Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

[X] Plan: The Lost Ones

Evilness42 said:

[X] Plan: The Lost Ones

I'm liking the European vocabulary/titles getting thrown in here, but I can't quite decide what culture it's predominately sourced from. Rome has the discipline and teamwork thing going on in the Legions, but also I get the feeling that the tradition of Roman Ambition in its leadership would embrace the Xianxia pyramid.

Maybe Byzantine, because of the title Strategos? Though the empire wasn't exactly famous for its military prowess at that point...

Also lol, their super secret powerful bloodline is the fact that some of them are blond.

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To be honest, I assumed Greek. But no plan is completely set in stone - if the Lost Ones was picked there'd be a vote on general clan culture (maybe everyone has a Greek name, but the heavens hate it so they need to use an assumed Chinese name to avoid further heavenly punishment) and customs - every clan or sect will have this kind of vote, of course.

One of the biggest things after we establish the points is establishing more minutiae about the clan so I can write it, and also so anyone deciding to create cultivators for the clan can do so with a decent notion of what their background is liable to be.

[X] Plan Perfected Body

[X] Plan Sacred Blade
[X] Plan Beastmaster

Well I'm adding lost ones to my vote.

The bloodline was 5 points but all I saw it be able to do is make you Blond. What does the Bloodline do?

Glad my efforts were enjoyed

Yeah, I tried to be vague on the whole thing aside from "Generic Western-derived culture" thing, which sticks out like a sore thumb when most of these settings have these absolutely colossal worlds, with quadrillions and quadrillions of people, planets tens and hundreds of times the size of earth.

And every single one has completely identical culture.

Half of this idea explores this concept, where you've got a culture of supermen who are encouraged to rise to power off the corpses of everyone who wasn't as vicious as they were, where they brag about defying the heavens but ultimately have no interest in doing anything with that defiance other than living a bit longer. What happens if you get one group that didn't start with all of these blessings, had to seize them begrudgingly?

As most of the works in the genre say? "You get treated as an invader, the universe starts suppressing you, and a whole bunch of formerly pathological killers suddenly find their courage and unity among one another and gladly spend their lives to hurt you a little bit." Yes, most of these works handwave it off by going "Well they deserve it because they're horrible monsters who are even worse than the demonic sects, because those at least have the shared foundation that says that they won't tear everything out by the roots and will leave enough left to regrow eventually."

Then I started reading Nine Star Hegemon and Long Chen's whole story is exactly what happens when one of these people who has the will and desire to change the world has to deal with the consequences of doing so. Namely, literally everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and he only gets by because he's very strong, very clever, and spends a staggering amount of resources in helping his buddies get strong with him until he has the only effective army in the setting so far, the only one that actually gets real benefits from adding more numbers because they're trained from the start to rely on the guys next to them and cooperate fully, while most cultivators are murderhobos who get more nervous the more peers they're surrounded with, to the point where adding more numbers just means every individual holds back more out of fear of being backstabbed.

Thus, we have this, the Most Definitely not Lost Roman Legion thrown into a Xianxia hellscape, successfully adapting and raging against what seems to be the very laws of nature encouraging barbarism--and then getting slapped down once they become strong enough to potentially make the universe better.

So then they retreat back, they bunker up, and they wait, all in hopes of a real gamebreaker to arrive...

Sounds fun, huh?

Twisted Mind said:

The bloodline was 5 points But all i saw it be able to do Is make you Blond. What does the Bloodline do?

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It was a cheeky joke about 'Blonde Westerners', but mechanically it works to help mitigate a lot of the other flaws. Faster cultivation and stronger clansmen at any given level seems to the the thing.

Between Arrays, solid access to spirit stones, and Elemental Blood, the other penalties--while hefty--are mitigated enough that treading water at least is possible, and the level of pressure that comes with it isn't to be discounted either.

Twisted Mind said:

The bloodline was 5 points But all i saw it be able to do Is make you Blond. What does the Bloodline do?

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In very generic terms, + to cultivation speed, + extra bonus to be decided. It mitigates 75% of Thin Qi, but also offers 'gain more strength', a bonus which will be voted on if a plan with Bloodline is taken.

