I will point out that if Serena and retinue are willing to DIY some stuff in the villiage, that can be very good for Serena's mental health and self confidence and general morale. Although that is more of a longer term thing again.
I'm reconsidering that you can do the renovations that fast in the first place. I mean yeah theoretically 10k a week in labor costs, but getting work crews out to some place instantly isn't that common... So I guess that in account I won't let you use the village house the turn you pay for it.
I think it pretty important that we get confirmation that we can rent out the other Akiya homes, since if I was the GM I probably wouldn't allow it.
Just say that the government offers it as a one house per customer special deal.
Meta-wise though the point would be to force a choice on the players. Do we take the more financially attractive deal, and take a monthly risk for a bad die roll, or do we pay more money?
Also... how badly would it set us back to rent the Getaway house permanently?
If we get the courier business into Tokyo... and get even 10x the revenue... That's another 90k a month? Maybe it only delays us a few months?
Is it really a notable negative? I'd assume we'd pick one of the houses on the outskirts as our first house to renovate. Preferably on a hill or something, with the rest of the village obscured around the bend.
There's also the fact that, as refurb costs increase, you start to run into things that can't be done in parallel. For example, you can't exactly paint the walls when you're ripping out drywall to get at the electrical. $30,000 is low enough that you're mostly looking at paint, mold removal, flooring, roof repair, appliances, cabinetry and minor plumbing/electrical work, but $50k is when you start ripping out walls, and that's not something you can do at the same time you're repairing the roof, painting, or doing the floors.
I think it pretty important that we get confirmation that we can rent out the other Akiya homes, since if I was the GM I probably wouldn't allow it.
Just say that the government offers it as a one house per customer special deal.
Meta-wise though the point would be to force a choice on the players. Do we take the more financially attractive deal, and take a monthly risk for a bad die roll, or do we pay more money?
Precisely the issue at hand. Though I had no handwave for trying to force you into a more interesting set of choices. I think I'll take your explanation.
Honestly that's a pretty good way of punishing nit-picking, but I don't want to wage an escalating conflict in that regard. This quest is already hugely difficult to balance.
I'm surprised you don't have more questions about Serena's powerset now that you could ask her directly. There really weren't as many questions listed in the vote as people talked about asking.
Also someone brought it up earlier, but Serena will not spend a night in Tokyo, population density is way too high to expose that many people for a prolonged period. She'd rather camp out than that, though other options would be along the lines of a boat, or maybe an isolated travel motel.
I don't think we can pick option 3. Knowlingly running a chance of having people falling into Serena's Aura is a betrayal of the deal we've made with her, pure and simple.
How would Serena respond to camping out in the village, far enough away from the work crews, while we get the house in order? Would that be as negative as having her rough it in our nomad territory generally would be?
I don't think we can pick option 3. Knowlingly running a chance of having people falling into Serena's Aura is a betrayal of the deal we've made with her, pure and simple.
Well in fairness she already exposes people on a regular basis, and clearing Tokyo is going to be exposing more people per day than she usually does in months. She agreed to that because the situation is obviously dire. The problem is only if the exposure is more than very short term.
How would Serena respond to camping out in the village, far enough away from the work crews, while we get the house in order? Would that be as negative as having her rough it in our nomad territory generally would be?
Hmm not sure how I'd handle that. At least you'd be visibly working towards permanent residence though, so it wouldn't be quite so bad.
Also I just did the rolls to see about groups in the rest of Japan. They are pretty terrible... like GM is tempted to reroll but doesn't because he's trying to let the dice fall as they will. These rolls are bad enough that it probably places you guys as around 6th in terms of size. Nagoya > three Kyoto/Osaka groups you don't have enough information to rank against each other > Sendai > You.
Kumamoto and Okayama rolled low enough that there's no organizations at all and everybody's fighting each other. <10 on unity.
Getaway - Can acquire and move in immediately. $10,000 per month.
Akiya - Can get refurbished within the time limit. $30,000 refurbishment, $300+$100 per month.
Village - Cannot get refurbished within the time limit, so will have to have some other option available in the meantime. $50,000 refurbishment, $500+$100 per month.
Doubling up on the akiya and the village in the short term seems like a bad deal. There's no point in getting the akiya if we aren't going to use it, and no point in getting the village before we're ready to start the repairs, and a waste of money to do both at the same time.
If we need a short-term housing option while working on the village, then we can take the getaway. We can use that for the month it takes the village house to be refurbished. However there will definitely be expectations whiplash in moving from a corporate retreat to an abandoned village. The alternative is to force her to camp out, with varying degrees of negative on that.
I really don't like either option. We should not be forcing her to camp out, and we should not be giving her false impressions of what we're offering. If there was some way to get something 'average' as the temporary housing while we get the village started, that would be fine, but we have nothing that would fit the bill that doesn't require its own money sink.
Also, as an option for the akiya situation, it's not like we're completely helpless, even if we can't rent out the other homes. We can put in some warning systems (infrared motion sensors down the road, and security cameras) to let them know if anyone comes near, so Serena can move out of range if that happens. It should be a pretty rare event, anyway. Maybe add a few potholes to the road if we really want to discourage people from visiting, though that could also penalize us.
Merge 10+17 areas with North (size 9 territory). Then split 9 from the North to merge with the South, giving us two balanced urban territories (37 each).
North DS: -0.2
South DS: 7.5
Grief Use Tracking/Management (1.5 vets)
Cost: 1 Veteran per 40 Meguca; Reward: Meguca upkeep GCU cost reduced 5% (in our case 1.5 vets to get 3.4 cube savings).
Research Paused (0 vets, 0 cubes)
Production (0.5 elite, 2.5 vet, 1.2 cubes)
Create Charms: (x100 tandem barrier charms): (1.5 vet, 0.6 cubes) Done in the isolated nomadic territory to avoid notice (teleportation support listed in support), have a team produce 100 tandem barrier charms. Keep the charms stored in one of our cryogenic coolers, to be held for use in next month's expedition.
