Agreed. See you soon!
Meguca Micro Empire Quest (PMMM)
- Thread starter inverted_helix
- Start date
Thirded! Have fun Helix!
Non-canon Omake: Legendary Magical Girls Part 2
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Disclaimer: The mechanics I have made up best guesses on how I would run the legendaries, and may not actually interact well with the system Helix has set up. Secondly, this is intended as an addendum to Legendary Magical Girls, and I would like that and this to be lumped together as a single omake, as happened with the Manual omakes.
==
Citra of Jakarta
Citra does not come with her own army, she comes with her enemy's. Citra can make copies of people, demons, animals, and even Incubators. These copies are nearly perfect, with all of the original's skills, knowledge, capabilities, and equipment, the only changes are a fanatical loyalty to Citra and an internal IFF able to identify other copies (Citra has the IFF too). These copies are completely autonomous, and the Puellas can seemingly use magic without end and without drawing from Citra's gem. The copies last until dismissed, however keeping even one going for any longer than a single engagement is very draining on her soul gem. Despite being able to support any number of copies at once, she is unable to make more than a single copy of any given creature at a time.
Citra is powerful and skilled combatant in her own right, and her favored method in a fight is to break the stalemates that inevitably develop from her power so as to create a snowballing numerical advantage.
At 16 Citra is a devout Muslim, and a devoted and dutiful wife to her husband, who she believes she is coming to love despite the arranged nature of their marriage. She is part of a small 3 magical girl group that maintains a 7 cube territory. Her weapon is a polearm more inspired by Sailor Saturn than any real life polearm.
(Mechanically Citra gets -100% Casualties demon hunting, and in PvP rolls 6d20 as an elite, however, the enemy result after multiplier is added to her side's total, and if she hasn't made copies of her allies then her allies total after multiplier is also added to her side's total {so she auto-wins PvP}. Her Cube collection modifier is 5x. She can effectively double your organization's available manpower, with each copy increasing Citra's Cube upkeep by +X, where X is determined by the GM for balance but set to .5 by default. Citra cannot copy copies, so no doubling the kyoclone. Attempts to copy QB will be met with orbital bombardment.)
Alternate Location: Instead of Citra of Jakarta, the same powerset and personality could go to Meti of Addis Ababa, if it is felt that the East is getting too many Legendaries.
Errata on other Legendaries:
Sabrina: -100% Casualty modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 0 GC Upkeep; 5x Cube Collection; Weapon is Warhammer; Bonus is X% discount on all non-kyuubey, non-spiral cube costs. X% can be set by GM for balance and represents QB putting his foot down demanding a cut of cubes rather than an inherent limitation of Sabrina's abilities, and so can change if the group draws too much Attention, it is 50% discount by default. Also, Sabrina's ability has a meguca cost depending on how large the group is, increasing in .5 megucamonth increments as the GM judges the group has gotten large enough to warrant more trouble recycling cubes, Sabrina must be one of the meguca assigned for the discount to apply.
Hortence: -100% Casualty modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 5x Cube Collection; Weapon is 1kg mass (configurable); Bonus depends on a hidden Loyalty stat kept track of by the GM. Loyalty determines how valuable the materials Hortence is willing to make for the Organization are, higher loyalty gives higher value materials and thus more money per cube fed to her. The materials still need to be sold, which requires megucapower (not necessarily Hortence) and may incur Attention.
Homura: -100% Casualty modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 5x Cube Collection; Weapon is Madoka's Bow; Bonus is ability to redo a turn. Each time you redo the turn Homura gets a cumulative +X% to her spiral chance above the Spiral Percentage Roll Result for the turn, where X is determined by GM for balance but by default is +5%. This does not go away immediately but decays over time, rate of decay would need to be determined by GM for balance, but by default it takes two turns to decay away completely.
Jiao: -0% Casualty Modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 1x Cube Collection Modifier; Weapon is a traditional chinese staff; Bonus is Morale set to 100. Jiao also automatically succeeds at things like recruitment or diplomacy. Jiao can do things that require at least a Green or at least a Legendary, but not things that need at least a Vet or an Elite to do.
