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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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tehspooniestbard said:
Her directly admitting that she doesn't agree with her mom's plan, and is in fact terrified of her, is a big secret. Personally so very much I'd think. She didn't have any small secrets to share that show under that public face because she feels that her choice of who she could be was taken from her at age 6. Literally shaped by her mother to the point she feels that even her 'rebellious' critique, and driving ambition, isn't of her own will.
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The fact that Shenhua is a monster is no secret. That her daughter realizes this could be inferred from various clues.


Anyway, I'm getting rid of the subvote. Let's not be the knucklehead who confesses everything and sells out her co-conspirators the second an authority figure looks at her funny.

[X] Remain silent, thank her sincerelyand speak of yourself as promised.
 
Yeangst said:
The fact that Shenhua is a monster is no secret. That her daughter realizes this could be inferred from various clues.
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That Shenhua is a monster wasn't the secret though? How that impacted CRX...you know the personal part about how Shenhua being inhuman and how her priorities and methods shaped CRX, her ambitions, and sense of self? Those were the secrets. Not that CRX knows about her mom's modus operandi and how it is seen by anyone who prefers a hint of compassion in their dictator.
 
[X] Admit to the deception. Apologize, explain, and accept the consequences.


My former reasons still stand. We need to see how Cai squares her ideals with the failings of her subordinates in the real world.

Because if she chooses to publicly fuck over her spymaster and her covert agents over minor incidents (and I do consider it minor compared to the magnitude of our war contributions), damaging her own position and reputation for the sake of upholding her ideals, then she does NOT have what you need to have to become an hegemon, and we will know that we do not want to sign with her. She is headed for disaster, it would be like becoming the left hand of ROB STARK.

If she is able to compromise and handle this discretely, imposing restitutions for the victims or similar, and more importantly learns to keep a closer eye on her intelligence assets (because let's be real, blindly relying on somebody as addicted to manipulation as Fu Xiang is very naive for any wannabe ruler), then we can keep considering joining her
 
[x] Remain silent, thank her sincerely and speak of yourself as promised.

It was in repayment for a debt telling her about it would in fact be worse for him then if we didn't do anything.​
 
Hannz said:
Some secrets can be incredibly obvious, yet, take a unbelievable amount of courage and trust to say. Cai's opening up to us in a way that she possibly hasn't ever done before.
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But we can't use it against her.

She already knows every personal secret Ling Qi has. The secret that you want to reciprocate with is the opposite- It's not particularly personal, but Cai can and will use it against us.
 
We really can't afford any setbacks right now with the tournament so close. Any sort of punishment that is meaningful to us, and I believe that Cai would make it meaningful, greatly hurts our chances at years end.
 
We have a bit too much to lose right now for me to be comfortable with confessing. Realistically lockup by Turtleman is very possible, so just losing the white room and getting Xiang annoyed enough to stop his investigation is a pretty tame punishment. I don't think we can afford to take such a blow right before the tournament.

This vote reminds me of our final test to get into advanced classes, where we had the choice of a free pass or fighting it out and maybe losing Xin's art or not getting into the advanced class. I don't want to do the shonen thing in a setting that clearly doesn't care for such attitudes and risk losing the tournament if we get locked up.
 
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[X] Remain silent, thank her sincerely and speak of yourself as promised.
-[X] Convince Fu Xiang to drop the framing part of the plan, it would be best to avoid further abuses.
 
Neshuakadal said:
Just as a reminder to everyone that if it is found out that we did this we will be banned from the market place
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The exact wording, as it's not that clear cut:
"The three targets I have in mind have their facilities in the market," Fu Xiang said smoothly. "The wards merely prevent violence, not sabotage or theft… but I admit, you would be taking a risk. Should you be caught, you could receive a ban from the market."
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But yeah, being banned from inner market would hurt a fuck ton, especially as we never went there yet.
 
Yeangst said:
But we can't use it against her.

She already knows every personal secret Ling Qi has. The secret that you want to reciprocate with is the opposite- It's not particularly personal, but Cai can and will use it against us.
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It really doesn't matter that we didn't get any dirt on Cai.

Ling Qi doesn't care much for getting even as her generosity towards her friends show, and how she doesn't chase after grudges unless she's prompted to. She's trying to be a better person, not someone who takes advantage of people she's allied with like her days as a street rat taught her to.
 
I would say it's more like we ended up with no reason that we're closer to Cai. We tried and we bounced off. There's nothing to befriend there. Is she a person or just another of her mother's dolls? What she did tell us indicated more towards the later.

I would have preferred to hear about her tastes in tea. That's how bad the befriend her part of our intent went, in my personal opinion.
 
To me Cai has turned from a person with a bad upbringing trying to follow her mom's footsteps to a doll on strings. It seems that her mom has burned most of her humanity out of her.
 
[X] Remain silent, thank her sincerely and speak of yourself as promised. -[X] Convince Fu Xiang to drop the framing part of the plan, it would be best to avoid further abuses.

I feel baaad about this, but at this juncture the fallout of coming clean is just too unclear. I vote for staying silent but being 100% straight with Cai from now on, which also means not getting talked into sneaking around and bullshitting her.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I would say it's more like we ended up with no reason that we're closer to Cai. We tried and we bounced off. There's nothing to befriend there. Is she a person or just another of her mother's dolls? What she did tell us indicated more towards the later.

I would have preferred to hear about her tastes in tea. That's how bad the befriend her part of our intent went, in my personal opinion.
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I get the impression that she's less of a monster than she thinks. Like, if it was as bad as she said it was, she wouldn't think of herself as a monster in the first place.

Is she entirely mentally stable? Maybe not (in fact she might be the least of everyone we know), but I think there is still humanity left in her.
 
Urgh, OK. Flip Flopping, because we now have a real alternative to CRX with sect route and apprenticeship Jiao, and plausible Time Out + Inner Market Banning is a high price to pay to check whether we want CRX route when I am not wholly committed to it.

CRX is not yet our friend, and admitting it basically committing ourself to make the 'first move' on befriending her with a very heavy price. The price to be Silent is, to me, basically refusing CRX offer (As accepting the offer in like 4 days after this will be dishonest as fuck), but admitting it is being punished on the off chance of maybe agreeing with the offer.

Also, I think that it's OK for Ling Qi to be dishonest with strangers.

[X] Remain silent, thank her sincerely and speak of yourself as promised.
-[X] Convince Fu Xiang to drop the framing part of the plan, it would be best to avoid further abuses.
 
Neshuakadal said:
To me Cai has turned from a person with a bad upbringing trying to follow her mom's footsteps to a doll on strings. It seems that her mom has burned most of her humanity out of her.
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Yes, this is another problem I have with confessing to her.

From the secret she's told us, she's pretty much been confirmed as robotic and inhuman in comparison to Ling Qi. I'm really hesitant to throw our chances at the Inner Sect away just because of a , 'maybe Cai won't be exactly what she says she is'. There's too much to lose for us if we get banned from the white room, if we get locked up, if we piss off Xiang, and banned from the market. I'm real worried this choice will close off the inner sect if we roll badly on a confession.

Again, this is just like the choice we had in the advanced classes. Do you take the free win or do you do the shonen thing and possibly lose your Moon Spirit Art and fail to get into the class? I believe we made the right decision last time, so I am doing the same this time around too.
 
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Neshuakadal said:
Just as a reminder to everyone that if it is found out that we did this we will be banned from the market place
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And? I don't think it's worth compromising Ling Qi as a character that wanted to do better and was uncomfortable with ruining people's lives that hadn't harmed her solely for her own selfish desire.

Look - having something be harder, so what? This is a lot of what we like about Ling Qi as a character in xianxia and what people in story like about her. That she doesn't take the easy path, that she doesn't abuse her position, that she is loyal to her friends in spirit even when the times are tough. It's refreshing because she is someone that tries to do better and be more moral as compared to the usual xianxia 'protagonists.'

If you just want the sect and don't care about Cai? Fine. I wanted the Cai option, but the thread may disagree.

I'm frustrated mostly with people who think we can have our cake and eat it too.
 
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tehspooniestbard said:
I've seen a lot of people say that CRX isn't sharing anything big, so this isn't necessarily just directed at you. But I'm kind of confused as to why.

Her directly admitting that she doesn't agree with her mom's plan, and is in fact terrified of her, is a big secret. Personally so very much I'd think. She didn't have any small secrets to share that show under that public face because she feels that her choice of who she could be was taken from her at age 6. Literally shaped by her mother to the point she feels that even her 'rebellious' critique, and driving ambition, isn't of her own will.

That doesn't seem like a nothing secret to me, and I'm confused why people feel like that. Is it because we already knew she was terrified of her mom OOC from the interlude?

It also confirms what we already thought and shows CRX really just does not get how friendships work. She and Ling Qi would be a true force to be reckoned with with their power of social derping combined. :V
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Because isn't, especially compared to the dirt she literally had people dig up on Ling Qi.

"I'm terrified of my mother" isn't remotely surprising for anyone who's more than half heard of Shenhua and has a basic knowledge of her. "I only 95% agree with her" isn't particularly surprising either given that everyone's path of cultivation is different.

Now the secret is uncomfortable certainly, but Cai literally had people dig into Ling Qi's past and come up with the fact that she was a street-rat daughter of a prostitute before she even bothered to introduce herself to us. That is information that is both intensely personal (see how long it took to admit it to Meizhen and that we still haven't told basically anyone else the full truth) and potentially damaging to our face if released. That's what Cai is thinking about in terms of trading secrets.By comparison most Cai's information is personal, but could be fairly easily guessed by having a basic primer on who Cai Shenhua and a 2 minute meeting with Cai. It cost her to say certainly, but it has very little outside value.

It is not worthless. As I have said it is an excellent first gesture, but it is hardly some great secret that can only be gleaned by hiring dedicated investigatiors or years of close intimate contact. Nor could it destroy her entire life if revealed, most evereyone, including Shenuha would shrug and move on.

By contrast the thing people are advocating revealing Can destroy basically our entire life if revealed. Whilst it may be arguably less personal it could destroy any hope of us getting into the inner sect and wreck our relationship with at least one and probably several of our friends (Suyin obviously, Xiulan's got mega-issues already without having 'second-best friend of a treacherous theif' hanging around her neck. It could cause Su Ling issues with her friend Fatty, gives Meizhen even further problems coming from the Ling Qi direction whether she sticks with us or leaves us due to the face issues etc).

These secrets are not of the same value becuase one can literally destroy the person involved and the only reason for the other person not to do so is to betray a large part of her characterisation so far.

This choice can basically wreck everything Ling Qi has worked for for months, including all her friends and a lot of their hard work. Cai's secret should not be worth anything like that, and people insisting that they are equivalentt are talking garbage.

Hence my complaints that this vote makes no sense IC. Ling Qi isn't the voters and revealing to Cai despite the risks flies in the face of her characterisation thus far. Ling Qi wants to be a better person, but she doesn't want to destroy herself over it. She can do more than survive, but that doesn't mean she should suddenly turn suicidal in the hopes that the proverbial abyss might decide it has a net inside.
 
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