- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
So plan dreams of power is already 100% moon. Second, the Fantasia is a place filled with dream spirits with a dreaming moon avatar. Not a grinning avatar.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Thanks for the correction. Misread that bit somehow, I've edited my original post to avoid further confusion.
I'm happy with the 100% moon which seems to be winning the vote, I was more considering if we want to go all dreaming moon projects and try to impress the avatar (assuming that we are going to meet them in the upcoming art). The current plan, despite being named Dreams of Power, has us going for Hidden instead of Dreaming or Grinning.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The leading plan has one Dreaming Moon project and two Hidden. The dream journey is the first thing we're doing but not the only thing; it connecting to one of the things we're cultivating is good enough for me.
Lol I just remembered that we are meeting with the Bai this month. Training our social traits to help deal with that is good, but it might also have been helpful to unlock the Courage concept to help fend off any passive fear effects. A level 1 concept won't help against any dedicated fear effects but it might help insulate us against passive effects and slips in their domain. Keep us from being more uncomfortable than necessary.
What do you mean?
Note that if people are worrying about whether or not we'll be able to get enough concept levels, I took an initial look at things, and they look like they should be fine.
We currently have 21 art projects we can see, and if we trained all of them we would be up to 31 concept levels. Assuming a rate of ~3 projects/month, that means we should have something like that by the middle of next year, which is about when we'd be looking towards G6 anyway, so that lines up well.
Now that's a very simple look at things that doesn't take into account things like social trait levelling or deciding to deliberately train concepts... but also didn't factor in the idea of being able to double our concept gains. So yeah.
I think we'll probably be able to do that much better after this turn once drugs are unlocked.
But I wouldn't worry too much about it. I think we'll be fine regardless.
The Dream Moon quest with Sixiang got a lot of attention in the votes but don't forget there were two more plot hooks:
Shouldn't we give Hanyi and Zhengui some attention too? Mostly Zhengui. Hanyi is doing fine so far and when we prepare for our diplomatic mission with the Pole nation we can focus on that. Zhengui and the Heart Demon need a resolution and as yrsillar notes he will be part of the upcoming art.
BKSR [Primacy of Beasts] might really help with both Zhengui and the Heart Demon and any lingering problems from the Nightmare (Weilu civil war) and possibly even the horned skeleton we woke.
Shouldn't we give Hanyi and Zhengui some attention too? Mostly Zhengui. Hanyi is doing fine so far and when we prepare for our diplomatic mission with the Pole nation we can focus on that. Zhengui and the Heart Demon need a resolution and as yrsillar notes he will be part of the upcoming art.
BKSR [Primacy of Beasts] might really help with both Zhengui and the Heart Demon and any lingering problems from the Nightmare (Weilu civil war) and possibly even the horned skeleton we woke.
With the vote wrapping up, now's a decent point to note system observations.
Starting the system's trial run on a mini-arc with each of our spirits was a fun idea. A Dream expedition with Sixiang, Hanyi's concert, and finishing up our gardening with Zhengui. It gives us a good look at how the more narrative-focused engagement of the revamped system works and what kind of engagement our resources permit. Just in terms of the voting process itself, we can see some discrepancies. I was initially excited to basically pick one project to compliment each of the mini-arcs we're doing, to really stretch our legs on synergistic project management, but getting down to the brass tacks of organizing it it swiftly became clear it was not feasible.
Sixiang's event could be matched up to some extent with a looot of the projects at our disposal. All of Songseekers Ceremony, PLR, MoSS, raw social traits, chunks of BKSD and Wind Thief, even some of SNR through analogy. Not all the projects work equally well, or well with each other, but the combination of Dream, Dreaming, and muse ingredients touch on a huge cross-section of our arts' projects. It's trivial to weave most of what we can choose to do into the planned event without toe-stepping or awkwardness.
Hanyi's concert touches on social interaction, expression, and Winter themes prominently. It's not hard to work in our social trait projects, SSC - Dreaming, UGM (Soul of Ice particularly), MoSS, potentially PLR - Echoing Grandeur, and WHR's Winter Reinforcement and Release of Spring projects via Hanyi's Winter/Cycles themes and the rationale behind her concert work. Pretty big selection there.
