It worked for you reasonably well in the last month, supplementing your cubes. For the most part escaping is possible as long as they are alert and ready to flee if needed.
The reason it was planned is because your cubes are going to be very much a problem with as many refugees as you took in. Without an end of month hunt you'll be at around half the normal reserve level. Which will cause a morale hit, though one you could accept. It would put your cubes next month at critical levels though, you could potentially run out in the next month.
Thank you for explaining the reasoning for more cubes.
Now this could be considered split up amongst say 6 shifts working 24/7 which would get it down to 6-7 man packs and get full pack hunting rate. Or you could eat a massive inefficiency loss of around 80% and keep them all out there at once (essentially the same yield as if you had 8 vets hunting, but a lot safer). Or you could hunt in multiple groups at the same time, but outside the protection of the interdiction artifact.
I would suggest something in between... strong enough to scare off attacks, but not drop efficiency as much. Though considering how things went maybe it was best.
Sprinting in the opposite direction she glanced back to see the Beholder reduce much of her blade barrier to dust with a few shots from one of its tentacles. It seemed like the mud monster and beholder were slow enough not to catch them if they kept running, the mantis was much faster though. They wouldn't be able to outrun it for long. She turned forward and kept sprinting away, to anywhere but here, but the warping environment keeps ahead of her.
A blue beam caught June square in the back, her whole body frozen in a single hit, the artifact still attached to her back. Kyoclone can't stop though, there's no way she could do anything for her now. The guilt at that thought is near crippling, magnified a dozen times. Kyouko, and by extension her clone, are used to guilt though, they lived it for a long time, she can handle it to survive. She keeps running.
Dang... going to have to reread this one in more detail, but talk about everything going wrong all at once.
Lives lost: Hamasaki, June (Healer) One of Seto's girls
2 of those from Tokyo that agreed to help but not join (Clairvoyant and a healer)
1 Kyoclone (Feedback hit on Kyouko, requires an additional GCU this month)
Ouch... wait, is that 4 total, plus Kyoclone? Or 3 total plus Kyoclone?
You will need to decide how much out of this you pay to the volunteer girls from Tokyo, there are 7 left. Original plan way back when was to give them each 2 GCU, but that may not apply anymore.
Gotta keep the promise. Maybe invite them to help form a team in Hiroshima?
Response time of Serena was rolled for (keeping in mind round the clock shifts meant her response time could be longer, though you got really lucky on that roll with only a 4 round response time).
Success of evasion attempts each round was rolled, who died was rolled. Even the composition of the group in terms of whether it was your core girls or new recruits. Plus rolling on a d6 for if there was an elite. You had Kyouko, Kyoclone, Taya, and Miho assigned to this, and there were going to be 6 shifts. So this meant that there was an elite with 4 groups and no elites with 2. You got sooo lucky that it was Kyoclone.
Ouch... need better planning.
Never enough, never enough...
I must... become BATMAN!
(I kinda feel like putting on that Homura = The Dark Knight parody video right now, Homura! We need you and your insane levels of preparedness right now!)
We also learned that the interdictor is not only completely ineffective at hedging out the beholder, but it locked our girls in with it when it arrived. Total cluster, that.
No, it seemed like we shut off the interdiction field before the beholder arrived. More like we got lazy about the Eyball.
@inverted_helix
Did Kyubey give us no warning that the Eyeball was moving? I thought the incubators agreed to give us warning if he moved to attack us?
Going back through the update... luring the beholder into a trap could be viable. Those beams are murderous, but they can be blocked by material. (And we need to get the girls to understand that blues while not instant death are just as bad. Or if we are going to take the fight to it, we could try trading cubes for incubator support in having them clear out office buildings and the like with a fake gas leak. Those evacuations can clear city blocks. And if Serafina stops the Beholder from altering the ground near her feet we can actually have some cover/time for some of the large charge attacks or the girls can attack via range from the windows. (Tiro Finale, Kyouko's gigantic spear, stealing from the Yakuza for firearms, have the girls make giant crossbows.) We could even have battle damage be down to the gas leak that the block was evacuated for.
Send in Kyoukoclone to look for buildings that fit the bill, have the plans for fortification made in advance, and then bring everything with us the day of. Notably, this will really only work if we are sure that entering that zone in particular will agro the Beholder to attack. But we need to get something between our girls and the black rays of despair. Insta gibbing is not fun.
Hmm... not clear how effective mundane weapons are at fighting demons... have we ever tested this?
Didn't we find that explosives had little to no effect on the Eyeball?
I think it's kinda like Walpurgisnaught. Immunity to physical, only vulnerable to Magical attacks.
Here's a sketch of a plan:
Serena and elites go in first, distracting the Beholder from the Vets. The Vets come in behind under layered tandem Barrier cover.
It's not a very good sketch I admit, but hopefully it will give the vets time to pound the Beholder, and the effects of the Miasma should mean the vets can concentrate on layering and tandem casting.
Ugh... I think a mass teleport on top of the Beholder when it's alone would be a better tactic. Though that needs it's own refinement with specific teams and duties, and backup teams in case one team is wiped out.
