Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
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I guess so. I'm skeptical as to his efficacy, but it wouldn't mean much anyway. Zhengui doing a cool thing doesn't advance anything in particular. All it would have to build on is Zhengui's comment about picking fights he can contribute to, which this spirit certainly qualifies for, but I'm unsure of that as a theme to develop. For one, it's kind of just tacked on. For the other, in that context it's settling instead of overcoming the challenge of mis-matched foes. Basically a concession following a recently highlighted conflict.
In narrative/metaphorical terms anyway. Basically, there isn't a foundation of conflict or enmity with underground corruption or star-taint, so Zhengui purifying them, if he can, isn't as engaging as it could be.
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- Pronouns
- They/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] 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.
I agree. To elaborate on this, the corruption effect was previously noted to be especially hazardous to both Earth-aspected and Wood-aspected spirits, such as Zhengui:
And Zhengui doesn't have Six in his head to constantly dispel poison and corruption effects. That's not to say we can't fight to kill this creature or that Zhengui can't be involved if we do, but if we go that route we'll probably want to exercise a lot of caution about him using many of his regular standbys, like tanking directly or using techniques like entangling roots. That would tend to significantly diminish his effectiveness.
Granted, Zhengui does also have a strong Fire aspect which we've already employed successfully against corrupted creatures and environs, and he does have a few ranged options. And this thing is somehow even slower than he is, so he probably can keep away but still engage (though even a hill may have, say, "avalanche"-themed burst movement effects so it's not guaranteed). But I think he'll be operating at significantly decreased effectiveness unless we take risks with him getting seriously sick, which "kill this hill before the army gets here" is just not worth.
(From a Doylist perspective, I think the fact that the corruption effect was brought up in-story earlier in connection both to Wood and to Zhengui specifically makes it much fairer game for a potential "you-could-have-foreseen-this" negative side effect of a quest choice. Not fatal, but still serious.)
On top of that, Ling Qi herself has seen in the past that a bunch of her cold-and-mist techniques are also less effective than she'd like against Earth techniques, as in the battle against Shen Hu. That was a while back and LQ is more buff now, but even so "both our heaviest hitters may be less effective at hitting than usual" is not a great thing if we're already looking at problems trying to grind down a literal mountain of HP.
I think these factors lean in favor of either pacifying it or containing it rather than trying to kill it outright (whichever we think is more likely to succeed). As with some other things we've encountered in this patrol, part of the leadership role is sometimes recognizing "my group is not best-suited to this task just because we found it first, and it is appropriate to turn it over to allies better equipped to handle it." Destroying an angry pile of hit points and purifying the ashes seems like it's right up the main army's alley.
(For instance, CRX's All-Scouring Light techniques are not something I'm wild about generally, but this seems like a great occasion for them, at least if the crafter brigade can't detox this thing somehow.)
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- Location
- Brazil
So, you just said Contain still spill things around. Why not kill it, then? That stops it for sure.
[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.
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[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.
Froyo Baggins
Sock Puppet
- Location
- NYC
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[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.
- Location
- the internet
[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.
[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.
True, but
Sixiang: "This is your Moon Senpai's reaction to you encountering a kaiju when he took his eye of you for a moment, and encountering you in the middle of killing it."
Sixiang: "This is your Moon Senpai's reaction to you encountering a kaiju when he took his eye of you for a moment, and encountering you in the middle of defeating with a musical score."
Sixiang: "Thanks you yours truly you have the once in a lifetime opportunity to add one of the memories to your horde in the Dream Vault! Choose wisely."
My big gripe with the fight option is how it fails to leverage the strengths of the unit. It probably even leaves Hanyi out of the fun, as fragile as she is. Considering the arc, a fight where we can't afford to let our subordinates get close to the fight at all isn't very satisfying. Not that they could actually do anything. They are completely outclassed, and Ling Qi doesn't have much in the way of support arts she can use to boost them to relevance. Ling Qi and Zhengui fighting a corrupted farting hill is a spectacle, but it doesn't play into the training exercise or Ling Qi's role as a Leader Of Men.
Frankly, I'd rather just fuck off than waste time on a pointless fight that only endangers our subordinates, while not even offering them a chance to assist. Plus, why make the decision to avoid barbarians because she might run out of qi running away from them, in a worst case scenario, but choose here to get into a fight she thinks she might run out of qi during? It's inconsistent, and would be for an objective significantly less relevant to her scouting duties.
Frankly, I'd rather just fuck off than waste time on a pointless fight that only endangers our subordinates, while not even offering them a chance to assist. Plus, why make the decision to avoid barbarians because she might run out of qi running away from them, in a worst case scenario, but choose here to get into a fight she thinks she might run out of qi during? It's inconsistent, and would be for an objective significantly less relevant to her scouting duties.
If it dies, wouldn't the gross stuff spill everywhere as its spirit unravels? No doubt less bad than it continuing to rampage around, but I'm not certain it's the best success possible here. Disposing of it cleanly sounds like a job for a higher realm cultivator to me, frankly.
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Cecylene
Eternal Idea Engine
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- He/They
[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.
[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.
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- Location
- his hidden lair
I can't help but despise the rampant bias and self justification that goes into asserting that Killing doesn't foster character development in this choice
How many times has Ling Qi examined a situation where she had all the initiative in the world and decided she needed to End something? Not hunting something and killing it for a reward. Not being pressed into killing or hurting something on the defense. Not being dragged along by her liege.
