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

[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] 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.)

Why is everyone allergic to the 80% option? It's good odds, Hanyi still gets some rep, we probably don't offend everyone, and we avoid tempting the damn question marks.

Seriously, I get why people don't like the 'slightly better than a coinflip' choice but why must we dive headfirst into the question marks of doom?

[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 remain unconvinced by arguments that it is important to not negatively impact the clergy's reputation of us. My belief is that they are at 0 or -1 with us, at worst, given our noted lack of interaction with the religious institutions. A negative impact at that level of attention is certainly annoying, but not crippling and is something we can improve if we wish to.

Furthermore, I am not sure that the clergy are entirely blameless in this matter given the text

yrsillar said:

"I cannot help but wonder at your motives, Baroness. Your bound spirit has been crass and disrespectful from the start," the priestess sniffed.

"You started being a jerk the second you walked in," Hanyi muttered under her breath. Ling Qi scattered the sound on her wind, but frowned herself.

"She does seem more hostile than a mistake would warrant," Sixiang muttered.

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It is frankly bizarre to me that the priest would accuse us to our face of having ulterior motives because of a, at first glance, mistake by one of the parties. While Hanyi can certainly be grating on the nerves, I think Sixiang has the right of it that the Head Priestess here is being more antagonistical than expected. This makes me think that at least this member of the clergy is not as natural an ally of ours as one would expect.

This, for me, makes the first option more appealing if we want to boost our clergy reputation up, but then we have to also consider the ramifications for Hanyi's performance, specifically how people will perceive the performances in the future and our roles in them. Overall, I just don't think that the first choice is a great one when taking everything into consideration.

If the optics and ramifications of the event and tour make me leery of option one, that leaves option 2 or 3. I don't like option 2 because, for me, it is a gamble where we either get everything we want or we lose everything we want. At slightly better odds than a coinflip. Tempting, but ultimately I prefer a more measured approach where we get some of what we want but lose some of what we want as well, which is option 3. We get a successful Hanyi performance, and all that entails, but we lose clergy reputation.

For me, reputation is something that can be improved, especially since we are young. We, of course, have to be even more careful with reputation hits given our Dreaming Idol gains, but I'm also not feeling the 40 percent chance of having to deal with those losses regardless.

So that's why I think option 3 is the best one, even with the uncertain consequences down the line.

P_Tigras said:

It also ignores Hanyi's own warnings, piles the pressure on her, and provides ample opportunity through no fault of her own to fail in a way that could badly damage both her confidence and her singing career. You're assuming success when success isn't guaranteed and the consequences of failure are significant.

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Yes, success on the first try is not garunteed, and failing could hurt her self confidence, but the same can be said of learning to ride a bike, and most people consider the eventual increased self confidence when the kid eventually succeeds to be worth it. We know Hanyi has a good chance of succeeding, because the option itself says so.

You know… if the clergy already don't have a good opinion of us as Thortwin says and we tank our rep further whether by bad rolls or by taking option 3.
We'd be looking at a -3 opinion on us for the clergy when the idol in the bag inevitably gets out huh?

[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.)

So one thing I wanna know is what role do the clergy have here exactly, in relation to us? We know how much we value our relationship to the nobility and our need to be on their good side. However, I feel like we kinda came into this mini-arc not knowing much about the clergy or how much we'll be dealing with them.

This lady is the High Priestess and daughter of the Viscount. Does she have sway in the next town we're performing at? Does she have influence over all the temples and clergy in this region? 'Cause if she does, pissing her off will imact the rest of Hanyi's tour.

Did Yrs say anything about this on Discord?

wrecksalot said:

Yes, success on the first try is not garunteed, and failing could hurt her self confidence, but the same can be said of learning to ride a bike, and most people consider the eventual increased self confidence when the kid eventually succeeds to be worth it. We know Hanyi has a good chance of succeeding, because the option itself says so.

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Yeah, but most kids don't try to learn how to pop a sick wheelie in the middle of a bike show when they've had no practice doing so before in front of a ton of people they don't know.

And sixty% odds aren't what I'd consider a good chance of succeeding.

Lena27 said:

So one thing I wanna know is what role do the clergy have here exactly, in relation to us? We know how much we value our relationship to the nobility and our need to be on their good side. However, I feel like we kinda came into this mini-arc not knowing much about the clergy or how much we'll be dealing with them.

This lady is the High Priestess and daughter of the Viscount. Does she have sway in the next town we're performing at? Does she have influence over all the temples and clergy in this region? 'Cause if she does, pissing her off will imact the rest of Hanyi's tour.

Did Yrs say anything about this on Discord?

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This is a pretty good point.

