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

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)

Something something compulsive gambling problem.

You know what, fuck this. Bring on your consequences

[X] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)

[X] Learn the missing piece yourself and take part in the performance (80% Success. Improved relationship with Clergy on success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Reduced benefits for Hanyi's reputation. Annoyed Hanyi)

i've played too much XCOM to trust a 60%

[X] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

I approve of this. Power is a concept I want to raise, and I think our first attempt to make ourselves a reputation among political factions like these should be a conservative, safe advance, rather than a gamble.

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)

[X] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)

Astro Ambulance said:

i've played too much XCOM to trust a 60%

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I've played too much xcom to believe an 80% is better.

[X] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

Yeah, I'm not a fan of a coin flip.

I think we can all agree that XCOM's chance system is traumatizing and should never be thought of ever again.

Neshuakadal said:

I don't think this is the only chance to placate the steam that this clergy have. Even if Hanyi does fail I doubt they will throw up their hands and call it a day. Saying we are playing with people's lives feels overblown.

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Thing is - in general local clergy are shit. While LQ can facepunch local spirit or calm it with one song majority of minor cultivators depends on years of dedicated action for same. You know what they action will be? Punt decision by the chain of command until somebody who can facepunch spirit will arrive. While field will be flooded and people will start starving. Or they will try to do something immediately... and some of them die because surprise surprise low level cultivators are squishy (even if better than mortals).

Also as I understand it in 100% we piss off one spirit that we can facepunch. In 80/60 we risk pissing off all of them. Or it would've been "and if it get pissed off we will facepunch it anyway" and last option wouldn't been option.

[X] Learn the missing piece yourself and take part in the performance (80% Success. Improved relationship with Clergy on success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Reduced benefits for Hanyi's reputation. Annoyed Hanyi)

[] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

For the record there are two obvious possible consequences from picking this option,

The decreased reputation of the local Clergy permits more Northern clergy to assert influence over them, and this is something those who believe the Celestial Peaks ways would love to use as an excuse.

More importantly while the third realm spirit is something Ling Qi can handle whomever is higher in the local spirit court probably is not the case, and this isn't the Argent Sect where the highest spirit overlord is an 8th realm dragon bound to the sect head, which is what allows foolish disciples to get away with beating/killing a 3rd real spirit carp.

Although it is plausible this is less face punch, and more bribe for the spirit to behave during Hanyi's performance. The issue would likely be word would inevitably spread, and well... we know spirits love musicians meaning the normal clergy rituals would likely be less effective as word spreads, which presumes nobody human notices Ling Qi doing something.

al103 said:

We are literally playing with peoples lives here. Either do it properly or just don't. Result of failure is not bad performance, it's flood, possible deaths and certain starvation (even if helped) of affected families.

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Except your proposed course of action actually makes things worse. Remember back when we were learning to scout how there was that one river spirit that came back meaner and angrier because it was beaten up last year?

al103 said:

Thing is - in general local clergy are shit. While LQ can facepunch local spirit or calm it with one song majority of minor cultivators depends on years of dedicated action for same. You know what they action will be? Punt decision by the chain of command until somebody who can facepunch spirit will arrive. While field will be flooded and people will start starving. Or they will try to do something immediately... and some of them die because surprise surprise low level cultivators are squishy (even if better than mortals).

Also as I understand it in 100% we piss off one spirit that we can facepunch. In 80/60 we risk pissing off all of them. Or it would've been "and if it get pissed off we will facepunch it anyway" and last option wouldn't been option.

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It is a pretty strong generalization to say the local clergy are shit. This is not the first time a spirit has acted up in the region, and it will not be the last. The local clergy have been working here for a while and just jumping to the conclusion that they are shit seems unwarranted. We know nothing of the area to make that claim. They are equally likely to be above average clergy.

What I am seeing from your argument is that it is based off the clergy being shit. We don't know that, and I see no reason to assume that.

