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

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memoryofglory said:
You might not be entirely right there.



While the world is fundamentally changeable, this passage from the second part written from the 'King of Explorers' perspective, the presence of the same realms across at least 3 different cultivation systems, and the way that the Sun and their vassals have combined imperial cultivation with the chakra system of the west seems to point to there still being some shared fundamentals.
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I would then argue that because the world is so fundamentally changeable that mixing cultivation is totally possible. The world is just changing in new ways. I don't believe that is indicative of some fundamental system at work.

As for the presence of the same realms, humans have to interpret the data of the world around them. Interpreting that data in a way they were trained for is completely reasonable to me. As for the data that is being interpreted? Qi and Shen. As you progress your qi becomes more refined until it becomes shen, and then shen becomes more refined. Interpreting how refined a spirit is, by interpreting how refined a person's Qi is, allows cultivators of different systems to understand the strength of a cultivator and that strength is interpreted using their own system.

The fundamental blocks that the world is built on seems to be Qi and Shen. How a civilization interacts with those blocks is their cultivation method, that doesn't mean that cultivation methods have any commonalities beyond "This is a way to interact with the world".
 
Neshuakadal said:
You're right about their being a reality that exists beyond local consensus. The interlude I keep quoting mentions it. That reality is Qi and Shen. Anything beyond those two building blocks, I suspect, is created by local consensus.
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To be honest, I'm not convinced that the distinction between Qi and Shen are elements of reality rather than local consensus. It's possible that both civilizations are wrong on that as Imperial civilization (may be) about the distinction between the two higher energies. And even given Qi and Shen everywhere, that definitely doesn't rule out humans having similar built in tools for interacting with those everywhere, in the same way that humans everywhere have hands and tongues and eyes.
 
Saidoro said:
To be honest, I'm not convinced that the distinction between Qi and Shen are elements of reality rather than local consensus. It's possible that both civilizations are wrong on that as Imperial civilization (may be) about the distinction between the two higher energies. And even given Qi and Shen everywhere, that definitely doesn't rule out humans having similar built in tools for interacting with those everywhere, in the same way that humans everywhere have hands and tongues and eyes.
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If humans had similar built in tools, why are the systems of cultivation so apparently different? Tools developed by humans to work the world have more commonalities than differences IRL. The reverse seems true in Forge. Khem consumes flesh to fuel their progress. Red Garden invites spirits into their bodies for progress. The imperial systems draws from qi holding stones. Even "Ways", which I thought would be a unifying aspect of cultivation, has been shown in this update to be far more mutable than anticipated. These different ways of interacting with the world in Forge tells me that humans have no "built in tools" with interacting with the world as spirits do and only by copying the spirits around them did they create a system that could be used.
 
[X] Let Hanyi speak her mind, she is technically the one receiving an offer.

I think this fits the Way better. Also, given the comments about binding from Jaromila and the Voice, I think in some ways they'd be happier seeing a spirit exercise free will (provided it isn't feral)
 
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Adhoc vote count started by EternalObserver on Feb 23, 2021 at 9:32 PM, finished with 107 posts and 44 votes.
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fictionfan said:
If it was formed on the spot it would not be old.
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It would, because the parts used for form it are still old and damaged.
Think of the baseline mortal as a junkyard of mixed parts.

You can use those parts to build SOMETHING and then thats awakening.
After that its using the parts that fit your something, and junking the rest, the process being careful not to junk the wrong stuff.
 
So I'm gonna go against the grain here and vote for the unpoplar option:

[X] Let Hanyi speak her mind, she is technically the one receiving an offer.

(fun fact, BeepSmile is a filthy liar who lied and isn't sorry about it)
 
Neshuakadal said:
If humans had similar built in tools, why are the systems of cultivation so apparently different? Tools developed by humans to work the world have more commonalities than differences IRL. The reverse seems true in Forge. Khem consumes flesh to fuel their progress. Red Garden invites spirits into their bodies for progress. The imperial systems draws from qi holding stones. Even "Ways", which I thought would be a unifying aspect of cultivation, has been shown in this update to be far more mutable than anticipated. These different ways of interacting with the world in Forge tells me that humans have no "built in tools" with interacting with the world as spirits do and only by copying the spirits around them did they create a system that could be used.
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How are you measuring "more commonalities than differences" and how are you generalizing it across all tools?

