I'm really just objecting to the idea that the Incubators would rely on evolution of all things to shape the human population. Even just deciding to keep going for 50 years and reevaluate their strategies afterwards would be infinitely more plausible.
Honestly on the scale the Incubators are working on, I considered originally that the whole time frame of this story would essentially be considered an outlier point on their statistical model. Interesting, but not really something they have to make much adjustment for.
That was part of the tradeoff but you've overemphasized the morale problems I think.
Something to keep in mind that I've said before and will say again is that morale is not linear, at all. There's very hard diminishing returns on it. The happier you are the more it takes to make you happier, the more miserable you are the smaller the things that can make you happier.
I think it's the nature of the quest mechanics, and the sorts of people it attracts. Shepard Quest has a resource-management mechanic too, and I think something like 3/4th of the posts on that thread are everyone picking nits about the setting;
I haven't followed Shepard Quest since the first thread. I kind of felt bad for the original QM that wanted Superheroes in Mass Effect, and instead got Business Simulator 2170 because people realized that Stark makes more of a difference designing things than superheroing. Now I feel bad for the current QM because having to deal with setting destruction is pretty painful... I think I may have too meta a perspective sometimes. QMing my own quest makes me too sympathetic to other QMs.
one particularly memorable omake is of Yog writing a Mass Effect Physics Paper, and another is where he describes how to use eezo to destabilize the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, destroying all life in the galaxy in a massive burst of lethal radiation.
...Why would you do this? I mean I basically assume if you give everyone access to biological weapons someone will think that it's effective to use them, but that's because they believe they can get some benefit out of it. But even I am kind of dubious of anyone wanting to destroy the entire galaxy. I'm inclined to think that would take a truly massive amount of resources to destabilize though, and anyone with that amount of resources is unlikely to be so nihilist as to destroy everything.
Almost done with update outside Nagoya expedition which I'm still turning around in my head for how to have it go. Will likely post it separately along with rumors which I haven't come up with yet.
Right now going to call again for random bad things for grief spirals. I've lost or used all the ones I had.
How are we going to draw the borders? Drawing borders is going to be the big sticking point here, and it's probably where the Tokyo girls fell into conflict before, because even a few blocks here and there is a significant amount of territory in a highly dense urban area like Tokyo. This is another reason it'd be much better for everyone if we can persuade Kyubey to keep to a 62.5% contracting rate for the 3-6 month adjustment period: the Tokyo girls will be much more willing to let a few neighborhoods "slip" here and there if they can be provably, mathematically certain that they'll have all the territory they could possibly need during the transition.
In contrast, what I don't want to have to do is have Mami get up in front of 50 girls and tell them:
Running numbers on the spreadsheet, a territory with 2 morale using 2 cubes on grief spirals would need 9.5 cubes per 100 girls. That gives a 19% death rate per year. Morale 1 would need 12 cubes for a 24% death rate per year. Morale 0 would be 15 cubes for a 30% death rate per year.
So even at morale 0, they'd be using 1.15 cubes each per month, not 1.6.
Can bump to 4 cube usage and increase cubes to 20 at morale 0 to drop the death rate to 15% per year. An increase in average cube usage from 1.15 to 1.2 drops death rate by half.
A 75% contract rate would allow a 20% buffer accumulation, which means 1x buffer in about half a year. They could then raise the contract rate to 87.5% (35 girls per 40 territory, 1500 per entire Tokyo territory) and drop the buffer rate to 0%, with the difference made up in rotating tactics.
Honestly on the scale the Incubators are working on, I considered originally that the whole time frame of this story would essentially be considered an outlier point on their statistical model. Interesting, but not really something they have to make much adjustment for.
I do, because the Incubators are space-faring aliens, not treants.
The Incubators do not have the sort of pathological dislike of haste that you see in fantasy creatures; in fact they seem to be very, very hasty indeed, given that the heat death of the universe is 10^100 years away, even the "Stelliforous Period" where we'll still have stars is likely to last another 100 trillion years. Both are absurdly long amounts of time away considering the universe itself is only 13.82 billion years old. A slow, deliberative race, the sort who would sit on a crisis for 50 years before engineering a way to mitigate the problem, wouldn't be doing anything at all about heat death for eons yet, probably not until long after our own Sun has died (3 billion years from now).
This implies that they are very, very proactive engineers, the kind who fully subscribe to the "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" type of thinking. Two years of crisis would be more than enough time to have noticed a problem, collected data on it, and be formulating mitigation strategies, running through simulations, etc. Now that I think about it, I'm more concerned that they should have zeroed in on Homura as a potential proximal cause for the current difficulties, given they already know about her time travel power, than I am thinking that they won't take our analysis seriously about keeping contracting rates down as an interim measure (maybe that's why Rebellion happened: the Incubators hit her with some sort of inhibitions-lowering interrogation ray, to see what she knew about the odd shift in demon patterns and sudden group formation?). Good thing we decided not to contact Homura; she may well be dodging Thor shots from the Incubators soon.
That was part of the tradeoff but you've overemphasized the morale problems I think.
Something to keep in mind that I've said before and will say again is that morale is not linear, at all. There's very hard diminishing returns on it. The happier you are the more it takes to make you happier, the more miserable you are the smaller the things that can make you happier.
Okay, conceded. I trust you know the underlying mechanics of the morale calculation far better than I do; the only part I know is that, in the world outside Hollywood, criminals don't really like being criminals when they don't have to be unless they're psychologically damaged, which strikes me as a condition you want to avoid as a meguca.
I haven't followed Shepard Quest since the first thread. I kind of felt bad for the original QM that wanted Superheroes in Mass Effect, and instead got Business Simulator 2170 because people realized that Stark makes more of a difference designing things than superheroing. Now I feel bad for the current QM because having to deal with setting destruction is pretty painful... I think I may have too meta a perspective sometimes. QMing my own quest makes me too sympathetic to other QMs.
...Why would you do this? I mean I basically assume if you give everyone access to biological weapons someone will think that it's effective to use them, but that's because they believe they can get some benefit out of it. But even I am kind of dubious of anyone wanting to destroy the entire galaxy. I'm inclined to think that would take a truly massive amount of resources to destabilize though, and anyone with that amount of resources is unlikely to be so nihilist as to destroy everything.
