ok, I'm doing a quick reread, seeing if we missed or forgot anything important.
[X] from deep underground they come, gateways to lands of horror and madness, deformed mutated beasts', servants of higher powers unlimited in number, seeking the end of all life.
reminder of what the apocalypse will be about.
Servants of higher powers. But what kind? Divine? Demonic?
lovecraftian?
Kekita is going to serve in this role for your disciples, organizing them and searching for new students. As you trust her impeccably and as she recently raised her second pillar there is no one who could challenge her power.
I forgot our daughter is formally the "leader" and organizer of the cultivators, I admit.
The third option is Netik, the governor that started it all, he has experience in governing and a good head on his shoulders so he'll be competent in the role but that is all that could be said for him, on the flip side he also doesn't come with some drawbacks.
another thing I forgot, our first steward was
the first governor who surrendered to us after we killed the first king, and so the one who first gave us the idea of becoming the Emperor.
heh.
He gave us a city, and we gave him an Empire
The first few tests were promising as your test subject did confirm that more Qi was drawn out of their body's -even some that was in the process of being absorbed- the problem was that the amount was still too small to be sensed.
The solution to this problem came in a burst of inspiration as your claws carved a vaguely remembered sigil into the bark of the tree.
This sigil amplified the natural drain of the tree tenfold -at least where the sigil touched- allowing you to sans the amount of Qi someone can't absorb and as such conclude how high their affinity was.
the first rune was a "half remembered sigil".
from when/where?
Currently, you're reading the reports Netik and his subordinates prepared for you at speeds beyond mortality, absorbing and contemplating the new information in the blink of an eye.
For anyone else it would take hours to sift through all the information, for you it will take less than ten minutes and only because you need to be careful your claws won't rip the paper.
I already imagine the day where Shikatu will go through his reports on a 240 fps monitor, and thus read a book per second or so
She has spent the last decade organizing and overseeing the recruiting and training of four hundred and seventy-three new cultivators of the first step. If not for your decision to switch to an apprentice-master style of training she could have probably trained ten times this number.
a reminder that the alternative to our low-numbers-high-quality recruiting would have been 10 times more cultivators.
I'd also forgotten we had provoked the nobles
again right on turn 1, though it was before I joined the quest.
It seems that a significant minority of your disciples have found a love of teaching the new generation and have petitioned to make it their permanent job.
Such an agreement has obvious benefits, mainly the fact that such will lead to specialization and greater experience in teaching and make them better able to train new cultivators, increasing the numbers and quality of new recruits.
Of course, this will fully occupy their time and so you will lose some of the free labor they can provide.
[] Allow the petition. (-1 AP for cultivation actions but gain a passive and growing recruitment of first step cultivators).
oh, we also went for dedicated teachers. Really, I forgot a lot of stuff...
With the latter comes an offer from the sects.
They offer to bend the knee and be sworn into your empire peacefully, paying a token amount of taxes as tribute and be available to call as Keku at wings when the needs arise.
the sects proved themselves FAR more reasonable than kings and nobles before them, and offer their loyalty at an acceptable price. And they definitely benefited a LOT from it.
Of course, there is strength in diversity and different organizations could come with different ideas which would otherwise not be found.
and this proved itself true. They came up with the tribulation arrays, first of all.
Were this any other event you wouldn't have been able to even attempt this -in fact it seems that the event casts all others in its shadows- wait…
Shadow's?
Since when did the sea of time have shadows?
You look up.
And your heart freezes in absolute terror.
You cannot move, you cannot speak, you cannot think.
You can only look at the being whose mere size and weight is enough to warp the sea of time around itself and obscure the visions of the future.
And you can see it starting to wake.
Thankfully, before it can wake and squash you like the bug that you are an old friend intervenes.
The wind howls in your chamber, extinguishing the multitude of candles that you have lit and scatters dozens of parchments and scroll throughout
The sudden chaos breaking the hold the creature has on you and throwing your soul back to your body.
An hour passed before your heart returned to its regular beating.
Wh-what have you seen?
-your efforts to narrow down the timeline have given limited results but results nonetheless. (see the top of this post for said results).
-through your divination you have spotted ??? and only through the timely intervention of the wind (you know how one of the insights in your character sheet says the wind will aid your actions from time to time? that wasn't metaphorical the wind will literally come to your aid, and this was probably the best place it could have triggered) did its alert level wasn't raised.
I now wonder if that might be
the Lord of Fate...
They wont equal it but they won't be that much weaker either, like within 5%. Although there are ways to boost it later on.
acceptable to me. All in all I'm fine with all options with a vote thus far, really.
When making a core and its concept you have various attributes you have to think about. Two of them are harmony and stability.
Stability is easy, to get 100% you just have to have all of your pillars in the core (IE: make the concept out of all of the pillars) this attribute mostly effects cultivation speed, its mostly relevant for when you get an injury but their are specific instances you would create a core without all of the pillars.
So why would you create a core from only some of your pillars? That has to do with core harmony.
Core harmony is basically how well do the pillars of the core jell with one another, this increases or decreases based on the concept chosen and this directly impacts the power of the core and one other hidden thing, so taking the hit to stability for more harmony is often time a very good trade to do.
If we went for Death and Time I could see us removing Flight and/or Teaching from it to get a better fitting Core, I suppose. It will likely end up being a core including 7 to 9 pillars.
In any case, this is important information, and I'm assuming that once he becomes more aware of it Shikatu will share it with the other third steps. Knowing about this from the start will help a LOT in choosing the right pillar concepts to begin with.
