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

yrsillar said:

Words were spoken of a flawed world and the constructed nature of natural hierarchy. Of the falsity of the divide between individuals, and the impermanence of the material world. The greatest of the cults among them spoke of achieving some transcendent state, beyond even Great Spirits, who they had begun to regard as impure for their involvement in the World.

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Thor's Twin said:

In such a way, they sought to achieve a state better than the Great Spirits.

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Thebigpieman said:

Isekai'd into nonexistence?

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Thebigpieman said:

Isekai'd into nonexistence?

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yrsillar said:

Suddenly a generic dragon quest -esque world has a very large and confused population of super powered deer people.

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Thebigpieman said:

Isekai'd into nonexistence?

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Assuming that the divide between individuals is not, in fact, false they uh.

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storryeater said:

To weigh on the Weilu debate, the thing about this world is that it is really hard to prove either way.

Domains work by making reality their plaything in such a way new laws are created by their mere existence, so nearly every theory can be supported. Mind linking, mind melding, transferal of power, those all are possible though domain and can be used to support zero separation if the domain owner believes them to be a more natural state. Strict indivindualism can also be supported by Domains, but at the same time, those domains do not necessarilly disprove the "all is one" theory.

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BagFullOfLizards said:

Huh, so in a sense ascending to a Great Spirit is becoming so powerful that your domain becomes all of reality?

(Assuming that the great spirits truly do alter all of reality, and not just the Empire. You would think that if all cultivation methods culminated in altering reality as a new Great Spirit, the empire would have a lot of recorded instances of reality changing as a foreign Great Spirit manifested. So far we have not heard anything that even implies that, which may mean that it's a local effect.)

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Lleda said:

With that evil laughing book and Shen Wuhan's attitude, I thought @Neshuakadal omake was hilarious. After our adventure with Meng Dan, I had some thoughts on library hijinks. So this happened.

@yrsillar here's an omake for the throne.

Spoiler: Archive Hazards: En-Tome-d

Hou Jin seethed as he stalked through the archives. That damn snake had advanced again and it was infuriating. The treacherous Bai were probably drowning her in elixirs. Hou Jin slapped a beastiary onto a first floor study table and settled onto a stool to read. How could he contend with a ducal clan? His qi flared at the unfairness and the stool shifted under his bulk.

Last year the dukes of Emereld Seas, Thousand Lakes and Western Territories had even doctored the outter sect tournament brackets in order to advance their chosen. There was so much left over talent, that Hou Jin didn't stand a chance this year. It wasn't fair at all. Hou Jin trembled with frustration. The little stool creaked.

The clan wouldn't put extra resources into a ninth nephew doomed to the outter sect. Especially not after his drubbing by that snake and her cobbler. Hou Jin scowled and the stool groaned under his expanding mass. At least these backwater borderlands were rich with bondable spirits.

"Sir piggy," a mocking whisper penetrated the quiet. Hou Jin surged to his feet. "Who dares!" He glowered liberally around the area but only encountered bewildered stares. Unable to discover the culprit, Hou Jin reclaimed his stool. He resumed paging through the bestiary while grumbling about natural predators snake skin boots.

"Sir Piggy..." Hou Jin's melon sized fist slammed the table top. The rasp of a book sliding back onto a shelf nearly disguised the snickering coming from a row of shelves off to the left. Bounding from the tiny stool, Hou Jin spun towards the sound and charged into the stacks.

"S-surfing Miss Xiao, I've never heard of it. If it's truly a marine leisure activity, maybe cultural journals from the Alabaster ...well, shit," the archivists explanation trailed off as Hou Jin barreled over his cart, scattering books, scrolls, and tomes in every direction. Hou Jin stopped short of impacting the grey robed girl as the violent wind of her aura whipped at his robes and rattled windows. Nacient green? What medicine were these commoners eating? The archivist was nonplussed as the gale redistributed his collection among the bookshelves. The towering Hou Jin absently sketched a bow. "Apologies, in my haste I was not adequately wary of the path." The snickering was louder, closer. Determined identify the heckler, Hou Jin lumbered after the sound. He ignored the girl's glare and the archivist's disinterested warning, "Careful, that section's under audit."