Cost: 0.2 cubes and 0.5 vets (of specific specialty) per 100 normal charms, x3 for tandem charms
Create Charms: (x67 tandem healing charms): (1 vet, 0.4 cubes) Done in the isolated nomadic territory to avoid notice (teleportation support listed in support), have a team produce 67 tandem healer charms. Keep the charms stored in one of our cryogenic coolers, to be held for use in next month's expedition.
Cost: 0.2 cubes and 0.5 vets (of specific specialty) per 100 normal charms, x3 for tandem charms
Create Charms: (x100 elite illusion charms): (0.5 elite, 0.2 cubes) Done in the isolated nomadic territory to avoid notice (teleportation support listed in support), have Kyouko produce 100 elite illusion charms. A can of redhead whoop-ass! (as Kyouko calls them). In reality they are two charms. First an explosion of illusionary Kyoukos all acting as distractions, 14 made of these. The second type use stealth on the person triggering the charm, 86 of these. The idea is that they are bug-out charms. Used if there is a call to retreat from the battle entirely. The leader of the pack uses the illusion charms, and then everyone on her team uses the stealth charms to hide their presence. Hopefully the illusions and temporary stealth gives the girls a head start in getting away. Keep the charms stored in one of our cryogenic coolers, to be held for use in next month's expedition.
Cost: 0.2 cubes and 0.5 vets (of specific specialty) per 100 normal charms, x3 for tandem charms
Training (0.5 elite, 6.5 vets, 2 greens, 3 cubes)
General training - With the new recruits, you need some time to get them all up to speed on your procedures and tactics.
Cost: 1 vet, 2 greens. 3 months.
Month 2
Tokyo Prep Training (0.5 elite, 5.5 vets, Serena & Co, 3 cubes): (10% of all non greens) With the anticipated difficulty of the expedition to clear out Tokyo, you need to do a lot of work to get people ready to handle the risks involved.
- Have Serena & Co. review Serene Combat training documentation and begin training in it themselves. Guided by video discussions of their lessons, and practical practice in their own groups. Focus on Pack Hunting and General Combat.
- Working with transformed/untransformed Serena (max 1 hour exposure for each girl) to get an idea of how their powers will behave inside her aura, and get used to the aura feeling. In particular try to identify ways to keep girls focused and not becoming reckless when dealing with her transformed aura.
- Coordinating as teams:
-- 1st Format: One massive pack: 6 barrier girls with layered tandem barriers, and 4 barrier girls on standby. Rest of the pack attacking from inside the barriers. Teleporters ready to teleport everyone out given a small window of safe time to teleport, etc.
-- 2nd Format: 7 to 8 girls - 2 barrier girls, 1 healer, 2 melee girls, 2 range girls. w/ 1 teleporter as add on (sometimes teleporting allowed, sometimes not)
- Running combat ops without reliable teleporter backup.
- Using charms (Kyouko assist, since she's really the only one with experience using them in combat)
- Parkour training with Akeno, for non-teleport escape
- Scenario Training: (Illusionists help with depicting the scenarios, refs to keep score)
-- Scenario 1: Mr. Eyeball demon: Teleportation = insta-death. (Have the refs be very strict on this one, plan at least one run through to be rigged so that everyone "dies.")
-- Scenario 2: Lot's of teleporting clairvoyant demons mobbing us
- Training scanning large areas, and specific navigation through them.
Scouting (1.0 elite, 1.5 vet, 0.2 cubes)
Clairvoyance Scouting of Yokohama and Downtown Tokyo: Get the patterns of Tokyo demon behavior, patrol routes. In particular focus on the floating eyeball. Use teleport charms to identify the safe teleport range around the eyeball. Try to identify any behavior patterns, vulnerabilities, and a good location for an ambush of the eyeball demon (near the border with Yokohama, and a place we have a good chance to take it on alone). Try to identify other abilities of the eyeball. Stay well outside the range of any patrolling demons on the outer edge of Tokyo. Possible observation post: Mt. Tanzawa.
Things we want proposals for:
— Ambush locations/ideas for the eyeball
— Possible "test case" where we could deploy Serena against a single class 3 demon and gain experience with the aura effects.
— Locations and times to attack that would permit fighting the teleporting demons in a staggered way.
1 clairvoyant vet, 1 Taya - Tandem Casting; 0.5 vet (teleporter), 0.2 cubes
Diplomacy (1 elite, 5.5 vets, $11500)
Recruit Tokyo Elites: (1 vet, $1500) - Attempt to recruit Elites in Tokyo to join us in the fight against the floating eyeball.
— Purchase one month worth of cellphones for distribution to any Elites in Tokyo that don't have cellphones. Ask Kyubey to help us distribute them. Any extras can be distributed to Vets leading cells that Kyubey thinks might be helpful.
— Contact all Elites in Tokyo, telling them we are planning to clear Tokyo, and asking them to be ready to join the fight next month.
— Specifically explain that we have a plan to clear all class 3 demons out of Tokyo, but doing so in a reasonable amount of time (1 to 3 months) will require killing the floating eyeball first. We intend to ambush and kill it. Ask for them to agree to join us in the battle. We have a secret weapon that will allow us to overpower the demon.
— For those that continue to be resistant to the plan, offer to accept any girls who participate in the battle as immigrants.
— Consider any dossiers we get from Nagoya for additional ideas on how to persuade different girls to participate.
Serena (0.5 vets, $9000) - Manage final arrangements for recruiting Serena. Arrange travel for her and her companions to reach Japan. ($8000 abstract cost) We will meet her directly when she arrives at Mitakihara airport. Provide standard welcome package of bikes (mountain bikes), cellphones, and shields ($1000), and begin the process of welcoming her to the Serenes. Keep initial exposure limited to Mami and Seto. Seto can provide transport to housing, and Mami can have a quick sit down with Serena to welcome her. (This ought to be maybe 30 mins of Mami and Seto's time, so not counting them in the meguca cost).
