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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Please don't bring in excessive modern philosophy to a work set in a deathworld with hereditary superpowers. Also, don't assume that everything will go to plan. Yrs is obviously setting up for a great deal of chaos in the empire. If you've read Xianxia, you'll know that just about every one includes one or more arcs where the comfortable setting that the protagonist lives in is overrun by an out of context problem. There is an immense amount of foreshadowing involving barbarian raids, and it's already been noted that the Sect Head became famous for defeating the leader of the previous raid. A new leader is coming, and we're going to get caught up in it, likely setting up arc 3. For all we know, the barbarians or some other invader will bring in a White that will take down Mother Cai and completely bork everything.

With regards to arts, don't just think about coolness, consider domain compatibility, redundancy, and use cases. Arts should either be a direct upgrade to what we have (assuming that what we have is insufficient), cover a weakness, provide a potent new avenue of action, or help us close out a victory. In fact, Yrs gave us a hint in that CRX dispelled everything we had.

Money wise, generally funding from above is given proportional to closeness and work done. Ling Qi still has a great deal of freedom, so it's unlikely that she'll get the kind of support a more servile cultivator would. Also, remember that the Cai are a very new clan, and that CRX is being tested right now with limited resources. Anyways, isn't the fact that we have the option to constantly spend a sign that we're well off? There's no question on if we can buy something, we always just ask what should we buy.
 
George said:
It's hard to feel rich when we have no idea what any of our enemies or allies spends.
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Is that a need that Ling Qi has? To feel rich? If so lets ask LanLan to get us a super awesome dress filled with fancy jewels and such. By looking rich surely we will feel rich.

To me I don't really care how much other cultivators spend. All that should really matter is if we are advancing at a good rate which I feel like we are.
 
Neshuakadal said:
I am unsure by what you are talking about. Absolute material superiority is not materializing? Our income is basically double what we would have had if we tried for the sect route. We wouldn't have become Jiao's disciple by this point. The only reason we got such a good price for our mirror is because cai has connections. Like... What more do you want? Seems super greedy to expect everything to be covered by our liege. Like we have to buy things ourselves, oh no what a nightmare.
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Didn't Xin said that we Jiao couldn't make his offer yet because we were in the outer sect ?

And of course I expected her to cover everything, that's exactly what absolute material superiority meant for me. The other option was getting 2 prism teachers, that follow a similar way to ours. Of course Cai route which main attraction (cultivation wise) was that absolute material superiority was supposed to be equivalent to that. And it's not. It's even far from it.
 
Throwing my hat into the ring for the people who like EANP but also want challenges!

[X]Plan Harmonic Convergence
-[X] Invest 8 GSS, also use 8 free YSS
-[X] Medium Pills (free)
-[X] Buy and use Unwavering Discipline Pill (30 SP) and Melodic Elixir (60 SP) (Total 90 SP)
-[X] EPC bonus XP into Physical
-[X] Physical Cultivation x2
-[X] EPC x4
-[X] FSS x4
-[X] FVM x3
-[X] HDW x3
-[X] EANP x3
-[X]Challenge research 1
-[X] New default Art loadout: de-equip AE, AM, FZ(and AC if necessary for meridians); equip HDW, EANP

[X] Battle Royale Skills
-[x] Manipulation* 3, Presence* 3, Composure* 2 (16 points)
-[x] War* 3, Perceptiveness** 3, Fortitude 3, Resilience 3, Fade 3, Empathy* 3 (18 points)
-[x] Woodwind* 3 (6 points)

As usual, comments are welcome!
 
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I think that people are grossly mischaracterizing what Cai was talking about in the chapter, and then freaking out over the gross mischaracterization. This is, as best as I can tell, what people are freaking out about.

yrsillar said:
However, Ling Qi, there is something you must understand," her liege continued. "This will be a thankless task. I cannot provide you with many of the incentives and exceptions which most offer their direct retainers. I have bent certain rules in last years proceedings, for the purpose of testing, but I will not weave such expectations into the foundations of what I seek to build. The Outer Sect was a testing ground, and what occurred there is to be remembered and learned from, but it must be left behind. You do understand that?"
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The key, here, is the incentives and exceptions that are offered to their direct retainers. Nowhere was a dissolution of nepotism directly stated, but it appears that people are implying it in the incentives and exceptions clause.

Given the next sentence, it would be difficult to say that the incentives she is talking about refers to material wealth. More likely than not, the incentives and exceptions she is referring to involve things that are not normally legally permissible but people turn a blind eye due to the status or connections of the individual conducting the actions. Things like what the Huang are implied to do to commoners who catch their fancy. Things like murdering those who get in your way, illegally oppressing those underneath you, the ability to bypass customs and tariff regulations to create favorable market conditions for yourself. Things which break the system when used and people look the other way.

