So our Frozen Throne trip involves:
Augur
8th Hour
Triads (LL's sister)
Magical Girls, only some of which know in how much trouble they are
Justice Unlimited + New Dawn (not yet merged)
Yara & Co waiting for rescue (or trying to rescue themselves)
The Frozen Throne
Crusade interference they got ordered to stay away from us

that sounds like a clusterfuck in the making.
I would assume these might count as two different (and smaller) clusterfucks:

Triads (LL's sister)
Magical Girls, only some of which know in how much trouble they are
Justice Unlimited + New Dawn (not yet merged)
And...
The Frozen Throne
Augur
8th Hour
Yara & Co waiting for rescue (or trying to rescue themselves)

Possibly at one point mid-mission the two merge or something? But otherwise, I'd assume things to be simpler, because I don't think the outside team knows the others are in the Frozen Throne specifically. They just know they went somewhere else.
 
This next Issue/Turn is going to be... interesting.
Reality Check, the FT, Demon Flamez, The R-Train, making sure Ellies Girls are ok. Things are about to get tense.
And then theres the fsct theres going to be new missions.
I think we have reached the second of many Boiling points (First one being The New Dawn, Seasons, Global Justice choice). Its going to be interesting to see what fresh hell we are heading towards.
If nothing else, I don't think our main missions are going to be that difficult to sort? The core 6 AP, probably still grab Third Person to progress our obligations here, and then float the last 2 between the new mission(s), Abarimon, and resources as need be. The main thing probably would end up being where do we put the free ND slot if that's still a thing this turn, given Third Person/Puella are both ND missions. So it would probably be between Reality Check and the Train depending on numbers and how Puella + Reality Check mesh there.

With the knowledge that we're getting DNA and money from personals, what interests me more here is the globals honestly. We've got 6 global AP and probably 8 actions we might want to take?

Spider Web is our highest priority just due to dealing with information overload.
Apiary expansion is likely a requirement given we're running into the cap and OID control can only give us so much, we've got the money and so we should do it given it was always a realistic longterm requirement anyway.
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I'd personally make an argument for doing at least 2, if not all 3 of Leizi, Merchandising, and Rosemary's Baby here if we can swing it. I would expect Leizi's boost wouldn't come into effect until after she returns (@Bitterman can you confirm either way?) but it still would give her a boost for half the turn + future turns while getting us further into the 2 part questline that the QM has very blatantly been pushing for us to do.

Merchandising is just more money flow, even if we get sponsorships we want to maximize money flow as fast as possible as early as possible. Maybe if there's an upfront cost or it doesn't give a decent amount maybe it can be delayed but unless we have a huge chunk of higher priority options it probably should make it in.

Rosemary's Baby is mainly just, its been hinted that it allows for using higher cost samples easier. There's a few ideas I have for what that can be, with all of them being good for us in terms of making more interesting and optimized builds in the future. If we have the money and the space I don't see a reason not to get this done ahead of our bigger empowering options like Homer/Shelley/Cain.
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Doing likely 1-2 of Prometheus, Spoonful, and Shield Generators for the remainder depend on how much we are willing to empower someone with the impending potential cap issues that will take a turn to mitigate (If Katie counts, empowering someone puts us to 11/10 I believe), the amount of money and time we have for Spoonfulling someone, and how much we need the shield generator gacha while we only have one currently.
 
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I doubt we get to be that lucky.
The triads are empowering the mgs with the Frozen Throne and LL's sis will be very interested in getting to know her sis better.

That's two chances for Bitterman to cause some drama. I doubt he'll let go of this chance.
I definitely think there'll be drama regardless (particularly of the familial kind), but I don't think things will end up as a gigantic free-for-all, honestly.

Bitterman said the Frozen Throne Fill-In Issue would be a multi-parter as the Issue progresses, so I'd expect Augur/any agents he has and/or the 8th Hour of the Horae Guard to be present/overcomed/escaped before the PM mission. So maybe one of them might join the PM clusterfuck? But I'd hope that it wouldn't be both.

(Also, while I love superlong updates, I always prefer the moments when a narrative lets its characters breathe instead of being in a wild sprint. Eidolon was 59k words long! And if it hadn't had the lunch section, I'd have considered it almost oppressive.)
 
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I definitely think there'll be drama regardless (particularly of the familial kind), but I don't think things will end up as a gigantic free-for-all, honestly.

