of.
An asteroid struck Buenos Aires this month. The scale of the impact is unprecedented in human history, though nothing special in geologic history. Immediate death toll was in the millions, with the airblast and thermal radiation causing most of the deaths. The EMP from the ionizing effect on Earth's atmosphere as the asteroid entered and broke up has caused mass disruption of communications and monitoring in the area which contributes to difficulty in measuring the exact size of the impact; estimates put the energy in the range of 1,000 Megatons. Mass mobilization of humanitarian aid is underway, but Argentina's government has largely collapsed and lack of communications hampers the efforts.
When you questioned Kyuubey on Buenos Aires with particular stubbornness to drill through his deflections you eventually learn that the Incubators were indeed responsible. An unfortunately abrupt solution but the problem was very sudden. The local collective of Contracted was performing an interesting experiment in enhancing grief energy generation. Unfortunately their containment of the resulting rupture in four dimensional spacetime failed in 43.09703 seconds. Incubator intervention was able to reseal the rupture and sterilize the extraspatial contamination before the damage was too severe.
Their goal was to extract grief energy directly without being limited by the sustainability limits of demon hunting. The containment was preplanned, but the power against the containment field rapidly increased in ways they failed to anticipate and containment failed. When containment failed the facility was almost instantly destroyed with all personnel involved. The human population was already doomed and rapidly dying though they had no way of realizing it. The Incubators needed a very swift response to contain the effects or the human population of the entire continent could have been lost.
Their goal was to extract grief energy directly without being limited by the sustainability limits of demon hunting. The containment was preplanned, but the power against the containment field rapidly increased in ways they failed to anticipate and containment failed. When containment failed the facility was almost instantly destroyed with all personnel involved. The human population was already doomed and rapidly dying though they had no way of realizing it. The Incubators needed a very swift response to contain the effects or the human population of the entire continent could have been lost.
The release of so many girls from Tokyo from the Serene's blasting into the Tokyo zone has sparked minor battles across Gifu and Nagano prefectures. Demon strength has risen significantly and nomadic territories especially are getting dangerously unpredictable. NM members have swept through trying to convince people to accept temporary stasis. There are rumors that they've been forcing people into stasis.
Information about the Osaka-Kyoto area is somewhat scattered. The sides are fluid month to month and the results unclear. It seems to be mostly small inconclusive skirmishes between sides where they withdraw without pressing too hard into escalation.
Resources
- 4 (5) Elite Meguca: Mami (+20% persuasive), Kyouko (can act as if two Elites), Taya (Can fill role of two clairvoyant vets), Seto (Elite teleporter)
- Legendary Serena, +4 vet/elite special +2 vet
- 57 Veteran Meguca, 45 Green Meguca, 1 Associate
- Upkeep: 19 Veteran, 18 Green, 1 Associate
- Support/Training (11 veterans, 7 greens)
- 10% meguca training upkeep (6 veterans, 4.5 greens)
- 2 vets on dispatch service (+30% grief cubes additive with demon finding, -1% casualties)
- 5% meguca general organization maintenance (quant team time, hunting log writing and cataloging, scheduling, etc) 3 Vet, 2.5 green
- 10% meguca training upkeep (6 veterans, 4.5 greens)
- Jobs (8 Vet, 11 Green, 1 Associate)
- 1 veteran (Hainako) Translation service
- 3 veteran + 6 green working courier business (Minimum 3 vets)
- 1 Akeno Delivery
- 2 Vets (Akane), 3 Green, 1 Associate Restaurant
- 1 vet, 2 greens - Restaurant delivery
- Support/Training (11 veterans, 7 greens)
- Upkeep: 19 Veteran, 18 Green, 1 Associate
- Grief Cubes 113.6
- Money: $53,730
- Expenses: $46,520
- $2280 upkeep on cellphones (-2% solo hunting, -1% pair hunting)
- $1000 upkeep on cable/internet
- $11000 upkeep on apartments
- $8000 upkeep on house
- $300 upkeep on Akiya
- $11400 upkeep on stipend
- $11400 upkeep on food
- $1140 upkeep on gear (bikes, shields, misc)
- Income $37,500
- Translator: +$5500 per turn
- Courier Business, Mitakihara: +$9500 per turn
- Courier Business, Kasamino: +$4500 per turn
- Restaurant +$9000 per turn
- Akeno Delivery +$4000 per turn
- Restaurant Delivery +$5000 per turn
- Expenses: $46,520
- Morale: [3 of 10] Taking in a group of girls two thirds your own group's size and so heavily damaged by their experiences has seriously impacted your average morale.
