Okay, now that the lovefest is complete, I would like to add my few concerns.
First, I think Empowerment is problematic. Since it is at discretion of plot, it has a high potential to be unfair and unbalanced. Unfair because one plot member might give a purely suboptimal benefit than another might give, even when faced with statistically identical casters, and even possibly in the same chapter. I don't expect it to be done for nefarious reasons (though it could), but it simple lack of communication. Also, the plot created effect/permanent flaw could easily be horribly unbalanced. And, since the effect is NOT LCO, the unbalanced flaw could move to other games. And, yes, while I hope it isn't an issue in Alliance, favoritism or accusations of favoritism are likely to rear their ugly head with this.
Personally, I think each ritual should have a set Empowerment or maybe a short list of possible Empowerments (sorta like scroll specific flaw/backlash) and using this ability gains that benefit. It standardizes the ability across chapters and lets rule oriented people determine the power balance.
Second, I think the Super Golem ritual is still too powerful. The ritual still allows a caster to become about 400 build more powerful for an entire weekend (possibly longer... I don't understand extension that well) and now it is even easier to min-max this improvement. Build replication is already something that many players find frustration and this new method of riding golems just makes it more powerful.
I still would prefer to see golem storing simply provide small benefits that are much more in line with about a 20-30 build increase, but that the benefit be unique based on golem type and roughly balanced across all golem types.
Other than those two concerns, I like a lot of the stuff presented.
-MS