Finished recently forge of destiny, and started threads of destiny, I just seen the dream vision/fight with the ghost of the white cultivator that had his hand eaten by our dress with the bloody moon.
And I thought of something, is there an actual point to trying to ascend past white, people in the comment said that by doing so, you stop being a character, so my question is why, why go past white and not try to find something more similar to becoming a sublime ancestor, those at least can help their descendants.
By ascending past white you become a great spirit. Your vision, your Law becomes part of reality, forever. The way the winds blow are from an ascended white. The way the tides function are from an ascended white. By ascending you change how the world works forever.
By ascending past white you become a great spirit. Your vision, your Law becomes part of reality, forever. The way the winds blow are from an ascended white. The way the tides function are from an ascended white. By ascending you change the world forever.
I see why some people will see appeal in that, but I am assuming the effect is limited and shared across all the great spirits, while sublime ancestors get to stomp people who bother their descendants of they feel like it.
The previous emperor can't really keep his lineage on the throne, he is an aspect of death, maybe he can make the death of people less painful, or make a miniature afterlife you get into under the right circumstances, but it isn't as useful as being a physical god.
It sounds more like if I might as well die in 1000 years, I can make something that will last even as I lose my personality and abillity to act.
I see why some people will see appeal in that, but I am assuming the effect is limited and shared across all the great spirits, while sublime ancestors get to stomp people who bother their descendants of they feel like it.
The previous emperor can't really keep his lineage on the throne, he is an aspect of death, maybe he can make the death of people less painful, or make a miniature afterlife you get into under the right circumstances, but it isn't as useful as being a physical god.
It sounds more like if I might as well die in 1000 years, I can make something that will last even as I lose my personality and abillity to act.
That's fair, and different cultures have come up with different solutions to the questions you've posed. It may be that the preferences of Imperial cultivators towards ascension is from the strive of the twin emperors. But yah, each culture seems to have a different solution to the question of "What is the ultimate goal of cultivation."
On to the previous emperor though, there is no way he is going to make death less painful or create a miniature afterlife. He is Inexorable Justice, and that is what he does. Once you reach White or beyond your ability to act is sharply limited to your cultivation. Someone who cultivated Truth for example would not be able to lie, ever ever ever. So with the previous emperor we know he is not interested in providing mercy, like a nice afterlife or a less painful death, because justice has nothing to do with mercy.
I see why some people will see appeal in that, but I am assuming the effect is limited and shared across all the great spirits, while sublime ancestors get to stomp people who bother their descendants of they feel like it.
The previous emperor can't really keep his lineage on the throne, he is an aspect of death, maybe he can make the death of people less painful, or make a miniature afterlife you get into under the right circumstances, but it isn't as useful as being a physical god.
It sounds more like if I might as well die in 1000 years, I can make something that will last even as I lose my personality and abillity to act.
Basically there are issues that make it harder for that to happen. First of all, the dragon gods way back when were absolutely awful and when the nameless mother had to be woken up to deal with them she changed reality so that it actively tries to reject greater than white entities so you have to get around that. Sublimes do it by spending the vast majority of their time asleep so they can only show greater than white power very rarely when they return to their bodies and it is very costly. Imperial cultivation generally can't do the same thing because they don't leave behind a body when they ascend. Shenhua has been theorized to be attempting to forge herself a sublime object spirit that can let her be active past white and some other non imperial cultures have their own methods you will eventually see.
"Seeing that you and the other temple staff are needed here, the only reasonable thing to do is to deal with the spirit in question myself," Ling Qi said after a long moments deliberation. "Thus the festival rite and performance may go off without hindrance."
Chao Yanlin stared at her, and Ling Qi squared her shoulders, meeting the older woman's gaze. Finally, the priestess said, "You cannot be serious. I have heard of your expertise, surely you could simply take up the missing part?"