Sita: Casualty Modifier is set to 0; 10x Cube Collection Modifier; Weapon is a khanda; Bonus is to skip combat phase entirely and just decide who dies, who lives, and who gets away unscathed, with Sita as the victor even when other legendaries are involved.
No rules for resolving multi-Legendary fights not involving Sita are suggested due to the rarity of Legendaries and the wide geographic dispersal of such.
==
Citra of Jakarta
Citra does not come with her own army, she comes with her enemy's. Citra can make copies of people, demons, animals, and even Incubators. These copies are nearly perfect, with all of the original's skills, knowledge, capabilities, and equipment, the only changes are a fanatical loyalty to Citra and an internal IFF able to identify other copies (Citra has the IFF too). These copies are completely autonomous, and the Puellas can seemingly use magic without end and without drawing from Citra's gem. The copies last until dismissed, however keeping even one going for any longer than a single engagement is very draining on her soul gem. Despite being able to support any number of copies at once, she is unable to make more than a single copy of any given creature at a time.
Citra is powerful and skilled combatant in her own right, and her favored method in a fight is to break the stalemates that inevitably develop from her power so as to create a snowballing numerical advantage.
At 16 Citra is a devout Muslim, and a devoted and dutiful wife to her husband, who she believes she is coming to love despite the arranged nature of their marriage. She is part of a small 3 magical girl group that maintains a 7 cube territory. Her weapon is a polearm more inspired by Sailor Saturn than any real life polearm.
(Mechanically Citra gets -100% Casualties demon hunting, and in PvP rolls 6d20 as an elite, however, the enemy result after multiplier is added to her side's total, and if she hasn't made copies of her allies then her allies total after multiplier is also added to her side's total {so she auto-wins PvP}. Her Cube collection modifier is 5x. She can effectively double your organization's available manpower, with each copy increasing Citra's Cube upkeep by +X, where X is determined by the GM for balance but set to .5 by default. Citra cannot copy copies, so no doubling the kyoclone. Attempts to copy QB will be met with orbital bombardment.)
Alternate Location: Instead of Citra of Jakarta, the same powerset and personality could go to Meti of Addis Ababa, if it is felt that the East is getting too many Legendaries.
Errata on other Legendaries:
Sabrina: -100% Casualty modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 0 GC Upkeep; 5x Cube Collection; Weapon is Warhammer; Bonus is X% discount on all non-kyuubey, non-spiral cube costs. X% can be set by GM for balance and represents QB putting his foot down demanding a cut of cubes rather than an inherent limitation of Sabrina's abilities, and so can change if the group draws too much Attention, it is 50% discount by default. Also, Sabrina's ability has a meguca cost depending on how large the group is, increasing in .5 megucamonth increments as the GM judges the group has gotten large enough to warrant more trouble recycling cubes, Sabrina must be one of the meguca assigned for the discount to apply.
Hortence: -100% Casualty modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 5x Cube Collection; Weapon is 1kg mass (configurable); Bonus depends on a hidden Loyalty stat kept track of by the GM. Loyalty determines how valuable the materials Hortence is willing to make for the Organization are, higher loyalty gives higher value materials and thus more money per cube fed to her. The materials still need to be sold, which requires megucapower (not necessarily Hortence) and may incur Attention.
Homura: -100% Casualty modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 5x Cube Collection; Weapon is Madoka's Bow; Bonus is ability to redo a turn. Each time you redo the turn Homura gets a cumulative +X% to her spiral chance above the Spiral Percentage Roll Result for the turn, where X is determined by GM for balance but by default is +5%. This does not go away immediately but decays over time, rate of decay would need to be determined by GM for balance, but by default it takes two turns to decay away completely.
Jiao: -0% Casualty Modifier; Auto-Wins Sub-battles in PvP; 1x Cube Collection Modifier; Weapon is a traditional chinese staff; Bonus is Morale set to 100. Jiao also automatically succeeds at things like recruitment or diplomacy. Jiao can do things that require at least a Green or at least a Legendary, but not things that need at least a Vet or an Elite to do.
