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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Sure, and every delay can matter in a high stress and danger situation. I'm leery of any delay at all, but tipoffs are also bad, hence the middle route. I also sincerely doubt we're being given a choice where the explicit down side is somehow magically not a down side, y'know?



To clarify, I don't think he'll necessarily do anything intentionally. It's more a lack of trust in his judgment, or, to be more specific, an unwillingness to trust a completely unproven quantity in that regard (as we have no evidence at all of his judgment in this kind of situation).
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All of the sabotage incidents so far had had delays because they were random and we had no forewarning. We reached all in time and managed to prevent any significant injury.

While it's possible this attack may be worse, we actually know about it beforehand and can reach it. Ling Qi is a speed-specced cultivator who cannot be matched by most in her realm. And, as we don't know the enemy, we can't predict what they'll do with a tip off. Whether they'll ramp up sabotage, go into hiding until the worst moment, etc.

I think the delay is an acceptable sacrifice here. I mean, without Cao Chun's divination, it would have happened regardless, and may be longer than the time we'll have to wait.

And Jin Tae has shown to lack judgment in situations outside of his scope of learning. Or well, not judgement, but experience. But for something which he has been training for for years, I'm pretty surr he'll have good judgement. Plus, he has Chai Chun's vote of confidence here, with none of the disdain Cao showed with him earlier. That's good enough proof in my book.

Like, if I'm going to trust him to send trustworthy judges here, I'm going to trust him to have a good judgement for agents.

Edit: Also, according to Yrs on Discord, once the culprit is found, everyone will come together, regardless of the winning option. So we'll still have Zheng Fu content.
 
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Cao Chun is the professional here, and this is his field of expertise. This is an Official Op as well, and we just neutralized the MoI Reputation. Letting them take the lead in their area of focus on the recommendation of the professional should help keep any egos from being bruised.

The delay as a nuisance, but it's not like there's going to be no agents whatsoever doing damage control either.

Still, I'll think on it.
 
Oliver_Twister said:
I think Jin Tae's the best option here, just because there's no tip-off. The city attack already showed the power of secrecy, and we can use the info to plan more.
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That assumes Jin Tae is in fact no tip-off rather than a certain tip-off. Because fucking over the negotiations suits the MoI's interests, and he's more flexible in thought than Cao Chun.

[X] She would ask Zheng Fu to lay in wait. (Slight delay, less obvious tip off)
 
Winged One said:
That assumes Jin Tae is in fact no tip-off rather than a certain tip-off. Because fucking over the negotiations suits the MoI's interests, and he's more flexible in thought than Cao Chun.

[X] She would ask Zheng Fu to lay in wait. (Slight delay, less obvious tip off)
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The vote literally says Jin Tae provides no tip off. I sincerely doubt Yrs will lie to us here since the info in the brackets is OOC.

And the moratorium is still ongoing. It ends in about 21 minutes.

Edit: Plus, while they don't like what we're doing, the MoI takes imperial security very seriously. We got rep from them because of that, iirc. And, since 2/3 of the suspected groups are barbarians in their eyes, I doubt they'd let them go or sabotage an operation that may justify their xenophobia.

And Cao Chun can totally get rid of Jin Tae for messing such an important operation. He's just a lowly apprentice rn. Really, I don't know *why* Jin Tae would mess this up.
 
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Cold brutal realpolitik is telling me that perhaps an excellent path forward is to let Jin Tae take point. Our end goal is to get everyone to agree to this venture, not keep every worker safe. Letting Jin Tae takes point gives the MoL what they clearly want in this regards, and it might give us cause to push for the polar temple to be a large part of the investigation part arm of this venture.
 
Oliver_Twister said:
The vote literally says Jin Tae provides no tip off. I sincerely doubt Yrs will lie to us here since the info in the brackets is OOC.
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The information in the brackets is also written to be concise. I think the only guarantee we can take away is that Jin Tae will not tip off the culprits by his conspicuous absence the way Ling Qi or, to a lesser extent, Zheng Fu would. It seems like a hell of a reach to assume that we're also getting hard OOC confirmation, with no particular prompting, that Jin Tae is personally innocent of any involvement in the sabotage.
 