An ancient looking tome tumbled from a shelf and flopped open in Hou Jin's path. Over the creaking of its burnished hinges a mocking mimicry of a squeeling pig reached his ears. As he knelt and retrieved the tome, more books tumbled to the floor around him. Liu Xin swung down into the aisle, smirking with ridicule. "No audience now sir piggy." Hou Jin's grin at the challenge was feral. The snake was beyond his reach but this common deviant could be taught a lesson.

Liu Xin's hand blurred and hot gravel hissed towards Hou Jin's eyes. Hou Jin shielded his face with the tome in his left hand and laughed at the common churl's audacity to start a fight in the archives. He materialized his jeweled jian into his right hand and taunted, "I see your begger's stones and raise you a noble's weapon!"

Circulating qi to his legs, Hou Jin blurred towards Liu Xin, sword tip thrusting towards his opponent's eye. Liu Xin instantly leaned back into a walkover, his trailing foot knocking Jin's sword arm up and away. The other boy quickly recovered into a tight fighting stance, and Hou Jin's eyes widened in surprise at the flaming fist filling his vision. Then he winced in pain as Liu Xin shuffled in low and followed the feint with a foot stomp, body hook and uppercut that sent Hou Jin flopping to the floor.

Liu Xin stared down at Hou Jin's supine form and drawled, "us commoners're s'posed to handle the trash n all, yeah?" Hou Jin's grimace became a snarl. How dare this uncouth trash deride him so. How dare his own clan deny him the resources necessary to take his proper place above this borderlands rabble. It - Wasn't - Fair!

Ham sized fist wrapped half way around the tome, Hou Jin clambored to his feet and slashed his sword down at Liu Xin's clavicle. Liu Xin sidestepped and grasped Hou Jin's wrist and the jian's guard. With a flare of fiery qi the jian became red hot.

Hou Jin yanked his sword arm up and back, simultaneously dematerializing the scalding blade into storage and pulling Liu Xin forward. Liu Xin dodged the arc of Hou Jin's kick by leveraging the growing boy's own wrist to pull himself upward.

Their eyes met for a moment as Liu Xin dangled from Hou Jin's upraised arm. Then, as Liu Xin dropped back towards the floor, his cheeks puffed out and he belched a cloud of embers and ash into Hou Jin's face. "Aaargh!" Hou Jin bellowed as he cradled his face in his hands. How could a rootway rat improve so quickly? "IT - WAS - SO - UN - FAIR!"

Now standing at 3.5 imperial spans, the aisle could barely fit Hou Jin's girth. He charged Liu Xin again. The smaller boy dodged two quick right jabs with contemptuous ease, but misjudged the range of Hou Jin's left handed swipe with the large tome jutting from his grasp.

Briefly staggered by the blow to his crown, Liu Xin suffered too more tomes to the dome before Hou Jin's rising knee strike lifted him from the floor and slammed him into a book shelf. Liu Xin coughed up a mouthful of blood at the vicious impact. Hou Jin smacked his face with the tome once more for good measure before letting him crumple to the floor.

More books fell from the shelves, the staccato smacks as they impacted the floor seemed to applaud Hou Jin's victory. He was tempted to linger and gloat, but it would be better to seek out an elder than to be found amid this mess.

Hou Jin retraced his steps to the reading area and then made for the exit.
However, he must have mistaken the path. Instead, the walkway led to a cramped study. A prodigious desk dominated the space; its surface strewn with plant detritus, core fragments and dozens of high grade elixer recipes. Hou Jin happily took his time examining the desktop.

"Such rewards would not be left about if not for the taking," he rationalized as he gathered formulas prescribed to see a cultivator through to green completion. "It's only fair," the papers seemed to whisper as Hou Jin surreptitiously slid them between the pages of the weathered tome.

Avarice drew his gaze to the cupboard in corner, but Hou Jin really did need to inform the elders of Liu Xin's transgressions. Once more he retraced his steps. Back at his reading table the beastiary lay open, temping Hou Jin with a map the peaks and a portrait of a dusky feathered bird grasping a serpent in its talons. But he bypassed the inviting arm chair and headed for the entrance.

Hou Jin suspected something was wrong when the walkway next deposited him into a spacious tea room with a kneeling table of rich dark wood and various seating cushions strewn across the floor. The four walls were decorated with a panoramic mural of a lakeside landscape so shockingly realistic that it must have been an immortal's work.