Bitterman said the Frozen Throne Fill-In Issue would be a multi-parter as the Issue progresses, so I'd expect Augur/any agents he has and/or the 8th Hour of the Horae Guard to be present/overcome/escaped before the PM mission. So maybe one of them might join the PM clusterfuck? But I'd hope that it wouldn't be both.

(Also, while I love superlong updates, I always prefer the moments when a narrative lets its characters breathe instead of being in a wild sprint. Eidolon was 59k words long! And if it hadn't had the lunch section, I'd have considered it almost oppressive.)
Might split this final arc into two for just that reason. I'm pretty happy with Eidolon, but it can't be 11 v 8 v 14's and god-fights all the time.
 
Rosemary's Baby is mainly just, its been hinted that it allows for using higher cost samples easier. There's a few ideas I have for what that can be, with all of them being good for us in terms of making more interesting and optimized builds in the future. If we have the money and the space I don't see a reason not to get this done ahead of our bigger empowering options like Homer/Shelley/Cain.
we definitely need to get Rosemary's Baby done so we can start to really use samples like Zeno and Giant Slayer, and it's possible there's even more Project Prometheus research gated behind it.
 
I don't get why people are so concerned about unlocking PP's further potential or whatever when we've already made multiple S-rank heroes with the current setup, and we've still got a huge list of builds someone wants to try out. The next Black Swan could be waiting in the threadmark now!
 
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I don't get why people are so concerned about unlocking PP's further potential or whatever[…]
Well, at the moment the other big money sink aside from Tolerance ups, building the Apiary, has a vague amount of gain at best, and seems quite expensive? Also we just have been talking about RB for a while, and it's sort of an inertia thing, where once a good part of the thread decides on a thing it's hard to sway the voters.
 
I don't get why people are so concerned about unlocking PP's further potential or whatever when we've already made multiple S-rank heroes with the current setup, and we've still got a huge list of builds someone wants to try out. The next Black Swan could be waiting in the threadmark now!
We have a limited supply of candidates to match S-rank builds to, so most of the Prometheus research is going to end up benefiting lower tolerance candidates. This is true of fast track, keyword lock-in, and even Rosemary's baby to an extent.
 
There are several cool synergies we practically can't use because they're sitting on high potency samples, which would be fun to play with on more easily accessible, lower potency builds.
 
Well, at the moment the other big money sink aside from Tolerance ups, building the Apiary, has a vague amount of gain at best, and seems quite expensive? Also we just have been talking about RB for a while, and it's sort of an inertia thing, where once a good part of the thread decides on a thing it's hard to sway the voters.
Honestly I;m not sure how expensive apiary expansion is since even PP only cost 1k for each Meta, with the main cost being getting ambrosia.

We know 1K is enough to create community centers, Training rooms and so on. So it really might just be 1k for each hero slot not cheap but affordable.
 
Wonderland
  1. Monarch [Overall Leader]
  2. Princess [Monarch's Daughter??] [Dysmorphic] [Power Booster]
  3. Marie Marionette
  4. Dollman [Algernon-Type]
  5. Acid Rain [Algernon-Type]
  6. Stitches
  7. Warpstar
  8. Heracles
Confirmed Princess as [Power Booster]
@Bitterman should I add Luftwaffe and Enforcer here now that they have presumably escaped the Brig or not?
Demon Flamez
  1. Phlogiston [Leader]
  2. Sparksurfer [Wants Out]
  3. Jorogumo [Dysmorphic]
  4. Phlegethon
  5. Evard
  6. Hotstep
Jorogumo confirmed as [Dysmorphic]
Phlegethon + Evard + Hotstep added.
Court Of Loons?
  1. Le Petit Prince [Leader]
  2. Ash Knight
  3. ???
Now that we have a name for at least one of LPP's Subordinates they get their own category.
Placeholder Name courtesy of Phlogiston!
Philosophers/Hand of Mysteries
  1. The Hand - Trismegistus [Tumor of the World] [Leader]
  2. The Speaker of The Hand of the Mysteries - Kyoko Shirayuki
  3. The Lantern - Lilith
  4. The Moon-Over-Crown - Faust [CEO of Dominion- Owner of Powers]
    • Allied to Scarlet Maturity
  5. The Star - ???
  6. The Fish - ???
  7. The Sun - ???
Added in Star + Fish + Sun, removed SB/Key and now we have a name for Hand.
Also cleaned it up a bit.
The Hours - The Horae Guard
12th Hour - ??? [Possible Leader?]
11th Hour - The Man with a Boyish Smile
9th Hour - ???
8th Hour - The Penitent Scholar
7th Hour - ??? [Probability Manipulator?] [Precog]
3rd Hour - Octavius The White Hawk [Leader of Crusade]
Minute - Sunlight Knight/Simon McAllister
The Hours/HG were added in.
Independents
  • Cordelia Reed/Valkyrie [World's Strongest Psychic] [Former New Dawn Founder] [Wild Card/Possibly with King]
  • The Interlocutor [Unknown Man] [Possible Spawn of Leviathan??] [Philosopher Target of Interest] [Possibly Captured Valiant Silver's Mind?]
  • Shroud
  • Third Person (Psychic Parasite)
  • Abarimon (Not A Real Villain) (Cursed Power)
  • Augur?
Augur added here.