It's true to an extent that tools created by humans to solve similar problems will have similar elements, wars everywhere have been fought with sharp things on the ends of sticks (as they are in both the empire and the south in FoD) and lots of cultures have invented pyramids, but not every tool follows that rule so closely, traditional architecture and clothing near the equator and near the poles vary drastically (different places having different problems and therefore different solutions), some cultures sterilized water with alcohol and some by boiling it to make tea (different cultures having different solutions to the same problem and finding different solutions neither of which is clearly better in a general sense), writing's been invented multiple times and varies both in mechanism of creation (Carved in durable materials like stone, deposited on materials with ink or paint, assembled of beads on a string like in quipu), and in how they use symbols (representing sounds, representing syllables, representing complete concepts). And that's not even getting into things like governments, economies and family structures.

There are areas where it's easy for people to converge on a single basically correct solution and there are areas where it isn't. Add to that, it's entirely possible for fundamentally very similar systems, to look very different based on what parts of them the people using them emphasize and talk about.
 
Saidoro said:
How are you measuring "more commonalities than differences" and how are you generalizing it across all tools?

It's true to an extent that tools created by humans to solve similar problems will have similar elements, wars everywhere have been fought with sharp things on the ends of sticks (as they are in both the empire and the south in FoD) and lots of cultures have invented pyramids, but not every tool follows that rule so closely, traditional architecture and clothing near the equator and near the poles vary drastically (different places having different problems and therefore different solutions), some cultures sterilized water with alcohol and some by boiling it to make tea (different cultures having different solutions to the same problem and finding different solutions neither of which is clearly better in a general sense), writing's been invented multiple times and varies both in mechanism of creation (Carved in durable materials like stone, deposited on materials with ink or paint, assembled of beads on a string like in quipu), and in how they use symbols (representing sounds, representing syllables, representing complete concepts). And that's not even getting into things like governments, economies and family structures.

There are areas where it's easy for people to converge on a single basically correct solution and there are areas where it isn't. Add to that, it's entirely possible for fundamentally very similar systems, to look very different based on what parts of them the people using them emphasize and talk about.
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I was pretty specific about what kind of tool for a reason. Tools to work the world. Almost everything you've mentioned here; writing, culture, dress, governments, are tools to work with each other. Not tools necessary for survival, or even to make the world a physically better place. In forge cultivation pretty clearly started as a means of protection. To protect against the beasts and the monsters that roamed unfettered. Therefore, if humans have inbuilt tools for cultivation we should see those inbuilt tools being used across cultivation systems. As a thought experiment let us use writing as an example and a simile for cultivation systems.

If humans have a built in tool we should expect most writing systems to start with a similar principle with very few divergences. And that is what we see, most writing systems make use of sticks, in someway. A brush, a chisel, a pencil. There all sticks. There all sticks, because humans have a built in tool, hands, that work well with sticks. Quipu is one of the very few divergences from writing with a stick. Thus looking at cultivation systems we should expect to see some kind basic unifying feature with one or two large expectations, a stick if you will. That is, if humans have an inbuilt system to interact with the world of forge. We don't see that in forge though. We know of only one system with even the barest shreds of competence, but the methods of cultivation are simply too divergent for a "stick" to be in use.

Khem devour flesh and exalt the physical body above the spiritual, to the point of subsuming it. Red Garden invite spirits into the body for power. Cloud nomads tie themselves deeply with a single beast. Ice ladies offer physical pieces of their body to spirits and reforge the pieces. Imperial cultivators draw qi in from the environment and stones. What is the "stick" between these methods? If humans had built in tools for cultivation we should expect maybe one of these systems to be divergent from the others. If all of these systems used qi stones, even to different effects, or perhaps if each system dealt with spirits and qi stones were the divergence, I would believe humans had an inbuilt system.

That's not what we see though. Each system deals with the problem of cultivation in radically different ways. Even at the most fundamental level we've seen in the quest. I see to many differences in how cultivators gain power for me to believe that their is some fundamental cultivation tool built into humans.
 
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The "stick" is the erosion of the border between self and other.
Khemite cultivation is based on the devouring of flesh while being devoured in turn.
Red Garden turns their body into a community (I guess? I'm just going off your description, I wasn't aware that was how it worked).
The Cloud Nomads become one person with two bodies (I'm not sure what their cultivation consists of past that, but presumably they send energy back and forth between their bodies).
The Ice Ladies turn their bodies into things and things into their bodies. They also assume the mantles of powerful beings like cloaks.
Imperials essentially turn themselves into spirit(-beast) chimeras.

I would also argue that human cultivation is fundamentally about empathizing and communicating with others in the world. The resulting power is secondary. This is most obvious with the Polar Gates' and Imperial cultivation methods which are based on literally imitating spirits (and spirit beasts), with the Cloud Nomads' merging with their mounts being similar in basic theme. I wasn't aware that Red Gardens practiced spiritual possession for their cultivation but that would also fit in with this paradigm.

