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

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[X] Plan: Icy Moon-Dance Fog Machine

We throw up our mist with FVM and have it running to the point that we can use travellers end at any point, we adapt from there and decide when to call down travellers end based on what's going on with the greens. We'll be using our mist people to distract and doing what we can while we play, and dodging about using SCS etc, ideally some extra distracting ranged attacks and trying to determine the location of the 3rd green. When we call down travellers end We move immediately into PLR. The whole time Hanyi is singing FSS so they'll have to prioritize between the confusion and the life-sapping effect of FSS. When we have all three greens determined and we're in PLR, we immediately throw lunatic whirl on the three greens. Zhengui acts as a general troubleshooter when we point out spots of trouble, helping us distract the greens and to obscure the area, Zhengui's poison should also help distract from dispel attempts. Ideally we save Joyous toast till Cai and the troops show up, but if we need to use it, we use it. Proceed from there to doubling up FSS with hanyi and sniping with (touch) Call to ending if we can, but If we're in a bad way and things are getting out of hand we should go stealth and snipe from the shadows.
 
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yrsillar said:
She had just assumed that the archivist was taking his time, or fighting a library monster, or...something.
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Honestly I could absolutely see that happening. Especially if the Cai library is mostly looted. Gotta protect your library from thieves and looters somehow right?

Archivist vs the monster book of monsters? Spritual encylopedia's that vomit up the nighmares people had about their subjects? The expanding annals that eat other documents to add to themselves?

Imagine if this is why the empire switched to using Jade slips for everything? I have the beautiful image of some poor clan archivist from back when they used proper books and scrolls for everything having to literally fight to their own clan techniques every hundred years or to just keep them from getting up and walking away to start cultivating themselves as they developed item spirits .
 
Froyo Baggins said:
We throw up our mist with FVM and have it running to the point that we can use travellers end at any point, we adapt from there and decide when to call down travellers end based on what's going on with the greens. We'll be using our mist people to distract and doing what we can while we play, and dodging about using SCS etc, ideally some extra distracting ranged attacks and trying to determine the location of the 3rd green. When we call down travellers end We move immediately into PLR. The whole time Hanyi is singing FSS so they'll have to prioritize between the confusion and the life-sapping effect of FSS. When we have all three greens determined and we're in PLR, we immediately throw lunatic whirl on the three greens. Zhengui acts as a general troubleshooter when we point out spots of trouble, helping us distract the greens and to obscure the area, Zhengui's poison should also help distract from dispel attempts. Ideally we save Joyous toast till Cai and the troops show up, but if we need to use it, we use it. Proceed from there to doubling up FSS with hanyi and sniping with (touch) Call to ending if we can, but If we're in a bad way and things are getting out of hand we should go stealth and snipe from the shadows.
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yrsillar said:
Plans should be no more than 4-5 sentences in length, keep it to general outlines please.
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Sorry man, you're gonna need to rework that a fair bit.
 
Can't really read the plans; phone kills formatting. Will read later.

Anywho, what are our main goals? I see three main things we need to accomplish.

1. Stall targets long enough for CRX and adds to arrive. They cannot be allowed to reach the boarder.
2. Prevent anyone from escaping. We don't know who has the loot and can't risk the one guy who gets away being the one with everything in storage, or even a single important item.
3. Confirm the make-up of opposing forces, especially verifying the presence and combat role of the potential third Third Realm Cultivator.

With that in mind, I feel like our best bet would be to get in front of them and leave Zhengui and Hanyi in their path, then travel back and set up FVM and the like and then rush them from behind, kiting them towards Zhengui who can root grapple most of them with Hanyi to take down the ones who manage to evade. Not sure if the Greens would try and fight Ling Qi or bust past the Spirit Gang, but whichever group they ignore can tie down the adds, if not remove them completely.

I'll try and refine that some and add some specific art names once I can get to an actual computer if I don't see an obviously better plan once I can actually read the thread.
 
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Wiggin42 said:
With that in mind, I feel like our best bet would be to get in front of them and leave Zhengui and Hanyi n their path, then travel back and set up FVM and the like and then rush them from behind, kiting them towards Zhengui who can root grapple most of them with Hanyi to take down the ones who manage to evade. Not sure if the Greens would try and fight Ling Qi or bust past the Spirit Gang, but whichever group they ignore can tie down the adds, if not remove them completely.
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That's never going to work, since there's over 70 of them. The Greens can just occupy Zhengui by spamming illusions and their own Spirit Beasts and Domain Weapons, blitz Hanyi while we're away, and the 70 mooks would split off into the distance without us having any way to lock them all down.
 
[X] Plan: The Night Parade of One Thousand Demons - Final Mix

Eh, seems like the best plan going right now.
 
