A Drop-In with a sadistic streak

I look over the digital form, and consider my options carefully. I’m all but vibrating with excitement, but I’m not about to make a hasty decision that might screw me over down the line. After some consideration, I choose to start my conquest with the Touhou universe. It’s a somewhat risky starting point, but it’s a setting I know well, and the higher than average DR lets me start with a relatively generous credit balance. It’s also a setting with a lot of high-tier targets, but little to no high-stakes conflict, meaning that their guard won’t be so high, and I can hold off on buying the warranty plan until later.

Moving on to intensity options, leave most things as they are by default, but I do adjust a few things. I don’t plan on selling many of my captures, but I don’t want to lower my intensity too much, so I go for a 50/50 split. I don’t like the standard binding effects, so the binding option is easy; No Loyalty. I don’t really want to mess with changing power sets around, so I choose to ban power swap and template stacking. Lastly, I go with the brick and mortar option for the warranty plan. All this leaves me at intensity 3 with 330 credits to spend.

For my Origin, I just go with Drop-In, and I don’t feel like getting a patron, so it’s time for the exciting part: Bindings! Absolute Order is a must-have, as far as I'm concerned, so I pick it up, along with its prerequisites, Tempest Jewelry, and Aggressive Initiations. The Tempest Jewelry binding seems to have some annoying extra mental effects that No Loyalty doesn’t nullify, but I should be able to cancel them with Mind runes, so I get that too, along with its prerequisite Basic Runes. While I’m at it, I grab the Body and Logic runes too, the utility they offer is just too good to pass up. Symbiotes, Lures, and Truck-kun don’t interest me. Apportation would be nice, but I’ve already spent 160 credits here, almost half my starting balance. I decide to be a bit more frugal with my 170 remaining credits and move on.

The prices for Heritage seem a bit steep for now, but I might look into Transhuman later. There’s not much use for vehicles in Gensokyo, so I skip that. I keep my personal world pretty basic for now, grabbing only Pocket Space, 1 instance of Pocket Apartment, and All Roads Lead to Home. Earlier purchases gave me a few talents and a defense for free, and I also add three more talents (Soul, Psychic, Covert) and two more defenses (Information and Body). After checking that the benefits of Sexual Calibration only extend to my partners if I want them to, I pick it up too since the cost is trivial and it’s a good quality-of-life feature. All this leaves me with 73 credits left for starting companions.

I don’t want to add any new characters (other than myself) to my starting world for now, so I decide to use the Yoink option for all of my starters. Unfortunately, this makes my options pretty limited, since the majority of characters in the setting are Tier 7 or higher, but the highest I can afford is Tier 6. After some consideration, I decide on Koakuma, and spend 60 credits on her. She’s not very powerful, but she makes up for that by having access to the Scarlet Devil Mansion, which should be a good place to start setting up a power base. With only a tiny amount of remaining credits I also pick Akyuu, Kosuzu, and Ruukoto for 3 credits each, which should give me a bit of a foothold in the Human Village, and let me keep an eye on the Hakurei Shrine. As a bonus, Akyuu and Ruukoto effectively only cost 1 credit each, because each of them gives me a retroactive discount on one of the defenses I bought earlier

I wrap up my build creation with 8 credits to spare, and give my build one last look-through to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Satisfied, I give a nod, take a deep breath, and hit Confirm.