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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here

I'm fairly sure he is being legit, but there is going to be a lot of action investment to keep group strife down, and we already committed to a AP intensive course
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here

We have already entered the final preparations for the summit. Rigth now we have to rendezvous with Reixang and GG, share the demands of all the main participants and construct, through debate, prioritizing and compromise, a cohesive and compelling action plan for the summit itself. Including any new player into the decision planning of that just spells disaster. Even more so if it's a Jin from the MoI we barely know.

To clarify. I'm not saying we shoud keep secrets from the MoI. We'll truthfully and dutifully transmit our intentions and our conclusions, and accept, if not neccessarily include, any feedback they give.
This is just my POV, but I think that the more personal approach should be taken after we have proven our proffesional competence and success.

And he also should prove he desrves the position. Everyone one in our inner circle has earned that position and is heavely invested in this project. Including this Jin guy, no matter how reasonable he seems, it's a disservice to them.
After the summit, if the Jin is stationed here as the junior MoI minder, we can start letting him in into the inner workings.
 
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
I do believe that there is such a thing as a "good" Jin, just as much as there is a cuddly "friendly" Bai.
He would have to prove himself.

[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here

Letting a Jin we know nothing about into the decision and planning loop? Ahahaha fuck no.
 
[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.

You know what, I decided this is the more fun option, for one key reason, and the consequences of him blowing our trust aren't likely to be decisive.

The thing that makes this option more fun is being all accommodating with an open and inclusive discourse... and then hitting him with a surprise turtle boy. Basically, it's a test. If he can't match our disposition with the stress test of our pet Xuan, then we withdraw that level of coordination. Importantly, this would put the failure in his court, not ours. As an agent of the Ministry of Integrity, there's an expectation that he be able to put aside clan feuds and act with neutrality.

His position as an MoI apprentice cuts both ways, and we can use it to rein in some kinds of potential misbehavious, if we manage it carefully. And thinking about it, I'd prefer to take an approach that proactively tackles some of the potential risks over an approach that passively shrinks away from some of the potential risks.

Lastly, the close approach gives us more levers to play Jin Tae off of Xuan Shi, distracting him and keeping him off our back when we need it. We can coordinate with Xuan Shi ahead of time no problem, so the risks are minimized. Especially since Savage Seas and Alabaster Sands are both on the other side of the empire; there's rhetorical options open for us to play around with as long as they don't make it into policy, which they won't because we don't want them to be policy and we'd be coordinating things from the shadows. There's a lot of potential in feeding Xuan Shi with unconventional positions to keep Jin Tae off balance or open him up to considering positions that he wouldn't otherwise, if for no other reason than opposition to Xuan Shi. True politics! At last! Mwahahahahaha!

Edit: we can also use Meizhen in this role, though with somewhat less latitude because political and geographic relations with Thousand Lakes are closer, she has a supervisor, and the Bai are very unchill. That said, she does have subordinates who could potentially be used for the role of sending Jin Tae in odd directions using hot takes.
 
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[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
I'm incredibly torn on this vote.

On the one hand
[] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
is the obviously more professionally intelligent option. We have goals that we can't fail to achieve and risking it for a potential husbando doesn't really make sense, especially given that some of our already built relationships already hate him by virtue of his family being massive dicks. Keeping Tae at a distance also limits what we can accidentally feed him directly but he's still going to be doing his spy bullshit either way. This is the smart but boring option in my opinion.

On the other
[] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
is the potentially more interesting narrative option. We introduce more opportunities for highly charged social interactions to take place as well as develop a contact in another ducal family. Jin Tae has also been noted to be very attractive to Ling Qi a couple times now so he may end up being an at least decent option for a complicated romantic relationship for Ling Qi to work some of her problems out through without impacting one of the more attractive (for us the readers) options that could be pursued later. It also opens up opportunities for Ling Qi to do some counter-spy work against an Imperial asset which is something she hasn't gotten to do any of yet and will probably be an area of expanding importance for both her own barony and as CRX's left hand.

Since we didn't get any numbers or other direction on relative failure rates or other meta information I like
[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
significantly more for the potential for spicy drama and other valuable experiences for LQ.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
Adhoc vote count started by EternalObserver on Oct 12, 2022 at 4:42 AM, finished with 78 posts and 52 votes.
 
Hmm, yeah, thinking more on it, this vote kind of boils down to a "Do you Do the Thing or not Do the Thing?" vote. And historically, Doing the Thing has been more interesting, while not Doing the Thing usually results in the narrative meandering around until it finds some other direction to go in. Which is a bit of a waste of time, which isn't something we have in abundance. So, counterintuitively, to save time I'm inclined to go for the closer relationship.

If problems or complications arise, then we can just... deal with them? That's something we've been missing from the plotline, and sometimes the quest itself, as a whole: actual problems to actually spend our time resolving. We do a lot of prep work, we do a lot of getting confused about what prep work we want to do, but we don't get a lot of execution in relative terms. If problems don't come up, cool, we're ahead. If problems do come up, cool, we have something to do and give the narrative some real texture.

Obviously, problems can come up through the arms length option as well. However, in the past when we've had problems come from things we barely acknowledged, we've had very real trouble even beginning to do anything about those problems. The reason is simple too, we just didn't have the narrative detail on the subject to, well, do anything about it. If we don't, if Ling Qi doesn't, have information about a problem, it tends to take a long time to poke around investigating before kicking off the process of starting to put together an action plan and... viola, by the time we're in place to respond the damage has either mostly passed us by or we have a new crisis(that we're unprepared for) to deal with instead.

I choose the path of information. Because that is almost always the path of action.

[X] Take a close approach, allow him into the decision and planning loop of most of their actions. Keep him close, and maybe, just maybe outright convince him that you're right.
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
[X] You can't be fully sure of Jin Tae's intentions, given his family and work. Keep communication professional and arms length. There is too much to risk here
 
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