It's when we get to the gardening arc that things take a turn. Reminder, we're modding WHR based on inspiration from Zhengui during this last stretch, and that's about all we currently know is planned. First, none of the projects really map to gardening itself, so there's immediately a disconnect in weaving any projects into the narrative. Second, there's really thin pickings on subject matter among the projects. Getting it out of the way, people have discussed Xiangmen, Fortress of Tsu Pt. 1; being about the god tree doesn't automatically make it a fitting project for Zhengui, and the specific narratives/focus on history clash with the focus of the mini-arc. Kindle the Hearth is clearly meant to be the Zhengui-iest project, but the sacrificial aspect doesn't map well to Zhengui's manifestation of Renewal, and the aesthetic also distracts heavily from the context of how he engages with it. Winter Reinforcement and Release of Spring both have the problem of basically being bog-standard WHR thematics, with clearer nods to Hanyi's Cycles business than Zhengui's stuff. This is at cross-purpose to the choice we made to change WHR based on Zhengui; leaning really hard into existing WHR themes inherently waters that down. It doesn't help that all three of the WHR projects alter the outcome and/or tone of the previously committed-to and foundational alteration of the art. Being given further choices on how to tweak it before we've seen the results of the first choice is awkward.
I wanna point out this is not due to some kind of innate philosophical incompatibility. It's a resources problem. If you look at the bonuses our spirits give to various projects and then to a list of Ling Qi's Domain Concepts, you'll see that each of the spirits have 2 bonuses overlapping with her known Concepts(technically Sixiang only has one, but I'm assuming Dream is an oversight/category error, and it's clearly something Ling Qi's grounded in). The overlapping concepts are right there to work with, the problem is just that we currently lack the tools to work them together under the system. It's basically a design oversight, atm. And one we should take steps to address because otherwise Zhengui's going to be contributing those bonuses to Persistence and Power without it ever showing up in the narrative, which is exactly the kind of narrative hole @yrsillar partly designed the new system to address.
Spirit project bonuses are inherently collaborative. It's necessary that we secure tools that can allow that collaboration to be demonstrated in the narrative.
Miscellaneous other thoughts:
-Sixiang and Hanyi's arcs benefit from being clean starts preluded by a bit of foreshadowing, while Zhengui's is weighed down by never really finding its identity but having enough baggage it doesn't have enough time left to do so
-Dream forays and spirit-placating concerts aren't limited moving forwards, and it's implied we'll be taking part in more of them as time goes on; by contrast, gardening is arbitrarily wrapping up because of time-limits put on the arc when it was first started instead of any real reason they need to, which makes the venture a narrative dead-end
-the new system demonstrates the gardening project had lack of direction or good ways to hook in progress/meaningful action baked in, so we should move on to something else anyway
Starting the system's trial run on a mini-arc with each of our spirits was a fun idea. A Dream expedition with Sixiang, Hanyi's concert, and finishing up our gardening with Zhengui. It gives us a good look at how the more narrative-focused engagement of the revamped system works and what kind of engagement our resources permit. Just in terms of the voting process itself, we can see some discrepancies. I was initially excited to basically pick one project to compliment each of the mini-arcs we're doing, to really stretch our legs on synergistic project management, but getting down to the brass tacks of organizing it it swiftly became clear it was not feasible.
Sixiang's event could be matched up to some extent with a looot of the projects at our disposal. All of Songseekers Ceremony, PLR, MoSS, raw social traits, chunks of BKSD and Wind Thief, even some of SNR through analogy. Not all the projects work equally well, or well with each other, but the combination of Dream, Dreaming, and muse ingredients touch on a huge cross-section of our arts' projects. It's trivial to weave most of what we can choose to do into the planned event without toe-stepping or awkwardness.
Hanyi's concert touches on social interaction, expression, and Winter themes prominently. It's not hard to work in our social trait projects, SSC - Dreaming, UGM (Soul of Ice particularly), MoSS, potentially PLR - Echoing Grandeur, and WHR's Winter Reinforcement and Release of Spring projects via Hanyi's Winter/Cycles themes and the rationale behind her concert work. Pretty big selection there.