If the Clergy are sabotaging us here, then that suggests our relationship is already low, enough that they're willing to actively fuck with us. Dropping that lower still seems like it'll make things even harder for us in the long run.

I don't think it's true, I think it's more likely a man in the middle attack by another power, given how we still get a Rep Boost for unfucking the ritual and a Rep Minus for pushing it through anyway, but that's not inconsiderable.

The question here seems to be who we risk getting shafted.

1 is Hanyi (Who we're willing to sideline at need if that's what it takes to avoid disaster)
2 is Our Political Ambitions (By taking bold risks to adapt to changing circumstances at the cost of 'Not every risk pays out')
3 is People Who Aren't Us or our Clan (And we're willing to accept making enemies to avoid short term losses, which isn't sustainable)

With the caveat that 2--if we nail it--is the best of all worlds as it's the only one that leaves everyone walking away super satisfied while helping Hanyi's own development, at the cost of fucking it up hurting everyone (Though apparently not so much Hanyi because we still trusted her, even if it went tits up in the end we still did our best)

That being said

If we play it safe, we're going to have a hard time getting ahead of the people who are going to try to keep us down on principle. Playing it Safe is the expected approach, and you don't get far as a First Generation Cultivator by playing it safe.

Alectai said:

This is a pretty good point.

If the Clergy are sabotaging us here, then that suggests our relationship is already low, enough that they're willing to actively fuck with us. Dropping that lower still seems like it'll make things even harder for us in the long run.

I don't think it's true, I think it's more likely a man in the middle attack by another power, given how we still get a Rep Boost for unfucking the ritual and a Rep Minus for pushing it through anyway, but that's not inconsiderable.

The question here seems to be who we risk getting shafted.

1 is Hanyi (Who we're willing to sideline at need if that's what it takes to avoid disaster)
2 is Our Political Ambitions (By taking bold risks to adapt to changing circumstances at the cost of 'Not every risk pays out')
3 is People Who Aren't Us or our Clan (And we're willing to accept making enemies to avoid short term losses, which isn't sustainable)

With the caveat that 2--if we nail it--is the best of all worlds as it's the only one that leaves everyone walking away super satisfied while helping Hanyi's own development, at the cost of fucking it up hurting everyone (Though apparently not so much Hanyi because we still trusted her, even if it went tits up in the end we still did our best)

That being said

If we play it safe, we're going to have a hard time getting ahead of the people who are going to try to keep us down on principle. Playing it Safe is the expected approach, and you don't get far as a First Generation Cultivator by playing it safe.

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Do people know us well enough to expect us to negotiate with the spirit personal? If they don't than option three may be the least expected out come.

Nervaqus987 said:

Yeah, but most kids don't try to learn how to pop a sick wheelie in the middle of a bike show when they've had no practice doing so before in front of a ton of people they don't know.

And sixty% odds aren't what I'd consider a good chance of succeeding.

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Okay but what about 80%? Why do we just have to pick between the two extremes?

Alectai said:

If we play it safe, we're going to have a hard time getting ahead of the people who are going to try to keep us down on principle. Playing it Safe is the expected approach, and you don't get far as a First Generation Cultivator by playing it safe.

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This isn't going to be the only time somebody who dislikes us is going to fuck with us, though, and if we respond with the 40% chance to fuck up every time, we're going to fuck things up 40% of the time.

And if we fuck up Hanyi's Viscount Winter Spirit Whispering Special, that's going to both cost us rep immediately, and decrease future demand for Hanyi's shows, which will make it harder to make other contacts or earn that rep back. If we succeed now, even if the clergy dislikes us, a milder winter will be quite difficult for the nobility to dismiss, leaving the possibility to continue interacting with these people on the table. (Everyone who lives here would probably also appreciate a milder winter, but alas, we don't get any points for that.)

So yes, obviously we need to take risks to get ahead, but we're already taking risks by doing things like talking to Bonedaddy. Why should we take this risk, when failure will deal so much damage to our weakest point? Is option 3 really that bad? Or is a failure for option 2 not as bad as it seems?

(Also, about Hanyi not taking it too badly - I'm pretty sure she'd take it terribly? She says she can't do it, we tell her we believe in her she should do it, she fucks it up and fails us, her audience, and herself, and if she doesn't lay any of the blame for that on us for pushing her that just leaves her with more blame to place on herself. I'm not seeing a failure at this juncture being graceful for anyone involved.)

Neshuakadal said:

Do people know us well enough to expect us to negotiate with the spirit personal? If they don't than option three may be the least expected out come.