Sita: Casualty Modifier is set to 0; 10x Cube Collection Modifier; Weapon is a khanda; Bonus is to skip combat phase entirely and just decide who dies, who lives, and who gets away unscathed, with Sita as the victor even when other legendaries are involved.
No rules for resolving multi-Legendary fights not involving Sita are suggested due to the rarity of Legendaries and the wide geographic dispersal of such.
Asking the GM via PM would have been a better idea, you know.
I've been working on an omake. I'll try to get it done this weekend.
Hm. Just found this thread and read through. I really wish I had gotten here for the debate over the police investigation, because I think it might be both less and more of a problem than the consensus is talking about, for one big reason:
The fact that we have police watching us, literally on a stakeout in unmarked cars, means a lot more than I think anyone, even the QM, realizes. Frankly we should have had a lot more warning, in the form of having uniformed officers interview all/most of the girls and their families, some probably more than once, long before it ever got to the point of an actual stakeout.
Here's the issue: in order to do a long-term, or even a very short-term, stakeout, you need approval for overtime, a lot of overtime. Stakeouts are never done on a whim: police only do them when they "know" someone's committed a crime, and they just need to gather enough evidence to get a search warrant or arrest warrant(s). That means a detective or higher got approval from a captain or above, put together an extensive plan involving personnel rotations and cover stories, got official orders and a budget assigned, have to make daily follow-up reports, etc. All of that takes a lot of time, more than two months, usually, so the stakeout currently underway should be less than 10 days along if that.
What this means is that there is a massive paper trail surrounding that stakeout. If we suddenly remove both impetuses for the stakeout, without simply letting Kyuubey mind-whammy everything out of existence, that could look extremely suspicious, even alarming. If, however, we "just" remove the Kevlar purchases, leaving the $10,000 damage bill in place, then when the police "discover" the big cosplay LARP event that we're going to stage the whole thing should die down without any escalation. Frankly $10,000 isn't all that much in terms of damage when you're talking a few dozen teenagers having a screaming fight; I've seen two college kids do more than that to a dorm room, although that case involved alcohol and a fire. The police captain will chide the detective for overreacting; his buddies will tease him about using public funds to finance a panty raid, and everyone will laugh it off.
On the gripping hand, the heat is not going to die down in a month, again barring bunnycat shenanigans. There are going to be at least a few officers who have already convicted these girls in their minds, and so they're going to go out of their way to scrutinize everything they do for months to come, maybe as much as a year. IMO we need to treat this as a long-term threat, work more on operational security (don't talk about magic or magic-related stuff through anything except telepathy, use teleporters to go on hunts), and maybe put off the restaurant idea for six months to a year, depending on what our mind-reader tells us.
The fact that we have police watching us, literally on a stakeout in unmarked cars, means a lot more than I think anyone, even the QM, realizes. Frankly we should have had a lot more warning, in the form of having uniformed officers interview all/most of the girls and their families, some probably more than once, long before it ever got to the point of an actual stakeout.
Here's the issue: in order to do a long-term, or even a very short-term, stakeout, you need approval for overtime, a lot of overtime. Stakeouts are never done on a whim: police only do them when they "know" someone's committed a crime, and they just need to gather enough evidence to get a search warrant or arrest warrant(s). That means a detective or higher got approval from a captain or above, put together an extensive plan involving personnel rotations and cover stories, got official orders and a budget assigned, have to make daily follow-up reports, etc. All of that takes a lot of time, more than two months, usually, so the stakeout currently underway should be less than 10 days along if that.
What this means is that there is a massive paper trail surrounding that stakeout. If we suddenly remove both impetuses for the stakeout, without simply letting Kyuubey mind-whammy everything out of existence, that could look extremely suspicious, even alarming. If, however, we "just" remove the Kevlar purchases, leaving the $10,000 damage bill in place, then when the police "discover" the big cosplay LARP event that we're going to stage the whole thing should die down without any escalation. Frankly $10,000 isn't all that much in terms of damage when you're talking a few dozen teenagers having a screaming fight; I've seen two college kids do more than that to a dorm room, although that case involved alcohol and a fire. The police captain will chide the detective for overreacting; his buddies will tease him about using public funds to finance a panty raid, and everyone will laugh it off.