Safe Passage/Trade Deal - Area 15/16 (2 vet): Particularly note our intent towards Tokyo next month, as well as Taya's scouting this month. Arrange safe way to deploy Serena without exposing them to her aura. Discuss any aid they might be willing to offer as well. Point out that by staging the attack from their area, they will likely not have to deal with any fleeing class 3 demons.
— Would they be willing to have clairvoyants aid us in watching the battle from the rear command base so that we can direct reinforcements, etc?
— Would they be willing to provide a safe command base in the rear for our clairvoyants to watch the battle from? And for our teleporters to be based out of?
— Would they let us hire some of their girls to hunt in our territory at 3 cubes per vets hunting in pairs, 2 cubes per girls hunting in packs? How many?
— Would they hire a clairvoyant to us to help with a hunting dispatch team in our area? What price?
— Give them a copy of our Hunting Manual, and our Serene History booklet
Trade Deal - Kofu (1 vet): Particularly note our intent towards Tokyo next month, as well as Taya's scouting this month. Discuss any aid they might be willing to offer.
— Warn them about the possibilities of class 3 demons fleeing Tokyo and attacking them. We are trying to arrange for protection, but if a class 3 demon does break through to them recommend that they immediately flee south and take shelter with us until we can deal with the threat.
— Ask them to warn the girls in Saku and in between, and pass on the same offer of shelter and aid.
— Would they be willing to have clairvoyants aid us in watching the battle so that we can direct reinforcements, etc?
— Would they let us hire some of their girls to hunt in our territory at 3 cubes per vets hunting in pairs, 2 cubes per girls hunting in packs? How many?
— Would they hire a clairvoyant to us to help with a hunting dispatch team in our area? What price?
— Cubes for money trade ratios
— Give them a copy of our Hunting Manual, and our Serene History booklet
Trade Offer - Coalition (0 vet):
— As their hunter training visit comes to a close, give them a copy of our Hunting Manual, and our Serene History booklet. Suggest that if they have a clairvoyant, she could come and work with our dispatch team to gain experience, and we would be willing to pay something reasonable for her time. What kind of price would they suggest?
Trade deal (Nagoya): (1 Mami):
-Discuss the situation in Tokyo, and that we are planning an action in the next month to begin a cleanup of Tokyo. The first action will be to kill the floating eyeball demon. Unfortunately our solution to allow this will require exposing girls in the strike force to side-effects that the Nagoya team is not trained to deal with, and often results in behavior that may be dangerous. Therefore we believe direct cooperation is not possible without Nagoya accepting significant risk. If Nagoya wishes to send clairvoyants to assist with observations and battlefield directions they would be welcome.
-- After killing the eyeball demon, we expect that clearing of Tokyo of all class 3 demons will be possible using only Serene resources, but working together with Nagoya's would certainly speed things up, though we would have to work in different parts of the city. This process may take anywhere from a month to three months. One thing we are concerned about is that class 3 demons may flee Tokyo and attack other magical girl groups that are not strong enough to handle them. We don't have sufficient resources to handle this by ourselves. Ask if Nagoya would be willing to send forces to hunt down any fleeing demons that leave Tokyo on the western border. Since we are planning to begin our assault in Yokohama, we expect Kofu will be the most vulnerable location.
-- Ask for all information they have on the eyeball demon. Abilities, behavior, can it be lured into an ambush? Any information they think might help us kill it.
-- Ask for dossiers on the Elites still remaining in Tokyo. Particularly any on their "banned" list with details about their behavior.
-- Negotiate to purchase Kevlar vest and clothing.
-- Offer our Duration/Storage research.
-- Offer our Tandem Casting Research
-- Negotiate to purchase research information on any of the combat tech we learn about from the Tokyo expedition
-- Ask if there is other combat tech we could purchase that may help us in the fight for Tokyo
Open Relations w/ Large Organizations (1 vet): Kyubey/Nagoya gave us their contact information. We know Nagoya, so let's contact the rest of them and get more information about what they are like from their own mouths.
-- Warn Sendai about our plan to clear Tokyo and the possibility of fleeing class 3 demons heading North towards them. We will try to prevent that, but they ought to be prepared. Ask them to warn the girls in Iwaki and Koriyama in particular, and assist them in defending against any class 3 demon escapees.
-- Warn both Niigata organizations about our plan to clear Tokyo and the possibility of fleeing class 3 demons heading NorthWest towards them. We will try to prevent that, but they ought to be prepared. Ask them to warn the girls in Aizuwakamatsu, Yuzawa, and Nagano, and assist them in defending against any class 3 demon escapees.
Trade (+$65,500; -25 cubes)
Nagoya Trade - Sell 22 cubes for money @ $3500 each
15/16 Trade - Buy 2 cubes @ $2000 each.
Coalition Trade - Buy 3 cubes @ $2500 each.
Pay Coalition: 8 cubes for hunters
Purchases (1.5 vets; $23,050)
Advertise new delivery service for our restaurant: $1,000
Setup Serena's new home: (0.5 vets, $16,500)
Rent Getaway House ($10,000 a month)
Special welcome package for Serena & Co ($500): Mexican staples stocked in the pantry and fridge. Spanish-Japanese dictionary. A copy of the Serene Hunting Handbook, Training Handbook, History Book, and Research Binder translated into Spanish. Games/books. Welcome decorations.
Computers and Video Conferencing Setup ($6000): For Serena's place and our two houses. So 3x $2000 gets us a large flat screen, a nice $200 pan and zoom web cam with good mic/audio, cables, wireless mouse and keyboard, a $600 laptop w/ 1 TB HD, 8 GB RAM, and a cart to stick it all on so we can wheel it from room to room as needed. (Main way to keep price down was to forgo solid state hard drive). Also, -$100 a month for improved internet for our two houses (to support video streaming).
Misc
Neon rubber balls. 50 packs of 144 balls (7200 total) @$11 per pack = $550
Printing up Serene propaganda (1 vet; $5,000):
Prepare/Organize Propaganda/Manual/Research (1 vet): Produce polished papers, pamphlets, and reports on various aspects of the organization, for use in distribution and trade.
