Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Aliya
Someone I might become
- Location
- Kazakhstan
- Pronouns
- They/She/It
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
The issue with disruption is that there hasn't ever been a reason to use it. Or, more precisely the only valid target for it would be Cai Shenhua, and I do think she will find it funny in a "Let her cook" way, but there is was literally no other time where having this effect would be of use.
The issue with disruption is that there hasn't ever been a reason to use it. Or, more precisely the only valid target for it would be Cai Shenhua, and I do think she will find it funny in a "Let her cook" way, but there is was literally no other time where having this effect would be of use.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
Ultimately, I think this is the better choice. We're not trying to parry Whites with this, because that's ridiculous. We're trying to ease the friction of interactions between different beings. Leaving a few rough edges so people can 'Get Used to it' is not removing the friction.
Ultimately, I think this is the better choice. We're not trying to parry Whites with this, because that's ridiculous. We're trying to ease the friction of interactions between different beings. Leaving a few rough edges so people can 'Get Used to it' is not removing the friction.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
- Location
- Rivendell
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
This seems like it actually expands our toolset, and it also does exactly what Ling Qi just said she's going to use the art for. Dispersion not only has a condition thats not really great for use in settlements, it also seems like… something LQ is already kinda doing with the art anyway? Just a more potent version without bringing something new to the table.
This seems like it actually expands our toolset, and it also does exactly what Ling Qi just said she's going to use the art for. Dispersion not only has a condition thats not really great for use in settlements, it also seems like… something LQ is already kinda doing with the art anyway? Just a more potent version without bringing something new to the table.
I think Grounding is potentially quite interesting, and some of the kneejerk reactions to its wording aren't necessarily accurate.
There's been some reaction against the whole "are one" thing since that feels off after our recent multitude stuff. However, it isn't actually saying "all are one" or "everyone is one" or any of that Dream cult unity stuff. It says "world and spirit are one". Combined with the general function and description of it ("Grounding") my read is that it's more about understanding the basic metaphysics and applying them here. Understanding how the world and the environment are not in fact separate from spiritual influences, and applying that understanding to assert yourself within that context.
The "apply to more targets" is also interesting. This sounds like it's suggesting it's good at handling multiple spirits'/people's influences at once, which would point it towards being good as a general diplomatic tool. Looking at trying to handle diplomatic meets like this and creating a nice diplomacy zone, or just asserting ourselves in the face of multiple parties. The whole lingering stuff could also maybe tie in thematically with our fief work and geomancy well what with trying to create a nice safe place for people.
I think there's a lot of potentially good stuff there that's been overlooked because Dispersion has a really solid immediately visible vibe with some of our recent trials.
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
There's been some reaction against the whole "are one" thing since that feels off after our recent multitude stuff. However, it isn't actually saying "all are one" or "everyone is one" or any of that Dream cult unity stuff. It says "world and spirit are one". Combined with the general function and description of it ("Grounding") my read is that it's more about understanding the basic metaphysics and applying them here. Understanding how the world and the environment are not in fact separate from spiritual influences, and applying that understanding to assert yourself within that context.
The "apply to more targets" is also interesting. This sounds like it's suggesting it's good at handling multiple spirits'/people's influences at once, which would point it towards being good as a general diplomatic tool. Looking at trying to handle diplomatic meets like this and creating a nice diplomacy zone, or just asserting ourselves in the face of multiple parties. The whole lingering stuff could also maybe tie in thematically with our fief work and geomancy well what with trying to create a nice safe place for people.
I think there's a lot of potentially good stuff there that's been overlooked because Dispersion has a really solid immediately visible vibe with some of our recent trials.
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Dispersion, seek not negation but acclimation, one must be touched to understand (Bastion's negation may affect more potent environmental effects, but can never fully negate them.)
Theaxofwar
Definitely not a Bunny Cat in disguise.