It's when we get to the gardening arc that things take a turn. Reminder, we're modding WHR based on inspiration from Zhengui during this last stretch, and that's about all we currently know is planned. First, none of the projects really map to gardening itself, so there's immediately a disconnect in weaving any projects into the narrative. Second, there's really thin pickings on subject matter among the projects. Getting it out of the way, people have discussed Xiangmen, Fortress of Tsu Pt. 1; being about the god tree doesn't automatically make it a fitting project for Zhengui, and the specific narratives/focus on history clash with the focus of the mini-arc. Kindle the Hearth is clearly meant to be the Zhengui-iest project, but the sacrificial aspect doesn't map well to Zhengui's manifestation of Renewal, and the aesthetic also distracts heavily from the context of how he engages with it. Winter Reinforcement and Release of Spring both have the problem of basically being bog-standard WHR thematics, with clearer nods to Hanyi's Cycles business than Zhengui's stuff. This is at cross-purpose to the choice we made to change WHR based on Zhengui; leaning really hard into existing WHR themes inherently waters that down. It doesn't help that all three of the WHR projects alter the outcome and/or tone of the previously committed-to and foundational alteration of the art. Being given further choices on how to tweak it before we've seen the results of the first choice is awkward.
I wanna point out this is not due to some kind of innate philosophical incompatibility. It's a resources problem. If you look at the bonuses our spirits give to various projects and then to a list of Ling Qi's Domain Concepts, you'll see that each of the spirits have 2 bonuses overlapping with her known Concepts(technically Sixiang only has one, but I'm assuming Dream is an oversight/category error, and it's clearly something Ling Qi's grounded in). The overlapping concepts are right there to work with, the problem is just that we currently lack the tools to work them together under the system. It's basically a design oversight, atm. And one we should take steps to address because otherwise Zhengui's going to be contributing those bonuses to Persistence and Power without it ever showing up in the narrative, which is exactly the kind of narrative hole @yrsillar partly designed the new system to address.
Spirit project bonuses are inherently collaborative. It's necessary that we secure tools that can allow that collaboration to be demonstrated in the narrative.
Miscellaneous other thoughts:
-Sixiang and Hanyi's arcs benefit from being clean starts preluded by a bit of foreshadowing, while Zhengui's is weighed down by never really finding its identity but having enough baggage it doesn't have enough time left to do so
-Dream forays and spirit-placating concerts aren't limited moving forwards, and it's implied we'll be taking part in more of them as time goes on; by contrast, gardening is arbitrarily wrapping up because of time-limits put on the arc when it was first started instead of any real reason they need to, which makes the venture a narrative dead-end
-the new system demonstrates the gardening project had lack of direction or good ways to hook in progress/meaningful action baked in, so we should move on to something else anyway
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Sorry for the doublepost, the above monster doesn't need anything else added to it.
There's kind of a double-edge going on where it's about some very specific things, but we also don't really know what that actually looks like. Makes it hard to introduce other ideas without big ugly seams.
I can see that as an avenue of exploration in a different context, but I'm not sure it would have room to breathe and have its theories explored in the context of the gardening/WHR mod arc. There's not much common ground to thread through the projects.
There's kind of a double-edge going on where it's about some very specific things, but we also don't really know what that actually looks like. Makes it hard to introduce other ideas without big ugly seams.
I think we have seen the start of what could make a good narative connection with Zhengui. I think the answer is geomancy. At some point we are going to move to our own land, tame it and then move our family there. Putting in effort to create geomanitic effects that shape it to be better for ourselves, our family and Zhengui would be lots of fun and good way for him to contribute. This could be a good way for him to both create a space that is his, contribute to our family, and it would give us a chance to work on some insights into home, community and the like. What does it mean to build a home? A home for a human and a home for him will different. How to handle conflicting needs and obligations in our family and community (Zhengui wants to refresh things but this may not be good for humans), etc. I think there are some interesting things there to explore.
Prior to moving there I'm not as sure how to give him more presence. We could spend some time and effort on finding someone to train him, but is it needed or a good idea? I'm not sure. It would also be nice to try out different effects to see if they would work maybe. So some sort of mini building/testing trip I guess? Even so, I think a fun idea and we should totally do it.
Prior to moving there I'm not as sure how to give him more presence. We could spend some time and effort on finding someone to train him, but is it needed or a good idea? I'm not sure. It would also be nice to try out different effects to see if they would work maybe. So some sort of mini building/testing trip I guess? Even so, I think a fun idea and we should totally do it.
Mmm, I think it's also reasonable to acknowledge here that LQ is honestly much more like Hanyi than Zhengui, and that in that context cycles might actually be the best way for her to relate to him in that area?
But moving back to your points yesterday about possible answers to our armor problem, we can make a strong case that the best way to attack both of these issues is, actually, to take a step back and maybe think about the ol' TRF and related things some more.