Alectai said:

Then I started reading Nine Star Hegemon and Long Chen's whole story is exactly what happens when one of these people who has the will and desire to change the world has to deal with the consequences of doing so. Namely, literally everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and he only gets by because he's very strong, very clever, and spends a staggering amount of resources in helping his buddies get strong with him until he has the only effective army in the setting so far, the only one that actually gets real benefits from adding more numbers because they're trained from the start to rely on the guys next to them and cooperate fully, while most cultivators are murderhobos who get more nervous the more peers they're surrounded with, to the point where adding more numbers just means every individual holds back more out of fear of being backstabbed.

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If you're a fan of 'trying to break a fundamentally unjust system in xianxia', 40 Milleniums of Cultivation is probably the best story out there. It's my personal favorite cultivation story (Nine Star is funnier and has a protag capable of actual flirting which is a first in xianxia, but plot-wise it's not as good) and really grapples with the big systemic questions all the time.

[X] Plan Perfected Body
[X] Plan Beastmaster
[X] Plan: The Lost Ones

pretty much all the plans i'm interested in.

occipitallobe said:

In very generic terms, + to cultivation speed, + extra bonus to be decided. It mitigates 75% of Thin Qi, but also offers 'gain more strength', a bonus which will be voted on if a plan with Bloodline is taken.



If you're a fan of 'trying to break a fundamentally unjust system in xianxia', 40 Milleniums of Cultivation is probably the best story out there. It's my personal favorite cultivation story (Nine Star is funnier and has a protag capable of actual flirting which is a first in xianxia, but plot-wise it's not as good) and really grapples with the big systemic questions all the time.

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Huh, so between Arrays, Elemental Blood, and the Medium Spirit Stone Mine, Thin Qi is almost completely mitigated?

Alectai said:

Huh, so between Arrays, Elemental Blood, and the Medium Spirit Stone Mine, Thin Qi is almost completely mitigated?

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Pretty much. Spirit Stone Mines and Elemental Blood are expensive, though, in terms of shinies - their main advantage comes in versatility (Spirit Stones > Qi if you're a clan by far as you can give stones to your clansmen and raise up your own people exclusively, Qi is open to all) and combat power. Tempering Trials and Dangerous Tribulations are both significant hits to your cultivation though - you picked more-or-less every cultivation malus it was possible to pick.

If lost souls wins my good seed character is going to try to go God emperor Warhammer 40k Style.

occipitallobe said:

Pretty much. Spirit Stone Mines and Elemental Blood are expensive, though, in terms of shinies - their main advantage comes in versatility (Spirit Stones > Qi if you're a clan by far as you can give stones to your clansmen and raise up your own people exclusively, Qi is open to all) and combat power. Tempering Trials and Dangerous Tribulations are both significant hits to your cultivation though - you picked more-or-less every cultivation malus it was possible to pick.

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Hah, fair enough.

Yeah, the dream is to mitigate all of this through a really damn solid defensive lineup. Still, yeah, I will admit that it doesn't have any outright "Wincons" like many other options theoretically possess.

But it's very good at not losing between the whole "In danger break glass" button that is the Late Nascent Soul Will button combined with the ridiculous defensive options.

Mmm, incidentally, how do you plan on handling the whole "Politically you're considered a Demonic Sect, but the mass murder and torture bits are beneath your dignity even if you're entirely willing to employ poisons tactically and repurpose the energy collected by attackers to your own ends" thing combined with the double stack on cohesion? Functionally rolling with a "Your Clan is on paper Demonic based on the common definition, but you tend to do Righteous better than the Righteous Path" routine?

Or would you rather just have me switch that to "Righteous" or something?

@occipitallobe given that we are uniquely placed to make use of many low level cultivators is there any reason we can't just recruit enormous numbers of people, adopt them and then give them just enough training and supplies that they're useful in large numbers and then pick out the best ones for further training? We could simply deploy them in minimum size squads of 8-12 supporting higher level cultivators.

That would consume way more resources then we are capable of Spending.

Would it? It seems like a setting convention that as you advance the resource cost starts growing exponentially so having many weak cultivators working together might actually be cheaper and it also increases the chances of us noticing talent we can then invest in more.