[X] Plan If It Bleeds...

Go big or go home, no reason not to try to force the issue and cost the puppetmaster messing with us something.
 
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Alectai said:
It's not going to be a piece of cake at all, this is actually a very hard encounter.

1) We know that in a fight between two peers, the one with an army at their back is probably going to win. We're fighting at least two peers, with a third of unknown abilities lying in wait. We're well suited to stall out a formation, but only if we pace ourselves
2) The Third Foe. I would bet money they're a Sun Clan Regular, and are serving as the observer and insurance policy for this force. I would bet Green 5/6, but they likely couldn't take action unless they're convinced it would sweep the table, because if it doesn't, and he fails to neutralize the witness, it becomes an Incident on their part, because they're double trespassing. On the other hand, if he gets a chance to pop us because we overextended ourselves, he will take it. It would be better for them to lose their entire force than it would for a Sun Clan Regular to be caught backing a bunch of 'Bandits'. This is likely why Renxiang didn't come with us and is instead rolling with the Response Force. because it denies them a chance to headcap the province heiress and get away with it.
3) We've never fought an actually organized formation before. Just that we've been told it's something to be feared. I don't want to underestimate them.

Anyway, Night Parade is just a first draft, I'm hoping other strategy maevens can look it over and help refine it, or at least confirm if it's garbage and needs to be tossed out.
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They're a team that's specced for team fighting. We should assume that pretty much everyone is packing group buffs, probably in some sort of synergystic way. If they're really bandits, they *probably* don't have all that much in the way of arts, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd managed to beg borrow or steal the equivalent of the argent set.

We do need to have our escapes up and ready, just in case. One of the things about harass and delay is that we don't have to hit them only once. If they all crank up their buffs, we can back off, given them time for their buffs to expire, and meet them again a mile down the road.

Worth noting that we have a domain weapon, and it is also specced for anti-crowd fighting.

Worth noting thatif you give Zhengui time to crank up, some combination of Ashfall and Innocuous Hill could have interesting effects, especially if you fill an area with ash that's difficult to just walk around.

Hanyi's Enrapturing Silhouette is *fantastic* for delay/attrition games. She hits someone with it, from behind. They turn around and start movign the wring direction. Either the enemy abandons them to their fate (which will cause morale damage, I guarantee) or they turn aroudn to deal with it... or, even better, they splinter, with one group breaking off and the rest moving forward. Disruption and attrition are Good Things.

Basically, we don't have to go grand battle against these guys. We can afford limited engagements that achieve useful things (including delay), then disengage, and come back to do it again a little later.
 
Lost Egos said:
[X] Plan If It Bleeds...

Go big or go home, no reason not to try to force the issue and cost the puppetmaster messing with us something.
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Well, we've got a lot of reasons. If he turns out to actually be just plain better at hiding than we are at tracking, then we waste a lot of time until things line up just right. It's a plan that potentially wins big, but also can backfire hard, especially since we've blown our +30 per turn at the start of the month.

Time only becomes our friend when the enemy has been halted, that doesn't happen until we engage the main force--and it also gambles that the assassin can't actually signal his buddies to book it while he ties us up, which still causes us to lose.

Sirrocco said:
They're a team that's specced for team fighting. We should assume that pretty much everyone is packing group buffs, probably in some sort of synergystic way. If they're really bandits, they *probably* don't have all that much in the way of arts, but I wouldn't be surprised if they'd managed to beg borrow or steal the equivalent of the argent set.

We do need to have our escapes up and ready, just in case. One of the things about harass and delay is that we don't have to hit them only once. If they all crank up their buffs, we can back off, given them time for their buffs to expire, and meet them again a mile down the road.

Worth noting that we have a domain weapon, and it is also specced for anti-crowd fighting.

Worth noting thatif you give Zhengui time to crank up, some combination of Ashfall and Innocuous Hill could have interesting effects, especially if you fill an area with ash that's difficult to just walk around.

Hanyi's Enrapturing Silhouette is *fantastic* for delay/attrition games. She hits someone with it, from behind. They turn around and start movign the wring direction. Either the enemy abandons them to their fate (which will cause morale damage, I guarantee) or they turn aroudn to deal with it... or, even better, they splinter, with one group breaking off and the rest moving forward. Disruption and attrition are Good Things.

Basically, we don't have to go grand battle against these guys. We can afford limited engagements that achieve useful things (including delay), then disengage, and come back to do it again a little later.
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We're getting into the point of too much granularity there. We're already a bit borderline here. These are all good points but we can't actually point out every possible move or asset and have it still be an acceptable plan.
 