"I am very serious," Ling Qi said. "While I do not have your support priestess, I have experience wrangling upset spirits. I am certain the Seven Hills Stream can be brought to an amicable agreement in overlooking this error. I will not risk my junior sister's success in integrating myself into something so complex on such short notice."
"The management of a spiritual ecosystem is not something which can simply be… done on the fly," Chao Yanlin said incredulously. "Spirits are not merchants which you simply haggle with to arrive at a new agreement. Even this performance is an unnaturally swift change. Now you wish to disrupt things even further? Even if you succeed it will disrupt all other agreements!"
"Spirits are more malleable than you imply. Regardless, this is the only way I see for the festivities to go off without disruption," Ling Qi said. "What can you tell me of the Seven Hills Stream?"
Hanyi smirked smugly behind her, and the priestess looked up at her with much more intense dislike. "Arrogant girl. Why should I have expected otherwise. It is not your people who will suffer for this."
Ling Qi blinked at the unmasked and blunt hostility of her words. "High Priestess I have no intention of causing difficulty for the people of the valley."
Chao Yanlin frown smoothed away, leaving her expression studiously blank. When she spoke, her words were short and clipped. "The Seven Hills Stream is wide and shallow, it runs down from the high peaks and weaves between the seven eastern hills. He is patron to prospectors, who he gifts signs of lodes and veins in his sparkling waters. He is as vain as any of his siblings, but suspicious of flattery. Praise him sparingly. Do not speak his name last in any sentence which refers to more than one spirit. He loves the things which mortals make from his spoils, but despises disorder."
Ling Qi pursed her lips as the woman turned to go, but regardless of her personal feelings, she offered a stiff bow. "Thank you, High Priestess."
The woman gave her a dark look over her shoulder. "I am only doing this to begin with because my Uncle wishes to play for the favor of the Bao. Know that regardless of his wishes, I am reporting your interference to the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs. If you wish to play at our duties, than you may suffer our responsibilities as well."
South Emerald Seas Clergy Reputation Set to -2
Then she was gone, bustling off, surrounded by attendants. Ling Qi felt a small tug on her sleeve and looked down to see Hanyi looking up at her with a crestfallen expression. "...Thanks, Big Sis. I'm sorry I messed up."
"You didn't mess up, someone is messing with us," Ling Qi said darkly. Her first instinct, to accuse the priestess, felt off. "Just perform well okay? Big Sis will take care of the background stuff."
"Okay," Hanyi said, setting her expression in determination.
"Um, Baroness…" the meek voice of an initiate drew her attention away. "Would you like me to show you the way."
"You don't need too," Ling Qi replied flatly, she was going to get to the bottom of this. <Sixiang, send a message to Bao Qian. Someone is trying to sabotage us. Tell him to keep an eye on things.>
"Got it boss," Sixiang replied.
She strode away from the initiate, passing through a door and out onto a balcony overlooking the eastern part of the valley. With the name and the knowledge of the spirit's nature and a passing understanding of the geography she had passed through on the way here, it would not be difficult to find.
"Although, I don't need to go there physically I suppose," Ling Qi murmured.
"I alerted Bao boy," Sixiang said. "What's the plan?"
"We're going on a little jaunt," Ling Qi said. She slid a foot forward, feeling at the fabric of the waking world, and stepped through the balcony.
She emerged in a clear blue sky without end, filled with countless drifting leaves. Some were tiny, normal curls of autumn color, others were tremendous leaves the size of ships' sails and every size in between. As she immediately began to fall, Ling Qi felt her foot alight on a palm sized leaf, spinning soundlessly in the sky. It made a crinkling sound as she pushed off of it, jumping to a leaf nearby, and then another and another.
"I'm glad you're getting into this quickly, but I gotta ask why." Sixiang asked. When next her foot fell on empty air, it rippled like the surface of a multihued lake and her next leap carried her much further.
"Two reasons," Ling Qi replied, catching the edge of a drifting red leaf and using it to swing forward, sending the giant thing spinning. At its core she saw the stylized ink paintings of people, moving through their lives preparing for the winter. "If I travel physically I will need to explain myself to more people."
