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Even Further Beyond [Complete]

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Time is our most valuable resource, right after Beyond Points, and if we pick the Mastermind Point-enhanced scam... we're effectively passing up both. The chance of a Priceless Treasure is tempting, but it's just a chance, not even the 30% offered by Migration. We'd be spending our discussion bonus to mitigate the downsides, but the enemies we make if the scam isn't enhanced might consume even more time. It's a good application of our intellect and social skills, but fundamentally just a distraction from gaining power, which is what we're here to do. Our journey to the Border Zone took a while, two months on top of the four spent getting to Southern Vane. We learned Potentiation along the way, but objective time is slipping away from us, even as our multipliers stack up.

A Cultivator without the backing of a Great Clan might have to resort to scamming to stay solvent, but the Final Scion can just take out a loan. It isn't going to cause regional instability on a relevant scale, Deplian's in the middle of nowhere. It contains one two hundred and thirty thousandth of the Empire's total population. We ruin some livelihoods on a local scale, sure, but Nameless doesn't care about that and neither should we. Near-zero interest rates mean that we can pay them back later if it's an issue; Nameless has numerous ways to parlay startup capital into huge returns. Kleinvarr's Greater Refining alone would do the trick, if especially if we mastered it; the loan would be another arrow in the argumentative quiver of its supporters, if we went that route.

Basically, we're in a hurry. This only matters if we make a habit of it, which we won't because that would be stupid, and our protagonist is anything but. Let's not make this harder than it has to be. Beyond Points and money are both there for the taking. Poverty is a choice, here.
 
You forget though, that everyone here in favor of using the MP is having it as one rung of a scheme to take everyone involved in this to the cleaners.

Like, for heaven's sake, we have one of the strongest social builds and parties we could have had. Spending a month of objective time to scam a bunch of mid levels for their magic and money isn't exactly pointless, especially with the revelation that Nameless already fails to make perfect use of his time, especially when he's not having fun.

Scamming is very much something he has fun with. Passing this up, or half assing it, is a good way to cause us more problems than we solve through gaining marginally more time at this exact moment. Beyond Points aren't the only thing that's valuable in this game, not to the point where a fraction more outweighs all other considerations.
 
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Orm Embar said:
A Cultivator without the backing of a Great Clan might have to resort to scamming to stay solvent, but the Final Scion can just take out a loan. It isn't going to cause regional instability on a relevant scale, Deplian's in the middle of nowhere. It contains one two hundred and thirty thousandth of the Empire's total population. We ruin some livelihoods on a local scale, sure, but Nameless doesn't care about that and neither should we. Near-zero interest rates mean that we can pay them back later if it's an issue; Nameless has numerous ways to parlay startup capital into huge returns. Kleinvarr's Greater Refining alone would do the trick, if especially if we mastered it; the loan would be another arrow in the argumentative quiver of its supporters, if we went that route.
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Note that Nameless' father, who was the son rather than the grandson of the Titan of Earth, still needed to resort to scamming, and said that it was forty times as lucrative as relying on the wealth he could get from the coffers of Yong. He would be even more capable of pulling off bullshit like defrauding the Bank of Yong than we are, and he still preferred to scam people in the street.

We rejected the chance to go Beyond with Greater Refining, so it's not as lucrative as it could be.

Of course, we've not had it confirmed by Rihaku that my proposal to synergise Scamming and the Direct approach to try to roll the entire Bleak Raven sect is viable, but if it is it might almost be worth the expenditure of time for the resources we'd gain. Particularly if we could do something like master Greater Refining in the background of the scamming, and then radically upgrade the Sect's stockpile of cultivation resources before consuming it.
 
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Incoming: (Edit: There were enough distinct mastermind point votes that it would have felt weird consolidating some of them)
Adhoc vote count started by Conjured Blade on Mar 24, 2018 at 5:46 PM, finished with 341 posts and 41 votes.
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We're essentially paying .4BP to have shittier version of previous vote.

If you wanted to seek treasures and farm Cultivation you could have just taken option that did the same thing, in actually efficient way. As it is, we're just wasting our time.
 