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We've talked about or done enough weird spirit interactions with other people (such as having Hanyi) that it's probably not that hard to learn about Ling Qi's spirit ken.

memoryofglory said:

Okay but what about 80%? Why do we just have to pick between the two extremes?

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Sidelining Hanyi is not an easy platform to campaign on, especially when it still comes with a 1 in 5 chance of fucking up everything.

Neshuakadal said:

Do people know us well enough to expect us to negotiate with the spirit personal? If they don't than option three may be the least expected out come.

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Only our close friends, music group, sect elders and the scout team from the Sect know about it.

Its possible to know about but so far our stance on spirits seems to be known as more political than spiritual

kfrar said:

This isn't going to be the only time somebody who dislikes us is going to fuck with us, though, and if we respond with the 40% chance to fuck up every time, we're going to fuck things up 40% of the time.

And if we fuck up Hanyi's Viscount Winter Spirit Whispering Special, that's going to both cost us rep immediately, and decrease future demand for Hanyi's shows, which will make it harder to make other contacts or earn that rep back. If we succeed now, even if the clergy dislikes us, a milder winter will be quite difficult for the nobility to dismiss, leaving the possibility to continue interacting with these people on the table. (Everyone who lives here would probably also appreciate a milder winter, but alas, we don't get any points for that.)

So yes, obviously we need to take risks to get ahead, but we're already taking risks by doing things like talking to Bonedaddy. Why should we take this risk, when failure will deal so much damage to our weakest point? Is option 3 really that bad? Or is a failure for option 2 not as bad as it seems?

(Also, about Hanyi not taking it too badly - I'm pretty sure she'd take it terribly? She says she can't do it, we tell her we believe in her she should do it, she fucks it up and fails us, her audience, and herself, and if she doesn't lay any of the blame for that on us for pushing her that just leaves her with more blame to place on herself. I'm not seeing a failure at this juncture being graceful for anyone involved.)


We've talked about or done enough weird spirit interactions with other people (such as having Hanyi) that it's probably not that hard to learn about Ling Qi's spirit ken.


Sidelining Hanyi is not an easy platform to campaign on, especially when it still comes with a 1 in 5 chance of fucking up everything.

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That demand gets a lot harder to meet though if the people we're supposed to be liasing with clam up because we get a reputation of bulldozing things and overriding their advice--and because we went over their heads, they're going to assume that and even if it later comes out that someone tampered with the mail, the answer is going to be "Yeah but they still fucked with us and didn't make corrections when we straightened them out". It reinforces the bad rumors about us with people we could have made allies, and largely closes that door without a disproportionate degree of effort soothing them.

To get what Hanyi's supposed to be doing with these performances, we need the clergy to cooperate to get us the info about who needs to be impressed and bribed. The nobles pay the price but the clergy are who we get the information from. If we just casually alienate them because we're chasing the patrons, we're going to have to either accept incomplete information going forward, or spend considerable time and energy smoothing over the ruffled feathers or doing the research ourselves.

Again, if you want to go "Yeah, the nobles and the performance going off are more important than the actual degree of success of the performance and all future ones", sure, fine. But don't go and say we can 'Safely' piss on the clergy. It's a guaranteed rep hit with them and they're the sort of people we'd need to play nice with to get good information from in future performances.

And if this is a man-in-the-middle attack, it gives ammunition our detractor can use to throw further roadblocks in our way. It is very much going "Trade short term success for long term aggravation", and acting like it isn't is wishful thinking.

The actual correct choice if we care about building relations is option 1. Option 3 is very much "Make one group of enemies today to ensure that I don't have to change my course today and risk embarassment"

Alectai said:

That demand gets a lot harder to meet though if the people we're supposed to be liasing with clam up because we get a reputation of bulldozing things and overriding their advice--and because we went over their heads, they're going to assume that and even if it later comes out that someone tampered with the mail, the answer is going to be "Yeah but they still fucked with us and didn't make corrections when we straightened them out". It reinforces the bad rumors about us with people we could have made allies, and largely closes that door without a disproportionate degree of effort soothing them.

To get what Hanyi's supposed to be doing with these performances, we need the clergy to cooperate to get us the info about who needs to be impressed and bribed. The nobles pay the price but the clergy are who we get the information from. If we just casually alienate them because we're chasing the patrons, we're going to have to either accept incomplete information going forward, or spend considerable time and energy smoothing over the ruffled feathers or doing the research ourselves.

Again, if you want to go "Yeah, the nobles and the performance going off are more important than the actual degree of success of the performance and all future ones", sure, fine. But don't go and say we can 'Safely' piss on the clergy. It's a guaranteed rep hit with them and they're the sort of people we'd need to play nice with to get good information from in future performances.

