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NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

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Alectai said:
Seems pretty decisive, I wonder if we'll get that extra update?
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Well, given that if we want another update out today I'm gonna have to call it now, I guess I'm calling it!

Anyways, cultivation basketball. A thought that just occurred to me.

Cultivation sports in general, but Space Jam-esque cultivation shenanigans would be a delight.
Scheduled vote count started by Imperial Fister on Apr 21, 2023 at 6:56 PM, finished with 41 posts and 15 votes.
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I've been thinking about how we could possibly get past the Enemy's detection. I have a feeling that whatever tripwires it put in placed are going to be passive, right now. Its not like its actively listening to every single conversation happening in the Norse lands, after all, if only because of how expensive such an effect would be, and the sheer processing power required.

I wonder encrypting the instructions could get the issue. On the lower end, disguising the steps by creating a story or poem whose symbolisms and references point out the method of cultivation, or perhaps is written in a different lanugauge. On the higher end, literally writing in code, and the reader would need to decode the text themselves.

Of course, there is that perception barrier that seems to be present, but I'm not sure how that would interact with the above methods.
 
My gut feeling says the next breakpoint is at 36, and that Odr Cultivation ultimately runs on the same cost breakpoints as Tricks.

If that is the case though, the next breakpoint on the Hearthroot should start getting some nice benefits, I'd bet it's actually the start of permanent ones.

As for the Fronds though... No idea, they produce an oil? But I'm not sure if that's just a minor detail or if that's the actual product. We'll have to see!
 
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Summer 6/Scouting Horra 4
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    • Stay and wait for Horra to go to his workshop
    While the prospect of learning what Horra plans to put in those pots and jars is admittingly appealing, the opportunity to nail Horra to the wall with something concrete is just too tempting to pass up on.

    So you sit on the fence as the seconds turn to minutes and the minutes drag on to hours. The little trickles of light streaming in from behind slowly trundling gray clouds dim to the bleak darkness of night. Rain begins to fall in a heavy downpour, battering everything down and driving everyone indoors from raw pressure.

    No matter how powerful one gets, the strength of Mother Nature inevitably puts you back in your place.

    Fortunately, as a spirit owl, silly things like low light levels and the pitter-patter of rain matter little to your super-powered senses. So when Horra opens the door to his house and shoulders a heavy, oil-slick cloak, you're ready to follow him into the night.

    He trudges through mud and gloom, shadows and gunk, all while you silently coast overhead. As he walks, the cloak drags across the ground and obscures his tracks both mundanely and physically. Broken branches are mended, disturbed leaves are righted, and footprints are filled back in.

    Frankly, it would make following him an absolute shit show.

    If you weren't an owl dressed in rags, that is.

    Since you are, the preparations are completely meaningless. It does, however, serve as a potent reminder that no matter how strong you are, no matter how many precautions you take, it only takes one random idiot to come along to render it all useless. Or worse, actively detrimental as he has to move slowly to allow the cloak to do its work, which makes him even easier to follow.

    After more than an hour of following this bastard through the freezing rain and descending fog, you arrive before a large tree with a broad knot on an end. Horra reaches into his belt and pulls out some kind of key.

    After looking over his shoulders as carefully as he can, he presses the key to the knot and red light shines bright. A moment later, the tree unfolds into a ladder, which he then climbs down at a swift pace.

    The tree begins to reseal itself, leaving you with little time to make a decision.

    What do you do?
    [ ] Dive in after him
    +Guarantees concrete evidence
    -You'll be trapped inside until he leaves
    [ ] Call it a day and go home
    +You now know where he keeps his skeletons
    -You'll have to visit again at a later date to get at them.

    0~0~0

    AN: Not much to say here.

    No moratorium, but this is the last update for today.
     
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    • [X] Call it a day and go home

    Too early to chase him into his sanctum--we know where it is, I'll call this trip a success.

    All in all, this operation I'd say is a complete success, and we garnered very little suspicion in gathering our intelligence as well.
     
    [X] Dive in after him

    I want that evidence, dammit, and we're on a pretty tight time limit to boot. As long as we can evade notice being in there as long as he is can be dealt with pretty easily (and that is the most likely scenario, I think, or the vote would be phrased differently), and even if we do get noticed we can almost certainly survive long enough to get out.
     
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    DeadmanwalkingXI said:
    [X] Dive in after him

    I want that evidence, dammit, and we're on a pretty tight time limit to boot. As long as we can evade notice being in there as long as he is can be dealt with, and even if we do get noticed we can almost certainly survive long enough to get out.
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    Our time limit isn't that tight, and I really do not want to be backed into a corner when our mobility is likely to be reduced, and our ability to escape sealed.

