Remove ads

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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
[X] Continue distracting the hill beast while your subordinates and Zhengui wall off the remaining exits from its valley, then vanish, and only engage again if it looks to be breaking out.
[X] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.
Adhoc vote count started by Diomedon on Jul 16, 2019 at 5:16 PM, finished with 103 posts and 25 votes.
Click to expand...
 
[X] Continue distracting the hill beast while your subordinates and Zhengui wall off the remaining exits from its valley, then vanish, and only engage again if it looks to be breaking out.

Having a living example of the corruption may be valuable for the sect. They could study it and figure out better ways to negate the toxins it is spewing everywhere.
 
[X] Continue distracting the hill beast while your subordinates and Zhengui wall off the remaining exits from its valley, then vanish, and only engage again if it looks to be breaking out.
[X] Close in, relying on Sixiang to keep it's toxic aura from affecting you, between your music and your subordinates ritualism, it should be possible to pacify the creature.

Voting containment because it seems like the probably correct choice here, and voting pacify because it's what I'd want to see happen.
 
[X] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.
 
[X] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.
 
[X] Continue distracting the hill beast while your subordinates and Zhengui wall off the remaining exits from its valley, then vanish, and only engage again if it looks to be breaking out.
 
[X] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.

While there's definitely a risk of fighting it spreading the corruption, there's also the possibility killing it ASAP and being able to leverage Fire's purifying properties with impunity on the corpse and the nearby area could stymie the spread of the contaminants.

It's already leaking this stuff out, and considering how deep the hill could go- it's entirely possible it's spreading a bunch of this stuff below ground level and out of sight. A surface quarantine can by no means be guaranteed to stop the spread
 
[X] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.

Enemies are for Killing.
 
Ok, if I were to rank these in terms of character from best to worst:
  1. Pacify. Builds off her preference for diplomacy with spirits and her recent struggles with killing. Follows her recent diplomatic actions nicely, reinforcing a character trait. Potentially makes for a fun character flaw as well as benefit.
  2. Contain. Reinforces her preference for playing things safe and being a good girl. Again, this can both be good, but also a character flaw.
  3. Kill. Generic monster killing. The obvious rpg "default". Not wrong, but not really interesting from a character perspective.
From a riskiness perspective, however:
  1. Contain. The "safe" option. Minimise risk to us, and leave it for people equipped for the job. Main failure state here is if it starts moving fast or tries to chase us, because I assume the walld won't stop it if it wants to go through them.
  2. Kill. Also fairly safe. Main risk here is us not being able to kill it, but even if we fail we would have at least damaged it. Worst failure states are that woumding it pisses it off and makes it more inclined to try to chase us or rampage everywhere. This is a perfectly "normal" thing to attempt, and even if we fail I imagine we wouldn't really get in trouble.
  3. Pacify. Totally the riskiest option. Highest chance of injury. Highest chance of our subordinates getting injured. Arguably lowest chance of success, given it's bot clear how exactly we're supposed to pacify it and Sixiang will be busy cleansing poison. Failure state bad, as it leaves us having accomplished nothing and we're likely to get in trouble for taking unnecessary risks for spirits.
So, on average, they're all at rank 2 :V

And finally, in terms of "fun":
  1. Kill/Pacify. Action! kaiju fight! Excitement!
  3. Contain. Don't fright the kaiju. Be boring.
 
[x] Continue distracting the hill beast while your subordinates and Zhengui wall off the remaining exits from its valley, then vanish, and only engage again if it looks to be breaking out.
 
Quite honestly, I'm not seeing a good option here. Option one has us leaving it to spill it's corruption everywhere. With all the work that we went through to do some fire breaks around the site of the corruption, letting that corruption just escape and continue to plague the surrounding hillside seems like an option that will make a lot more work for others. Also, the land will become more diseased and corrupted.

Option two is... possible. But it means exhausting ourselves in the middle of our scouting mission. This will take a truly large amount of qi and I'm not sure how much more work we will have to do in the region. Working on fumes is undesirable, but so is waiting half a day to get all of our qi back. That will put us on the back foot in terms of doing our job in a timely manner.

