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

TalonofAnathrax said:

The wording of the vote suggests that by giving the Diao in incomplete version of the facts, we will be misleading them regarding what actually happens and they will be rounding up children they suspect may be sacrificed and/or who were "abandoned" for sacrifice. It even seems like they won't only grab fox children, because they'll be hunting for sacrificial rites practiced by locals (to the fox). This brings me back to the targeting issue: It's also hard to survive as an abandoned orphan, while it's easy to grab poor kids who aren't actually abandoned by mistake. Similarly, methods to identify "how children are being mistreated" by local rich folk have historically been really terrible, so if they go around trying to guess who'll sacrifice their kids I don't expect them to get it right most of the time.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

While I think this post is fearmongering, I also think it's a valid fear.

I think you're underestimating the fear on the opposite side though. The fear that they'll be disappearing any and all potential sacrifices for Madame Grey and taking them in such a way that we (an outsider from the Diao with no connections into the clan) won't know what happened to them. If we go around pushing the trauma buttons of the 2nd most powerful clan in the Emerald Seas, we're going to find it difficult to get involved if they start feeling existentially threatened.

Honestly? 70% chance of success is pretty good. We're a very busy person with a lot of irons in the fire, and this particular iron is one we're 100% circling back to later. We need more personal power. Su Ling needs more personal power. We need a Diao Contact we can actually trust. I think it'd be a good idea to get our Imperial Overseer to witness the subjugation (so that he can attest to the honor/virtue of it and the heroes involved). There's a lot of ground work to be done before we can solve the issue.

In either option, we're trusting the Diao and the Ministry to handle it. If they bungle the handling because we didn't give enough information that's on us. However, if they go around kidnapping children that's on them for having super powers and still bungling the targeting that badly. Frankly, in this deathworld there should be no shortage of orphans and runaways of all kinds. Dealing with the children will be something the Diao will be handling for now, but may involve Ling Qi and Su Ling making decisions about them later on. Su Ling is almost certainly the closest blood relative to the foxbloods, after all.

We already know that many areas of the Empire have manpower struggles, a legacy of the detonation of Golden Fields that the Empire still hasn't fully recovered from. Count clans are so fabulously wealthy that mortal wealth is less than pocket change for them, the ability to provide for the abducted children is there and a motivation to do so is there. Honestly, this should be good for them so long as they're orphans and not mistargeted working kids.

In the case that they're mistargeted working kids, the best thing we can do for them later is getting the kids to be shunted towards the Ling. From there we can figure out who wants to give back to their guardians (like Ling Qi getting back in contact with Ling Qingge) and who doesn't. It'll take a few years, but securing a system for the neglected to get picked up and sent to us gives us a steady supply of scions and gives the children a way to escape to a place that'll take care of them. The region will have less issues with crime and spirits like Madame Grey will go hungry.

Yes, it'll take a longer amount of time and more personal effort. There will be people suffering in the meantime. That said, a journey may be long and harsh but it's worth it if we can show something beautiful to others at the end right? This is a fairly crude way to enforce our Domain onto others, and yet I think it's worth it. These are mortal kids that are currently discarded and neglected. It'll take a little bit, but stealing them for ourselves should be better for everyone involved c:

Got some musing about the possible identity of our saboteur. Or rather, their ultimate sponsor. General consensus has been somebody unhappy with our cultural leanings, and I'm inclined to agree. One of the complications with that, however, has been trying to figure out who is upset enough by that kind of abstract to make a move while being light enough on the means at their disposal to screw it up like they did. A big player could afford to make it as a minor move over something that annoyed them, but you'd expect them to have succeeded. For a minor player, where the chance of failure is much higher, the risks of failure are also a lot greater, and that doesn't fit into a sensible risk/reward pattern for an abstract motive; you'd expect a personal grievance there.

I think I've come up with a plausible answer that satisfies most of the bounds we have to work with. The sabotage was directed by a member of the Bao who is culturally aligned with, as a catchall, Imperial Conservatives.

The added connection from Bao Qian's courting of Ling Qi provides the additional motivation to act. If somebody wants our cultural projects to fail, then they also don't want a marriage between their clan and ours, and they especially don't want to see one of their own scions publicly managing our cultural project in action through Hanyi's performances. As for risk, if it's a Bao, then they're at a lot less of a risk for messing with our affairs than many others would be, because of the presence of Bao Qian in the matter. Sure, the Diao and/or their vassals won't appreciate some Bao agent messing around on their territory, but since Bao Qian was already dealing on that territory, it edges into "family matters" where there's an understanding from all parties(because the Bao are rich/powerful and the matter is relatively minor) that the drama, if discovered, should be swept under the rug to save face and spare mutually disfavourable escalation.

But it's also interesting if you look at the specific outcomes of the concert sabotage. For a Bao trying to spike Ling Qi's cultural cred and shove a wedge in-between her and the Bao, or at least Bao Qian, most of the possibilities score a "win", even failure conditions.