[X] Plan Perfected Body

Alectai said:

Hah, fair enough.

Yeah, the dream is to mitigate all of this through a really damn solid defensive lineup. Still, yeah, I will admit that it doesn't have any outright "Wincons" like many other options theoretically possess.

But it's very good at not losing between the whole "In danger break glass" button that is the Late Nascent Soul Will button combined with the ridiculous defensive options.

Mmm, incidentally, how do you plan on handling the whole "Politically you're considered a Demonic Sect, but the mass murder and torture bits are beneath your dignity even if you're entirely willing to employ poisons tactically and repurpose the energy collected by attackers to your own ends" thing combined with the double stack on cohesion? Functionally rolling with a "Your Clan is on paper Demonic based on the common definition, but you tend to do Righteous better than the Righteous Path" routine?

Or would you rather just have me switch that to "Righteous" or something?

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Demonic is fine.

Demonic vs Righteous is more 'do you play by the main set of rules' as opposed to a moral meaning. Using poison in combat is considered evil and Demonic - this is because poison can kill or badly harm cultivators across realms and nobody is a fan of having to actually guard against random Core Formation cultivators.

There are several Demonic sects that are Demonic specifically because they don't play by the rules. Some of those rules are genuinely good (don't kill mortals en masse and refine them into cultivation materials), some are neutral (only send so many cultivators to certain secret realms, pay compensation for certain slights, etc, etc) and some are legitimately 'Long Chen mad at the Righteous Path for being a bunch of hypocritical backstabbers' rules where you can do what you want provided nobody finds out and you get away with it.

The Magic Oak Sect on the map, for instance, has an ancient Magical Oak that allows cultivators who consume its acorns to drain one another of life and absorb each other's cultivation. Despite only impacting disciples of the clan who willingly choose to eat the empowering acorns, it's technically Blood Path and they are Demonic because of it, even though they're considerably less morally questionable than the three Righteous clans around them.

The Demonic Path on average is far more evil than the Righteous, but there are definitely Demonic Sects and Clans that are on the wrong side of the rules but aren't 'evil' as such.

Nice, looks like it all fits then.

No7sHere said:

@occipitallobe given that we are uniquely placed to make use of many low level cultivators is there any reason we can't just recruit enormous numbers of people, adopt them and then give them just enough training and supplies that they're useful in large numbers and then pick out the best ones for further training? We could simply deploy them in minimum size squads of 8-12 supporting higher level cultivators.

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Even if you're trained to fight in formation, it's not as simple as x lower realm cultivators are as good as 1 higher realm one. It's 'you can fight between realms when organised and in formation - being caught out of formation is death'. In open battle or behind prepared defenses you're really good, but in general formations is a big boost to 'big open battles you know are coming'.

Secondly, if you're a Clan, recruiting is much harder. Especially if you have a Bloodline you don't want to risk thinning out.

Thirdly, this is a much better strategy for a faction with lots of Spirit Qi (you can raise practically unlimited numbers of terrible Qi Gathering disciples) as opposed to primarily cultivating through the use of a limited number of Spirit Stones.

It's not implausible, but it does have some significant disadvantages. Conducted well, though, it could be a major boost.

Honestly, Lost Legion's wincom - or start of a route to wincon, anyway - seems to be making more friends.

Our already-established connections like Flood Gang would probably serve as a decent intermediary between us and people who are basically our natural allies but shy away because of that whole "Number 1 on the Heaven's Shitlist, Supposedly Very Evil" thing.

Recruiting randos is all good and fine and probably should be in our big book of tricks people hate us for, but the real treasure would be bonds with other factions that actually matter.

The way I see it, Lost Ones do recruit from the outside for their common soldiery, but getting funding to advance beyond Qi Condensation tends to be restricted to the direct bloodline unless you really distinguish yourself.

Frankly, I love the lost ones plan, with my only real problem with it being that it doesn't have spirit beasts or beastmasters
If @occipitallobe can confirm that there's nothing stopping me from just creating a beastmaster good seed, then I have no real problems voting for it

I'm pretty sure that the 'Specialty' doesn't mean everything else doesn't exist, just that it's not super hyper developed.