Option three is risky given that we don't have the tools to really do a good job, and if it fails we are left exactly where we were before, just with less qi and fewer options, and wasted time. I would feel more comfortable with this option if Sixiang had the spare attention to assist us in communicating with the hill, but with her dedicated to purging the toxins from our body, she won't have any time or energy.

So yeah, option one leaves this problem for someone else to deal with, option two is exhausting when we are on a time table in hostile territory, and option three is risky where if we fail it was a waste of time and we'll have to choose option one or two.

I'm going to have to keep thinking on this because I don't like the consequences of any of the options.
 
Honestly the most appealing part of offing the Hill, to me, is that we can go ahead and secure that loot to hand off to Li Suyin with absolute certainty.

Whereas with the main combat group, there's a pretty high chance that whomever takes it down will either keep the remains for themselves, or sell them to other people that would potentially shoe in on Suyin's niche while she's still trying to establish her own setup.

Non-competition clauses only apply to that singular entrance on Sect Grounds. It says nothing about going for this site.

Like, having examples of just how this deep ground corruption stuff can go wrong is probably super important to Suyin's budding Kamen Rider project. Best to give her samples of what to work with before it has a chance to go wrong.
 
Last edited:
[X] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.
 
Thor's Twin said:
Option two is... possible. But it means exhausting ourselves in the middle of our scouting mission. This will take a truly large amount of qi and I'm not sure how much more work we will have to do in the region. Working on fumes is undesirable, but so is waiting half a day to get all of our qi back. That will put us on the back foot in terms of doing our job in a timely manner.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Update mentions that we are almost done with the survey(for the day or entirely is a ??? but we would have the entire night to regain anyway) when this happens. We dont have anything else to do after this so our job will be complete after we deal with this incident.
 
yrsillar said:
The day had passed in tense peace, but as they were reaching the end of their survey, the ground beneath their feet had rocked, and the slowly crawling hill that they had been traversing had burst into malignant life.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Incidentally, Ling Qi is already almost done with the Survey for the day anyway.

Getting tired out here wont harm her ability to do her job at all.
 
[X] Close in, relying on Sixiang to keep it's toxic aura from affecting you, between your music and your subordinates ritualism, it should be possible to pacify the creature.
 
Last edited:
Hm. So I'm somewhat confused why spirit ken being low is a reason for why pacify is a bad idea? Because while Ling Qi will almost certainly gain insight into the nature of spirits the option mentions her using music, and her subordinate using his/her ritual, which to me would mean she is simply improvising a song to ease the creature's agony that it might've been born into existence to.

So pacify to me would involve Ling Qi taking the poor creatures pain, and weaves it into a song that gives it a measure of relief from the pain alongside an opening for her subordinate to do their rituals. Should the rituals fail it'll probably turn into a battle of endurance to keep it subdued until the main force arrives, but seeing as the narrative has had two instances where LQ's determination/diligence in the face of adversity was noted I'd expect her to continue the trend in her specialty.

Finally there is a degree of thematic carry over from the previous arc where the topic of killing came up, and Meizhen mentioned the topic of killing spirit beasts. This has Ling Qi doing what she can to ease its pain, and is actually a continuation of a distaste for unnecessary pain she felt way back in the previous quest when was training Zhengui using a bear iirc.
 
[] Go in for the kill, and call Zhengui to help. You have underestimated your own killing power before, and the things cultivation is not superior to your own. Hill or not, you can End it.
[X] Close in, relying on Sixiang to keep it's toxic aura from affecting you, between your music and your subordinates ritualism, it should be possible to pacify the creature.
 
Last edited:
I have serious problems with making choices based on characterization here, as justification for the Pacify vote. It's one thing to do that in our EPC dream, where characterization is literally one of the main purposes, but we're on the job here. And we as a voterbase should be making our decisions entirely based on risk/reward assessment and the orders of our superiors. Explicitly been told not to overreach ourselves for glory here, and gunning for that here could be huge negative consequences potentially. We've been doing really well so far, we don't need to pick this fight, let's do the sensible thing once again. Something that is quite within our capabilities and won't leave us completely exhausted even if we win.
 
Well, yes, that's the issue at hand.