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[X] Plan: Icy Moon-Dance Fog Machine

We throw up our mist with FVM and have it running to the point that we can use travelers end at any point, we adapt from there and decide when to call down travelers end based on what's going on with the greens. We'll be using our mist people to distract and doing what we can while we play, and dodging about using SCS etc, ideally some extra distracting ranged attacks and trying to determine the location of the 3rd green. When we call down travelers end We move immediately into PLR. The whole time Hanyi is singing FSS so they'll have to prioritize between the confusion and the life-sapping effect of FSS. Zhengui and Lunatic Whirl are used to troubleshoot and distract.

Thanks for the save- Down to 5 sentences.
 
[X] Plan: The Night Parade of One Thousand Demons - Final Mix

Not only do I like @Alectai 's plan title (since it references our parade of spirits), but it simply seems to me like the best iteration of the plans so far. It reminds me of a clear upgrade of the original plans in the Tournament in the last quest, where we prepped our mist before running over the opposition. It's pretty similar to how we crushed the first round of the tourney (qi-battery all of the mooks before going after Shen Hu (A green-level threat)), and when we fought Chu Song (dropping the mist cloud on her and her spirit beast (both green-level threats) before then qi-draining her into submission). It plays to our strengths of having a very anti-crowd art build and looks like a natural escalation of our previous winning builds (given we now have stronger and improved arts than we did back at the tourney).

I think that @TehChron 's plan If it Bleeds has merit, since any unknown in the supposed "bandit" party is probably their backer/insurance in case things go wrong, and will probably be the biggest threat. Ganking them would be immediately removing a priority target, but I'm unsure if we could realistically find them in time, since an assassin would probably have a dedicated stealth suite (to prep for a killshot). Given that we need to stall the main group, I think that we'd probably be better off going using this plan if we find the assassin, but if we don't then default to @Alectai 's plan.

yrsillar said:
Very soon, she turned down the mountain path, and brought the other girl into sight. Sun Liling sat cross legged atop one of the trail markers, looking out over the sheer cliff below, looking for all the world like she wasn't paying any attention at all.

"Princess Sun," Ling Qi greeted nicely, coming to a stop a polite distance away. "I couldn't help but notice that you seemed to be seeking me, can I help you with something?"

Sun Liling looked at her without bothering to turn her head, but only briefly. "Hmm, paranoia's not a good look you know. No reason to get worked up about someone walkin the same direction as you. I was just lookin for a good meditation spot."

Ling Qi scowled internally, but there was no point in arguing with the other girl.

"How come, she's obviously lying." Hanyi said guilelessly in her thoughts. "Does she think you're dumb? Big Sister should beat her up."

Ling Qi sent a silent thanks to Sixiang as the spirit pulled hanyi deeper into her dantian to explain. "Well my apologies then," she replied sweetly. "If I might be so a little rude princess, you might wish to talk to someone about your troubles, if they've affected your restraint so badly."

Sun Liling shot her a withering look. "Well thanks much," she said in a voice as dry as a desert. "Let me give ya a little advice in return little doggie. Your mistress is gonna have some real trouble in the future. You both made some real bad choices last year."

"Is that so," Ling Qi replied blandly. "I'm sorry princess Sun, I must be misunderstanding, because that almost sounded like a threat."

"Your forgiven," the redhead replied with a smirk. "Just informing ya, opening borders with the Bai… it's just asking for trouble you know? They're pretty bad at policing their domain. It just hurts my poor heart to think of those emerald seas folks living near the border."

Ling Qi narrowed her eyes. "Are you certain you weren't seeking me out, Princess Sun? That seems oddly specific."

"Hm, maybe I was? Well you know how it is, little stuff can slip the mind," she shrugged. "Go ahead and run along then."

Ling Qi restrained the urge to grind her teeth at the flippant dismissal, but instead simply turned away. If Sun Liling had so openly stated something then the information wasn't valuable. She supposed it wasn't exactly a secret that the Sun family would not be taking their humiliation lying down.

Aside from informing Cai Renxiang, there was nothing to do about it for the moment. While things remained peaceful, she could only keep pursuing her goals.
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On another note @TehChron , @Alectai and @Iarkins , I know you keep mentioning that this is probably being backed by the Sun (there's not a doubt in my mind that this mess is being backed by Someone and it's probably the Sun or their allies), but I was just wondering what your take on this is in light of our encounter with Liling a while back. Liling's very brazen mentioning of the Cai getting some trouble soonTM ​and implication of people coming across the Bai's (Thousand Lakes Province) border seem describe this event very well, and I'm kinda unsure why she'd rub it into our faces beforehand. Maybe she's just confirmed Sun involvement?
 