I think it was envisioned as a "Final Solution" to the Reapers. It was also envisioned as a way to get the Citadel Council to approve more exploration efforts: "We don't want to do this, but we've already run into some pretty crazy psychos out here in the black, so we'd better get out there and patrol the center of the universe and prevent some other psycho from trying it!"
And yeah, I got involved one and a half QMs later (Shepard Quest is on its third QM now!). Honestly I think the whole weird resource management aspect could have been avoided if Auks or someone else had brought up how absurdly likely it was for Revy to get assassinated in her first three years in business by basically everybody else in the galaxy, but nobody thought of that until everyone was too far along.
As for arguing with me, you didn't even need to bother. @Elder Haman, @racnor, and @Kinematics were all refuting my points at the same time as you were. That's why I love active discussions like these: lots of different points of view.
Almost done with update outside Nagoya expedition which I'm still turning around in my head for how to have it go. Will likely post it separately along with rumors which I haven't come up with yet.
Right now going to call again for random bad things for grief spirals. I've lost or used all the ones I had.
[Not really serious]
X really, really thought we should be contacting Homura this month instead of Serena. It took 4 cubes to calm her down from her sudden anxiety attack.
X was in a frothing rage because somebody was wrong on the Internet! It took 2 cubes and a threat to check her into an Internet addiction rehabilitation clinic to get her to stop seeing red.
[/Not really serious]
(1-cube spirals)
X's grandfather had a mild stroke this month. He is recovering nicely, but the extra strain on X and her family meant that she needed an extra cube to keep up appearances and be as helpful as possible.
X did very well at the spelling bee this month. Too well, in fact; she had to turn down a trip to the nationals because it would mean a week-long trip to Tokyo. The poor girl nearly had a panic attack which took a cube to calm down.
X's cat ran away. She had to borrow a clairvoyant--and spend a cube--to recover him.
X has been having Very Important Problems all week thanks to a truly awful haircut at a new hair salon her mother insisted she try. It took 1 cube and the liberal use of cute hats to keep the Problems under wraps.
Kyoko has no idea where the extra cube went this month. She was not having problems at school! That test was no trouble at all! Her clone must have just taken extra effort to keep going this month; that's it!
(4-cube spirals)
One of the Tokyo girls had a nightmare. A bad nightmare. The four of them closed ranks and refused to say who had the nightmare, and all were careful to wear heavy eye makeup that day, but in the aftermath all four of them seem oddly impressed that the rest of the Serenes were at once wholly sympathetic, and wholly unconcerned with punishing the one who dared to use four months' worth of grief cubes in the course of a single night.
This implies that they are very, very proactive engineers, the kind who fully subscribe to the "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" type of thinking. Two years of crisis would be more than enough time to have noticed a problem, collected data on it, and be formulating mitigation strategies, running through simulations, etc.
Now that I think about it, I'm more concerned that they should have zeroed in on Homura as a potential proximal cause for the current difficulties, given they already know about her time travel power, than I am thinking that they won't take our analysis seriously about keeping contracting rates down as an interim measure (maybe that's why Rebellion happened: the Incubators hit her with some sort of inhibitions-lowering interrogation ray, to see what she knew about the odd shift in demon patterns and sudden group formation?). Good thing we decided not to contact Homura; she may well be dodging Thor shots from the Incubators soon.
The problem with that is that killing her wouldn't fix the problem. And they lack data because she won't tell them anything. Without more data they don't want to act because the results are too unpredictable.
...What. That stops the Reapers but also kills everyone else. At least while there's still life someone might eventually defeat the Reapers. That makes no sense.
Okay, conceded. I trust you know the underlying mechanics of the morale calculation far better than I do; the only part I know is that, in the world outside Hollywood, criminals don't really like being criminals when they don't have to be unless they're psychologically damaged, which strikes me as a condition you want to avoid as a meguca.
Morale is basically my "everything else" lever to handle things. It has no real clear rules. Just like emotions don't have solid numerical rules either. Generally at each 1 pip (Now tempted to make pips instead of numbers) you can see though I diminish all sources of positive morale to account for diminishing marginal happiness.
What that means though is that each point is significantly easier to maintain than the next point. You guys for instance can reach 5, but struggle to hold onto it. While a group like Nagoya couldn't possibly reach 5, but they can definitely maintain a morale above 0.
Research Tandem Casting, Fusion:
There's some progress on fusing different magic types, supposedly. You're not too sure yourself. There's been some rattling bangs, but nothing much. Keiko has extended her previous metaphor to say she's trying to craft music when she can't hear any of the musicians, but if Beethoven could do it she can figure it out. You think she's stretched the metaphor a bit too far.
Telepathic Defenses
Taura continued her attempts to figure out ways to block herself this month. This time she decided to see if she could shield the target with her own powers from her own powers. She wasn't particularly successful though, she's never actually done this before even for herself, and her attempt to block herself isn't very good though she can't say if that's just to her or in general.
Effects of Enchanting on Technology:
The results of your experimentation on technology are a bit unclear. You weren't able to derive anything of actual immediate use though. While use of magic in the area has no effect on technology that you were able to detect, enchanting the objects directly usually caused them to fail or introduced wild inaccuracies between the object's design and the results, and in cases where it didn't cause problems didn't seem to help either.
Keiko believes that this is a result of the materials making up the objects being altered individually. Modern technology is made up of a huge number of smaller components working in carefully constructed harmony based off their properties. When you enhance the properties of those individual components without concern for the overall design, there's not really much benefit, and it even causes problems. For instance most electronics fail if the semiconductor properties are altered even slightly without a complete redesign based on the new properties.
She's not really sure that there's anything your group can do about this right now. Something like assembling a computer out of parts would be easy enough, but redesigning and building the parts based off changed properties of the materials would be very difficult; she's not even sure where to begin on something like that.
Training General training
With all the fresh recruits you gained last month you start up a special training program for them all this month, putting them through the paces of how your organization does things. They won't be used in combat roles right now, most of them will just fill in your mundane jobs, but better they know things now before they get put into field roles without any knowledge of how your group does things.