- Location
- Standing right behind you
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
Seems to me this is about making the point we aren't so different, spirit and world, where dispersion is about tolerance or accommodation to different things.
Seems to me this is about making the point we aren't so different, spirit and world, where dispersion is about tolerance or accommodation to different things.
- Location
- Staring into the void
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
[X] Dispersion, seek not negation but acclimation, one must be touched to understand (Bastion's negation may affect more potent environmental effects, but can never fully negate them.)
[X] Dispersion, seek not negation but acclimation, one must be touched to understand (Bastion's negation may affect more potent environmental effects, but can never fully negate them.)
TimEd
Meteor maker
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
Hmm. Switching because of good arguments, but really mainly because I'm curious to see how far exactly we can push that "negation" bit.
Hmm. Switching because of good arguments, but really mainly because I'm curious to see how far exactly we can push that "negation" bit.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
After thinking about it more, I think Grounding is the better option, mainly because of Ling Qi's plans- both for MoSS in general and in the long term.
Ling Qi wants to use MoSS to train her priests and Ministry of Spiritual Affairs. That's goal number one. Goal no. 2 is she wants to introduce Weilu methods to the Foundations and hopefully the Emerald Seas in the long term.
However, as Wang Lian said, though the Weilu methods are good, they are too personal. They require individual relationships with spirits and thus are difficult to scale up.
Grounding HELPS with that. It works on multiple targets, like wards, and creates a lingering effect afterward. This can help set the ground for further rites and rituals instead of relying on a spirit liking you before it squashes you. I'm confident that this can and will help with scalability.
Firstly, one person can pacify and neutralise many spirit's effects without active engagement. It won't go a long way towards standardisation - we'll need to make more tweaks to MoSS for that- but it's a start on that path, imo.
Plus, Dispersion feels like SNR and Grounding feels like TRF. Even though Dispersion may be more "active", in a fighting sense, it's difficult to make it visible, just like how SNR is usually a line about a black film or whatever unless it's the anti-finisher. We'll leap from one problem to another. The active effect may be the reduction in effects needing LQ, but it's not as eye-catching or narratively visible as a total removal of negative environmental effects, like it does for Grounding. That'll probably help with more narrative engagement, imo.
For example, if Ling Qi was mediating between Xia Ren and the Weeping Willow, Grounding completely removes their passive effects on lower ranks (like the feeling of a knife on your skin) instead of a reduction. Then we don't have to spend time maintaining it, and can do our political and mediation stuff.
And lastly, well, both Dispersion and Grounding talk about understanding, but Grounding asserts that you can try and understand two different things by looking at their connections, the points where they intersect and resemble each other. I think that also fits the idea of Multitude. Everything is different, hut some things are similar enough that you can apply different concepts to them and all.
That feels very Ling Qi to me compared to "you have to touch me for me to understand". Ling Qi is no longer ignorant. She seeks knowledge and understanding, and I think this best reflects that.
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
Ling Qi wants to use MoSS to train her priests and Ministry of Spiritual Affairs. That's goal number one. Goal no. 2 is she wants to introduce Weilu methods to the Foundations and hopefully the Emerald Seas in the long term.
However, as Wang Lian said, though the Weilu methods are good, they are too personal. They require individual relationships with spirits and thus are difficult to scale up.
Grounding HELPS with that. It works on multiple targets, like wards, and creates a lingering effect afterward. This can help set the ground for further rites and rituals instead of relying on a spirit liking you before it squashes you. I'm confident that this can and will help with scalability.
Firstly, one person can pacify and neutralise many spirit's effects without active engagement. It won't go a long way towards standardisation - we'll need to make more tweaks to MoSS for that- but it's a start on that path, imo.
Plus, Dispersion feels like SNR and Grounding feels like TRF. Even though Dispersion may be more "active", in a fighting sense, it's difficult to make it visible, just like how SNR is usually a line about a black film or whatever unless it's the anti-finisher. We'll leap from one problem to another. The active effect may be the reduction in effects needing LQ, but it's not as eye-catching or narratively visible as a total removal of negative environmental effects, like it does for Grounding. That'll probably help with more narrative engagement, imo.