    We know where his sanctum is, which means we can invade it at our leisure. That's enough to call this operation a success. We don't want to break inside without a Felag at our back and our True Body present.
     
    Shard said:
    What tricks do we have prepared?
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    We've got a decent setup for a potential dogfight, but an underground sanctum is not a place for a dogfight. Our compatibility there is extraordinarily poor.

    It might have been worthwhile with another Fylgja--and I might have been willing to risk it if our Fylgja was Rank 6 or 7, but this is not a good time to invade when he's right there.

    Our Suspicion is low, but it's not zero. Call it a day and come back with friends and fire.

    As things stand? We've developed three attack surfaces we can exploit. We have excellent data on his support of the local banditry, we know he's getting a shitton of Metal from somewhere and is preparing a large variety of anti-personnel siege weapons--enough to infer his hand with the incoming clan of Dwarves, and we've identified where his Sanctum is hidden. That's enough to call this a smashing success, we don't need to push our luck.

    Remember, our plot armor is gone, and if we die here, everything we learned goes out the window.
     
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    Alectai said:
    Our time limit isn't that tight, and I really do not want to be backed into a corner when our mobility is likely to be reduced, and our ability to escape sealed.

    We know where his sanctum is, which means we can invade it at our leisure. That's enough to call this operation a success. We don't want to break inside without a Felag at our back and our True Body present.
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    It sort of is. With one Visit per season we only have three more before Steinarr's time limit expires. We can search for the bandits without one, but if we want to take them out as an organized attack, that's almost certainly a Visit, as is heading to Asvir to bring charges against Horra. That's two out of three right there, meaning we will get exactly one chance after this to get everything done before the time limit is up. We can put off the attack on the bandits if we have to, but it's not ideal at all.

    Also, the tree literally opens with a magical key...there is no physical path inside. How are we gonna get in there without following him? Steal the key? That sounds more risky, not less. Chop it open? That lets him know we're there 100% and likely hits all his contingency plans including possibly the destruction of the sanctum in some sort of explosion, taking the evidence with it.
     
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    DeadmanwalkingXI said:
    It sort of is. With one Visit per season we only have three more before Steinarr's time limit expires. We can search for the bandits without one, but if we want to take them out as an organized attack, that's almost certainly a Visit, as is heading to Asvir to bring charges against Horra. That's two out of three right there, meaning we will get exactly one chance after this to get everything done before the time limit is up. We can put off the attack on the bandits if we have to, but it's not ideal at all.

    Also, the tree literally opens with a magical key...there is no physical path inside. How are we gonna get in there without following him? Steal the key? That sounds more risky, not less.
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    On the contrary, I'm pretty sure when we call Go Time, it's all going to happen at once. We're not going to need to wait a full season to take our evidence to Town.

    Because once we declare Go Time, we're on the counter, to get our evidence and deliver it before launching our attack before he finds out about this and fucks off.

    Like, the tree might open with a magical key, but it still leads to a specific place, I sincerely doubt it's creating some kind of pocket realm that's only accessible through that specific mechanism. I don't think Horra is that skilled. If there was no risk of someone intruding when he's not there with his key, why would he go to such lengths to conceal his trail and hide where he's going? It'd be completely harmless for his close confidants to know where it is.
     
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    Alectai said:
    On the contrary, I'm pretty sure when we call Go Time, it's all going to happen at once. We're not going to need to wait a full season to take our evidence to Town.

    Because once we declare Go Time, we're on the counter, to get our evidence and deliver it before launching our attack before he finds out about this and fucks off.
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    Once we call 'go time', maybe...but whittling away his forces before we do that seems correct, and that's at least the bandit thing before then. Which means if we do the bandit thing this Winter, we're coming back here next Summer (and a year from now) at the earliest. That's cutting things real close. It's not necessarily wrong, but time is definitely a factor here.

    There's also still the question of how the hell we get in there without following him in. Like, following him in seems the safest way to do that to me (much less likely to be noticed or set off traps than the alternatives). We can wait to do it at 0 Suspicion I suppose, but I don't feel like that's a vast advantage.
     
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    DeadmanwalkingXI said:
    Once we call 'go time', maybe...but whittling away his forces before we do that seems correct, and that's at least the bandit thing before then.
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    Yeah, but it means the attack on his Sanctum is going to happen and then we're immediately going to go to the Headman with the evidence and follow that up with our Assault. There's not going to multiple months between them, it'll probably unfold over the course of days--if not hours.
     
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