Translator (1 vet): One of the new refugees has translation powers. Set her up with Hainako to expand their ability to handle job requests.
Hainako takes on the job of getting the other translator, Kumiyo set up with the job. Hainako reports Kumiyo is almost fanatically driven to do her job well enough to make herself too useful for field work, and if anything, does more work than Hainako does. Though Hainako comments also that Kumiyo is quite skittish. Your income from this source is doubled to $11,000, ($9k this month due to startup).
Kyuubey informs you that while Hainako's primitive efforts of using multiple accounts originally prevented suspicion he had to intervene to prevent investigation of this explosion in activity and has set up VPNs, edited records, reorganized her accounts, and divided translation capabilities amongst them into a significantly less suspicious arrangement that more effectively presents the image of your girls being a number of more humanly capable translators. (-1 GCU, automatically stifled early)
Translators are awesome! Hope she doesn't grief spiral. Maybe we ought to make a personal note to thank her for her help.
Also... thank you Kyubey?
Hiko oversaw your first attempts and gave some initial instruction but mostly left your training to a couple of her better students. She regrets having to pass you off in this matter but she has much to do that she cannot delegate. The difficulty largely lies in trying to strip out the unique flavor that your wish and your personality put on your magic. It's not something you'd ever really put much thought into before. You've always used magic directly for some sort of goal, never tried to experiment with purifying it in this way.
What you and Keiko extract from your tutors is that magic between individuals always differs a little. "Pure" magic unaffected by the caster may or may not even exist, but it's not actually the goal here. The goal is more to bring the magic into a similar enough standard range that the systems in the artifact which act similar to electrical transformers or perhaps a sort of funnel can handle the magic from different casters rather than being limited to only a single one it's tuned for.
Fascinating....
(This was modeled as progress dice if you know what I mean by that. You get 1d100 progress per completion each turn and need 75 progress to complete. Rolls were terrible: 7; 14; 30; 3; Mami 6+10 (for being elite) = 16)
Of course... well, so much for Mami leading us next turn. Mami is still stuck in school.
The Enlightened give off even more cult vibes than your own group, but you can recognize they have either large numbers of clairvoyant and/or they're clairvoyants are better. They can provide tracking data across fairly large swaths of territory. They've also deployed forces to secure the Nagano capital region, apparently by request of the girls in the area, though you can't independently verify that. It's still heavily contested, but lethality is lower as a result of more organized resistance.
Hmm... how can they be useful?
The overall situation is less positive than you'd like as well. Multiple hotspots have appeared in the rural areas west of Tokyo where demon strength has risen quickly enough to possibly spawn Youma. They believe it possible for there to be secondary Youma spawns in the rural areas next month, but the odds should remain low.
Ouch, ouch, ouch....
In general, your efforts have been falling flat. You didn't devote enough manpower to really enforce anything. You've distributed a few cubes here and there to try to leave some of the pressure, but the churn in terms of which girls are in any given location is very high. Lifespan appears to have dropped even lower than wild type life would normally suggest from sheer amount of competition. The band of urban area down the middle of Nagano especially is seeing some lethal fighting.
Though Enlightened projections are that the demon strength will kill off enough of the girls in the area before they can drive demon strength high enough for significant numbers of Youma to spawn, at least should the number of people fleeing Tokyo diminish.
Ouch ouch ouch... well, at least we managed to relieve some pressure. I think we are cornered.
We have no choice but to expand and expand very very quickly.
Kofu you've remained neutral in their views, but the battles there go far worse. It's all Kyouko can do not to die as a trio of elites cut a swath through Kofu. Tezuka Leiko, the single elite in Kofu and some sort of sound user, battles alongside Kyouko with several veterans supporting them. Ultimately they're forced to teleport escape each battle as the girls they face are far more skilled in pvp combat. Some sort of crystal manipulator, a puppet master that Kyouko isn't sure they ever actually saw, and a power mimicking doppelganger that made coordination near impossible. If Leiko wasn't so capable of shattering the crystals Kyouko believes they'd have been finished outright in the first fight. As it was, they fought numerous unfavorable battles across the territory and ultimately the trio of elites moved on, likely because it was just more troublesome than it was worth trying to deal with the repeated attacks.
Crap... I guess it was a good thing we started that support....
Not that we can hold Kofu though. Trio of elite users... do any of those match those in Hino's reports?
Even as it was the distraction those elites provided made it difficult to even manage to keep out the various greens and vets streaming through the territory. Much of Kofu is now at dangerous demon strength levels, and Kyouko gave the Kofu democracy about half the GCU she was allocated for the mission just to help them handle things. They're likely going to need more serious help and supplies next month if they're to avoid increasing problems.
We may have to evacuate Kofu... I don't see how we can hope to hold it...
(Note I've flat out decided major negotiations will in the future require Mami, they want to talk to the leader not the flunkie if you need Watsonian logic. The real (Doylist) logic is that it takes too damn long to write.)
Well crap... that limits us a lot...
But understandable.