Tandem Casting Training
- Teleporter: 4 (Seto + other)
- Stealth: 2 (Kyouko + other)
- Clairvoyant: 2 (Taya + other)
- Barrier: 5
With the warning about your visibility from Kyuubey in mind this month you have the training held in the wilderness with Seto providing transportation to the area so that it doesn't cost you too much extra time on traveling there. While they're there you have them hunt down the demons in the area to prevent them getting too troublesome for the human population.
Production/Purchases
You purchase three mopeds to start up the delivery service for your restaurant.
You also begin your first real production of charms this month beyond prototypes. Sending girls out with the trips to the forests outside the city to produce some tandem cast charms without drawing much attention. 17 barrier and 16 healing. They may look like mundane rocks, but they practically buzz with contained magical energy in your hands to your supernatural sense.
With your experiments in duration from the previous month in mind you purchase a couple of cryogenic storage coolers off the internet that are designed for laboratories and far superior to normal consumer thermoses. Some quick tests of healing charms dipped in polyurethane, placed inside a thermos, and then inside the cryo cooler give you a stable duration of 26 hours. It's good enough for your purposes. You store the tandem charms you produce this month in this fashion, refreshing as needed.
Kyouko's family church
You make arrangements and begin the long process of purchasing a large piece of property. You also get a professional inspection of the church as expected the church is still structurally sound, and likely will remain so for the inspector's entire lifetime barring major earthquake damage. Everything else though is pretty much completely destroyed. Rewiring is the biggest expense even amongst the remodeling you want. Putting in a normal gym is pretty simple, and the main room of the church makes it easy to make a large meeting room. Making a dormitory and upscaling the kitchen are more costly.
Total is probably going to run into around $200,000. That doesn't include putting in a basement of the scale you'd need though. The contractor laughed at the idea of putting in a full basement level to a pre-existing building. Given the block of land you're looking at it would be way cheaper to just build a new structure than try to dig out beneath an already standing one.
Housing
Getting another block of apartments is simple enough these days, you have a lot more experience in it and a lot more legitimate looking cash flow. You really needed it, people were getting a bit too cramped, and that's never good for people's tempers.
You also have someone look into what you could get for Serena specifically. There's a fair number of abandoned homes in Japan, but trying to find someplace that's as secluded as you want but has internet access is actually pretty hard. You have a couple options.
Option 1: The Getaway House
Benefits: It's a rental, it's big, it's complete with all the modern trappings, it's remote because it was designed for getaway trips for the rich/company retreats
Negative: It's expensive to rent long term $10,000
Option 2: The abandoned village
Benefits: It's cheap - literally you can probably get title to the property for free just as long as you pay taxes, it's even bigger than the getaway house, with the ability for multiple houses, it's remote, no one around
Negative: It's ruined, old, lacks modern conveniences, and will cost significant money to renovate/rebuild and lacks collateral value for a loan. It lacks cable/internet, so you have to spring for satellite connections. You'll have to pay Kyubey to help you a lot with the paperwork and come up with a cover story.
Option 3: Akiya home
Benefits: It's dirt cheap, $300 a month and big enough for the people that you'll have living there.
Negative: It needs a lot of work, $30,000 to bring it back into use and it will be hard to get a loan on it. It lacks internet and you'll need to pay for satellite connection. It's currently as isolated as you want, but there's still a couple other akiya in the area that people occasionally look at.
Diplomacy Open Relations: Kofu
Kofu appears to be a largely democratic group and met you fairly willingly. They did votes through an app on their cell phones for whether to meet you at all. They didn't disclose their membership roster to you, but they weren't as paranoid as some of the other girls you've encountered. They seemed to be doing at least okay enough not to be starving.
You're certain they don't have as many members as your group. Probably not even half as many.
Trade deal (Coalition):
They try to make light of just how you discovered their tandem casting technique, though they seem a bit embarrassed by it. Whether they're embarrassed by having violated your territory or that they were caught doing so is questionable. They seem a bit curious as to what you've learned from your own direction of research, aware you might have reached similar but different results, but turn you down on it.
As to the hunting deal there's a pile of emails showing just how much they've poked around the deal trying to discover the hidden catch or danger. They ultimately don't find one though and accept that it's some sort of peace offering. They'll rent you the two vets worth of girl-power as a pack next month.
As to trading money and cubes, they figure they could sell you up to 3 GCU a month at $2,500 each, or buy them at $1,700.
Trade deal (Area 15/16):
They don't actually have much information to give you about the girls in Tokyo. The way they've dealt with Tokyo's problems is essentially based on the idea of a moat. They maintain several kilometers gap between their coverage area and the next urban area, and even the edge in that direction is only patrolled in small numbers. This cuts down on the attractiveness to demons significantly. They rarely see magical girls out of Tokyo, as the demons tend to patrol the outskirts. The ones that do make it through tend to be half crazed and not too interested in negotiation.
They don't really feel like they have the strength for fighting the Class 3s at all. They've tangled with a few of them, but largely just try to lure them back off to Tokyo and even that at ruinous losses. They can wish you luck in trying to attack, but they aren't too eager to go fight for someone else's land against so dangerous an enemy.
They don't really have much in the way of spare cubes or spare money, or at least they don't let on if they do. They could spare a couple cubes though for some money, or the reverse maybe. They debate about it a bit and offer to sell up to 2 GCU at $2,000 each, or buy a few for $1,500 each.
Trade Deal (Areas 14):
Seta Rika from area 14 comes up with a booklet that appears to have seen some terrible things in their hands but once was probably nice. It outlines the extent of Nagoya's territory for you, and that information is in itself rather worrying. Girls from anywhere in that region are free to travel to any other.
It also provides information on the organizational structure. The NM is led by Hino, with a sort of council or perhaps nobility whose power you can't be sure of made up of three former heads of other organizations in Nagoya and what amount to department heads. The two girls you've had extensive interactions with are members of it, with the one from last month being in charge of their legitimate businesses though according to the gossip she's not elite herself and that isn't a requirement to be on the council if you have other talents.