Wolfy said:
We're essentially paying .4BP to have shittier version of previous vote.

If you wanted to seek treasures and farm Cultivation you could have just taken option that did the same thing, in actually efficient way. As it is, we're just wasting our time.
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We're paying to be able to do both at once, while also trying to optimise our approach to the Lich.

If we could get a Reality Forming Cultivator and his Sect under our thumb that would also be exceptionally valuable for a while, as we could get them to do the leg work of farming Cultivation while we focus on upgrading the spoils. Depending on how good our Greater Refining is it might even be win-win. Particularly if we can get the lich under our thumb as well, to serve as a taxi for their sect leader/elder. If he has a spare slot for us to teach him Beyond Potentiation and Greater Refining himself what would also be pretty great, as he could refine the resources their elders harvest without us having to do it.

The idea here is to try to win big from the greater investment. Now, this may not be viable, but it seems to be to be worth a go. We've really stacked our advantages for this kind of thing.
 
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So it's better to fail at what was ultimately decided on, because it'll take actual effort and time to maximize our gains?

Because sneaking in is sketchy without an MP, as it fails to get Charmed Life to start pulling for us, and Pass plus BP is basically saying "Nah, I'd rather dismiss a great opportunity that'll require time and effort to employ because I'm sure a better one that requires no time and effort will fall into my lap instead."

Scam + MP + Direct aligns every power, every skill, and gets Fate pushing in our favor on top of this in order to exploit the shit out of this scenario. There's even been solid plans on how we can interlock this into a cohesive whole.

Does this mean that you'd rather kill a Lich and burn all of their knowledge if Rihaku offers a BP for it? That we spare a hated rival if Fate walks in and offers us 3 BP to let her escape? Because obviously, it's better to fail to make any gains if it gives fractional amounts of BP.
 
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Alratan said:
Note that Nameless' father, who was the son rather than the grandson of the Titan of Earth, still needed to resort to scamming, and said that it was forty times as lucrative as relying on the wealth he could get from the coffers of Yong. He would be even more capable of pulling off bullshit like defrauding the Bank of Yong than we are, and he still preferred to scam people in the street.

We rejected the chance to go Beyond with Greater Refining, so it's not as lucrative as it could be.

Of course, we've not had it confirmed by Rihaku that my proposal to synergise Scamming and the Direct approach to try to roll the entire Bleak Raven sect is viable, but if it is it might almost be worth the expenditure of time for the resources we'd gain. Particularly if we could do something like master Greater Refining in the background of the scamming, and then radically upgrade the Sect's stockpile of cultivation resources before consuming it.
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The comparison was trying to 'earn' money from his father, not making a withdrawal, and that particular story ended with Liefang having to kill off a bunch of his slaves to avoid consequences for the Yong. We can avoid the enemies our scamming spree creates, but the opportunity cost is high, especially with a spending point coming up. As for targeting the Bleak Raven Sect, I think picking that fight would do more to destabilize the region than a simple bank run. One of the benefits of Direct Investigation is that it doesn't discard diplomacy out of hand. We can just say that we're a scion of the Yong who has experience dealing with liches and are here to investigate rumors of a stronghold. It has the added benefit of being true.
 
Orm Embar said:
The comparison was trying to 'earn' money from his father, not making a withdrawal, and that particular story ended with Liefang having to kill off a bunch of his slaves to avoid consequences for the Yong. We can avoid the enemies our scamming spree creates, but the opportunity cost is high, especially with a spending point coming up. As for targeting the Bleak Raven Sect, I think picking that fight would do more to destabilize the region than a simple bank run. One of the benefits of Direct Investigation is that it doesn't discard diplomacy out of hand. We can just say that we're a scion of the Yong who has experience dealing with liches and are here to investigate rumors of a stronghold. It has the added benefit of being true.
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Ok. I don't think you read my plan.

I don't care at all, one little bit for the money we make from scamming. The whole point of the camming is to gain some degree of control over the Bleak Raven sect and their rivals, to get us in a superior position of both knowledge and influence when the time comes, with a guarantee from the mastermind point expenditure that they haven't caught us making or preparations.

This isn't about having a fight with them. This is about either framing them or catching them in the act of dealing with a lich, and using that to get control of them - not for ever, but for a while. We then show them how that control has profited them as well, as I described above, and everyone leaves on non-hostile terms. We have things to offer, particularly if we get control of the lich, that he never could. We have Charmed Life pushing for us in this, we have a Mastermind point expended, we have Nameless' investment in social skills and manipulation, we have Xiaoling's social advantages as well. This is a real opportunity to suborn both sect and lich here. This plan is all about diplomacy. It's just also about having the most possible advantages when we open negotiations, including having information from insiders and possibly even influence over decision makers, as well as having influence over the rival sects so we can put the Ravens under pressure if required.

And Nameless' father's problem was that he was over-reliant on a single trick that could backfire, namely flashing the Great Seal of Yong, which meant his father would be embarrassed
if it came out. We're not doing that here, we're tailoring our scam to the situation.

And, as a note, the sect elders will be able to tell that Nameless is talking bullshit about being here to deal with a Lich. He's too low stage to use the bootleg Heavy Counter Yong Headhunters use on liches.
 
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How to find liches:
-We can already forge fate, so it ought to be possible to forge some method of seeing fate, and doom, so we can find the lichs the same way our mentor found us. The versatility of our forge-spell pays off once again!
-Our ring is tied to the lichs, both commanding them and dooming them. It is the ring of their age, and all the lichs left are its sons. There ought to be some way to use it to find the remaining lichs.
-Are there any Legacy zones where Cultivation is sealed, weakened, or otherwise altered? Or are there legacy zones where Diagram magic is stronger, or pocket dimensions easier to create? If so, that is where a lich would hide.
-Give Suizhen the ability to see diagram magic. A very simply and easy solution.

Why taking the loan is the correct choice:
Alectai said:
You forget though, that everyone here in favor of using the MP is having it as one rung of a scheme to take everyone involved in this to the cleaners.
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Yes, and it's still too much time chasing too small a reward. If we were running a scam on a Titan or a Lich I could understand, but the strongest Cultivator here is at Reality Forming, and has a shoddy base based on forbidden techniques. Scamming them is like scamming the bank guard rather than the bank; they aren't worth our time. We could make everyone in this backwater swear oaths of eternal vengeance and I'd just shrug, because we have gods to kill and 600 billion other people to save.

If scamming was guarantied to produce a precious treasure it'd be one thing, but spending half a Beyond Point just for a small chance at one? It's not even close to worth it.

More thoughts on psionics

We've been told that Cultivation is not a formal magic, but is instead jury-rigged from other magic systems. So having Psionics be one of those past magic systems that Cultivation stole from, and which is now rediscovered, is quite possible.

Rihaku said:
The art of Cultivation was not, at its core and despite its trappings, a proper art at all, not a formal system like the Diagram with systemic and derivable first principles. Cultivation was a path of precipitous self-modification, hacked together through opportunism and relentless testing, designed to exploit and maximally leverage a loophole in the laws governing the universe.
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We've speculated in the past that each age sees a new magic system, but now we have much stronger evidence that magic systems come and go on a regular basis.

Rihaku said:
Here, interactions between the exotic magics of prior ages and the robust wildlife of Kong spawned a multifarious domain of formidable beasts, monster-infested dungeons, and potent-but-poisonous vegetation.
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And lastly, we can confirm that will is very much a thing.

Rihaku said:
Cultivators used the elven Thriesis flower in conjunction with exhaustively-tested mental exercises to 'accrue' the stuff of will, eventually forming a coherent Ego Barrier. With the perspective of the Diagram, he could perform a parallel and analogous procedure to 'refine' that accrued will.
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Normal Cultivators gather enough will to create a barrier, then turn their focus to the Energy of All and Nothingness that they use to create their inner worlds. But the Psion never actually gets the Energy of All or Nothing, choosing to focus instead on further increasing their will. Where Cultivators are only capable of creating barriers, a Psion could create much more sophisticated constructs of will.