Also Kaitlyn Meyers-Williams Memorial Detention Facility—a.k.a The Brig! [Crusade] → Destroyed By Radiant Silvergirl
So Category Removed.
 
I don't get why people are so concerned about unlocking PP's further potential or whatever when we've already made multiple S-rank heroes with the current setup, and we've still got a huge list of builds someone wants to try out. The next Black Swan could be waiting in the threadmark now!
From my perspective we don't have a complete understanding of how powers work from a lore perspective or a mechanical perspective. Being able to reliably get/better understand synergies will make powers of all potency levels better. Also: it's the mystery box option.
 
Hello! Great story so far! I have a few observations <3

First, with the "end of issue feels like we can't get a clean win", that's a problem I've seen happen in multiple quests. This is because the author has the full context and is showing the audience some of the "Next Time On!" hooks, whereas the audience without that full context (with good reason) only get to see problems metastasizing. There's no gameplay difference between seeing White Hawk and Stockpile progress their own plans on screen vs finding out later. Still, some people see villains we're personally invested in making progress despite our victory and don't like that. Some people have more dislike of that then they have appreciation for the structural damage done to Crusade and the knowledge that at least two of the conspiracies arrayed against us will be tying one another up next turn.

On top of that we also get to see problems that weren't solved due to lack of AP getting worse due to our rolls and/or decisions. Even the minor failure to recruit the Fray-Tormenta man bites us in the results of the turn retrospective.

Hopefully this helps explain to anyone that doesn't understand the perspective of "dam, no clean wins huh?" readers what that perspective is seeing. Sure, the conspiracies themselves got burned bad enough by us that they're turning on one another. Sure we see internal divisions enflame (Stockpile vs Crusade) or get them revealed to us (White Hawk only out for White Hawk, weakening The Hours for personal gain). At least with the Flamez situation the expectation is that we'll be solving that problem next issue for sure.

But Stockpile gets a win here. White Hawk gets a win here. Mr Fray-Tormenta man is captured by Lethal Anodyne of a failed recruit roll. Flamez vs LePetitPrince is heating up (worsening). Further arrows in the quiver against us are revealed (the power level of non-WhiteHawk Hours that will be activated the more we succeed).

I don't think any of this is actually a problem to show the audience that it's happening, I'm not personally bothered by the postscript posted. I made this little post to hopefully help people understand the perspective some are coming from! <3

If I wanted to be more specific about which parts of the postscript are likely the biggest pressure points well . . I'd put it behind spoilers because I don't think it's important to dissect tbh. BUT also I'm a freak on a collaborative fiction forum, so I guess I'll do it! Just remember I don't think anything is even a mistake here, just my thoughts on where the biggest pressure points were/are
The most obvious pressure point to me is the Lethal Anodyne section. Not only does it seem unlikely that we'll be tackling this specific issue next turn (we're swamped), but it's inflicting a terrible thing on a nice man for the fault of a failed recruit roll. It may be true that the situation is worsening in a similar vein as the Flamez section, but that one is getting worse by our choice (prioritization that didn't include them). Mr Fray-Tormenta-Guy actually is going to be tormented because of one of our failed rolls. Entirely preventable, but of one capricious dice. That sucks, and is one of our failures by dice rather than choice.