"And the other?" Sixiang's voice asked her, coinciding with a gust of wind that carried her across a wide gap in the falling leaves.
"Less people know that I can do this," Ling Qi said bluntly.
"Ah, that'd make sense," Sixiang said, they materialized ahead of her, perched on a boat-sized leaf spinning lazily in place, hovering on unseen currents. The muse reached out and Linq Qi caught her hand, landing on the leaf to peer at her surroundings. She closed her eyes letting the words of the spirit's name resonate in her head, not merely the syllables of the imperial tongue that made it up, but the faint resonance they left in the world.
Her senses resolved the feeling as the gurgle of water flowing over stones. Ling Qi turned toward the 'sound' and leapt again, dashing through the endless autumn sky. Soon from the way she came, she began to feel ripples of power, the soft strains of a song, and cold breeze. The show was beginning.
Ling Qi picked up her pace, until at last solid shapes resolved in the distance, high misty peaks and sheer cliffs, verdant and green below and capped with white above. The sound of crashing water emanated out from a wide stream that fell gracefully from the higher cliffs to splash down into a wide pool before flowing further down. Here in the dream there was no bottom though, and Ling Qi suspected that should she climb, she would never reach the peak either.
Grasping the points of a falling leaf, Ling Qi drifted down on the mist filled breeze to land on a great mossy boulder which sat by the edge of the pooling water. Ling Qi breathed in the mist filled air, and the scent of earth and greenery as she stepped up to the edge of the waters. Opening her eyes she studied the mist and the way it curled, her eyes tracing the infinitesimally small fractal patterns which shaped it.
She gazed down into her reflection in the water, and watched as it stared back and cocked its head. Water rippled, the patterns rearranged themselves and the water rippled.
Lay low, Ling Qi thought to Sixiang as her reflection rose from the water. Composed of clear spring water flecked with a thousand touch of gold and silver that refracted the light. It observed her with luminous blue eyes.
By now, she could feel the ripples of the ritual more clearly, the echoing snippets of hanyi's song, the cold wind growing. As she observed the spirit the first flakes of snow began to fall.
"Honored one, Resplendent Stream of the Seven Hills, I greet you," Ling Qi said formally. She brought her hands together with a clap and bowed at the waist.
"Whence and whyfore comes headwaters maiden on day of play. Does it wish to dance under moon and sky, does it come with glittering toys of cleverness?" The spirits burbling voice was difficult to understand. It echoed weirdly rising not from the reflected avatar, but from the water and mist and stones, a hundred echoes speaking over one another. Its words were confused as one not used to speaking human tongues. "Go and come again, mine festivities arrive and I would drink."
"Honored Seven Hills Stream, I have regretful news," Ling Qi said carefully, paring down her flattering phrasing. "The singer of winter winds and the little folk were deceived terribly, and your rightful praises will not come today."
The mist and water grew still and the watery avatar's luminous eyes flared, a point of darkness appearing as pupils at their center grew into pools. Ling Qi bit her lip as the ground trembled and the thunder of the waters grew louder.
"But," she said loudly, letting loose her grip on her own power. The mist around her darkened and cooled, snow falling in a growing circle as she stared down the spirit. "I am here. I will make amends for this error, Spirit of Falling Waters."
"You come from the high peaks, as the Encroachments winds that freeze our waters," the spirit rumbled. "You are not they, pacts must be fulfilled by their makers. Overstep? Does the Maiden of night skies think she a tyrant?"
Ling Qi let her aura settle down, the circle of snowfall no longer expanding. While showing her power was necessary, force and intimidation were not useful tools here. Power brought with it respect, enough to be heard, but she could not simply be a blunt instrument. "I do not seek to rule you, O river," she said quietly."I wish to speak, as a peer to a peer. These are not my lands, but the deception which wounds you was a sling aimed for my heart. Does this not grant me the standing to speak on the matter?"