More peculiar though, was senior sister Xu Lian's presence. She was perched on a cushion next to the low table, with a truly indecent
amount of braised pork trotters. Her attire was equally shocking. From her slippers to the knee high slits of her deep violet gown, her legs were bare; and her lace trimmed neckline dipped low enough to expose the upper edges of her collarbones.

Xu Lian met Hou Jin's flabbergasted gape with a winsome smile. As she beckoned him closer, the leaves in the mural rustled in the subtly painted breeze. "It's only fair," they husked. Hou Jin briefly wavered, for they were very well formed collarbones. But the surreality was too much and his suspicion turned to alarm.

He retreated from the room, veering from the uncooperative walkway towards the nearest window. But as he approached, the walls with their attached book cases seemed to grow taller, whisking the portal out of his reach. Desperately circulating his qi, Hou Jin grew to four imperial spans, then five. Then it began raining books. Encyclopedias and almanacs poured from the shelves burying him in glossy bindings and neatly penned pages.

He batted at the encroaching volumes with the tome clutched in his left hand, but the books were piling too quickly. As the tumble of literature blocked out the distant window's light, a susurrous of fluttering pages joined Hou Jin's wail, "This isn't fair!"

"Hmph, so that's where the young master rushed off to." The softly moaning first year knelt next to a bookshelf, clutching an old tome to his chest and staring off into space.

Shen Wuhan harumphed and guided his cart around the richly robed disciple, carefully avoiding contact with the tome. He'd had enough of bothersome first years and spooky archive shit for today. Audits were the fucking worst. "I'll send along the next shift," he called over his shoulder as he continued down the aisle. Because right now, his shift was officially over. And this nonsense was distinctly not a Shen Wuhan problem.

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yrsillar said:

"Uugh, how is this time shit so hard," Su Ling's voice, tired and full of frustration reached up the passage.

"The Eldest does not deign care for us as our other divine siblings do," she heard Xuan Shi next, patient and calm.

"You're gonna have to expand on that," Su Ling snorted.

Ling Qi shared a glance with Suyin, who mouthed back 'shared project' in silence as they approached the closed latch that would lead into the lower workshop.

"Time is Eldest. The weapon with which the Nameless wreaked vengeance for their children, and introduced their siblings to death," Xuan Shi said. "Carved from Mother's rib and tempered with Father's blood, they are immutable and unknowable, the first and the last weapon. Their secret's never shared with the mortal children. To play in their yard, we must develop understanding without tutelage."

"No shortcuts built into the sacred characters huh. No wonder this is such a pain-" Su Ling began only to pause. "Ling Qi and Li Suyin are here."

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yrsillar said:

"How'd you tear out the regular qi projection and replace it with music?" Yu Nuan grunted. "I've tried that with a few things but it usually just makes the technique collapse."

Ling Qi leaned back in her own heavily cushioned seat, luxuriating in the comfort of the plush armchair.

"I helped a lot," Sixiang chuckled, manifesting as a child sized figure perched on the back of her chair. "Heh, when your whole being is composed of song and expression that kind of thing comes natural, she just copied some of my patterns."

"There's a bit reductive," Ling Qi said, glancing up at the smirking muse. "Copying some of Sixiang's manifestations helped but it's mostly trial and error. You have to observe the original effect, and compose new lines until you hit on one that makes the qi react in the same way as the base qi pattern."

"There are methods which you can use to be more systemic about it, but that is the gist of it," Bian Ya agreed cheerfully.

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Me said:

Hey nerds go look at those earlier quotes again while I abuse this box to break up my grotesque walls of text, thanks.

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AbeoLogos said:

Between our training plan for the month, seeing Xuan Shi again, and seeing our production buddies working on stuff, I've got to thinking. Thinking about formations. We are training the skill this month after all, and I believe we're even hitting the cap at our current rank?

I've been thinking about formations: what we want from them, the opportunities they can represent, and ways of implementing the skill in ways that tie into our character concept cleanly but that still has a distinct personality among our tools. I'll admit straight out that I haven't reached any firm image I'm confident in, but shapes are starting to form. Specifically, two recent passages are stirring the old thought cauldron. I'll list them now, but talk about them further down the post.




First, what do we want? I think I can lump various sentiments I've seen into three categories and one directive: formation bypass, preservation, utility, and identity.