They seem to have a headquarters building on the outskirts of their city which contains most of their facilities. They've converted the underground parking lot into their gym/dojo and it also holds significant housing and armory.
Much as you expected nothing given out this publicly contains information about any criminal operations, though it does provide info for if you want to be employed.
Trade Deal (Areas 13):
Trade deal (Nagoya):
Neither Area 13 or 14 are really available to your plans of cube arbitrage, as they both trade any excess they might have to the NM, though Seta cheekily offers to buy your cubes if you want less than Nagoya's price for them.
Nagoya is now willing to buy cubes at $3500 per cube, though you're expecting this to continue to decline.
Nagoya Information/Expedition
Nagoya is perfectly willing to talk to you about what they're doing in Tokyo, thought they switch you to a different girl from the one you talked to before. This one has a much more militaristic vibe to her as opposed to the businesslike one the previous girl had. Uno Natsumi is entirely too normal a name for someone that even through a video call can project a (non-magical) aura of violence.
They run their attack operations from a boat which they use to travel directly from Nagoya to Tokyo in order to avoid having to travel through the territories in between. It also gives them a relatively safe base of operations as the demons rarely venture away from the population and out onto the ocean. It acts as their fallback location and when they aren't running an op they withdraw further from the coast for rest in a more safe location.
They send between five and ten elites and around ten to fifteen vets in support roles and to guard the ship. They scry from the ship for a lone target they can pick off and then teleport in to engage it. This can often take quite a while waiting for one to venture close enough to the harbor by itself. If things turn badly they withdraw to pick a better fight. Virtually every time they engage additional 3s can be assumed to be inbound in short order. When the first arrives the leader on scene makes a call about whether to maintain the engagement or pull out, but if a second appears while the original target is still up they pull out.
She shows a few drawings of varying qualities of notable demons that they've encountered. They've had multiple encounters with around a half dozen so far, though they don't really stick around when things start going to hell.
She places special emphasis on a picture of a giant floating eye with short tentacles ending in more eyes. If that one shows up regardless of other circumstances they immediately run, but you have to run not teleport. It interdicts teleports in a large area around it even beyond its miasma. If you teleport within a couple kilometers of it whether into the area or out, regardless of how good of a teleporter you think you are you'll end up gone. They kind of assume that it redirects into its belly, though possibly it just scatters your atoms across the city. They can't really be sure. They don't have any way to test how far its interdiction aura reaches, more than one kilometer and less than five. The aura is down for a few seconds when it teleports though. So if it teleports to catch you after you run, just port immediately.
On the subject of other major organizations in Japan, the NM only really have contact with the ones in the Osaka/Kyoto area. And their opinion of them is "isolationist pricks" on a good day. Apparently the NM tried to get their help with clearing out Tokyo before, but they really aren't interested.
There are three groups that share that area, and while they've avoided a meltdown like Tokyo they still skirmish with each other on a regular basis. One of the groups Heaven's Chosen has even claimed that Tokyo's destruction is actually a good thing, as it will shift the capital of Japan back to Kyoto where it should be. The other two (the Magical Republic of Japan, and the Osaka Junta) just don't think that Tokyo's problems are their problems because they're quite sure that the Incubators will contain the problem before it reaches them and there's no value to them wasting their lives on a lost cause anyways. They think that maybe they could have convinced the Republic of Japan to help, but there was too much danger to them if they sent their combat forces that far away.
Feeler towards Serena Pantano
Your contact with Serena goes better than you could have hoped. She's ironically filled with negative emotions herself. Guilty about what she's done to her own friends, and bitter about how her wish was so twisted from what she wanted, and yet fulfilling the letter quite perfectly.
Saving a major city is quite the enticement in itself; it will give her something to do beyond merely surviving. The offer to let her settle someplace is certainly enough for her to come help you. The other magical girls in her area really don't like her much since she has passed through so much territory and negatively impacted so many of them.
She'd need money to travel across the Pacific, but she can easily collect enough extra cubes to make the journey if need be. She doesn't tend to keep many on hand since she doesn't have unpredictable spikes and she can collect more any time she needs them. She prefers to only take what she needs as she passes through areas. Any travel plans you make should probably include extra stopovers though to reduce the exposure of any one group. She usually takes care to be out in the middle of nowhere when she sleeps just in case even. While it probably wouldn't affect the average traveler, it would be unnecessary extra risk.
She can't really say how much support she'd need in clearing the city until she's encountered the situation; most demons she's faced have been nearly dead just from her getting close. So she really doesn't have much perspective on how difficult it is to kill them usually.
Ideally you'd clear out the magical girls from the path she takes, but given what you've told her that will probably just mean these demons will go to wherever you got the magical girls to gather and she'd have to go there anyways. So probably better to just keep moving. She's never heard of any problems from just a few minutes exposure so it's not a big deal anyways. If she could get a teleport directly to the demons it would probably be best though and save on the large swaths of exposure from travel on foot.
Her power is really hard to predict accurately though, especially to the Incubators because it's so dependent on the person being exposed. She suspects that the theoretical happiest person on Earth could spend a lifetime in her aura without any problems, while someone already terminally depressed could be pushed over the edge in no time at all.
She hasn't answered any of the requests from the Incubators in the past because of how twisted her wish was from what she desired. This was certainly nothing like what she wanted and has ruined her life. She talks to them for contact with someone unaffected by her power, but she certainly wasn't about to do them any favors.
She brings 4 girls with her, all of whom can perform well above elite level strength because of her aura effect, and she's no slouch herself. She'd prefer that all 5 of them get the full allotment of grief cubes you'd normally give a girl, but they could get by on less.
Morale
You put much of your time this month aside to spend time with the girls you're protecting. You started this group to give them a better life than you had. You've been a bit buried in your work lately and you hardly even know many of the newer girls. You spend some time seeking out each of the newer girls in particular to talk to them, to see how they're doing.
You've probably saved many lives in your years as a magical girl certainly more than sixty, and yet the impact you've had on the precious lives of these girls touches you much more strongly. You don't really learn anything of significance about them, but that wasn't the point. You've been a bit of a distant figure to some of them, and you hope you've closed that distance a little. You can see in the future a time when SIMP will be so big you can't know each of them, and that's a little regrettable.