Because regen, health, stamina, determination... these things work very well for LQ defensively, and could work as a supplement to LQ's dodgy-shadowy-ness very well. She gets hit and blown into little pieces of shadow? She just pulls herself back together again. You knock her down? She gets back up. It's not complicated, but it works great with her existing narrative.
At the same time, there are challenges - I'm fairly sceptical that we can actually adjust LQ's aesthetic enough to really go wood. Following on too directly from TRF or trying to copy Zhengui's elements is probably not the best idea.
As you noted though, the new system potentially gives us a lot more play in terms of focusing on more abstract concepts and themes instead of worrying about the elements too much there (though I feel we shouldn't forget them entirely - imagery is important too). Like, Zhengui's creation rebirth technique is actually something that would arguably fit LQ pretty well? You could run it through a winter/spring renewal lens or something to make it fit her imagery more, but it could be pretty viable? UGM isn't necessarily working out here, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's nothing in that sphere that could work. ... though of course that would mean going more down the ice path, which may be good or bad depending on your point of view. Then I guess from another direction entirely, the non-joke part of my meme Dream TRF art was that it is also an illustration of how you can just play with those concepts from a completely different angle and imagery.
There's also trying to look at BGR, or PGR ofc for more directly Zhengui-ish things... but I kinda feel like we'd need to adjust a lot more of our overall character image and concept to actually make that work well...
~~
Hmm, actually on the Kindle the Hearth problems, yeah, the problem is that it's not really a "renewal" per se - more just a sacrifice or trade. Maybe if, idk, the buffs came back stronger after a "bit" (the problems of loosing explicit turns...) based on how many debuffs they'd eaten? That would probably have balance issues, but might at least fit the idea of "renewal" better?
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Zhengui is good at Geomancy. We are not. I'm sure Zhengui will be happy to design our manor and grounds and other humans will be apoplectic at us for that, but since we're complete ignoramuses we won't be part of the process.
dpara
slightly confused ascendant
The most natural synergy with Zhengui is I think cycles/duality;
- LQ has the stillness of ice and the motion of grinning
- loneliness and connections
- music is naturally cyclic, or one goes with sound and silence
- (dream and reality)
I don't like reintroducing wood.. I might go even go so far as to remove ice entirely (and let that be Hanyis thing) instead use stillness/silence.
Zhengui will immediately feel more fitting if LQ is not elemental themed.
But I am perfectly fine with not having a synergistic build with Zhengui, I presume parents have good relationships with their children even if they are very different people. As long as the "be a good parent" is upheld for LQ I'd not really be mad about not having matching arts/aesthetics.
- LQ has the stillness of ice and the motion of grinning
- loneliness and connections
- music is naturally cyclic, or one goes with sound and silence
- (dream and reality)
I don't like reintroducing wood.. I might go even go so far as to remove ice entirely (and let that be Hanyis thing) instead use stillness/silence.
Zhengui will immediately feel more fitting if LQ is not elemental themed.
But I am perfectly fine with not having a synergistic build with Zhengui, I presume parents have good relationships with their children even if they are very different people. As long as the "be a good parent" is upheld for LQ I'd not really be mad about not having matching arts/aesthetics.
So, one thing about Winter/Spring Renewal that I've noticed is it's popular, but looking at what representing "Spring" in the duality means in practice often gets skipped over? Spring winds I think are not really substantial enough to sell the imagery; you're effectively just being told that they're Spring-y, it's not that evocative or distinct from companion Winter winds. Spring mists are maybe a bit better, but not much and clarity could suffer with the other things we throw mists at doing. Spring rains are clearer, but not really coming from anywhere. It's a more overt application of Water than we've ever done before, and doesn't map to any of our spirits particularly. It'd also be a shift in character image/concept. Spring growth though, that cuts pretty directly to the Ending/Creation dichotomy between Hanyi and Sixiang, nods to Zhengui, operates in aesthetic we've at least dabbled in before. It's obviously a shift, but so is anything we pursue. The main mark against it is there isn't currently a no-brainer obvious path to it in terms of arts, especially ones we've already cultivated. But that's a pretty restrictive sandbox to play in, imo.