There is some morale benefit to better food, particularly as many girls are less fond of cooking than Chisato in the first place. Some have suggested you might be better off with just a central canteen so that they could all eat this level of food all the time, or they might just go to the restaurant you operate, but that would be a bit suspicious if they were all eating there every day without paying.
Well... we'd probably attract some extra customers that way... get a reputation as a hang out place for high school girls.
You haven't had much time to personally talk with Morita Miho, but from what you've seen she's just a girl that's lost far too much. She gets along well enough, and the fact that she still shows that little bit of fire to still be willing to fight for her home is a good sign. It's hard to say what she might have been like before, but right now you can sense the emptiness beneath that veneer she puts on. Maybe in time with proper care she'll fill back in like Taya managed. She's willing to follow your orders at least, though she's very torn about not being on the front lines.
Okay... the earth tunneler right... we need to come up with a better use for her next month.
The technician Hiko sent is far more than that. From what your girls have gathered Risa is Hiko's current oldest disciple, though Risa says that a lady never reveals her age, and equally amused tells you that Hiko would say it's actually better not to keep track. Risa seems like some blend of a traditionally skilled shrine maiden and a college student.
She keeps a hotel room, but is willing to flow between your various bases as you wanted for a few hours a day. She's a bit surprised at your plans involving showing her between your various bases. Her cooking skills are far from good, and from what you've heard she doesn't actually care to be good at cooking, but she's perfectly willing to socialize and help a little while Chisato cooks though. Some find her wearing a shrine maiden outfit while doing so amusing. It does seem to be rather heavily enchanted as grease deflects off without ever marring the pristine white haori.
From glimpses of her hotel room, she seems to be continuing to work on some project while here, though your girls' guesses are completely random as to what. Or even if it's magical at all rather than just arts and crafts. There may be a betting pool you don't officially take notice of.
Hopefully she report back to Hiko how innocent and naive we are...
Ten of the green refugees you've taken in over the past couple months reached veteran status this month, the more comfortable environment and training exercises helping them learn what it really means to be a magical girl. Though it's a very different sort of meaning than what they are used to.
Oh thank goodness. We needed those ten vets.
On the other hand, you also have ten grief spirals this month. Mostly amongst the girls you've taken in so recently from Tokyo. 15 GCU were spent on dealing with them, and yet one still perished, nothing able to save her, and reaction far too slow to move her to Serena. You feel pretty bad that you never even knew her name personally. The other losses at the end of the month to the Beholder also weigh on you like any other. You're doing the best you can with what life throws at you though.
That's... actually extremely good.
I guess the grief spiral rolls continue to eat up all our good luck.
Your group is now far larger than you ever dreamed it would be when you first started it near three years ago with twenty girls. In your private thoughts, you have to admit you expected to lose half of them in the first few months. You don't think the you of three years ago could have believed that 17 of them would still be alive three years later.
Wow... we still have 17 of our original girls alive. That's actually incredible.
Your efforts to deflect refugees from Numazu and Kofu to your own organization contribute to your refugee count to consider being just as high as last month not even counting the mid-month recruitment of those still willing to fight for Tokyo.
Another 27 girls to consider if you can even possibly handle with your critically diminished grief cube supplies.
15 Vets (5 clairvoyants, 2 Healer, 2 barrier)
12 Greens (4 healers, 1 barrier, 3 stealth)
Crap... we gotta take them in. We have to. It's not even humanitarianism, we just have to do it to keep peace with our neighbors.
At least we got a massive number of veteran clairvoyants.
- Grief Cubes 54 Critical Levels!
Crap, crap, crap.
@inverted_helix We took the deal with Magik Corp right? So we actually have a huge pool of (borrowed) money to draw on right?
We're going to need that. Use the money to support sending out a couple groups of 30 girls or so (half vets, half green?) to seize new territory where there is currently no organization, and start massive cube hunting there.
We are not clearing Tokyo fast enough. We need to get our cubes back up a lot this month.
From what you've heard, The Enlightened are run by a small circle of girls termed the Intelligentsia with abilities which enhance their decision making in specific useful ways. They then leveraged this into establishing a divine mandate to rule. The religious aspects are somewhat cloying, but they seem to succeed in their operations far more than luck would allow for. They're also known to have recruited intelligence gathering powers like clairvoyance preferentially, you assume to further enhance their advantage.
Pre-cogs?
Great... just great... sounds like Orico troublesome type stuff.
By comparison from what you've heard from refugees, the Sendai Queendom seems more of an accidental government. The ruler was mostly put in place by being friends with everyone in the area. Growth from that point has been sporadic, with growth towards Tokyo and the fortification of that border in response to the threat there presented. Originally they took in a few escapees from Tokyo, but of late their borders have been closed to demon and meguca alike.
Heh... that's funny. The "Queendom" is actually the "queen" of high school girl society.
From your small talk with the various Heaven's Chosen this month, you've heard that Hiko would like to take a trip away from Japan at some point, but this is unfortunately impossible. They have some disbelief at the idea of her wanting to take a day off (without being forced to by Risa), much less enough time to leave the country, which is part of why they're talking about it so much.
Well now that is interesting... I wonder why it is impossible?