You're assuming that Ling Qi, with a base Spirit Ken of C, will be able to kitbash together a song that it'll care about enough to be pacified, while dodging a bloodraging mountain hydra thing that breathes poison, on the fly, when her only experience with spirits of that base (Before being double corrupted), from the day before, and it's already working against it.

Like, that's the issue at hand. Even the best argument in the world will fall flat if the target just doesn't care about the things you're arguing about. Spirit Ken is what gets you that knowledge, and at only C-Rank, I don't feel it's enough to work something that can work out without cost, or with any real assurance of it lasting long.
 
[X] Close in, relying on Sixiang to keep it's toxic aura from affecting you, between your music and your subordinates ritualism, it should be possible to pacify the creature.
 
Vanguard_D said:
Update mentions that we are almost done with the survey(for the day or entirely is a ??? but we would have the entire night to regain anyway) when this happens. We dont have anything else to do after this so our job will be complete after we deal with this incident.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
TehChron said:
Incidentally, Ling Qi is already almost done with the Survey for the day anyway.

Getting tired out here wont harm her ability to do her job at all.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sure the survey for the day may almost be done, but that doesn't mean our job is almost done. We have two tasks, to survey and update the maps as well as to smooth out the trouble spots in the area before the main force arrives. Here is the relevant quote.

yrsillar said:
"This operation is more than just watching for barbarian hunters straying into our territory," Guan Zhi continued as if the second long exchange had not happened. "Patrols such as these are a regular requirement at the edge of civilized lands. It is a cultivators duty to track, monitor and if necessary deal with the spirits of the land in territory they control. As the scouting division, in addition to checking for barbarian sign, it will be your duty to update maps of spirit territory as well as altered terrain within your assigned area, and pass that information back to the main group so that it may be dealt with as necessary."

In the lull of silence that followed her words, Liao Zhu spoke up. "Of course it is also the duty of our division to smooth out troubles before the main force arrives when are able. Whether a problem is one that you can deal with, or one which requires the main force is a matter of personal judgement. However, there are dangers to the latitude which our division is given."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So even should the assumption that we are almost done with all the surveying we need to do for the day be granted, and this is all the surveying we need to do or we don't want to get a headstart on other surveying tasks, surveying is only half the job. We also need to do pacification missions and smooth out the army's job in the region.

And, quite frankly, I don't think we are done with all the surveying we need to do for this operation, which means that I'm of the opinion that if we choose to kill the hill we won't be getting a head start on another region or we won't be able to handle some of the more minor areas that would be nuisances for the army to deal with.
 
[X] Close in, relying on Sixiang to keep it's toxic aura from affecting you, between your music and your subordinates ritualism, it should be possible to pacify the creature.
 
ChronOblivion said:
I have serious problems with making choices based on characterization here, as justification for the Pacify vote. It's one thing to do that in our EPC dream, where characterization is literally one of the main purposes, but we're on the job here. And we as a voterbase should be making our decisions entirely based on risk/reward assessment and the orders of our superiors
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think that the argument that we should only care about characterisation when it's not inconvenient sort of misses the entire point of characterisation.
 
Thor's Twin said:
Sure the survey for the day may almost be done, but that doesn't mean our job is almost done. We have two tasks, to survey and update the maps as well as to smooth out the trouble spots in the area before the main force arrives. Here is the relevant quote.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, taking out the enraged berserking double corrupted mountain with SS ranked health seems like it'd be fairly relevant for both those tasks, yanno?

Thor's Twin said:
And, quite frankly, I don't think we are done with all the surveying we need to do for this operation, which means that I'm of the opinion that if we choose to kill the hill we won't be getting a head start on another region or we won't be able to handle some of the more minor areas that would be nuisances for the army to deal with.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So what? By all accounts, we're super ahead of schedule by locating and removing obvious problem points of corruption to give the rearguard full reign with sealing it off as efficiently as possible, and the main force can focus on pacifying the various other problem areas that have been identified. As well as tracking down the relevant Barbarian incursion in the zone.

Liao Zhu's already praising Ling Qi's performance. Securing this zone to end the day is just piling on more success, not getting ahead of herself.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top