For example, if Ling Qi was mediating between Xia Ren and the Weeping Willow, Grounding completely removes their passive effects on lower ranks (like the feeling of a knife on your skin) instead of a reduction. Then we don't have to spend time maintaining it, and can do our political and mediation stuff.
And lastly, well, both Dispersion and Grounding talk about understanding, but Grounding asserts that you can try and understand two different things by looking at their connections, the points where they intersect and resemble each other. I think that also fits the idea of Multitude. Everything is different, hut some things are similar enough that you can apply different concepts to them and all.
That feels very Ling Qi to me compared to "you have to touch me for me to understand". Ling Qi is no longer ignorant. She seeks knowledge and understanding, and I think this best reflects that.
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
Last edited:
- Location
- United States of America
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
[x] Dispersion, seek not negation but acclimation, one must be touched to understand (Bastion's negation may affect more potent environmental effects, but can never fully negate them.)
It speaks about negation, not negotiation. Those words have very different meanings.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Thanks. I missed that.
[X] Grounding, Through and out, world and spirit are one, understand and stand tall. (Bastion's negation may apply to more targets, and linger even without your maintaining attention.)
Time to actually support a thing, I guess.
So, it's no secret that MoSS doesn't have the most memorable presence in the story. We've had the art since turn 7, so 10 months now, and its presence is mostly aspirational. This is down to two main factors, plus a third. The first is lack of opportunity, we just have not encountered wild or untempered spirits that often. Since getting the art, it's been that underground dream-eating fungus, Black Skies Yearning on the road to first meeting the White Sky, and Snowblossom lake. The second, and probably most significant, factor is lack of clarity of use; the art is broadly not that flamboyant, melding into our general songstress schtick so it's not always clear that we're even using it.
The third is basically a combo of the fact we completely flubbed our first named use of the art and the previous point, since it hasn't been referenced by name again since. Kind of amusingly, not even in this scene where we're discussing its cultivation, heh. But yes, the biggest challenges facing the art are its understated role even when it's being used as the primary tool of engagement and the relative rarity of circumstances where the art applies.
Grounding is the better pick in both cases, in terms of narrative presence for the art and its associated role of Spirit Seeker/Priestess.
On what's basically the special effects weight/obviousness of use for the art, it's this Bastion technique we're altering that is the most obvious and in your face effect of the art, though we've never obviously used it. The other option's approach of attenuation and acclimation is neat, but in practice it has the issue that we and our party are still getting hit by the environmental effect we're mitigating, so it... doesn't look like it's doing as much. It's that simple. Grounding, meanwhile, lends itself to use in larger scale scenarios that may only be possible in the first place because it's covering for weaker allies who couldn't bear the heat of the situation otherwise. Very much an a clear use. And it brings me to the second point.
Grounding facilitates more opportunities for use. Being larger-scale and lingering without direct attention means that it works in situations where we're supporting weaker subordinate in adverse conditions, in a way that Dispersion with its obligatory bleed-through can't. Work crews in weather conditions(beaver work crews?), harvesting expeditions(with the beavers!?), convoys through spiritually disturbed territory(rodent-shaped convoys as a random idea), maintaining exorcism worksites(perhaps useful in refurbishing spooky haunted corners of a certain beaver palace), and as others have mentioned, Ling Qi's priesthood training. These are all scenarios that either work better or are only realistic in the first place with the characteristics of Grounding. This means more situations where Ling Qi has the opportunity to show off her spirit wrangling in a meaningfully impactful way.