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RhapsodyOfLife said:
On another note @TehChron , @Alectai and @Iarkins , I know you keep mentioning that this is probably being backed by the Sun (there's not a doubt in my mind that this mess is being backed by Someone and it's probably the Sun or their allies), but I was just wondering what your take on this is in light of our encounter with Liling a while back. Liling's very brazen mentioning of the Cai getting some trouble soonTM ​and implication of people coming across the Bai's (Thousand Lakes Province) border seem describe this event very well, and I'm kinda unsure why she'd rub it into our faces beforehand. Maybe she's just confirmed Sun involvement?
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It's basically a free way for Liling to get us to squirm? Like, everyone who mattered knew this kind of thing was coming, it wasn't actually a surprise, but nothing's provable.
 
TehChron said:
That's never going to work, since there's over 70 of them. The Greens can just occupy Zhengui by spamming illusions and their own Spirit Beasts and Domain Weapons, blitz Hanyi while we're away, and the 70 mooks would split off into the distance without us having any way to lock them all down.
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Would they though? I've been under the impression that we have a better movement speed then anyone else involved, so we'd be right behind them if they chose to flee from us, leaving the spirits maybe a two or three rounds alone, depending on how spread out the bandits are. I would think Woodland Grasp and Rolling Forest Regrowth would be a good set for locking down a group, especially if Innocuous Hill applies.

Fair point about the illusions, though. Forgot Zhengui has crap dispell. Probably need to put more thought into the Greens.
 
Wiggin42 said:
Would they though? I've been under the impression that we have a better movement speed then anyone else involved, so we'd be right behind them if they chose to flee from us, leaving the spirits maybe a two or three rounds alone, depending on how spread out the bandits are. I would think Woodland Grasp and Rolling Forest Regrowth would be a good set for locking down a group, especially if Innocuous Hill applies.

Fair point about the illusions, though. Forgot Zhengui has crap dispell. Probably need to put more thought into the Greens.
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Illusionist gets contained by using Elegy's focused version on them, which means they can only affect themselves and us--and Ling Qi has the Sixiang Fun Zone to block such attacks on her.
 
Eastern Calculus said:
From a meta-perspective, this set up seems too good to be true. Seventy Qi batteries is a lure dangled in front of us. I'm sure there will be a hitch to prevent us from exploiting the hell out of the situation. So I'm not voting for plans that hinge on limitless Qi.
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Sometimes things do work out. Otherwise why bother preparing?
 
Alectai said:
It's basically a free way for Liling to get us to squirm? Like, everyone who mattered knew this kind of thing was coming, it wasn't actually a surprise, but nothing's provable.
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I mean since she certainly foreshadowed that some sort of shenanigans were coming, and basically confirmed Sun involvement with them, I was just wondering if there was some bigger picture stuff going on with this (considering the last time we were in politics at the tourney Shenhua basically played Sun Shao like a fiddle with the Bai alliance), rather than Liling simply messing with us. I mean, it really wouldn't be out of character for her, especially after we messed her up last semester with the whole Thunderdome Redux, infiltrating her fortress, giving her the slip when she tried to gank us and making the Cai look good at the Tourney, but I was wondering more about the political side of things, (since I'm kinda bad at reading between the lines with that sorta stuff :V )
 
Alectai said:
Well, we've got a lot of reasons. If he turns out to actually be just plain better at hiding than we are at tracking, then we waste a lot of time until things line up just right. It's a plan that potentially wins big, but also can backfire hard, especially since we've blown our +30 per turn at the start of the month.

Time only becomes our friend when the enemy has been halted, that doesn't happen until we engage the main force--and it also gambles that the assassin can't actually signal his buddies to book it while he ties us up, which still causes us to lose.
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I would be a bit more comfortable with a explicit contingency to engage if searching runs long but I'm not worried about him delaying while the rest run I think he'd have to be either strong enough that proving he was there would be it's own reward or picked specifically to lock us down while the rest run in which case he could just double back to stall us before we engage. It's definitely a riskier bet then your plan but even if we sweep and build a decent amount of prestige I'd rather take a risk and roll the dice. My biggest concern with the plan is actually Renxiang losing faith in our reliability to take independent action.
 
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Politically, what they want to do is put egg on Renxiang's (And by extension, the Cai's) face by stealing a major shipment and making them show weakness. Shenhua is allowing it because it's a good tempering experience for Renxiang, and she has assurances in place to prevent it from getting to blow back on her.
 
Wiggin42 said:
Would they though? I've been under the impression that we have a better movement speed then anyone else involved,
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The Assassin is the big unknown, and the primary factors in potentially holding us up are going to be the third realms.

One way or another, if 70 cultivators run off into the countryside theres no way we'll be able to catch them all before they make it to the border of the Province. Thats just a logistical reality.
 
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