Hunting Manual: Crop Rotation, Rotating Tactics (including risks), Various numbers on Solo/Pairs/Pack safety and efficiency. Armor and other casualty reduction options. Dispatch Team effects, Demon Forecasting.
1000x copies, 25 pages, B&W, color cover = $1500
Training Manual: Demon Finding Training, Dispatch Teams, Pack Tactics, Solo Tactics, General Combat Training, Defending Others, Telepathic Communication, Evacuation Team.
1000x copies, 25 pages, B&W, color cover = $1500
Serene Research: Magical Effects on Materials, Secondary Effects, Effect on Technology, Duration Effects, Spell Anchoring, Tandem Casting, other misc research
50x copies, 50 pages, B&W, 3 ring binder binding (so we can more easily trade just portions of this) = $200
Serene Propaganda: (Whitewashed) History of Serenissima Imperium Magicum Puella. Safety record of the Serene approach. Testimonials of various girls (some who joined as vets, some who joined as greens, Seto, at least two of the Tokyo girls we took in). Essay by Mami on the Importance of an Education, and having a normal life outside Magical Girl work. Information about various Serene businesses. Contact Information.
1000x copies, 25 pages, B&W w/ some (4) color pages, color cover, better binding/paper = $1800
Kyubey Requests:
A full analysis of the eyeball demon. Capabilities, abilities, behavior patterns, susceptibility to being lured. Vulnerabilities, recommended ambush locations and tactics. Methods to keep it from fleeing.
A count of the number of teleport capably demons.
An analysis of the patrol patterns and behavior of demons in the Yokohama area. Any particularly dangerous class 3 demons with unique powers? Any demons that we have a good chance of attacking on it's own? Any time or location where the teleporting demons would arrive in a staggered manner?
Fluff:
Mami briefs an inner circle on the situation before making the group presentation, (probably has already), particularly talking with Seto, Kyouko, Taya, Taura, Aiko, Keiko, and the girls from Tokyo (since they are all potentially heavily impacted by this).
Mami then has two briefings to the rest of the girls (one in each house), presenting the following information:
Graphs showing the numbers of class 3 demons in Tokyo, the dropping number of girls in Tokyo.
Discuss the likelihood that Tokyo's eventual state will probably be something like Hong Kong unless someone outside does something in the next three months.
Discuss Nagoya's attempts, ask Kyouko and her assistant to give a presentation on what Nagoya is doing in Tokyo.
Mami then raises the point that Nagoya cannot cleanup Tokyo in time alone, nor can the Serenes provide enough help either with our current resources. Because of this she has approached a girl from Mexico, Serena, who has an ability that will help make clearing Tokyo inside 3 months possible.
Present the information Mami has received on Serena's aura. Including it's effect on demons, and empowering magical girls to resist the class 3 demon despair effect. Discuss how it can become addictive to magical girls, and that once addicted magical girls cannot leave the aura's radius without grief spiraling. Mention that Serena is a very nice girl, who is very upset at how wrong her wish went, and that she is cooperative with effects to protect people from the dangers of her aura, and that she has agreed to help save Tokyo. Present the housing plan, and how we intend to limit exposure to keep everyone safe.
Don't sugarcoat it, this is going to be even more dangerous than the last class 3 demon we took down, but this is our duty as magical girls to protect Japan, and save Tokyo. Discuss the training that everyone will be going through. That Taya will be analyzing demon patterns in Tokyo, and the rest of the preparations. Present the preliminary information we have on the beholder as the major threat we have to deal with.
Discuss how after clearing Tokyo of class 3 demons the work will still not be done. There is a need to establish systematic hunting in Tokyo so that the over hunting that produced the class 3 demons doesn't happen again. For this purpose we are printing up hunting and training manuals for distribution afterwards. This will also require a large amount of resources.
This diversion of resources means we will have to delay purchasing Kyouko's church for our headquarters, but we still hope to do it soon.
Mami speaks to the girls of her faith in their ability to handle this and succeed in saving Tokyo.
Then take questions and try to project confidence that we will succeed.
Income: $35,500
Translator: $4500
Courier Business, Mitakihara: $9500
Courier Business, Kasamino: $4500
Restaurant: $9000
Restaurant Delivery: ~$4000
Akeno Delivery: $4000
Expenses: $30,620
$8000 upkeep on house
$5000 upkeep on apartments
$500 upkeep on cable
$100 upkeep on internet for houses
$1380 upkeep on cellphones (-2% solo hunting, -1% pair hunting) (will go to $1480 next turn with the cost of Serena's cellphones)
$7400 upkeep on stipend
$7400 upkeep on food
$690 upkeep on gear (bikes, shields, misc) (will go to $740 next month)
Note that we need a minimum of $70,000 the following months to fund Tokyo (expand courier business, and 1 month cellphones for 1000 girls).
Have not taken into account any additional money from Nagoya for our Duration research.
It all seems doable, but we are leveraged.
EDIT: Removed a bunch of no longer valid thoughts.
EDIT2: Switched Kyouko to normal charms. Dropped Tandem Casting Research for more diplomacy with the locals, and contacting all the Large Organizations in Japan.
EDIT3: Updated Nagoya diplomacy and other items for new information on Serena's powers.
It looks like you fixed the total based on what was listed, but that's actually wrong. The total (15.5 vets) was correct, but I entered the vet count for the South area incorrectly. It should have been 3.5, not 2.5. I fixed it a while ago, but it looks like you copied it before I fixed it.
Tokyo Prep Training (0.5 elite, 5.5 vets): (10% of all non greens) With the anticipated difficulty of the expedition to clear out Tokyo, you need to do a lot of work to get people ready to handle the risks involved.
- Working with Serena (max 30 min exposure for each girl to get an idea of how their powers will behave inside her aura).
- Coordinating as teams: 2 barrier girls, 1 healer, 2 melee girls, 2 range girls. w/ 1 teleporter as add on (sometimes teleporting allowed, sometimes not)
- Running combat ops without reliable teleporter backup.