- Assets
- Tiny household shrine: Somewhat reduces losses to morale from deaths. (Bonus Increased by omake)
- Shields: -3% Casualties
-
[*]Basic General Combat Training: -2% Casualties (May decay with losses or recruitment).
[*]Basic Solo Combat Training: -1% Pack Hunting, -2% pair hunting, -3% Solo Hunting
[*]Defending Others Training: -2% Pair Hunting, -1% Pack Hunting
[*]Pack Tactics Training: -4% pack hunting, -2% pair hunting
[*]Telepathic communication (-2% pair hunting, -1% pack hunting)
[*]Demon Scanning training (+20% grief cubes)
[*]PvP training: Still terrible, but slightly less so +2% PvP effectiveness
[*]Experienced Hunters +10% grief cube gather rates
[*]Tandem trained
- Healer: 2
- Teleporter: 5+Seto
- Stealth: 2+Kyoko
- Clairvoyant: 3+Taya
- Barrier: 11
[*]Fusion trained
-4 pairs of Teleporter+Barrier
-1 pair Telepath + Barrier
- 114 Bicycles (Mobility Bonus)
- 34 Bulletproof vest (-2% casualty)
- 34 Sets of Kevlar Clothing (-4% casualty)
- 3 Sets of Leather (-2% casualty)
- 9 sets hardened leather (-3% casualty)
- Housing (106/141)
- Apartments (88 capacity)
- House (50 capacity)
- Mami's Apartment (HQ of sorts) (Can be traded for $1200 per turn)
- Akiya (7/6 capacity, special)
- Territory
- Urban
- North
- Demon Status: Average 0.0
- Sustainable Harvest: 37
- South
- Demon Status: Average 0.0
- Sustainable Harvest: 37
- North
- Rural
- Demon Status: Weak -4.9
- Sustainable Harvest: 8
- Urban
Okay, so I significantly increased upkeep costs. 10% for training upkeep, 5% for bureaucratic at this point essentially. Really crazy that morale sunk a bit but grief spiral roll was quite high.
I'll post the hopeful conclusion to the Hiko negotiation in a little while, hopefully.
Bring on the million mathematical errors. And please point out if I missed anything.
Sorry this 1 month turn took almost a month to produce. I had a significant lack of motivation as usual. Plus just didn't seem to come out very good.
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OK, wow. Yeah. Restoration of Tokyo is going to be quite a bit more work than expected. And apologies to whoever I didn't believe about DS getting that low.
Meh. Money is going to be tight.
Gee, thanks Kyuubey.
Interesting, and at least will get us a little more income. We're going to need it.
Ugh. Finally finding where the other refugees have gone...
And it's not pretty.
Intelligentsia?
(Deadpan) You are welcome.
Well restaurant establishment always had a failure chance. You rolled low, just be glad that it didn't really cost you anything and you can try again.
It was really really close to the point where the human population starts falling off a cliff. Even at this level the population has experienced a notable decline and some migration to the other more stable metropolises of Japan.
I was basically at the point where I decided diplomacy was taking too long and limited what you got. But the word means the right thing approximately.
Hmm. Well, we had plans on dealing with the accommodations, though delayed a bit since the restaurant location hunt failed, delaying the loan. Might need to just give them a temp period in the getaway.
Had not expected quite so many issues with civilians. Though that might have been because of the overwatch this month keeping her there for longer periods that last month? Still, need to move camps.
Well, as far as the idea of later merging with 15/16, we can probably expect a "fuck no" for quite some time. Even if they haven't formed an official organization, that land is theirs. The more they have to fight for it, the more they're not letting anyone else step foot in it.
NM is pulling people out of deep storage as their hunting limits expand, and then putting them right back in to deal with the refugee mess. At least they have a means of keeping things stable while we work through Tokyo. Our closer neighbors aren't so lucky.
Almost wanting to ask if NM can track down and put the refugees causing problems in other areas in deep storage.
And now we have more. This is gonna be tough. We might even need to ask NM about storage for them as well.
We need to deploy some info to the Tokyo-ites:
We are working to help you, but if you flee Tokyo, you are killing people in Tokyo by not hunting, and killing magical girls in areas outside Tokyo who can't support you. If you try to flee Tokyo right now, we're going to have to ask that you take Nagoya's offer for deep storage while we finish clearing out the youma. However, realize that without your help hunting the local territory, there's still a risk that the human population may not be there when you get back.
