Yes but in this case the rock is very much self inflicted. If the Belters weren't behaving like domineering jerks we and the other polities would be much more willing to actually support them, frankly the whole situation is primarily their fault.
They have also shown some worrying trends in the omakes towards not regarding the groundsiders as people and the administrator seems to be developing a superiority complex. Remember when they found out about Indigo Hammer's bio-augments they issued conversion fields simply to one up the groundsiders.
I strongly suspect any long term resolution is going to require us to either stage a coup or flat out conquer them, as judging by their current attitudes, peacefull means will be useless. This is particuly worrying in the face of the Mantis threat and the potential loss of the STC.
On the plus side, high enough precog combined with a good MMI and Invigoration can probably be used for hacking. Just need to get Warding done so we can use a souped up muse for it, then telekinesis and clairvoyance so we can teleport. Then we steal all the designs off the Belter's main ship.
[X] Begin embracing Existentialist philosophy (possibility of gaining +5 Learning, activating a Decadence mechanic among Grave Tenders)
[X] Save for later
You eventually decide that you like the ideas of the Existentialists, but you start making posts in an attempt to help refine their philosophy, to help them figure out ways to implement their ideas that can fit with everyone, regardless of their abilities to properly pursue projects. While you think you are making some gains there, this also draws out the more hardcore philosophers from the Communitarian side, since nothing brings forth an argument quite like the opposing side having a really good idea that needs to actually be addressed.
Where this goes you're not exactly sure, but you're going to see what happens.
The rest of the year is spent mostly trying to get Jinah to shape up and teaching her a bit more about the world outside of her limited experiences while you work at your powers. While her overall education in being a psychic and the self control required is generally lacking, there is an iron hard foundation that you don't think you can improve upon in even a few years (Jinah's Base Willpower: 16)
You get a chance to meet with Rowena, but a lot of the interactions with all the various children are still shrouded in secrecy since most of them are not in government positions where they can be trusted with sensitive information already, like Rowena and Victoria. It's frustrating, but your three sisters all assure you that the situation is being worked on and sometime within the next year you should be able receive a proper public introduction.
Still, you don't let the frustration get to you and accept their reasons. You have time.
Unfortunately for a lot of other people, the year demonstrates that they don't.
Rolled 2
Major Eldar Raid!
Rolled 77
2651 casualties!
Rolled 8
Unexpected firestorm!
6
Rolled 39
Nothing
Despite your exercises, your divination is still not as strong as it could be, and thus you and everyone else is blindsided by a major Eldar raid that hits one of the smaller settlements and basically obliterates it. Over two and a half thousand people are massacred, with only a handful of survivors in the actual settlement, and dozens of the soldiers scrambled in relief are also killed before the murderous aliens decide to fall back into the Webway. Anna is of course apoplectic, but you feel a sickness in your stomach over the fact that you could have helped prevent this had you been stronger. You swallow that pain and anger though, subsuming it, adding it as one more motivation to get better. You are glad that you have made your presence at the hospitals known already since your assistance with emergency medicine for the survivors - both civilian and soldier - is immensely useful, especially in an emergency context.
Psychic Adviser
Select 4 actions (5 is reassign research) (Selections marked with 'R' are repeatable, and the maximum number of repeats are placed after as x(Max. number). 'AR' means that the action is also possible as a personal action and the Absolute Repeat value cannot exceed that number)
[] Train powers - Adviser (R x6)
[] Train with Paradox Cube - Adviser (AR x3)
[] Invigorate Council x1 (gives Anna and each other council member +1 Personal Action)
[] Invigorate Council x2-x6 (effects as Invigorate Council x1, and gives 1 additional State Action for each additional amount of commitment, kind given dependent upon adviser boosted. Not applicable to Psychic Adviser)
[X] Forbidden Research (Keys off of Learning)
-[X] Basic Psychoreactive Materials 304/1000
-[] Basic Psi-Detectors 99/1500
-[] Dandriss Flora-Warp Interactions 522/1000
-[] Dragon Cores 535/3000 (NOTE: Heroic Reroll applies to chance to disaster so long as you are the one running the program)
-[] Psy Science I 124/800 (NOTE: You need psykers to do this project)
-[] Sorcery: Basic Wardings 0/2000 (NOTE: Greatly improved by first completing either Basic Psychoreactive Materials or Dragon Body Part Usage)
-[] Sorcery: Basic Enchanting 0/500 (NOTE: Somewhat corrupting)
[] Hunt Psykers (R x6) (Keys off of Intrigue and Divination)
[] Train Jinah - Adviser (RA x2)
[] Lesser Future Telling - State (R x6) (gives warnings of impending short term disasters)
[] Telepathic Interrogation (R x3) (improves Intrigue actions)
[] Improve Health (R x6) (attend to the health of various people, generating goodwill. Each amount of commitment improves the reach of your services)
[] Hunt Dragons - Adviser (Mini-encounter, mostly keys off Martial)
[] Build Force Weaponry
In your personal life, you have a few limits to avoid triggering any sort of religious fracture until it can be managed, but you still have plenty of options. You have some education opportunities available to you, although admittedly a lot of that would mostly be taken via correspondence for this year.