On the gripping hand, the heat is not going to die down in a month, again barring bunnycat shenanigans. There are going to be at least a few officers who have already convicted these girls in their minds, and so they're going to go out of their way to scrutinize everything they do for months to come, maybe as much as a year. IMO we need to treat this as a long-term threat, work more on operational security (don't talk about magic or magic-related stuff through anything except telepathy, use teleporters to go on hunts), and maybe put off the restaurant idea for six months to a year, depending on what our mind-reader tells us.
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This is pretty much the case, omakes probably would help with motivation. The next update has been stalled about half finished for weeks.
So part of this is essentially quest abstraction. Real life is inevitably more complicated than any game can really accurately depict. You go with generalizations and tables, and then as a GM you fill in the blanks as needed. I do a fair bit of research for certain aspects of this quest, but not anywhere near enough to make things accurate, my goal in research is essentially enough to make a world that feels reasonable enough.
Police watching you was essentially a punishment event triggered by pretty much flaunting the masquerade. Contrary to perception there were a few clues in advance that you weren't really holding up the masquerade very well. No one really picked up on them. (Which granted as a green GM I figure is mostly me being too subtle, so didn't directly punish that.) Then you had a couple major masquerade issues that brought it up to a big deal and didn't try to mitigate them immediately. So it triggered this event. I didn't think it through completely perhaps, but I doubt the police would ask people they think are in a gang directly if they're in a gang. There were a couple other possible events you could have had for masquerade violations, but this one came up.
This quest has a tad more complexity than the CKII empire quests that were going around, but don't let that fool you, it's not fully realistic. (Even without dealing with the bullshit magic (I have a vague set of magical guidelines in my head, but I deliberately ignore scientific knowledge with magic).)
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They... actually would, and do, all the time. Mami would have gotten a knock on her door by two uniformed officers doing the whole intimidation thing with a black-and-white parked as close to her front door as possible; she might have even been brought down to the station for "questioning", at which point she (and everyone here) is advised to not say a word:
Frankly, in the real world none of what we've seen so far would even warrant a knock on the door, let alone an actual investigation. The police don't have evidence; they don't even have a crime. You can't get approval for an expensive stake-out operation on a bunch of kids living together, not without a string of high-stakes robberies or assaults, maybe a dead body or two; you can barely get a black-and-white to come to your house to fill out a police report for a robbery, and then only because you need it for an insurance claim.
Game mechanics are the only real justification for what we've seen so far meriting even a cursory investigation, let alone a stakeout, and that's perfectly acceptable. The point I'm getting at is that this investigation should go away just as easily as it came about, lessons learned on both sides, with the players having to walk on eggshells for the next 3-12 months as punishment for missing what in retrospect were glaringly obvious hints that we needed to micro-manage Mami and her girls more with regards to the masquerade. This isn't like Ersatz Quest, where the herd voted for Homura to threaten to nuke Tokyo--and pulled out a Russian nuke to do it!--we players just haven't been getting as detailed in planning out operational security as we have been the logistics, and have to pay a penalty for it.
Well, a cursory read-through gives me:
- No interrupt actions regarding the bike messengers, especially the one who was riding supernaturally fast all over the city
- Not being circumspect enough about buying body armor online (though this in itself shouldn't have been a big problem)
- Not throwing a priority interrupt or two back when we got two warnings in one update about police attention to what we were up to
Hmm fair enough, I didn't have proper perspective on this. I'll keep in mind in the future. Honestly police procedure is not something I have in depth knowledge of. Had I known this I probably would have done the event as you say. Though in fairness you can expect that Mitakihara's police have a bit less to do than you might expect.