- Using charms (Kyouko assist, since she's really the only one with experience using them in combat)
- Parkour training with Akeno, for non-teleport escape
- Scenario Training: (Illusionists help with depicting the scenarios, refs to keep score)
-- Scenario 1: Lot's of teleporting clairvoyant demons mobbing Serena as soon as we attack
-- Scenario 2: Mr. Eyeball demon: Teleportation = insta-death. (Have the refs be very strict on this one, plan at least one run through to be rigged so that everyone "dies.")
- Training scanning large areas, and specific navigation through them.
Clairvoyance Scouting of Yokohama and Downtown Tokyo: Get the patterns of Tokyo demon behavior, patrol routes, get a feel for the beholder. Stay well outside the range of any patrolling demons on the outer edge of Tokyo. Possible observation post: Mt. Hakone.
1 clairvoyant vet, 1 Taya - Tandem Casting
Serena (0.5 vets, $9000) - Manage final arrangements for recruiting Serena. Arrange travel for her and her companions to reach Japan. ($8000 abstract cost) We will meet her directly when she arrives at Mitakihara airport. Provide standard welcome package of bikes (mountain bikes), cellphones, and shields ($1000), and begin the process of welcoming her to the Serenes. Keep initial exposure limited to Mami and Seto. Seto can provide transport to housing, and Mami can have a quick sit down with Serena to welcome her. (This ought to be maybe 30 mins of Mami and Seto's time, so not counting them in the meguca cost).
Kinematics has 0.5 Mami on this in addition to the 0.5 vet, but that seems silly to me, as a 15 to 30 min meeting does not a 0.5 Mami take. Do you think 0.5 vet is sufficient?
Trade deal (Nagoya): (0.5 vets) Trade negotiations with Nagoya for our Duration/Storage research. Offer a couple tandem charms as samples. Do not explain why the charms are more powerful than theirs. If they express interest in trading for charms as well, agree on a price, but no commitment for charms delivery for two months. If they wonder why, explain that we have plans for Tokyo that require all our current charm production.
Special welcome package for Serena & Co ($500): Mexican staples stocked in the pantry and fridge. Spanish-Japanese dictionary. A copy of the Serene Hunting Handbook, Training Handbook, History Book, and Research Binder translated into Spanish. Games/books. Welcome decorations.
Computers and Video Conferencing Setup ($6000): For Serena's place and our two houses. So $2000 gets us a large flat screen, a nice $200 pan and zoom web cam with good mic/audio, cables, wireless mouse and keyboard, a $600 laptop w/ 1 TB HD, 8 GB RAM, and a cart to stick it all on so we can wheel it from room to room as needed. x3 for the locations. (Main way to keep price down was to forgo solid state hard drive). Also, -$100 a month for improved internet for our two houses (to support video streaming).
It looks like you fixed the total based on what was listed, but that's actually wrong. The total (15.5 vets) was correct, but I entered the vet count for the South area incorrectly. It should have been 3.5, not 2.5. I fixed it a while ago, but it looks like you copied it before I fixed it.
Also I just did the rolls to see about groups in the rest of Japan. They are pretty terrible... like GM is tempted to reroll but doesn't because he's trying to let the dice fall as they will. These rolls are bad enough that it probably places you guys as around 6th in terms of size. Nagoya > three Kyoto/Osaka groups you don't have enough information to rank against each other > Sendai > You.
Kumamoto and Okayama rolled low enough that there's no organizations at all and everybody's fighting each other. <10 on unity.
Increased cost of Tokyo Prep Training to 5.5 vets. Updated with expanded descriptions.
On the Serena issue, have we actually closed the deal, or do we still need to make a final check for that? If we still need to finish the negotiations, then I'd want Mami on that, but if all we're doing is making flight arrangements and such, then just the 0.5 vet should suffice.
I can see where we wouldn't want to use up training time on tandem healing this month, so I'll remove that. We can finish that up later.
Grief management gives us more cubes to buffer for sale. Useful.
Added the trade deal to negotiate the research sale.
Added your purchases.
Overall plans are nearly the same, other than where to put Mami.
Currently, I'm at 5/5 elite and 57/56 vets. Overcommitted by 1 vet.
Reviewing your current totals, you're at 5.5/5 elite and 56/56 vets. Overcommitted by 0.5 elite.
Rae sat on the windowsill, half bathed in moonlight, chewing on a lock of golden hair as she people-watched.
Or, to be more accurate, pretend-people-watched. La Rosarita was a ghost town, the colorful concrete shoebox-cum-houses painted in shadowy pastels, its town walls empty, streets crazed, buildings dusty. Bigots in America thought of Mexicans as an endless horde of poverty-stricken illegals desperate to cross the border, but from the Mexican side, the story told was very different. There was no endless stream of criminals, just people, and those people had to come from somewhere.
The truth was, too many were leaving. Cities were dying, drying up, like old leather once soft now cracked with age and use. The disease started from the middle of the country, radiating upwards. Corpse cities, with nothing but dust where once blood and bodies walked, were still perfectly livable, but were dying anyway, asphalt and concrete arteries hollow. You could feel the lack, an itch at the back of your brain, in your gut.
It should have been depressing.
It wasn't.
Thoughts like that should have also been depressing.
They weren't. You kind of had to get used to it.
Rae spat the lock of hair out of her mouth and wiggled her toes. Outside, the wind made the darkened streets of La Rosarita sigh, ever so softly. If she looked up outside, she knew she'd see the stars, beautiful as a picture.
They couldn't stay here long, much as they wanted to. They'd seen signs of people: fresh food wrappers, a latrine pit, recent newspaper, stuff like that. Someone had gotten the same idea as them, and that meant people would be coming back, and when that happened, well, off they'd go. More people, more problems.
She started to hum - an old tune, a favorite.
"When I was just fifteen and outta control, Lost to James Dean and Rock and Roll, I knew deep down in my country soul-"
One of the dusty piles in the room shifted. A mop of black hair poked itself out of the bundle, blinking blearily.
"Mmfgrfle?" said Amélie.
"Sorry - lo siento - go back to sleep," Rae said.
"Si vous insistiez," Amélie replied sleepily, settling back down. With surprising quickness, her breathing evened out. Rae regarded her fondly before turning back to the window.