The Serene Christmas party was anything but serene. It was joyous and boisterous and spread across many places. You spent some of the money put aside on decorations and extra food and the rest was just split out to the individuals with encouragements to get each other gifts. No one got each other anything too fancy, but it was cheerful and festive anyways.
General
Hunting proceeds as planned as you align your northern area with the new ones in strength. Nomadic hunting isn't quite as lucrative as you'd like, it gets capped off at 3.5GCU as demon strength approaches 10. It's much less predictable and easy to keep even throughout the territory compared to more populated areas.
Your mundane income sources proceed normally this month. The delivery service you started to set up this month, but struggle a little to get it running, besides Akeno your girls aren't quite used to managing this sort of thing. You might also need to do a little advertising. You forgot to put money towards that, and Taura wasn't around to catch the error. They still make a little this month, but it will hopefully keep picking up. +$3000 this month, will continue to grow
SIMP has grown by about 50% in the eight months since you started needing an aide, you're probably going to need a bit more help soon. Even if it does seem a bit odd that you went nearly two years without needing one and now you feel like you need a little more help after eight months, you've seen some rather explosive growth in that time. (+.5 vet to upkeep paperpushing needed soon)
Kanon the more cynical girl from area 10 made veteran this month.
Shioko did very well at the spelling bee this month. Too well, in fact; she had to turn down a trip to the nationals because it would mean a week-long trip to Tokyo. The poor girl nearly had a panic attack which took a cube to calm down. She's one of your original veterans she's had experience with demon problems, and she's not doing it again.
Aisa has been having Very Important Problems all week thanks to a truly awful haircut at a new hair salon her mother insisted she try. It took 1 cube and the liberal use of cute hats to keep the Problems under wraps.
Ayako's cat ran away. She was very worried even though Keiko assured her she had nothing to do with it. Her getting a pet seemed to be a good sign in terms of her feeling more normal. But given the way she held onto the cat after she tracked it down, perhaps she's just displacing her feelings more. (1 GCU
Soga Enko, one of the girls from the group that long ago butted heads with Kyouko, asked a casual question of Kyuubey, and got a casual answer. They found her shivering in bed. (2 GCU)
Rumors:
Global recession: China's economy is heavily impacted by ongoing crisis in Hong Kong, in addition to other spots of turmoil across the globe consumer confidence has significantly fallen. As ever survival supplies are up when everything else is down.
It's said that the leader of Heaven's Chosen Yashiro Hiko is the oldest magical girl in Japan, possibly in Asia. She's also amongst the most powerful, and has squared off against multiple members of the Junta's ruling council at once without a loss. Some say she's a bit out of touch with reality, but all agree she's fiercely protective of those under her protection.
Tensions along the border between the Osaka Junta and the Nagoya Magocracy continue to be high due to the Junta's hunting policies.
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)
56 Veteran Meguca, 8 Green Meguca, 1 Associate
Upkeep: 21.5 Veteran, 3 Green, 1 Associate
Support/Training (8.5 Vet)
3 vet demon finding training (+20% grief cubes)
2 vets on dispatch service (+30% grief cubes additive with demon finding, -1% casualties)
1.5 vet on telepathic communication (-2% pair hunting, -1% pack hunting)
1 Veteran, Paperpushing
Jobs (13 Vet, 3 Green, 1 Associate)
1 veteran (Hainako) Translation service
7 veteran + 2 green working courier business (Minimum 3 vets)
1 Akeno Delivery
4 Vets (Akane), 1 Green, 1 Associate Restaurant
Grief Cubes 78
Money: $69,590
Expenses: $29,370
$1380 upkeep on cellphones (-2% solo hunting, -1% pair hunting)
$500 upkeep on cable
$5000 upkeep on apartments
$8000 upkeep on house
$6900 upkeep on stipend
$6900 upkeep on food
$690 upkeep on gear (bikes, shields, misc)
Income $35,500
Translator: +$4500 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 +~$4000 next turn
Morale: [5 of 10] Morale was has picked up again to a level it hasn't been in a while. It really feels like you're getting things under control after all.
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
[*]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
69 Bicycles (Mobility Bonus)
20 Bulletproof vest (-2% casualty)
19.8? Sets of Kevlar Clothing (-4% casualty)
3 Sets of Leather (-2% casualty)
9 sets hardened leather (-3% casualty)
Housing (68/93)
Apartments (40 capacity)
House (50 capacity)
Mami's Apartment (HQ of sorts) (Can be traded for $1200 per turn)
Plans were changed so many times that at present as far as I can tell no plan matches what the plan was when I said I was going to write. I believe this approximates this plan most closely? I don't think any of the changes were really that significant but let me know what I've missed. I will have missed stuff.
You rolled a 94 on Serena. So easy to convince her to take your deal.
I think this update is around 50% longer than the next longest I've written. Uuuuughhhh. Going forward I believe I will need to cut down on the time sink of arguing about the setting. That took way too big a chunk out of my writing time, lol. I have a really hard time not arguing though, I'm very very argumentative.
I'm thinking we should go for the getaway house, it's available and adequately furnished now which means we could potentially start clearing out Tokyo in two months. $10,000 a month is a bit more than our current net income, but we can now trade grief cubes for money if we have to and we should expect a lot of growth from whatever part of Tokyo we can grab.
EDIT: Other thoughts:
5 Elites is at the lower end of force recommendations for Class 3 demons and any assault will have an unknown number of demons from the rapid response team, so Serena will need support even with her Aura weakening them. On the upside, she can probably grant the same bonus to anyone in her Aura, so we could just field enough people to drown the enemy in magic.
The demon Nagoya specifically warned us about sounds like it might be on its way to Class 4.
The "moat" around Tokyo means it's actually going to be pretty hard for anyone to notice us taking out the Class 3 demons and doing Elder Haman's Baravian Fire Drill plan. We should try to time our assault to happen right after Nagoya's monthly attack to maximise the amount of time we have to act before anyone else notices.
She places special emphasis on a picture of a giant floating eye with short tentacles ending in more eyes. If that one shows up regardless of other circumstances they immediately run, but you have to run not teleport. It interdicts teleports in a large area around it even beyond its miasma.