To compound on that, the LA section is not very locked in like Flamez or Qilin seem to be. It's a situation that's going to get even worse before we have space to tackle it. That sucks. It'll be hovering in the mind of any vote that chooses to ignore the LA situation (because we need to do so many other things). Additionally, it somewhat "locks in" the narrative space for what Mr Tormenta has been doing for the month(s) we won't be seeing him. Instead of a space where his fate is undetermined, we now know it sucks. Dam. Shoulda rolled better kinda moment. An open ended torment of a good man that we'll have to bite the bullet and accept in exchange for working where priority exists. Yara+Katie section isn't a loss for us by any stretch. The Flamez section
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other big pressure point that I'd point at is Stockpile's section. I didn't really think about how severe it was since it wasn't contingent on one roll this update like the nice luchador getting captured and tormented, but writing this out it's actually pretty dire.

Let's compare this to the other section where one of our personal enemies makes progress despite losing to us. White Hawk's section is a revelation that White Hawk isn't ideologically aligned with his faction and is actually actively undermining them in the pursuit of personal power. During the section it's revealed that our wins against the Hermetics/Mysteries and against The Hours (as represented by White Hawk) were severe enough that the rest of The Conspiracy of Hours will be targeting The Conspiracy of Mysteries and actively stepping out of our way. While our personal enemy is making progress, it's both at the expense of the Conspiracy he represents and we also get the knowledge that the overall Conspiracy is getting out of our way. That's a win for us, even if the win for White Hawk (personal command of Crusade) is sour.

Contrast to Stockpile destroying the Brig and going rogue. Stockpile cracks the power and legitimacy of Crusade in exchange for more freedom and potentially a better path for himself. He's freeing a lot of prisoners, revealing the existence of a blacksite, likely committing to not torturing prisoners for his Algernon (and thus accelerating his self-destruction) and gathered a few people (!notGuts, Mrs Spring and the Supermax Prisoner) to take with him on a more personal (and potentially principled) crusade against Justice Unlimited. This reading of it could be considered a win for Justice Unlimited. Crusade loses a lot as our personal enemy splits from White Hawk (and the Conspiracy of Hours) and tears up a super prison on the way out. Sure we failed the man behind Stockpile with our prioritization in the early turns, sure we failed him this turn with a bad roll when he tried to reach out for salvation, but at least he's free of the Conspiracy of Hours. With whoever was in Supermax joining up with him, his "faction" will be dangerous to us even as he loses all the support network of Crusade, but his personal freedom to act came at severe cost to Crusade (and thus the Hours) so overall that's a win for us. Even if it turns out that the prisoner from Supermax ends up absolutely ideologically convicted to Stockpile's beliefs (unlikely, but possible), this is still a win for us most of the time.
But we unfortunately know more than that.

Unfortunately we learn of an extremely severe failure of our intel network that we didn't even know was on the table these past few turns. Radiant Silvergirl survived and was abducted by the Americans. Not knowing this is a failure of ours. This failure then compounds and reverberates with the failures we've had with regards to Stockpile, as it gets confirmed that not only does the supermax prisoner become ideologically committed against us it's Radiant Silvergirl herself. If we hadn't failed the intel I'm certain that rescuing Radiant Silvergirl would have been a top-of-line maximum priority for Justice Unlimited. A primary objective we'd have fought Elysium itself for (as we're doing for ms AI). An objective we've just lost to Stockpile without even knowing there was an objective. The actual worst possible outcome for "who is the supermax prisoner", and it wouldn't be that bad if we hadn't failed Stockpile so many times. If we'd reached out (we didn't), if we'd rolled better (we failed), if we'd heard a whisper that Radiant Silvergirl survived (we didn't) this could have gone so much better at so many points of failure that there's no other way to call it than a colossal loss for us.

If Stockpile's sections skipped from the point when he enters Supermax to the reveal at the end that The Brig is torn apart by blackholes (that don't kill the prisoners) it'd be easy to consider it a win. We'd find out later that it was an extremely tragic loss, but we wouldn't have that smacking us in the face immediately after our cleanest win to date.

Ultimately we had a winning turn, but this actually isn't a "clean win" of a turn because of this outcome. I could cope and accurately state that this is probably better than Silvergirl being stuck in the brig another round, but given the fact that Stockpile was going to split from The Hours (Crusade) here this is the bad outcome of that. I can imagine worse outcomes, sure, but this is still an ugly loss. It'd be incorrect to say we had a clean win, because a clean win wouldn't include rolling a 1 when Stockpile reached out.