She hummed the rest of the song more softly. Bout' leaving for Hollywood, and then going back home to Texas.
It was a funny little life they lead. Restricted to a moving circle less than a mile and a half wide, Rae still felt like she only saw all of her friends in one place when they were on the move. With none of them the type to look into a crystal ball, or use magic girl radar, they had to keep watch for other people the old-fashioned way through the good ol' seeing orbs God had given you.
Two groups of two, Serena at the middle; at least one girl in each group awake at all times, keeping watch a few hundred feet from the boundary. If one girl saw anyone, she was supposed to stall for a minute, while the other was supposed to get the ball rolling when it came to any get-out-of-town-quick schemes. It wasn't a perfect system, not with their numbers, but it had worked so far.
Mostly, nothing happened. As per usual Rae had started inventing lives to walk the colorful, concrete streets of La Rosarita.
Times had been she'd imagine her dumb brothers commenting like it was a spectator sport.
She'd stopped, of course. She hadn't felt sad, but no matter how powerful Serena's magic, it couldn't stop her from feeling homesick, from missing her family. She'd let them go, replaced them with others. Imagined talking to them - or trying to talk to them, anyway. Over there by the Blue House was Bea, up old-people early, clucking in disgust at the state of the roads, the peeling paint; her son, himself an old man more past middle age than not, here out of a sense of responsibility, urging her to go back inside; there was Pedro waving hello, a young, single father with three daughters, struggling to get by, living in the Pink House-
Something stirred in the shadows by the greenery lining the broken streets, and Rae came alive. Her eyes sharpened, breathing quickened, body stilled.
Was that movement? A person?
There was another moment of trembling motion and then, anti-climatically, a dark-furred tomcat crawled out of the bushes, yawned, stretched forward, feline, paws pressing down, back arched, and walked away, its tail high in the air.
Rae watched it go all the way to the end of the street, where its tail suddenly drooped. It turned towards her end of the street, looking confused, then shook itself and moved on.
"Smart kitty," she whispered.
She wished she could do the same.
Couldn't, for the same reasons she didn't get depressed anymore.
Serena called it la Esperenza de los fantasmas - Ghosts' Hope. It was her magic - a circular zone, about a mile and a half at its widest, centered on her, where demons went to have bad time and magical girls became photos you found on milk cartons. When they entered it, demons began blurring into chalk outlines, wavering skeletally in the air; others began to look washed out, transparent, like their reflection had been caught in a soap bubble then brought to life; others became pixel boxes of random color that dispersed if you so much as touched them.
When it came to people, the effects were more insidious. It was not happiness, or pleasure - no one would make hay over that. No, people got it way worse. You became better. All the petty little things that you hated about yourself were scoured away, cleansed. It was like waking up at your best, on Christmas and your birthday, decked out to the nines without having to do the legwork, stepping outside and seeing the First Lady at your doorstep telling you were needed to save the President.
Here, you got to become your own idealized self. The best possible version of you.
You wanted to sit down and learn Spanish because even if Mama was pure mexicana Dad was white as sour cream and bilingual as a horse so you'd never gotten to learn anything except the swears properly? Yeah, you could do that. You wanted to sing even if you didn't have a voice worth a damn and were embarrassed by it? Straight up your alley. Wanted to get rid of that violent, trigger-happy temper and act more mature? You could do so.
But, trick was, there was a price. Your inner demons didn't just vanish. They were still there, waiting. La Esperenza just held them at bay for a while.
And if you ever got out, they'd be back thirsting for their pound of flesh. She'd been stuck here for a seventy-three hour spell - long story - and then tried to step out, go back to the fam - and still had the scars to remind her why that was a bad idea. According to Serena, normal people got super depressed, some snapping and killing themselves in their despair, which was horrifying enough, but meguca... they sort of dissolved.
It had happened before her time: she hadn't believed them, not really.
So.
Here she was. Dad was probably worried sick. Her brothers too. Hopefully they hadn't done anything too stupid.
All she had to do was -
Her eyes snapped to the shadows as the bushes trembled again. She got a premonition, ice running up her spine for no reason.
What exited this time was no cat.
"You," she whispered. Ghostly golden gears flashed into existence behind her, teeth interlocked, ready to spin. A street and more than a hundred feet separated them, but she still got a reply.
<Yes.> Kyuubey said cheerfully. Its tail swished. <Would you like to save Tokyo?>
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CoC: Betty Rae Allen (PoV), Amélie Poulain, Serena (mentioned), Kyuubey Time: Turn 31 Author's Note: I split the difference and combined the origin stories from @Kinematics and @Elder Haman. Rae's singing 'Texas in the rear-view mirror'. The Mexico ghost town stuff I stole and exaggerated from this article (she's got a skewed perception anyway since Serena's avoiding populated areas). Anyway, I was trying to figure out how Serena's aura worked, and this was the most positive spin I could place on it. Also, for some reason I had it in my head they didn't have a clairvoyant because if they had a clairvoyant it would obviate many of their tracking problems, but I realize that that was never actually confirmed what sort of wish magic they had. So. Uh. Yeah.
I probably should not have spent this time writing this but OH WELL, IT'S HERE NOW GOTTA GO.
Maybe XCom is a bit misleading here? I think that if we approached Nagoya they probably be okay with a foreign visitor passing through just the airport, and then we'd teleport her. Really most of the permission would be for our teleporter to travel to the airport to met her.
Also, thought for a teleport bomb - if the monster demon really is teleporting the girls into it's belly... Just use a teleport on a barrier bomb? Or even normal explosives?
They aren't really sure how the interdiction field works. They've tried teleporting bombs, they use explosives both mundane and magical in their hunts, without any visible effect. It's not something that's all that safe to study so they don't have a whole lot of data.
It's worth a shot, anyway. Using Teleport on a Hope anchor might be better than conventional explosives. Or perhaps Akane would be able to cook up some special explosives for us?