Also, and we don't like to have to say this: If there aren't enough magical girls in Tokyo to keep the youma interested, they're going to start fleeing and causing problems for every group surrounding Tokyo, where we won't have enough control over their movements to guarantee being able to kill them in a timely manner. So not only will you be killing other magical girls by overhunting, you'll kill them by dragging the youma along with you.
So please — the only way to save Tokyo is for you to stay in Tokyo and keep defending it, while we work on killing the youma.
I tried to specify it, but in case it wasn't obvious. They're running a sort of queue system. They aren't putting the same people back in storage, they're putting new people that arrive in at the back of the line. First In First Out (FIFO).
Total should be 10 Vets, 9 Green, 1 Associate
A few numbers to show some things we're going to be running into.
Going to assume we send 5 quants to NM. That's $10k, which covers our current income deficit.
Pet Whisperer (1.0 Nagisa) - An extra month of training is probably needed.
Second Restaurant (2 Vet) - Make another attempt at this.
Upkeep goes from 6.5 vets to 9 vets + 7 greens. (almost +10 meguca units)
Using simplistic hunting with 4 vets, 20 untrained greens, and 5 regular greens (minimal vet use) gives 79 cubes
Will have several girls training with HC. Call it 3.
Along with dispatch and morale, that leaves 16 free vets, not counting the new refugees. On the other hand, it's 10 over cap for greens.
Greens:
13 on training
9 on jobs
1.5 on morale (assuming 1 day)
7 on upkeep
== 30.5
That means a max of 14.5 on hunting, since we lost 7 to upkeep.
New refugees:
Another 27 girls from Tokyo came upon your forward operations looking for refuge this month. Still no elites, but this group at least had 8 veterans.
8 veterans (1 clairvoyant, 1 healer, 1 translator)
19 greens (4 barrier, 3 healer, 2 stealth, 1 clairvoyant, 1 teleporter)
Translator!! Pack her off to Hainako-land.
If we accept them and add them to training, that's 3 vets and 6 greens pulled off for that, and 2 more vets on training. I don't think we can afford to use those extra training vets there, so there would be no training for this group yet. On the other hand, they can shuffle into jobs while the greens we're currently training, and are in those jobs, get moved onto hunting. A couple on upkeep as well.
That means we can get back to 25 on hunting.
If we accept them, we'll be at 141 total meguca for cube upkeep. Could save 7 cubes with grief management, but probably not a good idea when we're low on morale already.
I think we needed like 12 vets to do half-time Tokyo hunting for the support team. We want to kill at least 10 youma this month. With interdiction, that means 5 attack runs, which is far under the halftime requirement.
We'll likely lose half the bounty cubes to magic usage, but killing 10 youma would still give us 50 cubes. Don't remember if the 10 cubes per youma included their own drops as well, so might be higher. 50 cubes would still be a net negative (-10 to -20), but it's manageable.
With the green-focused hunting, it will use 20 sets of full kevlar. We have 34 total sets, so would have 14 leftover, which is enough to cover the Tokyo team's needs for their assault days.
So once again, to we accept the refugees? As we can see in this month's events, turning them away is going to be kinda disastrous for other groups' areas, and no one has the space to accept any more. We can probably manage, with heavy bounty harvests, and it will give us the numbers we need to do the Tokyo run.
Overall, seems like we have to, but we can't do it on our current money. We'll need at least a modest loan just to get by. If we go to Sachiko, we can maybe get a solid enough loan to just get the restaurant paid for as well, whether or not we find the right location for it this month. $750k would be the bare minimum — $500k restaurant, $150k village, $100k buffer for apartments, welcome packages, etc. Be easier to get a flat $1 mil, though, because we'll need more in the coming months.
That's just the numbers side. Also the diplomacy side. Can we tell Kofu and 15/16 to try directing the girls they're fighting to come to us?
We have to get that danger message out to all the Tokyo girls, to get them to stay put.
And internal matters. Too tired to work it out right now.
Going to assume we send 5 quants to NM. That's $10k, which covers our current income deficit.
Pet Whisperer (1.0 Nagisa) - An extra month of training is probably needed.
Second Restaurant (2 Vet) - Make another attempt at this.
Upkeep goes from 6.5 vets to 9 vets + 7 greens. (almost +10 meguca units)
Using simplistic hunting with 4 vets, 20 untrained greens, and 5 regular greens (minimal vet use) gives 79 cubes
Will have several girls training with HC. Call it 3.