Formation bypass is straightforward and the oldest clear goal when it comes to formations. It's our lockpicking, our sensor net disabling, our ability to contest foreign designs. It ties into the thieving themes many of us are loathe to abandon completely, and on a practical level it gives us a few more tools to actually do stuff when sneaking around enemy compounds, which is notable since our combat kit is seriously lacking in that area.

I had a hard time deciding on "preservation" to describe this goal, but it's my attempt to summarize a thread of the thread's sentiment to lean into Ling Qi's protective instincts and goals with her formations. Keeping the things, and people, she wants safe, safe. The popular fusion with the above objective has been some kind of "Security" specialization. The goal of keeping things we care about safe works on a character level, but Security hasn't ever felt right to me, which I'll get into in a bit.

Utility is even less defined, appropriately being a grab bag of miscellaneous ideas and general non-combat, non-productions formations. Ideas I've seen include snares, traps, illusion fields, alarms, signals, stationary camouflage, area-theme-dampeners/enhancers, group strategic speed buffs, and more. More than could possibly fit in one specialization worth the term. There's a sense that formations could be used to patch some of the holes in Ling Qi's capabilities which feel like they should be filled on thematic or practical grounds, like helping allies or having more options during scouting operations, but that it's awkward to try filling with her suite of combat arts. At the same time, we want to avoid bringing a new, flexible toolset into the already overstuffed narrative space of combat. At least directly, terrain prep being a solid maybe. So, utility.

Lastly, we have identity. Ideally formations would mesh with our character and have a character of their own. Having its own presence is the best way for something to not fall by the wayside, either through disuse, lack of emphasis/application, or being overshadowed by something else. If that's done successfully, we can even hit on new opportunities to explore aspects of the Ling Qi's identity that other tools might not. That means we want something that's flexible enough Ling Qi can use it consistently, use that stands out as its own thing, and has flair to it so we want to use it. So, like, something cool hopefully.

Security is a fine concept, I don't want to knock it, but I do think it has some limitations which are illustrative. First, it's a bit bland. Second, it feels like it's missing the trees for the forest, in a way. It's something we want, but Ling Qi is a person who pursues family through the lens of isolation; things don't have to be immediate 1-1 goal-means. "Security" calls to mind constructing a vault for me, and that doesn't quite jive with my image of Ling Qi. What a tool does and what a tool is used for are interrelated but distinct concepts; both should relate to our character concept, but what we use something for gets way more influence back from our character's motivations. This gives us a bit more flexibility on the shape the tool itself takes, as long as it's still useful for our goals. If we pick the right tool and we're a little clever with it we can probably achieve some of each of bypass, preservation, and utility in a way that pays homage to Ling Qi's themes and insights.

So where am I going with this?




Two things are established. First, the art of formations is broader than, well, formation characters are but, expanding past their contained knowledge lacks in mentorship. Second, specialists, musicians in this case, are capable of recreating observed effects in the format they're more intimately familiar with through observation and trial and error.

Put these two together and a musical or otherwise artistic/dream/etc personal approach to formations should be feasible for Ling Qi. Plus, while formations using Music isn't conventional, it's not explicitly restricted from mortals like Time is, and Ling Qi has the perfect patrons for catching hints for systems of obscure musical notation formations between the Hidden and Dreaming moons. Sixiang could even realistically work on tracking down leads by themselves, to start. Heck, it's potentially a craft we could share with Sixiang/they could use to reinforce their fledgling Dream Domain in our head. Searching this stuff out could tie into the liminal exploration we're planning to get into. Something like the burning library, but a nexus of lost song? Pulling obscure lost artistry out of the ether and weaving it into something Musical of her own to use fits my image of Ling Qi a lot better than mundane security research does.

But that's only half of the equation. It's a form and aesthetic for the formations to take but not a practical focus. We want methods of application that match Ling Qi's aesthetic while being flexible enough to match our goals, but not so flexible it steps on the toes of other tools at her disposal. Subverting hostile formations, causing Mischief behind enemies lines, and sowing distraction and chaos among forces assailing our allies is possible if we focus our methods on the Grinning Moon's less combative footsteps. I bet it even makes Jiao annoyed at how proud he is of us weaponizing(non-literally) troll energy with a strong signature style. It's the pinnacle of the formation expert's craft.

Musical Mischief

Spoiler

I retroactively lied about not having something concrete in mind, because I figured it out halfway through this abomination of a post.

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