The watery avatar's head shifted from side to side and it stepped forward, into the circle of her power, thin skins of ice formed and melted creating a rustling crackling sound as the face that mirrored her own was pressed close. "Harm, harms, words spoken many of outside harm, of the Sky Children who burn with father's lightning, and of wars and wars. You are the cold of high vales and white peaks, not the salt and earth of valley and stream."
"The lord of this land has granted me leave to speak," Ling Qi replied, a slight twist on the truth. By Chao Yanlin's word she had been given latitude for this event, though she doubted lord Chao had meant it to go so far. "Again, as thy peer, I ask that you speak to me regarding the injury done to you by my foeman."
Her own words felt weird and archaic, but they just came out that way as she spoke, with the river spirits face barely a centimeter from her own. She did not flinch as a glittering tongue of silver water snaked past its parted lips, tracing her features. She did however prepare her defences in case it was more than mere perception.
"Your sound tastes true," the spirit said grudgingly, drawing back. "What then do you bring to salve this wound?"
Ling Qi breathed in, her foot was in the door here, however, she had to be careful, she couldn't offer anything that the spirit would take as repeatable, it needed to be a single thing, she could not promise something that would require her to come back here again and again. A sacrifice then, or a service.
[] For the adulation lost, offer a sliver of your own power, once and done. (-100 XP from cultivation XP earned this turn, before multipliers)
[] Offer an item of value to a spirit who values mortal craft.
-[] Offer the Dream Idol
-[] Offer the Hui Painter's Brush
[] Offer one service, which must be within your current power, to be completed within a year and a day (Locks in a Quest from the Spirit.)[/spoiler]
I see why some people will see appeal in that, but I am assuming the effect is limited and shared across all the great spirits, while sublime ancestors get to stomp people who bother their descendants of they feel like it.
The previous emperor can't really keep his lineage on the throne, he is an aspect of death, maybe he can make the death of people less painful, or make a miniature afterlife you get into under the right circumstances, but it isn't as useful as being a physical god.
It sounds more like if I might as well die in 1000 years, I can make something that will last even as I lose my personality and abillity to act.
You should also consider that a White cultivator is already barely human anyway, they're basically the concept they would ascend into in human form. The previous Emporer by White couldn't even care for his family, it's questionable if he would care for lineage, there might or might not be any perceived benefit for such a being to retaining their human form.
Though it's not the rule. The wait 1000 years to ascend might very well be what Shenhua is doing. Probably depends on the cultivator, especially considering how personalised cultivation is in the upper realms.
A sliver of power, or mortal craft, I think. I don't really want to get tied down by offering a service, and the other items are too valuable. I think. Unless are we done with the dream idol?
Yeah, this here's the mystery cost. "The Bribe needed to keep him happy"
We don't have time, I feel, for an extra Quest on top of everything else. We also don't want to give up either of the treasures on the table. The Cultivation XP cost is expensive but ultimately renewable, even if it cuts something like half of our cultivation gains for the turn out.
Is there any reason to keep the Hui painter's brush? Brushes aren't our thing, and I feel like we should have given it to Meng Dan already if we were going to give it to any of our friends.
[] For the adulation lost, offer a sliver of your own power, once and done. (-100 XP from cultivation XP earned this turn, before multipliers)
[] Offer an item of value to a spirit who values mortal craft.
-[] Offer the Dream Idol
-[] Offer the Hui Painter's Brush
[] Offer one service, which must be within your current power, to be completed within a year and a day (Locks in a Quest from the Spirit.)
Hmm, honestly, I'd kind of be inclined to offer up the xp just because, like, our progression is so fineeee. We can totally lose a bit here and there.
The dream idol might seem tempting a bit, but I'd see it as a trap tbh - people will find out, and then we potentially start looking more problematic. Could cause more problems down the road too.
