Volume 5 uber-poll + a humble plea

Good morning campers!

Volume 4 is just about wrapping up here on Patreon, so as is tradition I'm here collecting your thoughts and requests on what we're going to do for Volume 5.

As usual, you can vote for as many of these things as you'd like to see. Nothing is binding, but I am paying attention!

In addition to this poll, I wanted to come to you folks with something of a hat in hand moment. Over on Royal Road, PotV is currently hovering around in the top 50, on the first page of the best ongoing stories category. As of this writing we're rank 45, I believe.

This is really exciting, and it's getting a lot of views and new readership. But along with that, it's also falling prey to low scores. I'm getting those 1 and .5 star ratings left on early chapters without comments or reviews along with them. Some of them have been removed for being fraudulent, but some of them have stuck around. Needless to say, it's pretty discouraging to get these bombs, especially without any feedback accompanying them.

My request to you: if you're one of PotV's readers, please leave a rating or a review over there if you haven't already! To be clear, I'm asking for a rating, but not a specific one; it's against site rules to ask for specific scores, and I value your feedback and your honest opinions on the story. So, vote with your heart, and know that engagement with the best audience on RR is the fuel that my authorial engine runs on!

All right. Plea out the way. Let's talk about what you cool cats want from Volume 5. There's a few larger directions I am thinking about taking the story that are going to be the first big options. So please just pick one from the first three.

More relaxed: Grant and Sykora will have an adventure, with a problem to solve and stuff at stake, but it won't carry the big life-or-death, galaxy-spanning stakes that the previous few stories did. It won't be slice-of-life, necessarily, but we'll see them somewhat more relaxed and give them and the command group a chance to enjoy themselves a little more.

Keep it tense: No rest for the wicked! Keep the pedal to the metal and give us more epic, high-stakes space adventure!

Kick off the Maekyon plot: This is the big one that I've been threatening for a while now. The annexation of Earth. Probably the most fraught storyline in the pipe, at least at this stage. If it's not voted for here, it's likely going to come in Volume 6 instead.

After those big options, there's a bunch of smaller things that I'm thinking about throwing in, which you may vote on as you wish. And afterward, feel free to leave your comments on things you'd love to see discussed and explored in Vol 5.