Like I stated earlier if the identity of the Supermax Prisoner is left obscure there's room to consider this a win even if later it's revealed to be a loss. As it is though, this is a loss. It's only known to be a loss because of the postscript, but now we know it's a loss. Overall this is a winning turn, yeah, but ouch that's a tough loss.

Something I'd note having just caught up is that, I think Crimson Maturity is heavy coping. Like sure, he's a shitty person but he's also completely stagnating. He's not willing to press his luck against the biggest baddies with a chance to truly deal with him, so what was his plan? Just chill as the pawn of a different conspiracy to the Hours and hope a Black Swan event would just sorta happen to him?

When Black Swan and him hang out, that really feels like the line of thought she's going to focus down. The man might have an ideology of "only one may sit at the top" but his behavior seems to be "and I will take a long meandering path towards it, because if I don't play inside the rules I'll be obliterated". Which, I mean, true he would be obliterated but also his reputation and ideology is nearly at odds with his behavior. In addition, what are his thoughts about those below him hmm? Isn't it boring at the top without a robust society beneath? And where is the top hmm? If there's no iron to sharpen iron, how can you possibly do anything but stagnate?

I think Crimson Maturity and Black Swan are both immature in different ways, funny ways. He's an "Apex social darwinist" that's relegated to a middle-manager beat-stick because "wahh, I don't want to challenge power because I'll lose to collective society. And that's society's fault, rather than a flawed conception of my ideology boo hoo!" Actually he's less than a Middle Manager! He's not even necessarily a 426 (general) in his organization, he's just a particularly strong 49 (rank and file soldier)! What a bozo!

There's actually a number of people from anime that are like this, the "absolute strongest" stuck in stagnation beneath those with more tricks and guile (and allies) to maneuver themselves above "the strongest". Some of these characters die like pawns beneath their leaders, some of these characters change their beliefs, and some sign on with the protagonists' party because "actually the protagonist is strongest so I should stick around with them".

I look forward to Black Swan sparring him, but also I think they'd have interesting conversations about philosophy. Mona has almost certainly seen a ton of media about the power of friendship and the strength of love and the unlimited potential of connecting with others, but is also clearly struggling to form a romantic/deep connection with someone that both desperately wants to connect with her and that she wants to connect to actively. It's both a funny narrative beat and also a characterization of her own emotional maturity. Crimson Maturity by contrast has likely lived a life watching any people he could have connected to exploited and killed around him as he persevered. The conclusion is obvious, they were simply not strong enough to stand on their own rather than a personal failing to protect. You see this sometimes, a survivor's bias rather than a survivor's guilt. A rationalizing of reality as correctly brutal and unforgiving to cope with the random violence and suffering which occurs around and to the survivor. There's an insecurity at the accusation that he's bored that shouldn't be there if he was actually what he presents as all the way through. Is he still a bad dude? Yeah. Is he also merely the strongest pawn of the conspiracy he's in, rather than someone on the path towards the top of the pile? Yes.

And I think that's the most apt comparison. He's a pawn hoping that if he keeps following orders he'll eventually reach the other side of the board and show everyone just how powerful he is. This could be an incorrect read of what he's been living like, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. Without Black Swan what the hell was he doing? Just following orders, doing the motions, waiting and hoping that something/someone would nudge him further along the board. It's hope chess, but worse because you're just one of the pawns and not a player.

Now I don't necessarily want him rebelling immediately and dying (I think he's right that if he truly sought the top right now with no caution he'd just be obliterated), but I think Crimson Maturity asks questions of Mona's philosophy that should sharpen and broaden her in ways that the sparring sessions will do for them both. What they'll be doing for Crimson Maturity's mindset is a mystery, but I think nudging him away from being a pawn will be bad for our enemies even if we end up having to fight him in the end. Looking forward to their interactions
 
First, with the "end of issue feels like we can't get a clean win", that's a problem I've seen happen in multiple quests.
I've give this a lot of thought (and thank you for the insight!) and I think you've hit the nail on the head. Splitting up the win from the glimpses of the other players in the setting would make it feel less like a victory with an asterisk. Even putting them *after* the personal actions would probably make it less aggravating as then the very next thing you do is go to tackle the new problems.
 
I think a part of it is, while we've been extremely successful so far the stakes seem so high it feels like we have to continue to be extremely successful, so any perceived failure is taken harder than it might otherwise be?
 
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