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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Adhoc vote count started by EternalObserver on Mar 4, 2021 at 12:09 AM, finished with 139 posts and 95 votes.
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yrsillar said:
"But as often happens with those who make plans within plans, the great family failed to account for the whims of fate, and human feelings. There was a man in the Glittering City you see, a handsome, hard working and joyful man, whose hearty songs brought warmth to the girl's heart. In time, the girl became a woman, and passing fancy became a deep bond."

Ling Qi frowned, but the conviction in Jaromila's voice didn't leave any room for niggling doubts. Nonetheless it seemed her first impression might be wrong, if this wasn't a story of Jaromila herself…

"The woman's kin were enraged when she made her choice. The man was unacceptable, he was a man of the new tribes, with hair of straw and pallid skin, shiftless and untrustworthy by definition," Jaromila spoke the last words with only a slight bitter twist. "Yet it is law that none may force another to choose their marriage. They could not stop her, but wealth is a law unto itself, and so they could punish her."
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Mmmm, so in the further South, while there are some new tribe there, they seem to be heavily discriminated against.

yrsillar said:
"They went north, always north, chased by ill rumor and sabotage. Those who gave them shelter found the eyes of the summer traders cold, and aid in the winter slow to come. Even the kindest headmen eventually asked them to leave, for the town's sake if nothing else. Yet, in their travels, they were happy, for they had one another, even in the darkest trials."

Ling Qi saw the shadows of blizzards and beasts in the frost, but always the man and the woman remained hand in hand. It stirred a complicated feeling in her chest that she couldn't quite identify. Doubt was a part of it and yet, so was yearning, for such a refutation of loneliness was something close to her heart.

Eventually, they found their succor in the wild lands of the White Sky, far from the Glittering City and the wealth of the south. Here it seemed the limits of her families influence finally ran dry. Among the hardy people of the north, they found home and companionship. There were few enough who spoke to the spirits that both found their labors needed and soon they built a life among their neighbors. Their years were not without sorrow, their firstborn bore the touch of the crone, but in time, their came a second, and both the man and the woman were overjoyed when a girl was born hale and healthy, with the look of her father about her."
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Partially explains why they kept going north, away from their own conservative groups. White Sky is practically the ES of Polar nation :V

yrsillar said:
Here, at last, Jaromila paused, closing her eyes. "But, in a winter scant years later, sorrow came. As he had done often, the man, now a respected priest of the sun took up the duty to guide a caravan through the fall snows and deepening twilight, forming the veins of support between the settlements of the north. He did not return. Tales came of a ragged survivor, speaking of a sun priest who had given in the whispers of the void and ended them all, before being slain himself."

"The demons of Outer Night are weak in the north, so far from the gates," Jaromila explained tightly. "And the woman knew the man to not be of weak and avaricious temperament. He would not fall so she thought. Other's humored her, thinking it grief, until the day she went unto the survivors traveling south to hear their story. The woman had grown strong by then, and mighty in the Emissaries arts."

"There had been no Void demon," Jaromila said tightly. "And though the oaths upon the soldiers were strong, and left her with no proof. She knew well where to turn her eyes."

That was… Ling Qi couldn't call it unthinkable, to kill so many of your own people for such a petty reason. She knew well enough the vicious games that could be played among the nobility of the Empire. She had even seen the scars of it in many of her friends.
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Alright, so for those who are confused (cause I know I was at first), Jaromila's dad seems to have been assassinated and framed for killing a caravan under suspicion of being possessed by Outer demons.
yrsillar said:
"And, when her Mother chose to become part of the Land to end her pain, that girl gave herself over to the temple, where she learned the role of Emissary connect and to speak, to foster understanding and strike down hate. She learned too how so many failed to live to the words of the gods."

"She would not be like them."
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Jaromila may as well be the Ling Qi of the White Sky

yrsillar said:
Ling Qi was silent, placing down her emptied cup as the other woman's words faded, feeling the emotions implicit in the words in her mind. Finally as the silence began to stretch, she said, "Ice is cold and privation, it is truth that waits out in the world for those who are alone. Family is what keeps us warm and protects us from the chill."

Jaromila smiled. "Ice is the solid which is liquid. New layers, change, engenders motion, placing pressure on the old, and even the most stolid glacier must flow in time. This is winter, which ends the old and makes way for the new."

"Ice is beauty, it gave people time to tell stories and make pretty things, and makes them appreciate all the work they did when it was warm," Hanyi muttered.
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I like this small segment of them philosophizing the meaning of Ice between Ling Qi, Jaromila, and Hanyi.
Jaromila SL get!

yrsillar said:
Ling Qi opened her eyes, looking over her room. Zhengui slept in the hearth, flickering red and green flames burning around his shell, and Hanyi sat in a chair by the single window, looking up at the night sky. Ling Qi placed a hand over her chest, feeling the ache there. Yet, without strength nothing you accomplished could matter, it would be easily swept away by those who did have power.

"No matter what, we won't be around forever, there's no power that will change that," Sixiang murmured.

...That was true too.

So what was she to do?