The Khemite sacred cannibalism is the hardest to view in this light but its not completely absurd to do so, especially given the end state of essentially becoming one of their gods in their entirety.

Tribulations might also be fairly fundamental to cultivation, though that would be really hard to confirm one way or another and the division between forcing a tribulation or trial and trying to communicate with someone much weaker than you is unclear. Remember how Zeqing refused to explain the End to us out of concern for our safety?
 
Neshuakadal said:
I was pretty specific about what kind of tool for a reason. Tools to work the world. Almost everything you've mentioned here; writing, culture, dress, governments, are tools to work with each other. Not tools necessary for survival, or even to make the world a physically better place. In forge cultivation pretty clearly started as a means of protection. To protect against the beasts and the monsters that roamed unfettered. Therefore, if humans have inbuilt tools for cultivation we should see those inbuilt tools being used across cultivation systems. As a thought experiment let us use writing as an example and a simile for cultivation systems.

If humans have a built in tool we should expect most writing systems to start with a similar principle with very few divergences. And that is what we see, most writing systems make use of sticks, in someway. A brush, a chisel, a pencil. There all sticks. There all sticks, because humans have a built in tool, hands, that work well with sticks. Quipu is one of the very few divergences from writing with a stick. Thus looking at cultivation systems we should expect to see some kind basic unifying feature with one or two large expectations, a stick if you will. That is, if humans have an inbuilt system to interact with the world of forge. We don't see that in forge though. We know of only one system with even the barest shreds of competence, but the methods of cultivation are simply too divergent for a "stick" to be in use.

Khem devour flesh and exalt the physical body above the spiritual, to the point of subsuming it. Red Garden invite spirits into the body for power. Cloud nomads tie themselves deeply with a single beast. Ice ladies offer physical pieces of their body to spirits and reforge the pieces. Imperial cultivators draw qi in from the environment and stones. What is the "stick" between these methods? If humans had built in tools for cultivation we should expect maybe one of these systems to be divergent from the others. If all of these systems used qi stones, even to different effects, or perhaps if each system dealt with spirits and qi stones were the divergence, I would believe humans had an inbuilt system.

That's not what we see though. Each system deals with the problem of cultivation in radically different ways. Even at the most fundamental level we've seen in the quest. I see to many differences in how cultivators gain power for me to believe that their is some fundamental cultivation tool built into humans.
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Dantians/Chakras/Souls seem to be one of two real commonalities. The King of Explorers notes that 3 of the 7 Chakras are analogous to the 3 Dantians imperials use. The 5 Souls that cultivators from Khem have might be similar, although since they count the body as a Soul I can't really assert that unless we get a closer look at their cultivation in the future. I would guess that it's not that humans in different parts of the world are born with different 'cultivation organs,' but that they all learn how to cultivate from different sources, and the further you cultivate the more the neglected 'organs' become vestiges. Whether or not the mortal starting point is the same everywhere, we can all agree that every system of cultivation radically alters your body and soul the higher you climb.

All the most ancient imperial clans were spirit-blooded, so it seems natural that they found it easier to cultivate in a similar manner to spirit beasts focusing on the first core/dantian while ignoring the others in the beginning. Now the spirit-blooded might actually have biological differences in their cultivation, in fact we got explicit confirmation of that as far back as meeting Su Ling for the first time, but there's no reason for the mortals they passed their system on to to be locked into a specific system. The Sun assimilating Chakra cultivation and Emerald Seas clans assimilating cloud tribesmen seems to point against mortals having 'region locks.'

The other commonality is the first realm. Whether you are one of the Cloud Tribes or an imperial, you can't bind a spirit in the first realm. Red cloud tribe cultivators need gliders since they haven't bonded to a beast yet. I'd be willing to bet that Red Garden cultivators couldn't properly accept spirits into their bodies until the Second realm too, at least not without risking becoming puppets or worse.
 
Neshuakadal said:
What is the "stick" between these methods?
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Surely the "stick" would be the creation of metaphysical appendages which allow the cultivator to hold and shape spiritual forces. Imperial cultivators start out with a single general purpose appendage with modular attachments; the chakra system asks that you create seven special-purpose appendages which are less modular in nature. Cloud Nomads have a hyper-specialized appendage which binds to a single beast's spirit and uses it for everything. Red Garden is similar, but with multiple spirits. Ice ladies barter for temporary appendages crafted by spirits and then use said appendages to create semi-permanent versions for themselves. Khemites seem to be focus on augmenting their existing appendages to interact with the spiritual, which is a bit weird sociologically, but only as weird as an IRL culture not making extensive use of ceramics or the wheel would be.
 
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