One of the groups Heaven's Chosen has even claimed that Tokyo's destruction is actually a good thing, as it will shift the capital of Japan back to Kyoto where it should be.
Too well, in fact; she had to turn down a trip to the nationals because it would mean a week-long trip to Tokyo. The poor girl nearly had a panic attack which took a cube to calm down.
Arrrgh, if I weren't so swamped by unexpected work I would be so into this update, there's so much good stuff in there.
So, Serena's not actually affected by her own aura - it's horrible, in the usual wishes from Incubator fashion, but also sounds really interesting. I would take first crack at the omake, but given my schedule, I'm not sure how practical that is. Also, I know a bunch of you were already designing her hypothetical teammates so there is that.
I wish I could see the google map (or just the normal map, pictures... load unpredictably for me), referring to various group as area INSERT NUMBER is not very evocative, I am definitely getting them mixed up. I do hope we see more of Area 15-16 tho, even if they don't join us, I hope they'll at least be willing to call us if they get into trouble (read: escaped Class III).
Nagoya is also getting more and more interesting. They definitely do look like the empire of which our quest was supposed to be about. Armory, personal boat, what sounds like their own magical girl batcave - they definitely got their toys.
The 'let Tokyo die' magical girl faction is one I wasn't expecting, but okay, that will be an interesting encounter in the future. Not sure how to diplomance that.
The 'let Tokyo die' magical girl faction is one I wasn't expecting, but okay, that will be an interesting encounter in the future. Not sure how to diplomance that.
I wish I could see the google map (or just the normal map, pictures... load unpredictably for me), referring to various group as area INSERT NUMBER is not very evocative, I am definitely getting them mixed up
Any ideas for expansion a bit more aggressively? Seems to me like there's a lot of big groups around, and unless we have the numbers to make expanding into our territory inadvisable we might get into trouble later on.
Has Kyuubi contracted anyone in our territory recently? Like in the past year? I don't remember any mention of it one way or the other, but it would seem strange for him to have held off on it.
Any ideas for expansion a bit more aggressively? Seems to me like there's a lot of big groups around, and unless we have the numbers to make expanding into our territory inadvisable we might get into trouble later on.
My rough plan is to spend this month importing Serena and stockpiling tandem-cast charms and then launch our assault on Tokyo next month right after Nagoya finish their monthly raid to try and absorb as much of it as possible before anyone realises what's going on. If we get lucky, we should get a significant first mover advantage.
@inverted_helix Did you ever decide how many charms one person could have on them for this sort of thing? I remember you were planning to have a limit.
1: If we took on the cost of bribing a Legendary to come out and clean up Tokyo, would we get the bounty on the class 3 demons?
2: Ask for the contact information of all the large magical girl organizations in Japan (we already have Nagoya/Osaka).
3: Ask for the contact information for girls in the Tokyo area (so we could send useful tools to aid them), particularly any surviving Elites.
4: Ask for information on general demon strength levels in Tokyo city, the number of class 3 demons, and the number of surviving magical girls - so that we can more accurately estimate both the cost of cleaning up the class 3 demons, and the cost of stabilizing the area after cleanup.
Nope, google is still inaccessible. Imgur is generally okay, tinypic too, if they don't load they aren't so much blocked as... not loading. I think it's due to filesize, but hard to say.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't expanding into rural areas be the best thing to do if we want a place Serena can stay long term if we can get her to join us?
Not many Demons or Puella to deal with, but she'd still be close enough to get in contact with quickly.
Edit: Maybe check out Izu Oshima, the island to the south of Tokyo? It would be a great place to launch attacks on Tokyo from, and it has a population of about 8000, so it should be okay to support her as long as we supplement her every now and then.
She brings 4 girls with her, all of whom can perform well above elite level strength because of her aura effect, and she's no slouch herself. She'd prefer that all 5 of them get the full allotment of grief cubes you'd normally give a girl, but they could get by on less.
Option 1: The Getaway House
Benefits: It's a rental, it's big, it's complete with all the modern trappings, it's remote because it was designed for getaway trips for the rich/company retreats
Negative: It's expensive to rent long term $10,000
Option 2: The abandoned village
Benefits: It's cheap - literally you can probably get title to the property for free just as long as you pay taxes, it's even bigger than the getaway house, with the ability for multiple houses, it's remote, no one around
Negative: It's ruined, old, lacks modern conveniences, and will cost significant money to renovate/rebuild and lacks collateral value for a loan. It lacks cable/internet, so you have to spring for satellite connections. You'll have to pay Kyubey to help you a lot with the paperwork and come up with a cover story.
Option 3: Akiya home
Benefits: It's dirt cheap, $300 a month and big enough for the people that you'll have living there.
Negative: It needs a lot of work, $30,000 to bring it back into use and it will be hard to get a loan on it. It lacks internet and you'll need to pay for satellite connection. It's currently as isolated as you want, but there's still a couple other akiya in the area that people occasionally look at.
I think we can immediately eliminate option 3, since it has the most likelyhood of other people getting hit by the Aura.
Of the others, I favor option 2. It's the most isolated, and if Serena's girls are willing to put in the elbow grease then has the greatest possibility of having it feel like it's theirs, which will probably be important for Serena's morale.
...Why would you do this? I mean I basically assume if you give everyone access to biological weapons someone will think that it's effective to use them, but that's because they believe they can get some benefit out of it. But even I am kind of dubious of anyone wanting to destroy the entire galaxy. I'm inclined to think that would take a truly massive amount of resources to destabilize though, and anyone with that amount of resources is unlikely to be so nihilist as to destroy everything.
Yog has a tendency to look at how to stretch a setting's physics to it's limits, and is very good at it. My main memory of him is him figuring out a way for an Eva to destroy the entire universe in Asuka quest, despite that obviously not having any practical application. (though Asuka actually did find a practical application anyway, but that's mostly because Angels are just that weird)
Her power is really hard to predict accurately though, especially to the Incubators because it's so dependent on the person being exposed. She suspects that the theoretical happiest person on Earth could spend a lifetime in her aura without any problems, while someone already terminally depressed could be pushed over the edge in no time at all.