Additionally, Cai does not have unlimited funds to supply us with. She has another retainer that she needs to assist as delicately as possible as well as fuel her own cultivation. Giving us a green stone simply because we are her retainer is fantastic, especially given that a green stone is extremely valuable. Because of this, we are already at a clear material advantage from any other route, as we wouldn't have the additional green stone to play with. What the other ducal heirs are spending is, frankly, not a valid benchmark because we are not a ducal heir. A better benchmark would be to figure out how much Ji Rong is spending and getting, or even Li Suyin, or Gu Xiulan. I doubt that Li Suyin is getting a free GSS from nobody and Gu Xiulan is unlikely to get monthly GSS from her family.

No, we are solidly in a materially advantageous position compared to the majority of others.

Edit: And here is the changed language:
yrsillar said:
However, Ling Qi, there is something you must understand," her liege continued. "This will be a thankless task. You will not be above my laws, I will not create them with your direct benefit in mind. I have bent certain rules in last years proceedings, for the purpose of testing, but I will not weave such expectations into the foundations of what I seek to build. The Outer Sect was a testing ground, and what occurred there is to be remembered and learned from, but it must be left behind. You do understand that?"
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Which further highlights the point I was attempting to make. There is a distinct difference between legal incentives and exceptions and material advantages. Cai can not build a system where we are exempt from the laws, as that is antithetical to the system that Cai desires to build.
 
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yrsillar said:
I mean sure you can debate that the entire idea of monarchal systems is an exercise in nepotism, and I'd probably agree with you, but good luck implementing anything other than strongman rule in a world where the monarch can fart out kill-sat lasers.

Stripping propriety away, Cai's position is a result of the support of the scariest monster, if she ascends to the throne, it will be because all the other monsters agree that fighting for it isn't worth it. Please work within the context of the setting for your definitions. For fucks sake.

Also she is almost matching the funds given you by an entire organization when she doesn't even hold any property herself yet, quit with the goddamn greed
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It's unrelated question, but am i right that EPC 7 locked on moon mini-quest?
 
CRX basically let us craft a 4th realm equivalent domain weapon for free and hooked us up with an auction to sell the death mirror for a truck load of cash and own hooking us up with a great art from her families library but no we aren't experiencing the benefits of our lord showering us with riches
 
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yrsillar said:
there i changed the line to be even blunter. I eagerly await more bad faith bullshit complaining that doubling your income isn't superior enough
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I kinda do want to comment that I didn't understand Cai Renxiang point until you explained it, so thanks for the change.

EDIT: This isn't me complaining, I genuinely didn't understand her point.
 
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archangis said:
When we made a choice between jiao and her, she was told to have an absolute material superiority
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She does.

Jiao route wouldn't have us be his personal apprentice until, like, core. We'd get a lesson here and there, sure. Maybe an art. Cai, meanwhile gives us the Liming dress, the flying sword, doubles our resources (Maybe not the mirror, but she helped sell that too, so....), and has arts that haven't appeared yet. Not even counting immaterial things like the political support.

Also, New blunter line. Hopefully that eases people's concerns.
 
archangis said:
Didn't Xin said that we Jiao couldn't make his offer yet because we were in the outer sect ?

And of course I expected her to cover everything, that's exactly what absolute material superiority meant for me. The other option was getting 2 prism teachers, that follow a similar way to ours. Of course Cai route which main attraction (cultivation wise) was that absolute material superiority was supposed to be equivalent to that. And it's not. It's even far from it.
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Absolute material superiority is not having everything covered for you. Superiority is a word used to compare things. Being superior to someone just lets you know their relative positions. Person A has material superiority over person B. Person A is a homeless guy that owns a suit. Person B is a homeless person that does not own a suit. They are both in terrible positions but Person A does have material superiority over person B. Absolute material superiority means that no other route will give us as much material wealth as the Cai route. It does not mean unlimited funds. That just was never in the cards.

Other people may be richer and spend more than us and that is ok because they more money then us. Absolute material superiority was only to be used when comparing the different routes available to us. We do not have absolute material superiority over the inner sect because that would mean we have more money then Cai and that is, and will always be, false.

Thinking that we should have more money because other people maybe have more money or spend more than us is out right ludicrous. Thinking that we should have more money because we have to make choices about what to buy is ludicrous. Thinking that this is the limit of support that Cai will ever offer us is ludicrous.

I also question your knowledge about how the Jiao route would have worked. I highly doubt that we would have gotten the offer of apprentice ship by now. We got immediate material gains from the Cai route. An amazing robe that makes our other clothes wonder when they will ever be worn again, newsflash never. The idea that Jiao and Xin would have infinite time to teach us is simply silly. They have responsibilities other than teaching. There may be stretches of months at a time where we would never see them even if we choose the sect route. It is immensely unfair, both to the story and to the author, to compare the two when we really have no idea what the other routes would have entailed.
 
