Remove ads

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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
If Buddha Elder was still up I'd be willing yo talk to him about the ice lady, since he saw what happened and basically agreed with our reasoning (or at least didn't object). With him in a coma tho, I'd prefer to defer to Shenhua.
 
Zeful said:
That story raises a question. All the stars have names, and while it's possible the 12 fell Earthward before the naming, I don't consider it super likely, since the barbarian storytelling has the stars falling to earth during the reign of one of the early dynasties. This leads to the question:

Which twelve stars have gone missing from the night sky?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Cnadhros, Graiorr'itre, Vorr'kroz, Yoctydron, Ikthelpetl, Ingegg'lo, Kuirrug, Xaadhri, Nijho, Virvasz, Jimbo, and Fred.

Fucking Fred.
 
Alectai said:
Because if they're petty enough that the very idea of a non-hostile interaction will get them pissy with their ducal overlord, then revealing it first is likely to have them just take it and go "Great! A new weapon to turn against the hated foe!"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, people tend to get pretty pissed when you say stuff like "But how about we make peace with the people who literally killed our colleague just this month, and raided those villages, negotiate with a hostile power actively at war with us and apparently have long distance Xianxia-IBM's they can just slap us with when they want to pick up some star stone."

Sure, Ice Witches may not be the people that attacked us directly, but they're close enough I doubt there's much wiggle room.
 
I don't actually want to tell the sect at all. This is a personal invitation on the basis of her mentor and her adopted sister; making this a sect matter feels wrong. Telling a liege Lord about a family entanglement, however, seems ok and gives Li the chance to pursue this without too much interference.
 
qwolfs said:
I mean, people tend to get pretty pissed when you say stuff like "But how about we make peace with the people who literally killed our colleague just this month, and raided those villages, negotiate with a hostile power actively at war with us and apparently have long distance Xianxia-IBM's they can just slap us with when they want to pick up some star stone."

Sure, Ice Witches may not be the people that attacked us directly, but they're close enough I doubt there's much wiggle room.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Except the Empire has already conceded that not all Cloud Nomads are enemies, if they hadn't Wang lands would not have populations consisting of former nomads.

Further to argue that all nomads behind the Wall are enemies, even the ones that aren't strictly allied with the Tribes actively attacking, is a strategic failure of such epic proportions since it's little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
Arkeus said:
So, talking to edgy fire lady or "they killed my family" is basically the worse elders we could be talking with, Jiao being put on timeout really doesn't help there.

However, I'd argue that going over the head of the sect chain of command is going to be remembered. There is currently a polite fiction about CRX's role in this and how she has to obey orders, and while her giving reports to Shenhua is expected, her retainer hiding things from the sect and going directly to Shenhua is not, in fact, CRX doing double reports. Not only will this be remembered and would put Ling Qi strictly into the role of temporary sect disciple they can't trust in the long term, but it would also conflict with CRX's own philosophy about nepotism.

Now, the issue obviously is that it's hard to trust those Elders to not go REEEEEEEEEE Barbarians with what we have seen, but that's kind of how hierarchy works in an army, and the odds that Shenhua would have a more mellow response to barbarians than the sect is in fact fairly low if not non-existent. If Shenhua would consider the Ice Witch to not be barbarians, so would the sect, honestly.

Basically, I really don't think we should be assuming we know better than the sect and hide information from them in order to hope someone else would agree on our point of view. That shit has consequences.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If that's how it's seen, sure. You could just as easily say that we didn't think it was worth mentioning that we randomly got some very cold metal from some ice lady, and only brought it up with Shenhua because we were being thorough. After all, they're "just barbarians"; surely it cant be anything important or meaningful. Probably some weird tribal tradition or something.

Basically, there's...not that much reason to bring it up? Even without the thread ulterior motives, why bother? It's a cool item that we can maybe make into something nice; the elders all but said their plan is to go commit genocide if they can manage it, so why would they give a damn about it anymore than if we found a neat artifact while traipsing through the underground in our last mission?
 
Glau said:
I don't actually want to tell the sect at all. This is a personal invitation on the basis of her mentor and her adopted sister; making this a sect matter feels wrong. Telling a liege Lord about a family entanglement, however, seems ok and gives Li the chance to pursue this without too much interference.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'd remind you Zeqing and Hanyi were hosted in the Sect for a loooooooooooooot longer than we even know them.

While sure, telling the Sect first sounds like a bad idea it should be considered.
 
White Sky uses a language related to Hill Speech, and Zeqing was of the glacier they uphold. It isn't impossible to convince the elders that White Sky is more "foreign civilization" than "Barbaric Cloud Tribe" riders.

White Sky is also building a grand palace for Koliada. Koliada is the Slavic name of the Winter Sun post-Winter Solstice. He signifies the small end of Winter and the new beginning heading towards Spring.

This is fascinating. Because Zeqing sacrificed herself for the sake of Hanyi's beginning. Zeqing was old enough to have been proto-white-sky, from before the glacier and culture that worshiped the glacier were pushed back over The Wall.

Additionally, the Cloud Tribes of the Wall consider themselves distinct from Hill Tribe and constantly raided Hill Tribe before that culture was annexed by Weilu. Weilu also being not-of-cloud-tribe.

I believe that White Sky has the regality, presence, cultural distinctiveness, and (potentially) a common war target to bond with us over. Because the Glacier is beyond the Wall, I think they will not be that difficult to portray as Not Barbarian compared to a Cloud Tribe that was against the 12 Star Confederation.

If ISM or a related Hidden Art is going to be able to be earned by donning the mantle of war against the Stars.

I suspect the negotiating of first contact will be something Dream is quite happy about as well. We will need to be honest, while not showing our whole hand, and that's the sort of creative word-smithery that Trickster King enjoyed doing lol
 
IF we didn't know we were gonna talk to Shenhua, I'd have told the sect.

Now that we know we need to give our report ASAP to our liege's mom, this seems like a poor idea, as long term, we're beholden to Cai, not sect.

Problem is if Shenhua tells us to keep this news from the sect after the audience, which is when this goes from "I told my liege first, duh" to "you kept secrets from us"

I think. Who really knows \_(ツ)_/¯
 
Two hours up.

[X] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter

I don't actually care that much about the political angle of it, I just don't want to prolong the resolution of this arc more than necessary. Having one debrief conversation, with Shenhua only, is tidier than having two debrief conversations, even if this means that one conversation is twice as long.
 
Considering that we'd be talking to demon vengeance lady and rage filled papa Elder VS Shenhua I'm not exactly thrilled to bring it up to the elders

[X] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter
 
[X] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter

Lets not try and bite the hand that is gonna feed us long term, even unintentionally.

Also I want Shenhua chapter asap, because duh.
 
Eesh, the Mirror insight makes every choice like this one a potential oof.

Because not telling the Elders is not simply tantamount to not trusting their judgment - it is Ling Qi outright stating to herself: I do not trust their judgment.

I'm not sure we've reached a bridge so far.
 
[X] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter
FixerUpper said:
Eesh, the Mirror insight makes every choice like this one a potential oof.

Because not telling the Elders is not simply tantamount to not trusting their judgment - it is Ling Qi outright stating to herself: I do not trust their judgment.

I'm not sure we've reached a bridge so far.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well yes, but if they didn't go out of their way to make sure we know we can't trust their judgement, we may still trust them. So really its all their own fault.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top