[X] Encourage Hanyi to take up the missing part and help her with the prep (60% success. Improved relationship with clergy on success. Growth for Hanyi on Success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Happier Hanyi on success.)
picklepikkl convinced me on the need for us to trust Hanyi, thus making a tight decision into an obvious one for me.

Neshuakadal said:

It is a pretty strong generalization to say the local clergy are shit. This is not the first time a spirit has acted up in the region, and it will not be the last. The local clergy have been working here for a while and just jumping to the conclusion that they are shit seems unwarranted. We know nothing of the area to make that claim. They are equally likely to be above average clergy.

What I am seeing from your argument is that it is based off the clergy being shit. We don't know that, and I see no reason to assume that.

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All low lever cultivators are useful as group and in long term. All low level cultivators are also bad at short-term solution as they are simply not powerful enough.

They CAN placate pissed off spirit. They WILL placate pissed off spirit. But it's likely that it will take months to do that. While to ruin harvest prospect day is enough.

The arguments for 2 seem generally absurd. People constantly try to make these "trust" arguments - and frankly history has shown them to almost always be wrong.

Hanyi's just said she can't do it. Taking her at her word and accepting that our little sister needs help, because she's being screwed by factors beyond her control, isn't "not trusting her". Hell, if anything it's trusting her assessment of her own capabilities (though that would also be a weird way to frame it).

And Hanyi will be annoyed? Of course she will be! She's being sabotaged when she thought she was going to have a great triumph! It doesn't mean this is going to super poison our relationship or anything, and being super paranoid about ever making our family upset with us at all is really not the lesson people should be taking from all of our heart demon shit. Indeed, if anything the problems are caused by LQ being unable to deal with her family being upset with her at all, and she needs to learn how to deal with that and work out when it's fine.

The odds on 2 are not good, and frankly failing kind of spikes both our quest and Hanyi's goals here. There are layers upon layers of consequences here.

Really, the choice should be between (1) or (3), with questions around "what is the actual intention with (3)?". Like, people are jumping straight to "beat up a river", but LQ's history and leanings here that it's more likely that she'd try to surreptitiously run interference and personally placate the river imo... Indeed, we actually know it can't be that because we know from our experience that that doesn't work (unless you're the Bai). Killing spirits just means they come back angry later, and flood things, so I don't think it would actually count as "success".

[x] Learn the missing piece yourself and take part in the performance (80% Success. Improved relationship with Clergy on success. Negative relations with clergy and Nobles on Failure. Reduced benefits for Hanyi's reputation. Annoyed Hanyi)
[x] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

You know, thinking about it now, it's kinda funny to me when some of us are saying "we trust Hanyi to do it" when she herself says she can't.

yrsillar said:

Something was fishy here, Ling Qi thought. "Is it possible to just alter the choreography to fix this?"

"Even I can't memorize a whole new section in a couple minutes, I'd probably mess it up and just make things worse." Hanyi grumbled.

Ling Qi bit her lip. If it was only a short section then she could, however she hadn't wanted to get involved with Hanyi's tours.

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Like don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she really can't do it when the statistics are saying she can. I'm just remembering all those times we say we're such a helicopter parent, and here we are doing something that seems in comparison to someone pushing their kid who can't swim into a swimming pool and going "you can do it, champ!"

Obviously that's not what Ling Qi's doing since the vote clearly says she's helping Hanyi with the prep. It's just the way people argue sometimes are just...blehh

[X] Let Hanyi perform with the current choreography. Make sure this Stream doesn't cause trouble personally. (100% Success, +1 Power Success, ??? consequences. Reduced Clergy Reputation.)

This is our thing. Especially after the rule change we are legitimately good at talking with spirits and our entire thing is honesty so its entirely reasonable that the spirit will understand that we meant no offense. It doesn't even actually hurt the clergy's opinion of us, just has us lose an opportunity to improve it.

This is very much a "throw me into the briar patch" situation. The saboteur screwed up and didn't realize our skillset.