The other alternatives I have for masquerade violations short of apocalyptic "You lose" level that I've come up were basically neighbors snooping on you, parents figuring something out, internet videos, reporters. This level is fairly moderate. I could have done it better, but it is indeed as you say a game mechanic, and I'm relatively inexperienced at this. Mechanically I wanted something threatening, but still resolvable with your resources. This is what I came up with to fit that. Again it could be better but that's just me failing a bit.
.... wow. That sounds rather ridiculous. In the universe you're playing in in this quest expect that if you do something like that Kyuubey will intervene.
The logistics micro is leaning towards the comical at this point and that wasn't what I was really going for with opsec levels required. But my thought process on this was that Mami despite her regular life and death battles which gave her a level of maturity beyond what one could expect, and despite playing mother hen to a group of girls for a few years now doesn't think like a secret agent or a gang leader or anything like that. She doesn't naturally think like that. When she wants something and has the money she buys it. When the house has obvious battle damage and needs repairs she calls a contractor. This is a wake up call for her as well.
In fairness they did eventually tell their supernaturally fast courier to slow it down. Though it took a while. The others were obvious clues they picked up on.
I know I had it in mind as an issue for a while and expect I put in some other stuff, but it's late and there's a only a couple that occur to me right now. Back in turn 14 you got told that Shioko was caught by her friends transforming on her way home from school. No one seemed to pick up on that detail or comment on it in their plans for how to deal with the situation. The implication being that it was used as a way to get around faster. Mami tends to transform right before entering Miasma which cloaks her from human perception. Others... not so much so.
There's also the fact that you've had girls die, which means they effectively just disappear without a trace and no apparent cause. One of the omakes actually highlighted this issue. (Oddly Kyuubey never seemed to care much about that detail in canon, my guess here is that they figured in general police just don't put together the occasional missing child, plus the incubators tend to pick on people that are in bad conditions to start with which makes it less noteworthy.) There happens to be a new, suspected to be violent, gang of girls in town.
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Ironically, it might be the fact that we haven't had girls dying that could be drawing attention. Remember that the magical girl phenomenon has been happening throughout recorded history; it's probably a recognized "medical condition" like SIDS is in RL (Sudden Teenage Feminine Malaise Auto-Immolation Syndrome?
) A city the size of Mitakihara should be losing half a dozen to a dozen girls a month on average, but here we've lost, what, three in two years? That alone should prove this concept to be amazingly successful; between that and our unusually effective Grief Cube farming ideas we should be getting Kyuubey to sit up and take notice.
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Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
4, two in combat and two lethal spirals. All in the first year, the second year had no deaths at all.
Actually, if Kyubey gets enough energy from the contracting process, then the lack of turn over might make him think of this as a failure.
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Not really. They're still police; they're not the CIA or something. Police aren't hard-wired to go skulking around without good cause. Their job, and their mandate, is to protect and serve, and you do that by being visible as members of the community and a crime deterrent, not by staying in the shadows. Although...
this gives me such a good idea, or maybe several. A series of omakes; maybe even a seismic shift in the whole Quest! Augh, but I have to go to work right nowIronically, it might be the fact that we haven't had girls dying that could be drawing attention. Remember that the magical girl phenomenon has been happening throughout recorded history; it's probably a recognized "medical condition" like SIDS is in RL (Sudden Teenage Feminine Malaise Auto-Immolation Syndrome?
. Um, okay, quick teaser: the police have a good reason to be (temporarily) relatively hands-off with Mami and her group, and it could make the next few months (possibly years) really, really different for us. Let's see if anyone else is pondering what I'm pondering.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
To fully express my reaction to this statement I must relate to you a parable:
A person out for a walk in the evening comes across a fellow who seems quite miserable and engages that fellow in conversation.
"Bad day?"
The fellow just nods.
"Don't worry, I'm sure tomorrow will be different!"
The fellow wails, "But I survived today!"
@inverted_helix
Sorry, I promised an omake and I am slowly progressing on it. I don't have much time during the week, and I was planning to work on it this weekend, but another quest I'm in rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, and then rolled a 1 on what the enemy was, and then rolled a 1 on the number of capital ships invading us, and then rolled a 1 on the number of enemy escorts. Resulting in us being invaded by a Necron fleet that out numbers us 3 to 1 in capital ships, and 2 to 1 in escorts.