On Hearth Renewal, that might help. But I guess I'm approaching it from not really seeing the imagery as definite to either Ling Qi or Zhengui? It's more third party. And Ling Qi adjusting herself to fit the specific aesthetic of the hearth for the sake of reaching out to Zhengui's themes indirectly strikes me as a bit weird? Like it's treating one half of the equation as mandatory and status quo, when they're both tentative and optional, and there's no inherent reason we couldn't skip the middle-man.
- Location
- Finland
I'm actively hostile to the idea that we make our build to synergize with Zhengui.
It, feels wrong, to warp ourselves in such a permanent manner to fit someone else, almost as wrong as it would be to make Zhengui change to fit us.
We can work together without such drastic actions, and i think it is better narrative to see us learn to work together no matter how different our natures are.
Isn't that what we did with Zeqing? And the things she learned from us lead directly to her death, but we don't really regret that. There's nothing wrong with mutual inspiration, it's even the default assumption of spirit companions, and the nature of cultivation is that it's fundamentally transformative. The question's just a matter of degrees.
Mmm, yeah, spring growth is the obvious thing.
When I was trying to think of alternative FSS+ designs I played around with the idea of trying to make it so that there were like two versions of the art, the "Winter/Endings" phase, and the "Spring/Growth" phase, with the Ending drains fueling healing and buffs and shit. I generally felt that it was too messy and complicated, but thematically I like the ideas.
... I particularly liked my idea of being able cast a double-cast buff after we'd built up enough energy, giving us double Wolves or something
It's also generally like a good thematic fit to the Renxiang path of progress and hope and trying to build a better province and home imo.
Though yeah, it is challenging that we don't have any obvious spring/growth arts to play with. We have vaguely related precedent in TRF and HDW and FSS's insight I guess, and the nods in Soul of Ice musings and Release of Spring... but that is kinda weak, yeah.
I guess my feeling is that while I get what you mean in terms of saying that Hearth doesn't actually map exactly to LQ's ideas of Home, and we shouldn't get too hung up on it... I also feel that it's close enough to her interests that it makes sense that she'd explore it?
We do perhaps need a bit of alternative angles though, yeah.
To that I would say: so he shouldn't be our spirit beast? Like, that's actively half the point of binding spirit beasts. But also, as Abeo's noted, once we move away from the elements and look at themes and concepts, there's a whole bunch of Zhengui-ish stuff that actually builds really well off Ling Qi's "thing" and would make sense as developments - it's just that we don't really have good tools for elaborating on them well right now.
Oh, yeah. I'm not trying to rebuke Hearth-y Home exploration or anything. I'm just really leery of making it the linchpin of Zhengui thematic exploration because it's not directly related. And also that we can just... explore other stuff too!
Some of the paths in play right now look like basically hammering Zhengui into a Home, with almost literal imagery, and that's as weird as the comfy log cabin Domain to me.
- Location
- Finland
No, it isn't what we did with Zeqing, she thought us songs, and we decided to learn from her, at no point did we try change who we are to be more combat effective when fighting with, or for, her.
He should be our son. Or little brother if people insist on that.
Not a tool.
I am not opposed to ideas that do synergize with Zhengui, or Hanyi, or Sixiang, or <insert random person we have never met, and never will, here>.
But for me those need to be about us, not about synergizing with someone else, what makes sense to who we are, or who we want to become.
Any argument that relies on "will make us more combat effective with Zhengui" is an automatic fail for me.
... No-one's talking about combat effectiveness with regards to Zhengui though. Like, that was something we addressed months ago when we shifted to working more in groups and not haring off on our own all the time - which addressed more issues than just Zhengui's teenage angst.
We're talking entirely about themes and cultivation here. The only combat effectiveness elements were entirely focused on Ling Qi's personal effectiveness and how well her arts are meeting her needs.
Well, that's not my argument, so I think you're in the clear.
We learned from Zeqing because we thought what she had to teach was worthwhile, and it permanently altered us because that's just how cultivation works. I'm not fussed about combat effectiveness with Zhengui, or even the narratives of combat cooperation. I think those are increasingly solved problems regardless of what we do from here on out.
I'm interested in learning from the kiddo because I think it'd be worthwhile for us, and working closely with him on philosophy junk gives him greater freedom to choose lessons from us that resonate with him as well. If he feels like it! There's no principled reason we should go out of our way to not learn from Zhengui. My concern is there aren't a lot of options on the table to even try dabbling with it, and I think that's a shame. It's a matter of (lacking) opportunity.
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