Personal Actions
Select 4 actions
[] Attend University (3 actions) (synergy with Research as Adviser)
[] Attend Military Academy (3 actions)
[] Train Jinah - Personal (RA x2)
[] Practice your combat forms (synergy with Attend Military Academy)
[] Spend time with Anna and her family
[] Spend time with Victoria and her family
[] Spend time with Rowena and her family
[] Train powers - Personal (R x4)
[] Train with Paradox Cube - Personal (AR x3)
[] Hunt Dragons - Personal
[] Attempt to improve your Intrigue
[] Continue to study and debate religious changes to Grave Tenders (synergy with Attend University)
Note: If you do not spend an action to train Jinah then you will automatically take her as a Ward, but her living conditions will be automatically upgraded to Limited Freedom.
[X] Attend University (3 actions) (synergy with Research as Adviser)
[X] Continue to study and debate religious changes to Grave Tenders (synergy with Attend University)
I want to upgrade future telling so we can use it effectively on the polity level. Also finish the university asap. limited freedom for Jinah is probably ok, she gained a virtue compared to last year and was reasonably behaved except for the trolling. No starting fights or anything.
[X] Train Jinah - Adviser (x2)
--Need to get this done, and the more energy we put into this, the more we can straighten her situation out, and the higher chance of her getting a good Education Trait.
[X] Train powers - Adviser (x2)
--Need more Powers too, especially if this kind of thing becomes a habit.
[X] Practice your combat forms (synergy with Attend Military Academy)
[X] Continue to study and debate religious changes to Grave Tenders (synergy with Attend University)
[X] Spend time with Anna and her family
[X] Spend time with Victoria and her family
Synergy didn't seem to do a whole lot at first glance, and a good number of people wanted to hang out with our family. Now's our chance I guess.
[X] Train powers - Adviser (R x6)
[X] Invigorate Council x1 (gives Anna and each other council member +1 Personal Action)
[X] Forbidden Research (Keys off of Learning)
-[X] Basic Psychoreactive Materials 304/1000
[X] Train Jinah - Adviser (RA x2)
[X] Lesser Future Telling - State (R x6) (gives warnings of impending short term disasters)
[X] Train Jinah - Personal (RA x2)
[X] Spend time with Anna and her family
[X] Train powers - Personal (R x4)
[X] Continue to study and debate religious changes to Grave Tenders (synergy with Attend University)
--Need to get this done, and the more energy we put into this, the more we can straighten her situation out, and the higher chance of her getting a good Education Trait.
She is going to get primaris psyker just from the ward slot (Anna got Brilliant Strategist under worse conditions), and she already has max base willpower. Teaching her disciplines is counterproductive in several ways.
She is going to get primaris psyker just from the ward slot (Anna got Brilliant Strategist under worse conditions), and she already has max base willpower. Teaching her disciplines is counterproductive in several ways.
Oh, well, we will have to get rid of all gravetenders and related things now.
And I liked the bone poetry, but once we reclaim the artefacts, we will have to burn this religion to the ground like it never existed.
Foretunately we have Shadow Upon the Wave and Path of Balance as a fallback. It retards our philosophical development by a hundred years at least but its peanuts in the longterm.
