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

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Grek said:
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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What? Where are you getting the idea of these metaphysical appendages from? I have never heard of cultivation, in forge, being described as having metaphysical appendages. Where is this coming from?

memoryofglory said:
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.
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If your theory is true about cultivation creating vestiges out of unused spiritual organs, why then have these spiritual organs not been discovered by cultivators? If such organs existed then the standard imperial stance towards foreign cultivation wouldn't be
yrsillar said:
a debased form, operating under the same principals but through lesser means.
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They would instead be "oh they use those organs, which we don't, and they are dumb for doing so." Instead imperial study seems completely ignorant about these vestigial organs, which should exist if your theory is correct.

I've already touched on the second paragraph but I have never said that mortals are "region locked". The world is changeable and so are people. It makes perfect sense that if you try another cultivation system, even if it is difficult and slow at first, you will eventually make progress in it, simply because the you are so changeable.

As for the third paragraph, we have only seen two systems deal with spirit binding. We don't know how the red garden's system works and the ice ladies don't do it all. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a system out there lets cultivators bind spirits as soon as they awaken. I've seen no rules saying that you can't outside of "your soul can't handle the energy", but if one could deal with the energy, or had a different method that decreased the strain, then I don't see why a new cultivator couldn't bond with a new spirit.
 
[X] Politely refuse the request, reiterate your original offer

The other option feels like an abdication of responsibility. Hanyi hasn't yet assumed an adult role and adult responsibilities, and she has minimal practice with independence. Children regularly overestimate their own capabilities--I would go so far as to say this is one of the defining characteristics of children and teens. I mean, sure, adulthood doesn't actually mean you know what you're doing, but it does at least mean you've probably fucked up enough to have a better idea of your limits.

Ling Qi accepted responsibility for her, because Hanyi needed someone to watch over her, and I don't think that's changed just yet. Letting Hanyi take the wheel is easy, sure, and it feels Very Mature and Understanding, but there's a reason we don't typically teach people to drive by throwing them onto an iced-over interstate. If this leads to conflict with the Advanced Insight, then fuck it, I am legitimately suggesting we facetank that Way damage. She's not ready yet, and wishful thinking won't make her ready.

(Not to mention that Hanyi has no experience with more serious negotiations. Even if we were to say yes, this is a big ask, and that means we need to extract appropriate concessions... Not least of all being requirements for her care. This isn't the time and place for a crash-course in non-business bargaining.)
 
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memoryofglory said:
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.
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Thinking of them as organs is kind of the problem here actually - if you think about them as functions, it works better. Imperials build a Dantian out of the functions to take in, generate, and store spiritual energies, which allows them to take in and store spiritual entities, as well as generate spiritual entities later(after all what else are clones?). They build meridians to allow them to emit spiritual energies, and the subtypes of Imperial meridians are grouped by functions that use the emitted energies. They then take this one step further to form pearls, extracting basic survival functions from the meatbag organs and optimizing them .

You could split up the dantian's functions across multiple chakras, or hell, you could build an inverted structure where your meridians generate different kinds of energy which feed into a heart/stomach reaction chamber to be emitted from your orifices as different phenomenon.

TLDR - think less liver transplant and more like a Worm Entity's component shards, except they are all scrambled and incoherent.
 
veekie said:
Thinking of them as organs is kind of the problem here actually - if you think about them as functions, it works better. Imperials build a Dantian out of the functions to take in, generate, and store spiritual energies, which allows them to take in and store spiritual entities, as well as generate spiritual entities later(after all what else are clones?). They build meridians to allow them to emit spiritual energies, and the subtypes of Imperial meridians are grouped by functions that use the emitted energies. They then take this one step further to form pearls, extracting basic survival functions from the meatbag organs and optimizing them .

You could split up the dantian's functions across multiple chakras, or hell, you could build an inverted structure where your meridians generate different kinds of energy which feed into a heart/stomach reaction chamber to be emitted from your orifices as different phenomenon.

TLDR - think less liver transplant and more like a Worm Entity's component shards, except they are all scrambled and incoherent.
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I think the big problem with the idea of imperials, Khusan, Khem, or anyone else building their spiritual organs is the scenes with Ling Qi and her mother where Ling mentions that mom's dantian was cracked. If someone is building a dantian, why would they build it cracked, or why don't younger cultivators crack their dantain when building it? It certainly implies, to me at least, that the dantain existed before cultivation and was damaged by the lack of culitivation.
 