Given who his direct boss is I find it baseless to consider Jin Tae is connected in anyway to the sabotage. I may not like him, but I don't think his leash is long enough to get away with anything.
 
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Wiadi said:
The information in the brackets is also written to be concise. I think the only guarantee we can take away is that Jin Tae will not tip off the culprits by his conspicuous absence the way Ling Qi or, to a lesser extent, Zheng Fu would. It seems like a hell of a reach to assume that we're also getting hard OOC confirmation, with no particular prompting, that Jin Tae is personally innocent of any involvement in the sabotage.
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Jin Tae has not been involved in any negotiations so far. Currently, he's a faceless MoI agent at the summit compared to Cao Chun (vocal negotiator), Ling Qi (negotiator and organiser) and Zheng Fu (eventual negotiator. Person of relative interest).

And I think it's a hell of a reach to assume that something that has been consistently truthful like info brackets will suddenly lie to us. If Yrs did that, it'll ruin reader trust. It's just bad quest designing.

I don't like Jin Tae, and I think this suspicion is getting ridiculous. He's a baby Green with no experience in any of the skillset needed to sabotage us, such as geomancy. He's the apprentice of a cultivator whose Way was made for stuff like this. He can't hide something like that from Cao.

The only reason there's even a longer delay is because of his low cultivation because he's one year younger than us. If it was higher, I really doubt that Zheng Fu's signalling would be better. Even then, he's still a ducal with a highly constructed art suite.
 
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Knowing when the enemy will act and having a strong suspicion of how is an opportunity we can't be sure we'll have again. Preserving it is incredibly valuable and worth taking on a fair amount of risk, and it's still debatable how much risk the third option even involves. Given that, it feels hard to recommend the other options.
 
[X] She would agree with Cao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)

The arguments against this have been dumb enough that I'm voting for it out of spite
 
[X] She would ask Zheng Fu to lay in wait. (Slight delay, less obvious tip off)

I'm not willing to risk the longer delay. A longer delay means higher chances of serious casualties, which aside from the obvious humanitarian costs weakens us politically. Jin Tae is probably slightly better for maximizing chances of catching the culprit but the cost to doing that could potentially be very serious, and I'm confident we can manage the operation even with a slight tip off.
 
I'm for Jin Tae taking point, and I think having Zheng Fu in the loop will increase his reaction speed. I think it was a good choice to bring him along, and as expected Cao Chun was very accepting of Zheng "spontaneity".

longer delay shouldn't be a long delay unless Jin Tae (and the MoI) are seriously underperformers. This is Jin Tae's supposed area of expertise, some of his first field work, if he flubs it that's on him. I'm trusting Cao Chun here with the lives of our people, and if his apprentice is found wanting that's an L for both him personally and the MoI at this event that has some ducal eyes on it. Including, notably, some very important people to the Cai and Sun.

as for saboteur . . . yeah I think the Meng Reactionaries may be a good fit. How would the Hui, who specialize in weaponized Nostalgia, keep the Meng under control? Crank up the dial on "the good of the past is constantly eroding" and add the carrot of "but we're excellent dukes at preserving it"
But it's strange. You'd think that Meng Dan's uncle wouldn't be part of the faction that hates her, since Meng Dan and Meng Diu stand to gain from our success?

alternatively . . . the Hui may have had extensive successful deals with the Ith'ia that have dried up in the Cai era. The Hui ruled for many hundreds of years, it's plausible that the Ith'ia got some ideas from the trickle-down of those rivers or explicit deals. Perhaps both.

I think the most likely culprit is the Ith'ia. It's known that the Bao had some contact with them prior to the war, and entirely plausible for the Meng and/or Hui to have made contact in the deep rootways of Xiangmen. The swamps of Meng's core territory are probably awful for burrowing deep, so it'd have to be from Xiangmen that the contact was made. In addition, if the Ith'ia are from our south and across the Polar Gate then they'd have knowledge of the Polar Nation's brand of qi.

And ultimately, it'd be wild for there to be a peer to Shu Yue meddling here that isn't a hostile actor to everyone involved. It's just a huge use of resources for something that doesn't seem to be that likely to be highest priority for even those with the most buy-in? Probably Yan Renshu's sponsor if I had to guess
 
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It's a tricky question yeah. Hard to say which choice is more "optimal"...