— We can travel out north of Mt. Fuji, through Kofu's territory of Fujiyoshida. Get a Safe Passage agreement going with them? Do we need the full 2 vet allocation for that? It's somewhat of an emergency issue.
The emergency issue would make the agreement more likely to succeed, sure, but I would still expect it to require 2 vets of allocation to handle the details of the agreement.
Hmm I suppose most of the work is done by the professional print service. Though I'm wondering how many people working in those places read the contents of what they're printing. I suppose this should be enough time, most of it is probably going to be taken up trying to turn your research notes into something readable.
Eh. I doubt that they would take it any more seriously than someone reading this thread would. Magical girls and hunting demons? This is clearly just some sort of role playing group.
The Vets count as Elites mechanically (but presumably without the special abilities that make Elites truly stand out), so I'd assume that something similar would occur for Elites. Once accustomed to the aura, they'd be super strong, but their special abilities wouldn't be on par with a true Legendary.
Heh, direct e-democracies are fine in an idealized world, but they'll be way too slow to get anything done, and they're probably even more risk-averse than we are.
I sort of figure that our approach to Kofu is going to be to hug them, and be friendly and then when the inevitable crisis hits their fragile direct democracy we invite them into the fold.
I again have to ask if there is any value to this. @inverted_helix previously stated that PvP training wasn't going to be of much, if any, use against the class 3 demons.
This training would be a variant of PvP training which is specifically designed to train against known Class 3 behaviors, specifically the Beholder. So hopefully it would have some benefit.
Another thing we should do is to involve our Tokyo girls in the post-Class 3 plan. They know what the situation is like there better than we do and how girls in Tokyo would be likely to react to our propaganda/training/recruiting plans.
I wonder if Hainako can use her translation magic to help Serena and her friends learn how to speak Japanese more quickly?
You know what else could get us free/nearly free money? Grief cube negotiations with Kofu. We already know Nagoya has a voracious appetite for cubes still (and they will right up until we spring on them that we're clearing Tokyo ourselves; I don't think they'll be very happy about that! ... ), so there's probably some more arbitrage opportunities there.
On the other hand, do you suppose all this illusion-based training is going to cost some extra cubes, to account for our illusion-casters doing some pretty intense magic work, stuff that they'd be generally unfamiliar with?
I don't think we can pick option 3. Knowlingly running a chance of having people falling into Serena's Aura is a betrayal of the deal we've made with her, pure and simple.
It's not so much the "running a chance" part that's a problem; it's running a chance with no viable fallback option. We do have a fallback option, even if it's more than a little unpalatable:
How would Serena respond to camping out in the village, far enough away from the work crews, while we get the house in order? Would that be as negative as having her rough it in our nomad territory generally would be?
This is sort of our emergency, we're out of money and kinda screwed option.
As I see it, our current plan is:
Start with either Getaway or Akiya while we're refurbishing the Village. Which one we go with really depends on how much work and money we plan on putting into the village itself: if we're going to be working on the village for >3 months then we should go with the Akiya home; 3 or fewer months and we go with the Getaway.
One interesting corollary to this is that the more time we put into refurbishing the Village, the more time Serena and her girls could spend doing some of the renovation work themselves. Once you get done with the stuff you need professional help with, like plumbing, electrical, and roofing, a lot of things like painting and redoing floors, cabinets, moving appliances, deep cleaning, etc can be done nearly as well by non-professionals, especially these days thanks to the rise of IKEA and the DIY revolution of the late 90s.
If there's an emergency at Akiya, namely that someone else decides to move in within Serena's addiction zone, then we need to retreat, either to the village or, if it's not ready yet, to Getaway.
I estimate the chance of this happening is very, very low. After all, we specifically looked for a place far away from everyone else, and the overarching trend in Japan is for such abandoned areas to expand, not suddenly have an influx of new buyers; I'd be surprised if we had a greater than 1% chance of seeing anyone even look at one of the nearby houses in the next 12 months, and if we did we'd have plenty of forewarning in the form of a growing "Back to the farm" movement appearing in newspapers (eg. the Rumors section).
The only exception to this, ironically, would be if we managed to fail at the Tokyo Cleanse: at that point you'd be likely seeing people fleeing cities in droves, and one place they might flee to is the countryside.
In the worst case, if we flat out run out of money to finish the village renovation the way we want to, say if we spent too much time in Getaway House or lost a ton of money trying to franchise in Tokyo, then our next fallback is to get some high-quality camping equipment and have Serena camp out in the village. This is obviously not ideal, and is in a sense a breach of our covenant with Serena, but in this case we should have plenty of warning, and Serena is certain to agree that camping is better than getting people killed.
Even this fallback isn't as bad for Serena and her girls as her time in Baja: the rest of the Serene will be there to support her for sure, with money, food, cubes, and all the other support we can muster, and we'll still have the village, just not refurbed the way we want.
In this eventuality Serena and her girls will probably default to doing a lot of DIY renovation work themselves, with us only calling in the bare minimum of outside professional help. Any time an outsider would need to come in for a day or five, Serena and her girls will have to make day trips, or even camping trips, to the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park (specifically I'm thinking Aokigahara, just for the lols).
A can of redhead whoop-ass! (as Kyouko calls them). In reality they are an explosion of illusionary Kyoukos all acting as distractions, while also using stealth on the person triggering the charm.
One thing I think everyone else is missing: To prevent Tokyo from collapsing from negative demon strength (which will kill it just as well as the current apocalypse would), we need to harvest ~1500 cubes per month with a population of ~900. No matter what we do, we're going to end up with 500+ surplus cubes every month and if Kyubey has run out of potentials in Tokyo (which it sounds like he has), this will continue for at least a year. Obviously we're going to stockpile the first couple of months for morale reasons, but after that point we should be able to get a lot of money selling them even at depressed prices ($50,000 a month even if the price crashes to $100 a cube) without having to invest any more resources then we have to spend anyway.
@FixerUpper's omake got me musing about possible comparisons between Serena's group and the Senshi (assuming the named characters are used).
Betty Rae Allen - Has Makoto's temper (though not so much, now) and martial inclinations.