Psychic Adviser
[X] Forbidden Research (Keys off of Learning)
-[X] Basic Psychoreactive Materials 304/1000
[x] Hunt Psykers (Keys off of Intrigue and Divination)
[x] Train Jinah - Adviser (RA x2)
[x] Train Jinah - Adviser (RA x2) Personal Actions
Select 4 actions
[x] Spend time with Anna and her family
[x] Spend time with Victoria and her family
[x] Spend time with Rowena and her family
[x] Train powers - Personal
We Continue our resarch, we try to get a second psyker, take care of our pyromancer to get her in a proper headspace, spend the time with the family so we can spend it before the secrecy is gone (seriously this is important, meeting and spending time with family before we come out in the open so they don't view us as the Slayer) and start working on our personal power
Jinah respects power. Making her even more powerful at the cost of working on our own abilities will just make things worse. And continues to let the free ward slots go to waste. The problem last turn was too little working on our powers, not too much.
[x] Train Jinah - Personal
[x] Train powers - Personal
[x] Practice your combat forms (synergy with Attend Military Academy)
[x] Continue to study and debate religious changes to Grave Tenders (synergy with Attend University)
Training Jinah the maximum number of possible times is essential to ensure that her virtues change as quickly as possible and she gets the highest possible education trait. She's probably playing catch-up on other stats, too. We can't afford to half-ass things with any psyker, let alone one of her power.
We can't stop using the Improve Health action; we chose it last turn as a PR move and now that people know we can run around using psychic healing, they'll start to question why we've stopped if we stop choosing that action. If our identity is coming out anytime soon, we can't afford to have them asking those kinds of questions.
Improving our powers is obviously incredibly important for reasons discussed previously. If we don't put the required actions toward it, we're not going to be as strong as we need to be when push comes to shove- just look at the Eldar attack this round for evidence of that. Recovering our divination prowess, improving biomancy to the point that we can fix mutations, improving telepathy to the point of being a mind-surgeon... we have probably forty or fifty Improve Power actions between us and the very minimum acceptable level for what Mirande should be able to do.
We have two ward slots, so another Hunt Psykers action will hopefully fill the second one.
Our personal combat score visibly does not measure up; we need to resume training. This will also be important if we ever have a chance to get our Eldar Ghost Sensei back.
Keeping an eye on and influencing the religious debate is vital now that we've personally kicked it off (if through anonymous message board posts).
It got us the worst mechanic ever. Decadence mechanic. For +5 Learning we don't need and can do without for a few decades that we could have gotten over the years with philosophy and quests for enlightenment.
So now we have revolt risks when decadence goes up instead of having personal ambitions to remove traits of the vice and virtue path, and potentially ambitions towards gaining them and not caring about decadence one bit, allowing people with advanced sins and a equal numbers of virtue to function just fine. People like say, Dia. who has Unyielding Pride, Discerning Lust, Unbridled Passion, Focused Fury.... and whom we want as the Martial Adviser, but will be generating decadence to no end.
And we are not running a CK2 Muslim Merchant republic who can hire mercs and butcher all those revolting peasants who do not know their place.
Psychic Adviser
[X] Train with Paradox Cube - Adviser (AR x3)
[X] Forbidden Research (Keys off of Learning)
-[X] Basic Psychoreactive Materials 304/1000
[X] Train Jinah - Adviser (RA x2)
[X] Lesser Future Telling - State (R x6) (gives warnings of impending short term disasters)
[X] Improve Health (R x6) (attend to the health of various people, generating goodwill. Each amount of commitment improves the reach of your services)
Personal Actions
[X] Attend University (3 actions) (synergy with Research as Adviser)
[X] Continue to study and debate religious changes to Grave Tenders (synergy with Attend University)
[x] Spend time with Anna and her family
[x] Spend time with Victoria and her family
[x] Spend time with Rowena and her family
[x] Train powers - Personal
[X] Forbidden Research (Keys off of Learning)
-[X] Basic Psychoreactive Materials 304/1000
[X] Hunt Psykers (R x6) (Keys off of Intrigue and Divination)
[X] Train Jinah - Adviser (RA x2)
[X] Lesser Future Telling - State (R x6) (gives warnings of impending short term disasters)
Remember the one unique thing we can do as Psycic adviser that nobody else can accomplish? Maybe we should do that.
Personal Actions
Select 4 actions
[X] Attend University (3 actions) (synergy with Research as Adviser)
[x] Train Jinah - Personal
@Academia Nut: is training Jinah for training her powers or working on her character? If the former, can we stick her in a ward slot and use a different kind of action to work on her characters specifically?
[X] Spend time with Anna and her family
[X] Spend time with Victoria and her family
[X] Spend time with Rowena and her family
[X] Train powers - Personal (R x4)
lets not fuck around like we did last year lets just get our powers back up to the point where they were before.