So it is morale-based. Follows with the talk about morale and incrementalism, our girls already have so much that it takes really extreme things to make them feel much happier than that, and even then, it's only a small, incremental increase for them. That's a good sign for her being part of the Serenes, and she admits that so long as it doesn't turn into a big long deal (longer than fifteen minutes or half an hour I'd venture a guess at, @inverted_helix?) that it doesn't even have appreciable effects when leaving the aura. Not what I'd hoped for, but it's mostly a sideways difference from what most assumptions were about it (the morale effect was a bit of a twist that makes it immediately better, but the lack of personal knowledge about the long-term effects and the sheer hate for her locally took away from any personal knowledge she might have about duration and repeat exposure).
We should follow up with Kyuubey to try to buy any studies they have after we've included Serena, to get a stronger picture of how restrictive we should be, but we are ending up right about in the middle of initial fears and initial optimism.
Just realized that giving the Nagoya group the ability to harvest more cubes makes their criminal enterprise more sustainable. Just payoff Kyubey to help you cover things up.
Effects of Enchanting on Technology:
The results of your experimentation on technology are a bit unclear. You weren't able to derive anything of actual immediate use though. While use of magic in the area has no effect on technology that you were able to detect, enchanting the objects directly usually caused them to fail or introduced wild inaccuracies between the object's design and the results, and in cases where it didn't cause problems didn't seem to help either.
Dang it. Should have known that it wouldn't be that easy. Maybe we should just try to have Kaoru create normal charms? Or more likely we need to investigate Spell Bindings.
Total is probably going to run into around $200,000. That doesn't include putting in a basement of the scale you'd need though. The contractor laughed at the idea of putting in a full basement level to a pre-existing building. Given the block of land you're looking at it would be way cheaper to just build a new structure than try to dig out beneath an already standing one.
Ouch... Much more expensive than I thought it would be.
As for a basement... do we really need one with a gym? I guess we could use a basement for the more flashy actions... something heavy with concrete - reinforced, like a bunker.
Option 3: Akiya home
Benefits: It's dirt cheap, $300 a month and big enough for the people that you'll have living there.
Negative: It needs a lot of work, $30,000 to bring it back into use and it will be hard to get a loan on it. It lacks internet and you'll need to pay for satellite connection. It's currently as isolated as you want, but there's still a couple other akiya in the area that people occasionally look at.
I'm a little unsure what this option is. @inverted_helix Are we out right buying this house or are we renting it? If renting it would be odd for us to repair it. If purchasing then shouldn't this be a purchase price, with potentially money down and a mortgage payment, rather than a monthly fee?
Option 1: The Getaway House
Benefits: It's a rental, it's big, it's complete with all the modern trappings, it's remote because it was designed for getaway trips for the rich/company retreats
Negative: It's expensive to rent long term $10,000
Option 2: The abandoned village
Benefits: It's cheap - literally you can probably get title to the property for free just as long as you pay taxes, it's even bigger than the getaway house, with the ability for multiple houses, it's remote, no one around
Negative: It's ruined, old, lacks modern conveniences, and will cost significant money to renovate/rebuild and lacks collateral value for a loan. It lacks cable/internet, so you have to spring for satellite connections. You'll have to pay Kyubey to help you a lot with the paperwork and come up with a cover story.
Option 3: Akiya home
Benefits: It's dirt cheap, $300 a month and big enough for the people that you'll have living there.
Negative: It needs a lot of work, $30,000 to bring it back into use and it will be hard to get a loan on it. It lacks internet and you'll need to pay for satellite connection. It's currently as isolated as you want, but there's still a couple other akiya in the area that people occasionally look at.
So currently, of the three options the Getaway House is the simplest. It doesn't require initial investment, and we have a cash crunch right now with all the expenses. However it puts us into negative cash flow, so we'd have to expand quickly to pay for it. (Being dependent on grief cube trade is a little worrisome).
The abandoned village is the best long term plan, as once we get the place fixed up the ongoing cost is very low. However, we are going to have a hard time getting the money. One possibility is to rent the Getaway House, and then once we have more cash switch to the abandoned village. Of course, Serena and friends might not like that.
The Akiya home seems like a nice middle ground. Basically it fits our current finances much better in all ways (assuming the costs stay as it is). The occasional exposure to people looking at other house int he area shouldn't be too bad... except that upon feeling the euphoria people will probably buy the houses and move in. Might be a trap.
@inverted_helix Can we get a swag on the cost of renovating the village? Not a formal assessment from a contractor, rather a phone call to a contractor and a price range for a large house in a remote area (septic tanks, etc). Is it $100,000? $200,000? $300,000. Just want to get a rough price range.
Also, what is the cost of satellite internet? A quick google gives me $100 a month for top of the line connections.
They try to make light of just how you discovered their tandem casting technique, though they seem a bit embarrassed by it. Whether they're embarrassed by having violated your territory or that they were caught doing so is questionable. They seem a bit curious as to what you've learned from your own direction of research, aware you might have reached similar but different results, but turn you down on it.
Hmm... to bad they turned it down. But it served a purpose of hinting that they can't fool us as easily as they might have thought, while also signalling we will let bygones be bygones.
As to the hunting deal there's a pile of emails showing just how much they've poked around the deal trying to discover the hidden catch or danger. They ultimately don't find one though and accept that it's some sort of peace offering. They'll rent you the two vets worth of girl-power as a pack next month.
They don't actually have much information to give you about the girls in Tokyo. The way they've dealt with Tokyo's problems is essentially based on the idea of a moat. They maintain several kilometers gap between their coverage area and the next urban area, and even the edge in that direction is only patrolled in small numbers. This cuts down on the attractiveness to demons significantly. They rarely see magical girls out of Tokyo, as the demons tend to patrol the outskirts. The ones that do make it through tend to be half crazed and not too interested in negotiation.
They don't really feel like they have the strength for fighting the Class 3s at all. They've tangled with a few of them, but largely just try to lure them back off to Tokyo and even that at ruinous losses. They can wish you luck in trying to attack, but they aren't too eager to go fight for someone else's land against so dangerous an enemy.