Lita Valenzuela Pérez - Is the 'idol' and dancer of the group, similar to Minako.
Nina Mamani - The counterpart to Rei's miko. Is overly serious about many things, but still wants to have fun.
Amélie Poulain - Intelligent, but as if seen through a hall of mirrors. Probably closest to Usagi, and least affected by the aura.
Serena Pantano - The actual smart one of the group. Had a Plan with her wish, which ironically is why it went so wrong.
Basically, none of them actually match their namesake, but come kinda close to one of the other Senshi if you squint a little.
Obviously, subject to override by GM, or someone with another good omake.
Radius is 1 km, or 0.6 miles. It's 'width' would be the diameter, or twice that. ~1.25 miles. A mile and a half would be a slight overestimate, but not too inaccurate.
Sounds like one spell to me, just an Elite-level one. This is sort of what she did in the Nagoya raid to keep away from the sniper.
Spell layering is more about keeping multiple casts in a single anchor, or doing a cheap knock-off of Tandem Fusion casting where you can for example throw a barrier and a heal simultaneously.
Iwata. We were (sorta) justified with the whole kidnapping a ten year old thing, but it's very shaky all around. The biggest problem with our action was that we annexed the territory in the aftermath, rather than "merely" strong-arming the residents into expelling the kidnappers. Alternatively, we could have killed the kidnappers; ironically that probably would have hurt our reputation less than letting them go off bad-mouthing us to the areas now formed into the Coalition.
@FixerUpper's omake got me musing about possible comparisons between Serena's group and the Senshi (assuming the named characters are used).
Betty Rae Allen - Has Makoto's temper (though not so much, now) and martial inclinations.
Lita Valenzuela Pérez - Is the 'idol' and dancer of the group, similar to Minako.
Nina Mamani - The counterpart to Rei's miko. Is overly serious about many things, but still wants to have fun.
Amélie Poulain - Intelligent, but as if seen through a hall of mirrors. Probably closest to Usagi, and least affected by the aura.
Serena Pantano - The actual smart one of the group. Had a Plan with her wish, which ironically is why it went so wrong.
Basically, none of them actually match their namesake, but come kinda close to one of the other Senshi if you squint a little.
Obviously, subject to override by GM, or someone with another good omake.
My main exposure to Sailor Moon is, unfortunately, Dungeon Keeper Ami and maaaybe the first ten chapters of the manga, so - I can pretty much only write Serena now, assuming that she's anything like DKA's Ami.
How's this sound:
She's analytical, blames herself for everything that goes wrong, likes studying, a little naive, but still a quick study. She has a strong sense of justice, but she'll give you the benefit of the doubt once, maaaaybe twice, but past that you have to earn her trust back. She'll take risks, but mostly if they only affect herself, she's not willing to put innocents in danger, or her friends, which in this case is really awkward for her because if she dies, her friends all kick the bucket too so she's learned to be careful with her life, though sometimes she still takes risks she shouldn't. On that note, she really loves her friends, is literally willing to die for them, because she didn't have any growing up. Overall, this is an awful situation for her to be in because she is the one hurting the people she's friends with and she personally believes that her magic is making them her friends (Rae trying to leave only reinforced this suspicion) and if they could leave, they would leave. She has nearly zero self-confidence or sense of self-worth socially, what props her up in combat is a very good set of instincts when it comes to combat - she makes realistic assessments and is excels at running battles (PvP battles are mostly those kinds). She's been channeling a lot of her mental energy in trying to figure out a way to safely free the others from her aura, but due to her lack of success she believes she's purposefully sabotaging herself because she's a terrible human being.
Or something like that, maybe not quite so stark. If I were to write it, I'd let that sort of thing inform my writing without actually saying outright, hiimdaisy style: "Serena Pantano will now DIE FOR YOU." We can flip it for a more protective, mother bear angle, but that doesn't strike me as very Ami, hence the above rough sketch.
I gotta know more about their wish magic though, because I usually try to keep in mind a few possible wishes when it comes to where they are, and also how they relate and rely on each other.
On the other hand, do you suppose all this illusion-based training is going to cost some extra cubes, to account for our illusion-casters doing some pretty intense magic work, stuff that they'd be generally unfamiliar with?
The manpower allocation is right, but TheEyes is also right. This is a lot of magic you're talking about. We'll say another 3 GCU on this for the heavy magic use.
Kinematics has 0.5 Mami on this in addition to the 0.5 vet, but that seems silly to me, as a 15 to 30 min meeting does not a 0.5 Mami take. Do you think 0.5 vet is sufficient?
Well it would have been hard, but you said you needed like 5 groups to maintain a balance of power. There's enough for that. You'd need at least one or two of the Osaka groups to help balance Nagoya, but it's possible though difficult to get them on board. And there's a ton of smaller groups a little smaller than yours that could have organized into a coalition to balance the bigger ones. All the options were possible.
On the Serena issue, have we actually closed the deal, or do we still need to make a final check for that? If we still need to finish the negotiations, then I'd want Mami on that, but if all we're doing is making flight arrangements and such, then just the 0.5 vet should suffice.
Iwata. We were (sorta) justified with the whole kidnapping a ten year old thing, but it's very shaky all around. The biggest problem with our action was that we annexed the territory in the aftermath, rather than "merely" strong-arming the residents into expelling the kidnappers. Alternatively, we could have killed the kidnappers; ironically that probably would have hurt our reputation less than letting them go off bad-mouthing us to the areas now formed into the Coalition.
Ayako, Mariko, and Akane had literally nothing to do with the kidnapping, annexing them was some sort of guilt by proximity thing. They've come to be okay with the result because they're much better off. But it's still best not to talk about the point itself around Ayako or Mariko. (Akane is pretty happy with it because everything turned out great for her.) And people may claim they were just "encouraged" to join, but that certainly wasn't the impression they had, or honestly what I felt was meant at the time by the mood of the thread. They weren't really given a choice.
I gotta know more about their wish magic though, because I usually try to keep in mind a few possible wishes when it comes to where they are, and also how they relate and rely on each other.