I think it's also worth noting here that it's not like we'll be relying on Jin Tae to protect everyone? Cao Chun said that they'd be using him as a spotter for the other agents.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
don't think Tae would actually sabotage us, but he might not put in his best efforts or screw up in various ways, depending on several factors we don't know about.
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Not put in his best effort on the task assigned to him by his direct superior? Task that is a direct part of the operation about rooting out dangerous possibly external saboteurs of Empire's projects? I think Jin Tae will be on his best behaviour, actually.

I don't really care about the delay, but I don't want the tip off. We can catch someone really good here, before the enemy realises that Cao Cun can see them.
 
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[X] She would agree with Cao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)

if the MoI decides against protecting our people in favor of maximizing odds of success . . . well that's a helpful metric to know imo
 
either go big
[ ] She would agree withCao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)

or go home
[ ] She would make her excuses tomorrow and lay in wait. (Immediate response, Obvious tip off)

Sorry Zheng Fu, middle of the road isnt the way this quest goes :V
 
[X] She would agree with Cao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)

During the city attack, we had two votes that could have impacted the outcome of the outcome. We either rushed in and immediately arrested Yan Renshu's cousin, limiting our information gathering for speed or waited longer. Then, we had another vote, to either rush in immediately and fight or work together with the relevant authorities there. Each time, we picked the option that would take more time because we earned more from it. Each time, we chose the option to work with thr people more skilled or knowledgeable than us.

I don't see why we shouldn't do so here. Cao Chun is the person who divined the incident. He's the one who came up with the current plan. He's the one with decades to centuries experience with situations like this. And he's recommending Jin Tae.

Jin Tae's message may take longer, but it ignores how huge an advantage the lack of tip off is. If there's no tip off, we have time to plan around the saboteurs and control the narrative. If there's a tip off, we lose our advantage, and have no idea what they'll do. They could escalate. They could go in hiding until the worst possible moment. They could rush any existing operation. All of this could make the sabotage obvious and ruin negotiations.

There is also the fact that the Jin Tae option doesn't necessarily mean a long delay. It's a longer delay compared to Zheng Fu's own. That could be an extra nanosecond instead of a whole minute. It's still comparatively longer.

And all of the incidents have had delays since we didn't know about them and has to rush there to save people. No one has been harmed. Without Cao Chun investigating and telling us, we would be in that same situation, so continuing with his recommendation only make sense.. Now we know, and are prepared. We have MoI workers already on the scene watching. We will still be faster then we would normally be in this situation simply by virtue of knowing beforehand.

And Zheng Fu will be part of the fight and investigation regardless since everyone will converge once the signal arrives, so he'll still participate and won't be sidelined.

This option would help us root out the sabotage in the long run, and there ARE other ways to get MoI rep without giving them influence. I'm pretty sure listening to them in their rep in their area of expertise is one of them. Like, it's been hinted that the only reason why Cao is involving us is because we followed his suggestion and added a Peaks judge to the judge panel. I'm pretty sure listening to his suggestion on a literal matter of imperial security would do something similar.
 
Initially I was just thinking of what was best for the immidiate incident, so:
[ ] She would ask Zheng Fu to lay in wait. (Slight delay, less obvious tip off)

But considering the rest of the summit, I've been convinced:
[X] She would agree withCao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)

Edit: that said, this is when I really wish we had Sixiang.
 
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Oliver_Twister said:
Each time, we picked the option that would take more time because we earned more from it. Each time, we chose the option to work with thr people more skilled or knowledgeable than us.
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We are going to lose one of those gambles eventually, but I don't think today is the day.

[X] She would agree with Cao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)
 
[X] She would agree with Cao Chun to allow Jin Tae to spot. (Longer delay, No tip off)

Yeah, I think I'm inclined to go with Jin Tae as well.

Also, from a brutal political perspective, if worst comes to worst, having the MoI feel a little responsible is something too.

This absolutely shouldn't be the main reason to do anything - others have already gone over those - but it is something.
 
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