The reason that we need to be at least Dao Cleaving before fighting the heroine is that if we were any weaker, she could pop our inner world like a child popping a balloon. In the Ego barrier, Organ Refining and Soul Chrysalis stages, the inner world is weaker than the real world, so any disruption to the ego barrier would result in the inner world collapsing under the pressure of reality and presumably bad things happening to the Cultivator in question. But once you hit Dao Cleaving, your inner world is equal to the real world. And once you become a Titan your world is stronger than the real. So if we're going to fight like a Cultivator it's key that we at least hit Dao Cleaving, so that if our inner world is exposed it won't just collapse under pressure from reality.

It's not clear what more powerful and sophisticated abilities a Psion might possess. Barriers and blades of will represent only the most basic of powers.
 
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Alectai said:
So it's better to fail at what was ultimately decided on, because it'll take actual effort and time to maximize our gains?
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Except you are not "maximize our gains", you are just wasting our time. We don't have time to sit around on our asses for a whole month making irrelevant amount of wealth and political influence.

While at the same time effectively paying BPs to do so.
 
vali said:
Yes, and it's still too much time chasing too small a reward. If we were running a scam on a Titan or a Lich I could understand, but the strongest Cultivator here is at Reality Forming, and has a shoddy base based on forbidden techniques. Scamming them is like scamming the bank guard rather than the bank; they aren't worth our time. We could make everyone in this backwater swear oaths of eternal vengeance and I'd just shrug, because we have gods to kill and 600 billion other people to save.

If scamming was guarantied to produce a precious treasure it'd be one thing, but spending half a Beyond Point just for a small chance at one? It's not even close to worth it.
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Getting a Reality Forming and multiple Dao Cleaving cultivators under our control for a few months would be phenomenally valuable. Particularly if we also get control over the local lich to act as a force multiplier. Ii could be immensely valuable to have them going out and getting resources for us. They can get a lot more than we can get on our own.

Remember that a Reality Forming Cultivator >>>>>>>>> a lich in terms of power.

Wolfy said:
Except you are not "maximize our gains", you are just wasting our time. We don't have time to sit around on our asses for a whole month making irrelevant amount of wealth and political influence.

While at the same time effectively paying BPs to do so.
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Have you read the proposed plan? I don't think you can have done, as you think the point if the scamming is to the incidental pocket change we'd make along the way. It's not. It's the setup for a big play to suborn the sect.

Wolfy said:
We tell them to let her go?
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They tell us to get lost with the attempted mind control and kill her for our temerity in trying that. What then?
 
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The fancy blue text gives us an advantage in dealing with liches.

However, given what it represents AND Baenlixnaire could do something similar, I sincerely doubt it commands liches. If it did, he'd have ordered the other liches to fall in line and help him exact revenge long ago. Far more likely is that it's a way to speak that makes lying impossible.

So we could tell the liches that we're the student of Baenlixnaire and so forth and they'd believe us, as opposed to them thinking we got the ring off some lich we killed.
 
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DarkKing98 said:
Didn't we teach Ming the hidden ego barrier stage?
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yeah she has an Absolute Ego Barrier (akin to a steel wall in the metaphor) that lets her operate at +.25 Stages for all purposes which works alongside Half-Elf to put her at 1.75 (or is it 1.65?) effective Stages for combat power, plus 6x Quickening. That might not be totally trivial for a Lich, but most of them can probably still take her hostage. However, with our Ring, they will hopefully be persuaded to de-escalate once we talk to them a bit. I think a bigger worry is how she deals with traps, which we'll just have to muddle through on I think, beyond some common sense measures for simple types of traps like blocking with our body and attempting to clear rooms before she enters with Suizhen standing guard behind her. Oh, it's actually a moderate point in favor of the Eyes of Kong option; they let Suizhen spot traps which allows our Lackeys to stay with us in Diagram dungeons safely even after all the Diagramists are dead.
 
Alratan said:
Have you read the proposed plan? I don't think you can have done, as you think the point if the scamming is to the incidental pocket change we'd make along the way. It's not. It's the setup for a big play to suborn the sect.
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You are wasting a month on fanciful idea that will have us rule some irrelevant rando sect if it works out.

Like, do you actually think that people give a shit about Bleak Ravens?
 
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