And if this is a man-in-the-middle attack, it gives ammunition our detractor can use to throw further roadblocks in our way. It is very much going "Trade short term success for long term aggravation", and acting like it isn't is wishful thinking.

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If I thought tanking the Clergy Rep was costless, I wouldn't care about maintaining opportunities to repair it. So long as we continue getting gigs where we work with the clergy, we will have opportunities to make amends with the clergy we're working with, so I just don't see the downside of option 3 as anywhere near as severe as the downside of failing option 2, where the clergy thinks we're fuckups and the nobles aren't hiring us in the first place.

If I didn't think the consequences of option 3 were salvageable, or if anyone provided any idea for how failing option 2 might be salvaged, I'd consider switching votes. But so far, nobody's commented on how to salvage a spiked reputation with both the nobility and clergy when neither of them want to work with us in the first place, so I consider option 2's 40% chance of fucking up to be unacceptable.

That's what it comes down to, really. Option 3 does not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but unless someone can suggest to me how an option 2 failure wouldn't be absolutely awful or how option 3 would actually be nearly as unsalvageable, I'm inclined to pick Option 3 anyway.

kfrar said:

If I thought tanking the Clergy Rep was costless, I wouldn't care about maintaining opportunities to repair it. So long as we continue getting gigs where we work with the clergy, we will have opportunities to make amends with the clergy we're working with, so I just don't see the downside of option 3 as anywhere near as severe as the downside of failing option 2, where the clergy thinks we're fuckups and the nobles aren't hiring us in the first place.

If I didn't think the consequences of option 3 were salvageable, or if anyone provided any idea for how failing option 2 might be salvaged, I'd consider switching votes. But so far, nobody's commented on how to salvage a spiked reputation with both the nobility and clergy when neither of them want to work with us in the first place, so I consider option 2's 40% chance of fucking up to be unacceptable.

That's what it comes down to, really. Option 3 does not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but unless someone can suggest to me how an option 2 failure wouldn't be absolutely awful or how option 3 would actually be nearly as unsalvageable, I'm inclined to pick Option 3 anyway.

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The problem with that outlook is that "You assume this problem will go away and whoever's been fucking with us will meekly decide that enough has been done". If it's an internal faction? We just proved all of their words correct by running them over. If it's a man in the middle? We've justified the rumors against us. We won't easily get that foot in the door to make amends.

You assume that a first impression isn't hard to walk back on. And you also assume that whoever's fucking with us will be done with it instead of taking advantage of our blunder to drive the wedge deeper still. You don't beat someone like that by meekly playing damage control, because there's more of them than there are you. You beat them by seizing the initiative and taking advantage of that goodwill to get to the bottom of it.

And frankly, given how many things we'll have going on? I'd rather fuck up with this job and recover from there, because it's a lot easier to make good on "I'm young and callow, educate me on how to be better" than it is to be "I am young, precocious, and I don't give a shit about what you care about, we'll do it my way or the high way."

We can't afford to give the impression that we're going to casually override local concerns to push our own agenda, because that encourages everyone else to not extend their hands to us if they have anything that might get run over by us.

Also, someone said "Ling Qi's spirit-fu isn't widely known?" We just went to court which stated that Ling Qi negotiated passage through a foreign, fourth realm's territory. This play has happened two months later. Assuming that a hostile actor hasn't heard shit from the grapevine seems overly optimistic.

Yeah if we care about the success of this performance and making connections than option 1 is best since while option 2 would be better it's more risky and option 3 is a safe but flat minus to Church opinion and a ??? consequence that could be worse than that. The only consequences for option 1 are Hanyi based which if you care about success and connections don't really factor into consideration.

Option 3 is accepting a hit to the face because we care too much about Hanyi and too unwilling to risk a 60% roll

Alectai said:

The problem with that outlook is that "You assume this problem will go away and whoever's been fucking with us will meekly decide that enough has been done". If it's an internal faction? We just proved all of their words correct by running them over. If it's a man in the middle? We've justified the rumors against us. We won't easily get that foot in the door to make amends.

You assume that a first impression isn't hard to walk back on. And you also assume that whoever's fucking with us will be done with it instead of taking advantage of our blunder to drive the wedge deeper still. You don't beat someone like that by meekly playing damage control, because there's more of them than there are you. You beat them by seizing the initiative and taking advantage of that goodwill to get to the bottom of it.

And frankly, given how many things we'll have going on? I'd rather fuck up with this job and recover from there, because it's a lot easier to make good on "I'm young and callow, educate me on how to be better" than it is to be "I am young, precocious, and I don't give a shit about what you care about, we'll do it my way or the high way."