Thor's Twin said:
The key, here, is the incentives and exceptions that are offered to their direct retainers. Nowhere was a dissolution of nepotism directly stated, but it appears that people are implying it in the incentives and exceptions clause.
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the nepotism and stuff was a result of yrs post a little after the chap, and since basically everything CRX does, provides and and is is a result of it i think it's more than fair to freak out about it being removed.
With the new version of the chap it's clearer what CRX was talking about: Ling Qi won't benefit from the usual xianxia and wuxia Young Master's "i'm above the law" trope.

SITB said:
I kinda do want to comment that I didn't understand Cai Renxiang point until you explained it, so thanks for the change.

EDIT: This isn't me complaining, I genuinely didn't understand her point.
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I officially welcome you to the none-native English speaker club. :cool:

More seriously, Yrs when using double layered talk or whatever flavor of underneath the underneath you want to use, a lot of it will by missed by a significant fraction of you readers.
While Ling Qi herself might have gotten a crash course in politics and politic-speak, most of us readers didn't.
Neshuakadal said:
Absolute material superiority is not having everything covered for you. Superiority is a word used to compare things. Being superior to someone just lets you know their relative positions.
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I think you're forgetting the "absolute" or absolute material superiority in your argument :lol
 
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The thing is, a lot of Cai's route appeal was in the advantages to be gained by hitching our ride to Renxiang's horse, in exchange for a large part of Ling Qi's freedom.

Now, inevitably someone will mention that they chose the Cai path because of her ideals, but speaking as one of those who voted for the same path, everytime there was an argument about the future, the major advantage of choosing Cai was in what she could give us.

With Renxiang being more idealistic and by-the-book, less flexible and less tolerant of "lesse-faire", she feels less generous and thereby the main perceived advantage of her path is diminished.

That being said, Renxiang being like that isn't out of the blue. We should have expected it. Her actions in the Outer Sect always were a bit too pragmatic and almost two-faced.

For all that I often second-guess myself for not voting otherwise, this makes a compelling narrative and an interesting possible development for Ling Qi.

How will Ling Qi, a disciple of the Grinning Moon and a greedy, self-interested "chaotic-neutral" person, reconcile her path with that of a (benevolent) paragon of law, justice and order?

This promises to be interesting.
 
archangis said:
Didn't Xin said that we Jiao couldn't make his offer yet because we were in the outer sect ?
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... Merely entering the Inner Sect would not have enabled him to ignore or get rid of any and all restrictions in terms of what he's allowed to spoil us with.
Just like CRX is restricted in terms of how many resources she is afforded by her mother and how much she is currently allowed to pass on to us in terms of benefits, Jiao would have been similarly or rather even more restricted.

I'm not certain if he would have been allowed to formalize any relationship yet at all, but even if he was allowed to formalize something, there would be significant and notable rules in place to prohibit undue favoritism towards us, that would only have been gradually lifted over time to assuage anyone who might otherwise complain about the sect sidelining the almost one thousand noble scions currently in the sect.

And, given that we in fact have word of god that CRX comes with absolute material superiority we can say pretty damn safely that this shakes out to CRX being able to hand us persistently more goodies than Jiao would have been allowed to at that given point in time for the foreseeable future.
 
Ayashi said:
the nepotism and stuff was a result of yrs post a little after the chap, and since basically everything CRX does, provides and and is is a result of it i think it's more than fair to freak out about it being removed.
With the new version of the chap it's clearer what CRX was talking about: Ling Qi won't benefit from the usual xianxia and wuxia Young Master's "i'm above the law" trope.
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While the new edit is clearer, the old one was already fairly clear. So I don't think it was fair at all to freak out about us losing the material advantage Cai gave us. The post was fairly clear that what was in discussion was the bending of the rules, and the tax exemption for our friends was another bending of the rules. It's not particularly fair, in my opinion, to equate the inability to bend/break rules and laws to the absence of material support. Those two are very different things.
 
I have no problem with what we getting out of Cai in the sense of support. I really think she invest enough in us.
I just feel her stance is kinda vague? I maybe am wrong, but did the girls ever talk about any kind of plan beyond the sect?
We know she want to create a lawful state, but that can mean many things. Maybe she herself doesn't know what exactly want, which I personally find most likely.

I don't want to stress anyone anymore, but I feel our interaction with our liege is very shallow and we should increase interaction with one of the most important people in Ling Qi future.
 
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Neshuakadal said:
I for one am super excited about the future of the Cai route. I was never super hooked on being a spymaster but being a diplomat to the darker aspects of the Emerald Sea, those ancient places that still follow the weilu, seems way more interesting and super fun. I am really looking forward this direction. We will likely meet even more awesome characters this way.

@yrsillar Thanks for writing such an awesome quest that is a joy to follow and participate in!
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I agree, also being diplomat doesn't mean that we didn't need stealth and larceny, it's other way around - skills like this obsolete under Shenhua rule, who curbstomp all intrigue in her province.
 
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