Along with dispatch and morale, that leaves 16 free vets, not counting the new refugees. On the other hand, it's 10 over cap for greens.
Greens:
13 on training
9 on jobs
1.5 on morale (assuming 1 day)
7 on upkeep
== 30.5
That means a max of 14.5 on hunting, since we lost 7 to upkeep.
New refugees:
Another 27 girls from Tokyo came upon your forward operations looking for refuge this month. Still no elites, but this group at least had 8 veterans.
8 veterans (1 clairvoyant, 1 healer, 1 translator)
19 greens (4 barrier, 3 healer, 2 stealth, 1 clairvoyant, 1 teleporter)
Translator!! Pack her off to Hainako-land.
If we accept them and add them to training, that's 3 vets and 6 greens pulled off for that, and 2 more vets on training. I don't think we can afford to use those extra training vets there, so there would be no training for this group yet. On the other hand, they can shuffle into jobs while the greens we're currently training, and are in those jobs, get moved onto hunting. A couple on upkeep as well.
That means we can get back to 25 on hunting.
If we accept them, we'll be at 141 total meguca for cube upkeep. Could save 7 cubes with grief management, but probably not a good idea when we're low on morale already.
I think we needed like 12 vets to do half-time Tokyo hunting for the support team. We want to kill at least 10 youma this month. With interdiction, that means 5 attack runs, which is far under the halftime requirement.
We'll likely lose half the bounty cubes to magic usage, but killing 10 youma would still give us 50 cubes. Don't remember if the 10 cubes per youma included their own drops as well, so might be higher. 50 cubes would still be a net negative (-10 to -20), but it's manageable.
With the green-focused hunting, it will use 20 sets of full kevlar. We have 34 total sets, so would have 14 leftover, which is enough to cover the Tokyo team's needs for their assault days.
So once again, to we accept the refugees? As we can see in this month's events, turning them away is going to be kinda disastrous for other groups' areas, and no one has the space to accept any more. We can probably manage, with heavy bounty harvests, and it will give us the numbers we need to do the Tokyo run.
Overall, seems like we have to, but we can't do it on our current money. We'll need at least a modest loan just to get by. If we go to Sachiko, we can maybe get a solid enough loan to just get the restaurant paid for as well, whether or not we find the right location for it this month. $750k would be the bare minimum — $500k restaurant, $150k village, $100k buffer for apartments, welcome packages, etc. Be easier to get a flat $1 mil, though, because we'll need more in the coming months.
That's just the numbers side. Also the diplomacy side. Can we tell Kofu and 15/16 to try directing the girls they're fighting to come to us?
We have to get that danger message out to all the Tokyo girls, to get them to stay put.
And internal matters. Too tired to work it out right now.
They spent a lot of time on that mountain this month. Also this is the same mountain as last month. And even though humans don't understand why, there is some degree of understanding that outside the city feels less oppressive than inside the city, so hiking is more popular.
This isn't urgent, but as the Lost In Translation omake by @Storyteller pointed out, her girls normally don't really complain about bad conditions. So Serena feels obligated to complain for them.
They're an example of people banding together without really making anything formal out of it. Your classic zombie survival movie band. There's some vague leadership, but nothing concrete. But yes, no matter what the other circumstances are, once someone has started fighting to hold onto their land, it becomes a sort of feedback loop.
To some degree they're already doing so as noted in the Gossipmonger section.
Well I said last turn I was considering upping your upkeep and that was before you took in 40 more members
. Proportionally upkeep increased a little bit, but not much. 6.5/68 = 9.6%, 16/107 = 15% And part of that difference is because the original upkeep figure had lagged a little anyways from the proportions intended. (I tend to let manpower upkeep stick at a level instead of updating each turn.)Something I'll point out on this point for consideration is that the bank would give you a loan enough to cover the restaurant, but they won't give loans towards stuff like the village or apartments (because previously abandoned villages effectively aren't worth anything in Japan). So Sachiko giving you a loan is the only way to get a loan on some of this stuff.
Though notable at this point is you can go into debt on your main funds even without a loan to the tun of 2x your monthly income (as an abstraction of credit cards essentially), but the interest will be far larger.
Side note, I'm still brainstorming Sachiko's goals that she hopes to get from you. Broadly speaking her motivation at this point is money and probably long term mega-corp status. But the short and medium term plans are still a bit in the air.