We can't afford to give the impression that we're going to casually override local concerns to push our own agenda, because that encourages everyone else to not extend their hands to us if they have anything that might get run over by us.

Also, someone said "Ling Qi's spirit-fu isn't widely known?" We just went to court which stated that Ling Qi negotiated passage through a foreign, fourth realm's territory. This play has happened two months later. Assuming that a hostile actor hasn't heard shit from the grapevine seems overly optimistic.

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Personally I think it's over optimistic to say that going "I am young please teach me" on a failure is a workable solution. That shows that we, and by association CRX, don't know what we are doing.

CRX entire message to the court when asking for our current assignment was "I am good enough to do more." Turning around and spitting on that by falling on our face here severely weakens that stance. We are past the point of receiving instructions now in the eyes of nobility. Now we need successes to back up our talk, and if those successes mean burning a few bridges than I am willing to do that.

In regards to the beating the person who set this up, I would much rather do damage control now, accept the hit and then go on the proactive. You don't beat someone playing this game by trying to squirm out of their traps, you beat them by not falling into them. We fell into this trap and assuming any option, success or failure, hasn't been accounted for seems naive. I say take the hit , do damage control, than engage the threat proactively.

Alectai said:

The problem with that outlook is that "You assume this problem will go away and whoever's been fucking with us will meekly decide that enough has been done". If it's an internal faction? We just proved all of their words correct by running them over. If it's a man in the middle? We've justified the rumors against us. We won't easily get that foot in the door to make amends.

You assume that a first impression isn't hard to walk back on. And you also assume that whoever's fucking with us will be done with it instead of taking advantage of our blunder to drive the wedge deeper still. You don't beat someone like that by meekly playing damage control, because there's more of them than there are you. You beat them by seizing the initiative and taking advantage of that goodwill to get to the bottom of it.

And frankly, given how many things we'll have going on? I'd rather fuck up with this job and recover from there, because it's a lot easier to make good on "I'm young and callow, educate me on how to be better" than it is to be "I am young, precocious, and I don't give a shit about what you care about, we'll do it my way or the high way."

We can't afford to give the impression that we're going to casually override local concerns to push our own agenda, because that encourages everyone else to not extend their hands to us if they have anything that might get run over by us.

Also, someone said "Ling Qi's spirit-fu isn't widely known?" We just went to court which stated that Ling Qi negotiated passage through a foreign, fourth realm's territory. This play has happened two months later. Assuming that a hostile actor hasn't heard shit from the grapevine seems overly optimistic.

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This doesn't track. I can't agree with this analysis at all.

In the case of failure in option 1 or 2, we are straight up actually flat out failing at the job we were hired to do. The entire premise of the service Hanyi's offering is discredited. The nobles are pissed because the promised service (tamer winter/spirits not riled) isn't delivered. The clergy is pissed because we stepped in with our new ideas and fucked everything up. This isn't something you can just go "Oh, whoops, give me another shot?" Nobody has any reason to give us a chance at recovery, at all. And that actually extends past this project to others, like the trade road quest.

In the case of option 3, the clergy is annoyed because we're committing to doing a ritual ceremony incorrectly, but we make it work so nobody else really cares. The core promise of the work is fulfilled, it's just done through means the professionals tsk at.

I don't think it's reasonable to extrapolate the very specific parameters of the conversion we're having with the Priestess to being our general reputation coming out of the situation. She has specific concerns, in the specific context of her particular duties, preferences, and the (brief) collaborative history between her and us. The contents of our conversation are very unlikely to be widely broadcast; it's not good for either party, it's not how grievances are generally handled in the culture, and without obvious failure to support it with it'd be making a public debate and spectacle with her own office's respect on the line, instead of an effective public attack.

The broader reception is likely to include a few raised eyebrows about the tenth spirit not being addressed during the performance, but if it doesn't cause problems, they're just not that invested.

To be clear, it isn't an ideal state of affairs, but pretending like option 3 hurts us more than a failure in options 1 or 2 is delusional and, frankly, dishonest.

Edit: hmm, that last line sounds a lot harsher put in words than it was in my head, sorry about that.

Hmm.

Yeah, that's fair, I guess I still need a bit more sleep. I suppose I just assume that damcon for option three is going to be very expensive to work with in time and energy.

We chose to leave he sect, we no longer got to screw up and have it excused as being kids.

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Alectai said:

Hmm.

Yeah, that's fair, I guess I still need a bit more sleep. I suppose I just assume that damcon for option three is going to be very expensive to work with in time and energy.

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And damage control on failure for 1 and 2 will be far worse.

1 or 3 are both managable.

Damage control for 2..I've no idea where to even start