Painter's brush is obviously worth quite a bit, though we don't actually have any real use for it tbh.
Service... honestly, the quest is interesting, and dealing with this stuff more could be good experience. At the same time, too many obligations filling up narrative space is one of our continual problems.
[X] For the adulation lost, offer a sliver of your own power, once and done. (-100 XP from cultivation XP earned this turn, before multipliers)
We can bite the bullet and give up some cultivation for now, why would we give away other two is silly and I rather not get tied into a quest with it which we won't be here for.
Taking the quest is probably the best option. It needs to be done in a year and a day so we can put it of until way after our current table of missions are done.
I'm inclined to give up the brush, here. I don't think it's super relevant to us personally, so it's effectively a loss of money since we can't sell it. And trading money to solve a problem like this isn't a huge loss.
[X] For the adulation lost, offer a sliver of your own power, once and done. (-100 XP from cultivation XP earned this turn, before multipliers)
I like this best. It's simple, to the point, and sounds more like the sort of thing that won't happen again unless the offense happens again.
the brush is a cyan level brush. even if we never use it cyan grade gear isnt cheap or easy to come by. please dont throw the brush away nilly willy when a perfectly good alternative is here
[] Offer one service, which must be within your current power, to be completed within a year and a day (Locks in a Quest from the Spirit.)
I think I'll vote for this one cause I'm never one to say no to more side quests and I feel like this is the best option for making peace with this river in the long term rather than a bribe that mollifies him for the short term with no guarantee he won't cause trouble over the long term which I feel is important for trying to fix our relationship with the Priests
I think I prefer [] For the adulation lost, offer a sliver of your own power, once and done. (-100 XP from cultivation XP earned this turn, before multipliers)
Advancement has other requirements so this might not slow us down all that much. Giving up the dream idol seems like the kind of thing that would mean people might find out we had it to begin with, especially since the ministry's going to be looking into us. The brush is a cyan item so id prefer to keep it and we always seem to have things we want to do so taking the quest would mean not doing something else later.
[X] For the adulation lost, offer a sliver of your own power, once and done. (-100 XP from cultivation XP earned this turn, before multipliers)
I like this best. It's simple, to the point, and sounds more like the sort of thing that won't happen again unless the offense happens again.
Damn, I would be up for doing another spirit quest but with it being an obligation to be called in and Ling Qi's position don't know if we can responsibly take it. Prob gonna go with offering up raw power.
And whilst the cultivation cost isn't massive, combined with the political loss and this sabotage is starting to hurt, I really hope we can figure out what's been going on here. Reminds me of the Yan Renshu puppet incident except this time we actually got got.
Giving up the dream idol seems like the kind of thing that would mean people might find out we had it to begin with, especially since the ministry's going to be looking into us.
If they look into us, I think they're more likely to find out if we keep it. (Also, giving it away indicates we don't value it as much, which is a benefit if it does get found out.)
Honestly, just give it the idol. This is a spirit, it is not going to exhibit the thing, it'll end up at the bottom of a body of water with the rest of its gold and whatever other doodads it keeps. Even if people come sniffing around, it may very well just tell them we bribed it, but not necessarily with what. And if they decided to piss it off and dig around its belongings, then they'll find the idol but the spirit will be completely non-cooperative as to where the thing came from. All of which is much better than them finding it among our actual belongings.
As an alternative we can just pay in cultivation. The quest is going to be annoying, time consuming and quite possibly illegal so let's not do it.
Honestly, You know what I would like to do for a quest? Rewrite the song to take all ten spirits into account, give Hanyi time to practice it, and then give a private performance for the spirit. And then tell the spirit who deceived us, if we've found out by then. Redress the original wrong, go out of our way for the wronged, and give the blame its' proper target.
Can we do subvotes to suggest a quest to the spirit? Like:
[] Offer one service, which must be within your current power, to be completed within a year and a day (Locks in a Quest from the Spirit.)
- [] Give the spirit a private performance of the complete song.