So I instead spent the weekend developing a plan to save out butts, which also required redoplying the ground forces (all 400+ regiments) among the various cites (31). So I'm afraid I got rather distracted and didn't work on the omake at all this weekend.
As a side note on the girls that died, I would not that all the girls that grief spiraled had their bodies disappear, so they will be listed as runaways. The girls that die in battle do actually leave bodies don't they... actually unless their soul gems were shattered they probably died due to using up their magic trying to heal, which would also result in no body.
So while I would think that parents might be worried about the missing girls, and maybe 1 or 2 bodies, there wouldn't be as many funerals as the shear death count suggests.
Thought that is a new concern. All the previous deaths were before we set up our boarding house. If a girl goes "missing" now we might have some difficulties.
Sorry, I promised an omake and I am slowly progressing on it. I don't have much time during the week, and I was planning to work on it this weekend, but another quest I'm in rolled a 1 on the random encounter table, and then rolled a 1 on what the enemy was, and then rolled a 1 on the number of capital ships invading us, and then rolled a 1 on the number of enemy escorts. Resulting in us being invaded by a Necron fleet that out numbers us 3 to 1 in capital ships, and 2 to 1 in escorts.
So I instead spent the weekend developing a plan to save out butts, which also required redoplying the ground forces (all 400+ regiments) among the various cites (31). So I'm afraid I got rather distracted and didn't work on the omake at all this weekend.
As a side note on the girls that died, I would not that all the girls that grief spiraled had their bodies disappear, so they will be listed as runaways. The girls that die in battle do actually leave bodies don't they... actually unless their soul gems were shattered they probably died due to using up their magic trying to heal, which would also result in no body.
So while I would think that parents might be worried about the missing girls, and maybe 1 or 2 bodies, there wouldn't be as many funerals as the shear death count suggests.
Thought that is a new concern. All the previous deaths were before we set up our boarding house. If a girl goes "missing" now we might have some difficulties.
My napkin math shows with my system approximately .5% of females should vanish from this over the course of their eligibility. Considering something like 1.3% of the American population dies to car accidents it doesn't really seem like they'd make up a new syndrome for it. There just appears to be a lot more runaways that vanish in this world. Doesn't mean that people don't like to look for simple explanations though.Ironically, it might be the fact that we haven't had girls dying that could be drawing attention. Remember that the magical girl phenomenon has been happening throughout recorded history; it's probably a recognized "medical condition" like SIDS is in RL (Sudden Teenage Feminine Malaise Auto-Immolation Syndrome?
Given normal human population patterns in the real world though it makes me wonder if the Incubators would have slightly tweaked humans genetically to encourage a few more girls to be born to help stabilize the population pressure. Since normally slightly more boys are born than girls and that would be quite troublesome.
Honestly if you rolled 4 1s in a row I'd have expected far less survivable odds, lol.
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Yes, well, the race of the invasion fleet is such that usually they can only be defeated when our race has 3x the number of capital ships as the Necrons. Instead the Necrons have us outnumbered 3 to 1.
So we've gotten... creative.
Our only real advantage is our ground forces are better then theirs. (That's the whole reason for our planet being colonized in the first place, it is an unparallelled death world where all the flora and fauna are trying to kill you, and thus the perfect training world for elite soldiers.)
Thus instead of trying to fight it out with our ships against theirs, we have turned our capital ships into excessively armored and armed transports, closed to grappling range, locked our ships onto theirs, and then boarded the enemy ships.
We've done surprisingly well. We're still waiting to find out how the boarding goes.
I dunno about survived: we're apparently inches away from reenacting the end to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
cokerpilot
Here comes the rain.
sargentorion
Hunter of bunnycats
- Location
- West Sussex, England
the very start they threatened to nuke the city if we were not left alone and it has bit us in the ass constantly.
aeqnai
Nerdy Homu
- Location
- Laniakea Supercluster
- Pronouns
- She/Her