>>5810
Firstly, this clearly isn't the entire CYOA. It makes reference to the choosing from the "Guardians" artifacts, and joining them but there's nothing for that here.
Second, Roughly half of the patrons here don't give you your abilities, but instead allow you to channel theirs which pretty much implies either total loyalty or at the very least being entirely apolitical. That's kind of irritating considering you can choose to be a rebel right off the bat.
Say you picked the maw. You vomit out dudes, but it specifically says they're not loyal to you, they're loyal to the maw. So if you wanted to rebel, you'd immediately fuck yourself. You are corrupted by the corruption man, so it's probably not even possible to disobey him. Same with the lesser corruption lady.
The monolith is dubious, it's hard to say if the chunk you get is separate or not from the greater lith and what that means (though the second, rogue lith seems to imply they're not all the same at least). It's possible that it's distinctly different, meaning it can do nothing to oppose you. But it's also possible it's a functioning part of the greater whole, meaning it can and will fuck you if you decide to go against your patron. The mana generation and mana siphon both indicate the latter might be the case.
The Vampire has to infect you with his vampirism, so who knows what kind of gay shit that means for your individuality.
Other than that, though, everyone else seems to allow you to do whatever (they can't stop you). Mother of Monsters is definitely the best girl though, she gives no fucks about what you decide to do. Best mom ever.
I wanted at first to pick The Maw, because that whole set is fucking cool, but hurf durf LOYAL TO THE MAW, NOT YOU. Then I was thinking corruptor, same deal probably. Thought about the bugs and that seemed appealing but the thought of having to constantly give birth to maintain force strength disgusts me. Wanted to throw my hat in with the Mad Max folks but they're just not good enough. Their perks are being a cunt, being a cunt or being suicidally stupid? Their skills are a bomb, being suicidally stupid, or you blocking bullets with their bodies? There's nothing special about any of that, they're just orc-like human asshole banditos. I wanted to be like Ganon or Humongous or something - to at least have cool bandits who were interesting, not just some poor schmuck who has to wrangle a bunch of cunts. Finally I thought "Well, Mom seems nice." but being a big scary monster doesn't really have any synergism with teamwork or army building. Sergeant Fuckhuge would be a big target and it'd be far too tempting to just be in the front and get all the slings and arrows directed at myself.
So in the end it seems that Monolith is the best choice. Being a focal point for local friends, and using portals as logistical aids seems to be the best infrastructural start for building an army that's mine. It would be irritating because they can't produce soldiers in any way, but all magic users find Monolith agents useful so it wouldn't be too hard to get a network going. With some power you can also convince marauders and other jerks to be part of your merry band of teleporting bad guys. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to convince those kinds of people to murder magic users for me, instead of having to do it myself. Especially with that oh-so-useful Royal Jelly. It doesn't really matter where camp is set up, but I was thinking the Monolith HQ would suffice. The nemesis being their commanders, my psychic power would be great and terrible. Though I'd try to stay on good terms with the Monolith, at the end of day I'm just trying to go my own way. When the war is over I'd want to learn more about gaining power. With so much powerful evil around, it stands to reason it's both possible and perhaps even documented how to gain that much power. Becoming the 11th General of Darkness is the final goal, aided by the accumulated knowledge of the Forces of Darkness.