They don't really have much in the way of spare cubes or spare money, or at least they don't let on if they do. They could spare a couple cubes though for some money, or the reverse maybe. They debate about it a bit and offer to sell up to 2 GCU at $2,000 each, or buy a few for $1,500 each.
Seta Rika from area 14 comes up with a booklet that appears to have seen some terrible things in their hands but once was probably nice. It outlines the extent of Nagoya's territory for you, and that information is in itself rather worrying. Girls from anywhere in that region are free to travel to any other.
It also provides information on the organizational structure. The NM is led by Hino, with a sort of council or perhaps nobility whose power you can't be sure of made up of three former heads of other organizations in Nagoya and what amount to department heads. The two girls you've had extensive interactions with are members of it, with the one from last month being in charge of their legitimate businesses though according to the gossip she's not elite herself and that isn't a requirement to be on the council if you have other talents.
They seem to have a headquarters building on the outskirts of their city which contains most of their facilities. They've converted the underground parking lot into their gym/dojo and it also holds significant housing and armory.
Much as you expected nothing given out this publicly contains information about any criminal operations, though it does provide info for if you want to be employed.
Informative. Looks like Hino was able to essentially designate the former leaders of other large groups as her Dukes before expanding. So she might be more of a "first among equals" kind fo thing, probably supplemented by her charisma -and possibly telepathic powers. Hino might not be the telepath though. Need to remember that. Or she might have more than one telepath.
They seem to have a headquarters building on the outskirts of their city which contains most of their facilities. They've converted the underground parking lot into their gym/dojo and it also holds significant housing and armory.
Well there is a nice cover story for us building a new large underground facility on the land containing Kyouko's church! We just a need a large underground parking lot!
Neither Area 13 or 14 are really available to your plans of cube arbitrage, as they both trade any excess they might have to the NM, though Seta cheekily offers to buy your cubes if you want less than Nagoya's price for them.
So without going below the 1 month stockpile... that's roughly $50,000 that we can get out of Nagoya... (including the trade with the other girls... but that costs money, so that's... $40,000 even net.
That's barely enough to buy Kyouko's church, without paying for rebuilding. And it leaves us no cash. I think we might need to delay the church purchase by several months. Focus on Tokyo instead, and then once we are firmly established there, then we can make the purchase... that means a delay of probably... 4 months at least, and probably more like 6 months?
Nagoya is perfectly willing to talk to you about what they're doing in Tokyo, thought they switch you to a different girl from the one you talked to before. This one has a much more militaristic vibe to her as opposed to the businesslike one the previous girl had. Uno Natsumi is entirely too normal a name for someone that even through a video call can project a (non-magical) aura of violence.
They run their attack operations from a boat which they use to travel directly from Nagoya to Tokyo in order to avoid having to travel through the territories in between. It also gives them a relatively safe base of operations as the demons rarely venture away from the population and out onto the ocean. It acts as their fallback location and when they aren't running an op they withdraw further from the coast for rest in a more safe location.
They send between five and ten elites and around ten to fifteen vets in support roles and to guard the ship. They scry from the ship for a lone target they can pick off and then teleport in to engage it. This can often take quite a while waiting for one to venture close enough to the harbor by itself. If things turn badly they withdraw to pick a better fight. Virtually every time they engage additional 3s can be assumed to be inbound in short order. When the first arrives the leader on scene makes a call about whether to maintain the engagement or pull out, but if a second appears while the original target is still up they pull out.
She places special emphasis on a picture of a giant floating eye with short tentacles ending in more eyes. If that one shows up regardless of other circumstances they immediately run, but you have to run not teleport. It interdicts teleports in a large area around it even beyond its miasma. If you teleport within a couple kilometers of it whether into the area or out, regardless of how good of a teleporter you think you are you'll end up gone. They kind of assume that it redirects into its belly, though possibly it just scatters your atoms across the city. They can't really be sure. They don't have any way to test how far its interdiction aura reaches, more than one kilometer and less than five. The aura is down for a few seconds when it teleports though. So if it teleports to catch you after you run, just port immediately.
A Beholder... They got a Beholder. Sounds like a Gauth maybe?
And teleporting in doesn't work either... so hard to bring reinforcements to kill it. Five kilometers?
That means teleporting in to that distance and then running flat out to reach it... reinforcements will take a minimum of 3 minutes to reach there, and probably more like 6 minutes...
We will probably need a rapid reaction force designated just to kill this thing...
Maybe we should delay two months to allow for more training...
On the subject of other major organizations in Japan, the NM only really have contact with the ones in the Osaka/Kyoto area. And their opinion of them is "isolationist pricks" on a good day. Apparently the NM tried to get their help with clearing out Tokyo before, but they really aren't interested.
There are three groups that share that area, and while they've avoided a meltdown like Tokyo they still skirmish with each other on a regular basis. One of the groups Heaven's Chosen has even claimed that Tokyo's destruction is actually a good thing, as it will shift the capital of Japan back to Kyoto where it should be. The other two (the Magical Republic of Japan, and the Osaka Junta) just don't think that Tokyo's problems are their problems because they're quite sure that the Incubators will contain the problem before it reaches them and there's no value to them wasting their lives on a lost cause anyways. They think that maybe they could have convinced the Republic of Japan to help, but there was too much danger to them if they sent their combat forces that far away.
A Beholder... They got a Beholder. Sounds like a Gauth maybe?
And teleporting in doesn't work either... so hard to bring reinforcements to kill it. Five kilometers?
That means teleporting in to that distance and then running flat out to reach it... reinforcements will take a minimum of 3 minutes to reach there, and probably more like 6 minutes...
We will probably need a rapid reaction force designated just to kill this thing...
Maybe we should delay two months to allow for more training...
Aye. That's a scary one. The worst that it offers is knowledge that demons can do weird shit that isn't just cloning powers, but negating some of them. All the more reason to do some of those dummy run trainings I suggested earlier.
Aye. That's a scary one. The worst that it offers is knowledge that demons can do weird shit that isn't just cloning powers, but negating some of them. All the more reason to do some of those dummy run trainings I suggested earlier.