This would be a case of Ling Qi, holding all the cards and having the decision entirely being her own- deciding that this abomination, whatever it is it once was- needs to End. For its own sake, for the sake of others, and the sake of the world. It's the thief and coward, the fickle fairy of the moon- taking responsibility for a life. Right after her respected Sect Brother helped her examine what it means to take another's life deliberately and with intent. And then her spirits proceeded to further humanize spirits as a whole and make Ling Qi consider what it means to hunt and prey upon them. It's in light of all this fascinating and earnest character development that Ling Qi is taking it upon herself to expunge a toxic existence from this world as thoroughly as she can because she believes she can.
Least character development my ass.
How many times has Ling Qi examined a situation where she had all the initiative in the world and decided she needed to End something? Not hunting something and killing it for a reward. Not being pressed into killing or hurting something on the defense. Not being dragged along by her liege.
This would be a case of Ling Qi, holding all the cards and having the decision entirely being her own- deciding that this abomination, whatever it is it once was- needs to End. For its own sake, for the sake of others, and the sake of the world. It's the thief and coward, the fickle fairy of the moon- taking responsibility for a life. Right after her respected Sect Brother helped her examine what it means to take another's life deliberately and with intent. And then her spirits proceeded to further humanize spirits as a whole and make Ling Qi consider what it means to hunt and prey upon them. It's in light of all this fascinating and earnest character development that Ling Qi is taking it upon herself to expunge a toxic existence from this world as thoroughly as she can because she believes she can.
Least character development my ass.
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[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.
[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.
Inserted tally
- Location
- New York
Thank you so much. Just got back on the thread and the amount of biased reasoning to make killing sound boring and dumb is insane. Like it says, and you stayed, it's Ending. There are so many connections around that action and thought in this quest that's insane. It's not some rash move, or some version of her just killing causally. This is ending it, it's cycle is over. It's so damn meaningful. Also it seems likely to work, which from a sensible point IC means it is rather sensible. IC retreating is smart, but takes action out of our hands and leaves it free to corrupt as much as possible. I don't think people are thinking of the logistics of pacify. I mean, it's not like we can purify it, it doesn't seem calm in anyway. I just can't imagine pacify going well. And also...we are the strongest in the unit for a reason, it's for threats these scouts can't truly face. Also for us to gain experience. I just think people are doing their best to justify pacifying it, when killing it would be much cleaner, and a part of our job. We aren't supposed to leave everything to the main army. And we have shown many times that we don't chase Glory. It's not even that right now, since this a legit threat that we don't know we can leave alone.
Also the idea that our music, with no art or direct stated ability is going to pacify this creature...seems more like wishful thinking than anything else. When has our music ever allowed us to do that? It's a pained creature, tortured by its own corruption and exceptionally irritable. It seems stupid to assume that we can calm it down, considering the provocation to attack us was entering its range. The closest thing to pacifying with music we ever did was to the water dragon. After we beat it down, and it was clearly okay and capable of rational thinking. We don't even know how much this earth hill is capable of mentally, and based on our last chat with one, even at the best of times we can't really change it's mind from the action it was doing. Also it only really focused on us, and if it was really doing that based on cultivation that's not a high sign of intelligence and rationality.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I hear you on this- I don't think we've seen IC anything but threats that are too big for us coming from the south. It would have been interesting to have had a humanizing cloud barbarian encounter somewhere prior, or a better confidence in being able to follow unseen, but I'm sure we'll get there eventually.
A sojourn amount the clouds would have been cool, but it would have required weeks at least to build any trust- just spying would be the only short term option. Unless Moon sempai doesn't end up telling us what was going on at some point, we haven't lost a lot in future ic action terms.
Conversely, I really like our fellow moon practitioner and possessor of amazing abs. It was cool to see that there are complexities in how he thinks about Qi that can't be simply summed up. And that senpai noticed!
That could indeed be an interesting character development... in an arc designed for it. Like the last one, though that'd obviously be too soon. This arc started with exploring Ling Qi's discomforts and personal challenges with leadership. It's gone off the rails somewhat, but not in any fashion that coherently lends itself to the self-imposed duty of death dealer. The arc is crowded enough with discordant properties as it is that I think (re)introducing these themes would be a pacing misstep, both for the arc and the themes. Besides, I'd think it'd be more appropriate to really dig into those more once Hanyi's had a chance to advance a little bit, given their proximity to her own portfolio.
Ling Qi only recently, during this adventure arc, used music to pacify an angry river spirit. Without even qi draining it, like we did with the dragon. Her music talent also allowed her to 'hear' snippets of meaning from the earth elemental they stopped to interrogate. Ling Qi's music is pretty bullshit. It's an A rank skill, her single best skill, and core to her cultivation and Way. Negotiation and diplomacy are at least possible without a specific art, so I see no reason Music would be any different. It's also explicitly getting backup from our spirit-whispering subordinate for more nuanced communication.
Also, I think you just misunderstand what the pacify option entails? It's trying to convince the thing to go back to sleep, like when we found it and it wasn't spewing corrupted gunk everywhere.
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- Location
- US
[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.
And if she was making that decision about something that she actually cared about. Say, idk, a person, then that would absolutely be meaningful?
But just killing a random dangerous spirit? Please. There is no conflict there. Ling Qi kills dangerous spirits all the time.
Indeed, such a fight fits very poorly with this arc since our minions can't do anything in that path. If we're going to have a fight here it should at least be one that focuses on her development as an officer and learning how to use her subordinates thus building upon the themes of this arc. Like any of the options but killing. Or a completely different encounter that they could actually contribute to.
- Location
- California
[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.