Let's say Bao Qian caught the mail fraud right off the bat. Now he has to decide whether to keep that quiet or bring it to Ling Qi's attention. If he keeps it quiet, that's potential blackmail sitting in the saboteur's pocket they can reveal to Ling Qi to undermine her trust in him. If he comes out and tells her, that's still unsettling/unpleasant and has the potential to raise suspicions because it's coming out of left field. Any failure in the performance would have trashed Ling Qi's cultural standing and created huge tensions with Bao Qian. And with a fallguy in place to take the heat, the operation makes sense if the goal was multi-faceted shitstirring, which would fit for a motivated anti-neo-weilu Bao actor.

Also, if the above is true, part of me wonders if Diao Hualing doesn't already suspect, and she's sending us to go do the fieldwork so the actual discovery of a Bao connection can be placed at our feet. She reaps the benefits of cracking a case involving committal bad actors, while Ling Qi's involvement with the Bao, through Bao Qian's courtship, acts as a grounding wire for inter-clan tensions. She stays on the periphery of the matter rather than being seen to have personally crossed unspoken lines, and Ling Qi's involvement on both ends of the issue draw most of the attention.

[X] Bring round the subject of the fox children, but avoid mentioning the Diao connection you discovered, leave the matter with the deviant cultivation and sacrificial practices going on. [70% Success. Success means avoiding threats and having some fraction of the Diao enforcement turning to rounding up stray children. May be temporary.]

[X] Bring round the subject of the fox children, but avoid mentioning the Diao connection you discovered, leave the matter with the deviant cultivation and sacrificial practices going on. [70% Success. Success means avoiding threats and having some fraction of the Diao enforcement turning to rounding up stray children. May be temporary.]

Another thing to note here is that there's a difference between us not throwing their connection to this issue in their face and the Diao actually being unaware of it. Doubly so once they get down to investigating what's going on.

They aren't exactly idiots, and they know their own history better than we do.

I doubt they'll screw up because they missed out on the practical details of what happened here.

[X] Bring round the subject of the fox children, using the Diao connections you've discovered to make implications, let the possibilities of deviant cultivation and sacrificial methods to do the rest. [80% Success. Will cause some friction with Diao Hualing even on success, will cause more stringent attention on the matter of Madam Grey. Negative Diao rep on failure. Other potential side effects.)

I want to pressure Madam Grey and I don't want to play it safe.

[X] Bring round the subject of the fox children, using the Diao connections you've discovered to make implications, let the possibilities of deviant cultivation and sacrificial methods to do the rest. [80% Success. Will cause some friction with Diao Hualing even on success, will cause more stringent attention on the matter of Madam Grey. Negative Diao rep on failure. Other potential side effects.)

Be aggressive! B E AGGRESSIVE!

Also, I want to add how glad I am that we chose the Meizhen's Dad Gift Action.
We knew it would boost the rolls for the Long Hand of the Law quest, but I wouldn't have thought that Su Ling's matter would be included.

Valmond said:

There is no need to claim that there is somekind of cult going on.
All we need to say is that the malicious fox spirit intentionally leaves a child as a "payment" for the human they kill, and then eats the child when they get abandoned by the grieving next of kin and/or village they were left in.
No actual cult or worship involved.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

If a bunch of humans are symbolically recreating the origin of a divine being, using tools that were provided to them by said being, they are absolutely engaging in worship. The fact that they don't like said being and would prefer them to never return is irrelevant, plenty of historical cults had such a goal.

[X] Bring round the subject of the fox children, using the Diao connections you've discovered to make implications, let the possibilities of deviant cultivation and sacrificial methods to do the rest. [80% Success. Will cause some friction with Diao Hualing even on success, will cause more stringent attention on the matter of Madam Grey. Negative Diao rep on failure. Other potential side effects.)

[X] Bring round the subject of the fox children, using the Diao connections you've discovered to make implications, let the possibilities of deviant cultivation and sacrificial methods to do the rest. [80% Success. Will cause some friction with Diao Hualing even on success, will cause more stringent attention on the matter of Madam Grey. Negative Diao rep on failure. Other potential side effects.)

I think it's good to give them the whole truth to work with and see what they do with that, even if it'll generate some friction.

JohnnieBoy123 said:

If a bunch of humans are symbolically recreating the origin of a divine being, using tools that were provided to them by said being, they are absolutely engaging in worship. The fact that they don't like said being and would prefer them to never return is irrelevant, plenty of historical cults had such a goal.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

The people are acting like people, not recreating anything, that's the whole problem with the situation and why it works so well.
There is no act of worship, reverence, or appeasement, just people, reacting like people.

Valmond said:

The people are acting like people, not recreating anything, that's the whole problem with the situation and why it works so well.
There is no act of worship, reverence, or appeasement, just people, reacting like people.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

Banishing fox-blooded from society so that they suffer the pains of isolation is absolutely reflective of the betrayal of the fox spirits at the hands of humans. Worship can also include punishing the deity in question by proxy. This was a whole thing historically.

Once you are saying that the religious practices of the Romans and Greeks don't count you have gone seriously astray.