Neshuakadal said:
I think the big problem with the idea of imperials, Khusan, Khem, or anyone else building their spiritual organs is the scenes with Ling Qi and her mother where Ling mentions that mom's dantian was cracked. If someone is building a dantian, why would they build it cracked, or why don't younger cultivators crack their dantain when building it? It certainly implies, to me at least, that the dantain existed before cultivation and was damaged by the lack of culitivation.
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In Veekie's model, the functions that the dantian is built out of had degraded from lack of use. Leading to a degraded dantian.
 
Aranfan said:
Except that it isn't "no prior information". The first art we got was paper and ink, and it was how to go from mortal to red. Presumably something similar with Qingge.
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Alright, so I found a quote for this conversation.
yrsillar said:
Ling Qi let out a breath, not letting the other girls tone bother her. She told herself again that the other girl didn't mean any harm, and that she was being helpful. "What is a dantian exactly?" Ling Qi asked keeping her tone even. She hated even more that she felt she earned the condescension with her ignorance.

Bai Meizhen frowned, pausing as she poured herself a cup of the newly brewed tea. "It is the seat of a cultivators power. The core from which you channel energies through the meridians in your body. Filling the dantian is required to awaken and begin production of your own Qi." She pauses a beat staring at you again. "Qi is the energy which allows us to do… everything beyond the ability of mortals."
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So a mortal has a dantain and needs to fill it to awaken in the imperial system. This heavily implies that the dantain exists in some form before the awakening process begins, if it needs to be filled. It certainly doesn't fill me with confidence about the "building a dantain" theory.
 
Neshuakadal said:
I think the big problem with the idea of imperials, Khusan, Khem, or anyone else building their spiritual organs is the scenes with Ling Qi and her mother where Ling mentions that mom's dantian was cracked. If someone is building a dantian, why would they build it cracked, or why don't younger cultivators crack their dantain when building it? It certainly implies, to me at least, that the dantain existed before cultivation and was damaged by the lack of culitivation.
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Her mother's ability to store spiritual energy was evidently damaged. Imperials visualize this as a cracked dantian leaking what it absorbed, but its not like physically a cracked ball, its the method they use to visualize a fundamentally nonphysical phenomenon that can only be observed through synesthesia induced by Perception Arts.

With a damaged ability to store spiritual energy they have a hard time reaching the spiritual energy threshold to start producing spiritual energy. Most of what is gathered leaks right out.
 
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Insert Tally
Adhoc vote count started by EternalObserver on Feb 24, 2021 at 4:39 AM, finished with 138 posts and 59 votes.
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Hm. Well, on the issue of Mantles versus Cultivation versus... whatever the Tribes do.

So, I think that the fundamental difference here is that we're not dealing with cultivators. To borrow some D&D terminology, we're dealing with paladins and clerics (and the Tribes are, well, using Barbarian / Druid Totems, but that's a different discussion). These people worship the Great Spirits as gods, their priests can wrap themselves in their divine aura (Mantle), and grow in power that way. Its very much an expression of organized Western religion seen through the lens of Eastern.

A quirk of medieval Eurasia (and, by extension, fantasy verisons as well) is that the church is generally the most powerful political force, whereas in Asia its the Emperor who controlled the religions, making the royalty the dominant political faction.

While both Mantle and Path lead one to becoming a spirit at the highest levels, they're fundamentally, massively different. I don't think that we can even assume that dantians are being used. Cultivation relies on using Taoist alchemical principles, whereas we're looking at a new method of theurgy and divine grace as a transformative medium.

I'm willing to bet that we don't even have spirit stones being used as an aid.
 
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For the record, we don't actually know if mortals don't have essentially different spiritual biology based on region. We haven't seen anyone try bringing mortals from one place to another and seeing if they can cultivate under a system that requires different organs.
 
Its questionable if spiritual biology even exists, and not just a matter of perception. At beyond a few basics. The levels of power seem to have some commonality.

But I'm willing to bet that Ling Qi sees a dantian when she looks at her mother precisely because both of them expect there to be one. I don't know if its because its an unconscious shaping thanks to mom growing up this way, or if Ling Qi just expects there to be one, which colors her perception.

I very strongly suspect this is a very strong case of "Perception is Reality."
 
Black Noise said:
For the record, we don't actually know if mortals don't have essentially different spiritual biology based on region. We haven't seen anyone try bringing mortals from one place to another and seeing if they can cultivate under a system that requires different organs.
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I seem to recall that Liling uses chakras as well as a dantian. Regardless it looked like Ji Rong used a heart chakra based technique in our most recent duel with him, though obviously we don't actually know what went on there.

yrsillar said:
His hand rose, two fingers extended. He stabbed them into his own chest, lightning shrouded fingertips parting flesh like paper, and roared.
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Well, humans ARE supposed to be a big mixed up mess of everything.

Wouldn't do to have an actually coherent base state beyond what survival dictates!
 
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