She still didn't know how to reconcile things yet.
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Small mention of the heart demon, it seems

yrsillar said:
"A lot of Momma's relatives kinda suck, you know? I don't think I wanna try and be like them either," Hanyi mused. "I think I just gotta keep singing. I think that's the thing that's most important."

That was such a… Hanyi thing to say. Ling Qi couldn't help but laugh, and Hanyi pouted at her for it.
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Very Hanyi to do. "I'm just gonna be an idol. Fuck those other Ice ladies."
 
EternalObserver said:
Small mention of the heart demon, it seems
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Honestly, I just appreciate that we received some real articulation about the Heart Demon.

It's not about power at least not directly, but it's about the nature of powerful people in the world vs. Ling Qi's ideal of what a family is.

It's not directly about being able to reconcile Ling Qi's refusal to stagnate against her refusal to override familial concerns. It is inherently about the internal consistency of the Advanced Insight for not allowing one person's desire's not making a home or family. Power is the expression of it, but the Heart Demon is likely about Ling Qi reconciling the fact that while she does believe in the Advanced Insight wholly and completely on a personal level the world at large doesn't agree with her. It might be that Ling Qi needs to reconcile the state of the world at large or at least her view of the world with her Advanced Insight rather than specifically contesting or carving at any one of her existing insights.

I can't think of how to go about that directly, but building an Insight that addresses the cruel and insensitive nature of the world or the nature of power in the world might be the way to seeing this Heart Demon done away with.
 
[X] The Declining Storm (Yuan He)
I've wanted this one for a while, since he appeared at the end of that quest with Xuan Shi and the embarrassing fantasy room. That appearance and the story he gave suggested a lot of depth to his character which would be nice to see.

It will also be nice to see what's going on with his mini invasion/raid because that outcome will affect the war, the future of the sect, and possibly the outcome of the current mission.

Finally, we've had very little perspective from the truly high end cultivators. There was just the one interlude with Elder Jiao which was really interesting and Yuan He should be at least as powerful/alien(perspective on life as compared to a mortals). The fact his (main?) spirit companion is a Dragon King is also really enticing. We've seen small scale dragons, but what are the most powerful like...

On that thought, do we know if White realm cultivators have spirit companions. It hasn't been mentioned at all whether Cai Shenhua has any and there was one line in a previous interlude about young Elder Jiao were he mentions in order to ascend to white you need to sacrifice all connections (I'm hunting for the quote but I can't find it, might be on RR). Anyways, point is, do we think you need to sacrifice spirit beast bonds as well direct familial bonds in order to ascend to White, because that would be the mother of all heart demons if so.
 
Yeah, I think we're about to witness Yuan He getting shitstomped in some fashion, because he gets led into an unfavorable situation and dogpiled. Whether he survives or not is up in the air, but he's been telegraphed as old and over the hill, and losing Elder Zhou really fucked him up bad enough that even Ling Qi noticed.

And it's probably going to come from an avenue he missed, which would be visible from one of the other options.
 
Alectai said:
Yeah, I think we're about to witness Yuan He getting shitstomped in some fashion, because he gets led into an unfavorable situation and dogpiled. Whether he survives or not is up in the air, but he's been telegraphed as old and over the hill, and losing Elder Zhou really fucked him up bad enough that even Ling Qi noticed.

And it's probably going to come from an avenue he missed, which would be visible from one of the other options.
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If our enemies have something that can beat a Prism, even one on the decline like Yuan, then it's likely that the Duchess is gonna have to grab the other top Cultivators in the province and come to the front herself. Because the last time a Prism Barbarian showed up, he invaded half the province and I doubt Shenhua wants to go the way her own predecessors did by not being proactive in such a situation.

And that's just if they have a Prism. God forbid the Barbarians have managed to wrangle themselves a White...
 
Tylonius said:
If our enemies have something that can beat a Prism, even one on the decline like Yuan, then it's likely that the Duchess is gonna have to grab the other top Cultivators in the province and come to the front herself. Because the last time a Prism Barbarian showed up, he invaded half the province and I doubt Shenhua wants to go the way her own predecessors did by not being proactive in such a situation.

And that's just if they have a Prism. God forbid the Barbarians have managed to wrangle themselves a White...
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They do have a prism. That was the star lady with the seven colored sword of ruin. Shenhua is coming to the Wall, likely because of that.
 
I'm actually hoping for the reverse of the expected scenario. Basically, Yuan He showing why he was the one who managed to kill Prism Ogodei when he was still in Violet, in a classic "Old Master shows experience trumps youth".

[X] The Declining Storm (Yuan He)
 
TedBear said:
Where was this?
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yrsillar said:
Dawn came in the south.

Unlight rose over the mountains. The sk#@%^^&@@^%#

Radiant Titan, trailing hair and veil as one. Eyes of crimson fall upon the impure world. S@(*&())&^%%&*())))^%^%$&%^&^%&^ Seven Colored Sword of Ruin ris%&^*(^*%***&(&^&^&

And all the world crumbles.
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So the idea that this was a prism is a bit of speculation, because it doesn't outright say it, but it handled the violets on scene without issue. I don't think it was a white because we didn't instantly die.
 
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