Build
Bloodmight: A kind of magic! I can imagine this having a lot of versatility and capability, and the bonus of getting to save up for Ruling Ring is really, really temping. Explicitly can do healing, short term buffs for us and companions.
Full Might: A package of a bunch of stuff we've been offered before, rounds our build out almost completely. No shinies, but does offer Undying Vanguard to keep Gisena in the game.
Blademight: Arm grow back, weeee! Offers strength-scaling offense, high-grade anti-magic passive and interactive defense, a little bit of free mitigation on all of our curses (!!!), Stats and Rank, advantages against higher-Rank enemies, advantages against groups of enemies, and several progression oppurtunities. Probably the singular best combat-related option in the immediate term, with combat growth potential.
Mage Lord: An awesome magic pick. Allows "Imprisoning" related conceptual effects (ohohoho, Seven Seals) with a huge buff to our effectiveness with it on top, all at the cost of not being able to take more magic effects without getting another 7-Arete pick. I can see useful ways to munchkin this.
Fisher King: You must fish, Hungry Boy! The awesome combination of Dominion: Life and Gardener's Hallow. Honestly the best of this list if taken on their own, out of context. Allows us meaningful progression at much lower risk than the other combat options, and with a much wider scope than the Mage Lord effects. We do already have Might's Repose for timeskip value, so it's not unimaginable necessary, but is useful. Also, I assume is good for making us an economic powerhouse and permanently buffing companions. And hey, maybe we can get a cooking magic to stack on top of this! Imagine the synergies we could get from this
Crafting Magic. The most desirable kind. The only thing I'd be worried about is that the Apocryphal Curse and Decimator's Affliciton make it harder to gain value from long term investment.
Overall, I think that we need some measure of immediate power. Mage Lord is good, but if we're picking a magic system then Gardener's Hallow gives greater returns, despite being less focused. Full Might is lacking compared to Blade Might, only having Undying Vanguard as an important bonus over it. Bloodmight is only a good option if you're extremely desperate for Ruling Ring, otherwise being narrower in utility than Fisher King. I can't help but imagine that power is going to matter here. Maybe if we were willing to turn away from this place, or continue on with Apocryphal hanging over our heads, I could see us picking Gardener's Hallow. Hell, I think that it's the most long-term viable, giving us a way to accumulate power at nearly no risk and presenting us opportunities to stack further similar advancements together. But immediate power is the name of the game here, and the option that clearly succeeds at that here is Blade Might. Buuuuuuut it doesn't help solve the problem of companion squishiness and a lack of effective general utility. It's a triangle of opposing needs ://
[ ] Fisher King
This does give us some method of short term gains, healing utility, mid-term party-upgrades, economic viability, potential-in-itself and potential-in-synergy. If i was offered all of these as potential advancement paths myself, I'd have to pick Fisher King for the same reason that I don't go skydiving; I understand risk and actively mitigate it. Plus it's not like we don't have a little time to slow-roll, here. If we wanted, we could cultivate bonuses while steadily farming XP from Knights and sundry, and make up much of the power difference that way. And I really, really believe that this power will kick ass in the post-Voyaging-Realm section of the game.
Social
We have Veterancy still:
Caravan: Information. Eh, we've been okay without it so far.
Amiable Brutes: Highly tempting with Veterancy on the table. With FIsher King, our chances of losing are 4/10 X 4/10 = ~1/5. That feels even less risky than before, where it would have been 1/4 with Veterancy according to previous circumstances. I'm not super after help, and I am still worried about Tyrant procs, but extra help while we have Fisher King
and a "Primordial Rune"? That's likely to be worthwhile.
The Shining Paragon:
Everything I said in the last post still stands, except the fact that she likes us less if she doesn't have to save us from danger makes
me like
her even less. Nah. Plus, why would I ever, ever spend extra Arete when taking Fisher King leaves open the possibility of another 7 Arete option soon?
I think it has to be Brutes. Veterancy makes the risk tolerable, the problems with losing are not obviously terrible (how bad can the favors be? Well, pretty fucking bad. But the are
Amiable Brutes, so the favors would likely just be dangerous and difficult, rather than being the kind of moral or aesthetic awfulness that'd make us all angry. I don't see what the Caravan has to offer us, as things stand, that we can get by looking around for people again (if we really must), especially with Fisher King offering up whatever we would want from them anyways, but easier because we don't risk a Tyrant proc. I highly doubt I need to repeat my arguments against Paragon, right?
[ ] The Amiable Brutes
Fisher King + Brutes allows us to invest in a long-term way. The Apocryphal Curse will never ever let us avoid fighting or meaningful danger for long periods of time, but we can keep up with it in a way that doesn't invite even more risk. And the lack of immediate power (at least, power as great as something like Blademight offers) is offset by having the Brutes around, as well as being able to scale companions up using our delicious, delicious abilities. My optimal world is one where we get Fisher King, and then get a progression or synergy for it (pocket dimension garden immune to negative effects from our curses??) of it for another 7 Arete.