Plus, Grounding's version is still capable of mitigating the harmful environmental effects of powerful spirits. It's true that Dispersion is better at this, which works well in scenarios where it's Ling Qi and a small group of elites braving some danger. But, like, realistically yrs isn't going to throw an environmental challenge at us that we can't handle, because what would be the point of it, narratively? If that scenario pops up and we picked Grounding, the scene is likely to play out more or less the same as if we pick Dispersion. Call it meta gaming if you want, but Dispersion brings a profile of advantage that invites a very specific kind of challenge which essentially leaves us in the same place we started. An environmental grind on the cusp of our tolerances, same as it would be otherwise. Meanwhile, Grounding broadens the kinds of challenges we have the tools to face at all, in ways that work particularly well with the existence and development of the fief and land holdings in general.
In terms of the narrative opportunities, and opportunity costs, involved Grounding is the clear winner.
Time to actually support a thing, I guess.
So, it's no secret that MoSS doesn't have the most memorable presence in the story. We've had the art since turn 7, so 10 months now, and its presence is mostly aspirational. This is down to two main factors, plus a third. The first is lack of opportunity, we just have not encountered wild or untempered spirits that often. Since getting the art, it's been that underground dream-eating fungus, Black Skies Yearning on the road to first meeting the White Sky, and Snowblossom lake. The second, and probably most significant, factor is lack of clarity of use; the art is broadly not that flamboyant, melding into our general songstress schtick so it's not always clear that we're even using it.
The third is basically a combo of the fact we completely flubbed our first named use of the art and the previous point, since it hasn't been referenced by name again since. Kind of amusingly, not even in this scene where we're discussing its cultivation, heh. But yes, the biggest challenges facing the art are its understated role even when it's being used as the primary tool of engagement and the relative rarity of circumstances where the art applies.
Grounding is the better pick in both cases, in terms of narrative presence for the art and its associated role of Spirit Seeker/Priestess.
On what's basically the special effects weight/obviousness of use for the art, it's this Bastion technique we're altering that is the most obvious and in your face effect of the art, though we've never obviously used it. The other option's approach of attenuation and acclimation is neat, but in practice it has the issue that we and our party are still getting hit by the environmental effect we're mitigating, so it... doesn't look like it's doing as much. It's that simple. Grounding, meanwhile, lends itself to use in larger scale scenarios that may only be possible in the first place because it's covering for weaker allies who couldn't bear the heat of the situation otherwise. Very much an a clear use. And it brings me to the second point.
Grounding facilitates more opportunities for use. Being larger-scale and lingering without direct attention means that it works in situations where we're supporting weaker subordinate in adverse conditions, in a way that Dispersion with its obligatory bleed-through can't. Work crews in weather conditions(beaver work crews?), harvesting expeditions(with the beavers!?), convoys through spiritually disturbed territory(rodent-shaped convoys as a random idea), maintaining exorcism worksites(perhaps useful in refurbishing spooky haunted corners of a certain beaver palace), and as others have mentioned, Ling Qi's priesthood training. These are all scenarios that either work better or are only realistic in the first place with the characteristics of Grounding. This means more situations where Ling Qi has the opportunity to show off her spirit wrangling in a meaningfully impactful way.
Plus, Grounding's version is still capable of mitigating the harmful environmental effects of powerful spirits. It's true that Dispersion is better at this, which works well in scenarios where it's Ling Qi and a small group of elites braving some danger. But, like, realistically yrs isn't going to throw an environmental challenge at us that we can't handle, because what would be the point of it, narratively? If that scenario pops up and we picked Grounding, the scene is likely to play out more or less the same as if we pick Dispersion. Call it meta gaming if you want, but Dispersion brings a profile of advantage that invites a very specific kind of challenge which essentially leaves us in the same place we started. An environmental grind on the cusp of our tolerances, same as it would be otherwise. Meanwhile, Grounding broadens the kinds of challenges we have the tools to face at all, in ways that work particularly well with the existence and development of the fief and land holdings in general.
In terms of the narrative opportunities, and opportunity costs, involved Grounding is the clear winner.
Last edited:
