hey @uri , at this point you can tell us, would there have been something more if we took the heaviest oath possible? Not that I think it was ever really a possibility, especially not with miss "only 7 APs" Aurelia.
You would have gotten an inner member instead on an outer and would have had the second resource option fully subsidized with the third even more discounted.
It will most likely require you to take a mission every 1-2 turns, depending on difficulty and how much you spend on other stuff (note that your general use of contribution points is probably going to be low compared to others as for most stuff you can use gold instead).
You would have gotten an inner member instead on an outer and would have had the second resource option fully subsidized with the third even more discounted.
It will most likely require you to take a mission every 1-2 turns, depending on difficulty and how much you spend on other stuff (note that your general use of contribution points is probably going to be low compared to others as for most stuff you can use gold instead).
[X] Customs of the sun- your home the empire of the sun is host to a diverse range of cultures and subcultures, each one boasting of centuries of traditions and customs and you have learned many of them, when rolling an equitique check against someone whose culturally form the empire of the sun roll with advantage (roll twice and keep the higher result) [X] Spiritual herbs bath (10 contribution points)- far more expensive is paying for a relaxing bath of medical and spital herbs, of course the effect Is much greater as well (2.0 XP modifier for body)
[X] Customs of the sun- your home the empire of the sun is host to a diverse range of cultures and subcultures, each one boasting of centuries of traditions and customs and you have learned many of them, when rolling an equitique check against someone whose culturally form the empire of the sun roll with advantage (roll twice and keep the higher result) [X] Spiritual herbs bath (10 contribution points)- far more expensive is paying for a relaxing bath of medical and spital herbs, of course the effect Is much greater as well (2.0 XP modifier for body)
[X] Customs of the sun- your home the empire of the sun is host to a diverse range of cultures and subcultures, each one boasting of centuries of traditions and customs and you have learned many of them, when rolling an equitique check against someone whose culturally form the empire of the sun roll with advantage (roll twice and keep the higher result) [X] Spiritual herbs bath (10 contribution points)- far more expensive is paying for a relaxing bath of medical and spital herbs, of course the effect Is much greater as well (2.0 XP modifier for body)
nobody voted on a question yet, I'll propose my own.
I was tempted by a generic "what do you think I should know/what would you want to know in my situation", but that feels a bit like a cop-out, so I'm going to instead ask
[X] Any advice on how to behave in regards to the specific elders who'll give lessons to us newcomers? Things to do or not do to stay in their favor?
Scheduled vote count started by uri on May 5, 2024 at 1:04 PM, finished with 10 posts and 4 votes.
[X] Customs of the sun- your home the empire of the sun is host to a diverse range of cultures and subcultures, each one boasting of centuries of traditions and customs and you have learned many of them, when rolling an equitique check against someone whose culturally form the empire of the sun roll with advantage (roll twice and keep the higher result)
[X] Spiritual herbs bath (10 contribution points)- far more expensive is paying for a relaxing bath of medical and spital herbs, of course the effect Is much greater as well (2.0 XP modifier for body)
[X] Shell of formality- formality is often a bland tedious processes meant to allow to parties to interact without hostility or fear, you have learned to use it to your advantage, you may roll an equitqe challenge to aid in other social challenges (things like intimidation, haggling concealing information and so on).
[X] Refined olive oil (2 contributing points)- refined olive oil is oil made of spiritual olives and as such is cheep for the effect it provides. (1.5 XP modifier for body).
[] Customs of the sun- your home the empire of the sun is host to a diverse range of cultures and subcultures, each one boasting of centuries of traditions and customs and you have learned many of them, when rolling an equitique check against someone whose culturally form the empire of the sun roll with advantage (roll twice and keep the higher result) [] Spiritual herbs bath (10 contribution points)- far more expensive is paying for a relaxing bath of medical and spital herbs, of course the effect Is much greater as well (2.0 XP modifier for body)
Okey I'm about 50% done with the update but I'm probably not going to finish it in the next few days, in the meantime have this.
Character sheet.
Name: Gallus Protus.
Age: 17
HP: 28/28.
Wounds: none.
Armor: 0 (3).
Mental armor: 0.
Social armor: 0.
Soul armor: 0.
Horkos: 4/4
Attributes.
Body (first tier)- 10.
Mind (first tier)- 10.
Will (first tier)- 8.
Heart (first tier)- 5
Skills.
Mace- adapt 4.
A bunch of novice skills I won't bother to mention.
Oaths (1/1).
Total Oath rank: 4.
The First Oath (Oath rank 4).
You have sworn to perform a medium exercise session for the current you (Body 10-tier 1) (Mind 10-tier 1) every two weeks and in return you may instantly and perfectly recall any memory created in the past oath rank years.
Techniques:
Iron scales.
Tyap: defensive.
Mastery: none.
Cost: 1 Horkos.
Duration: 1 round.
Effect: add +1 physical armor to a specific body part.
Special: add additional armor equal to your iron body layers.
Equipment:
Twice refined Leather vest- +3 armor, may absorb a singile attack that deals less then armor granted*3 once a day.
Can we safely assume that unless a Skill is particularly exotic, Gallus has at least Novice in it? And even with the Exotic ones unless they're literally impossible for him to have he might get a roll to not be Untrained in it?
Can we safely assume that unless a Skill is particularly exotic, Gallus has at least Novice in it? And even with the Exotic ones unless they're literally impossible for him to have he might get a roll to not be Untrained in it?
AN: Took me a little time but it's out, I hope you will enjoy (and I very much hope it isn't too much of an infodump) feel free to ping me for questions we'll be having a 4 hour mortarium so don't vote yet.
Divine fingers danced upon Aurora shoulders expertly finding knots and overstretched muscles.
Aspa was good, really good.
And her work has almost made the harsh exercises worth it.
As another knot broke down under the maticus work of Aspa, Aurora involuntary let out a moan of pleasure.
Normally she would be mortified from doing such in public but she was just too comfortable to care.
She could hear Aspa snort and feel her shake her head but her expert fingers never once stopped in their work so Aurora let it slide.
"So, you wish t know how to make good impressions on the elders, yes?" Aspa asked.
"mmhhh" Aurora mumbled in confirmation.
"Hmmmm" Aspa hummed taking a moment to think over her reply "it's a good question, unfortunately there isn't a lot I can tell you"
"Elder Artus likes hard work, invest more time than your oath requires and he'll look favorably upon you but he very rarely takes the time to give personal lessons and tends to look at hard work as its own reward"
"The others are a little harder as they rotate every year and I'm not as familiar with the three who were assigned"
During this one-sided conversation Aspa fingers never left Aurora back and Aurora was all the more grateful for it.
"I gauss I'll start with the easy" Aspa said "I wouldn't bother with Elder Septima as she wouldn't be teaching you in two weeks"
"Elder Valla is a little harder but I can tell you what not to do, don't use learning enhancements in her presence, pill, treasure or oath, she absolutely hates them"
"Other than that show dedication and she'll at least offer you some advice"
"I know nothing of Elder Zerveas, but I can look into it if you want"
"Now let's get you to that medicinal bath"
Information gained, you may aske his question again and more information will be available. –10 contribution points, +30 body XP which is now at 60/96 to body 6.
It only took Aurora an hour and a half to be satisfied with the bath she took, it took her neither fifteen minutes to mender her way back to her assigned residence.
Gallus was already there striking a wooden mannequin in the small fenced in backyard the house had.
He noticed Aurora the second she returned but was content to let her go at her own pace, continued striking the mannequin.
Looking at his hands Aurora noticed that just before they struck the wooden mannequin a slight metallic tilt has covered them.
Siting on the small bench just aside the door leading back into the house and started speaking softly "I see that you manage in your task".
Beside sending her a single glance Gallus didn't stop in his practice as he answered her "yeah I did, wasn't that hard to find the library, the jade should be on the bench" sure enough it was just next to her "I would recommend going to the library sometime soon, apparently they also let you claim a basic technique if you go there in the first three weeks, something ,something about showing incitive and effort"
"I'll think about it, though who knows how many techniques I would actually need form there"
With a grunt of affirmation both teenagers returned to their tasks, Gallus to his training and Aurora to the jade slip.
While this has not been the first time she has seen such jade slips, her family library has many of them, it is the first time she could actually accesses one as they required a slight amount of Horkos to function.
As Aurora fed the needed Horkos to the jade slip, knowledge sprang into her mind, anything from diagrams and philosophy to training exercises.
Stopping the flow of Horkos and parsing the information dumped into her brain Aurora cam int a few conclusions about the iron body method.
The first was that as was in its name, the iron body method was a physical cultivation technique meant to transform one skin and muscles into iron or to at least possess its properties.
The second was that many of the exercises and methods of refining seem to fall completely under the preview of her oath.
The iron body method.
Type: body.
Difficulty: easy ((11- body tier)*layer XP needed to complete a layer) evry 10 layers tripple the cost.
Quality: high.
Effects: upon refining a single layer of the iron body, physical armor go's up by 1, upon refining five layers of the iron body +1 body (this breaks the mortal cap).
She would need to set time aside to practice it later.
But for now, Aurora was content to watch Gallus train, maybe she could figure out his new technique?
The next morning the group awoke at a reasonable hour -Aurora spent a few minutes the night before barricading the door to her room, which kept her retainers at bay for her to get more sleep- and proceeded to their exercise with elder Artus.
It has gone about the same as yesterday.
Afterwards the group split up again with Aurora meeting Aspa once again.
They later reconvinced at their residence before setting out for the lesson with elder Septima.
The lesson was conducted in an auditorium much like the one where they underwent initiation.
They found sits in the front and settled in to wait for the elder to show up.
By the time the Auditorium was about three forth full, elder Septima arrived.
She took a single glance at the gathered disciples and clapped her hands, in response the doors to the auditorium shut close with a mighty bang, Aurora could hear banging from disciples wanting be let in but the elder seemed content to ignore it and dove straight into her lecture.
"Oaths, the means by which we ascend ever higher" she began "they are the most important part of our civilization yet before setting foot into this school you were restricted form any piece of information on them, can anyone tell me why?".
Aurora didn't know the answer to the question, she has found it weird no one in her family bothered to teach her about oaths but elder Septima didn't seem to want an answer as she continued her lecture without missing a breath.
"This is done because the power of an oath is drawn both form how objectively difficult and risky it is, as well as how subjectively difficult and risky it is, I would recommend seeking an outer school member to tech you the mental gymnastics used to increase the power of an oath before swearing your second"
"To return to my previous question, a path walked in the dark is far more dangerous than one walked in the light, this is reflected in the power derived from your oath, should you have known what I will speak off today when you have sworn your first you'll have been lucky to derive half the power you received form it, for those of you whose sized this opportunity I commend you and for those of you who didn't" the eldar seemed to scowl while saying her next words "I would recommend steeping away from the life of an oath bearer for you clearly do not have the resolve to walk this road".
"Now, let's switch to… yes?" elder Septima pointed at Gallus who raised his hand to signal a he had a question, she didn't seem happy at the interruption.
"Honorable elder, if the disparity in power and benefit is so large as you have claimed why dos the sect not dictates our next oaths?"
"Oh, a good question, a good question indeed" whatever annoyance at being interrupted the elder had seemed to be replaced with glee "it has a simple answer to, is walking in the footsteps of your ancestors risky? Is it dangerous? Is following the advice of your brothers and sisters any of those things? When you have sworn your oath you only of the sect through its reputation, now you are a part of it and whatever power could be drawn from ignorance's pales in comparison to the protentional of promising disciples crippling themselves"
Almost as an afterthought she also added "it would also be wrong for the school to force an oath upon a disciple beyond the first, one contribution point for the excellent question"
When elder Septima gaze left gallus, Aurora drove an elbow into his stomach, unfortunately it didn't wipe the smirk form his face and Aurora gave up so she could focus on the lecture.
"Now that you know why you were kept ignorant, let me ask you what is an oath? Where does the power you gain comes from? How dos the oath know when it is broken? How dos the oath know anything at all?"
"I could stand here for a thousand years and well still won't have covered even a tenth of the theories and speculations about this matter, if you are curious seek the library and research the topic yourself, and so we will talk not of what an oath is but what it has become"
Ignoring several raised hands -one of which once again belonged to Gallus- the elder continued at full speed "we classify oaths into three categories, restriction, condition and task"
"Restriction is an oath much like your own, it restricts your actions, either by forcing you toward certain actions or forbidding them, oaths of restriction are powerful yet also dangerous for they stand the greatest danger of being broken" Aurora could see how they could be broken, her oath demands a great deal of time form her, what if she is occupied for a long time? what if she is in a place where she cannot practice the exercises or where doing it would place her at risk.
"Oaths of condition, are the most powerful of the three, in return for only working under certain conditions they receive far more power, the oath of revelation is a particular favorite, in return for reviling one of your oaths to an enemy you may empower it" Aurora thought back to her oath, it being reveled doesn't seem like such a big problem -even discounting the fact that the entire sect knows it- and depending on how much her oath is empowered it could be worth more than an additional oath for the same benefit.
"The third and last type of oath, is that of the task, swear to complete some task and upon completion gain the benefit of the oath in perpetuality" the elder then sent a withering gaze at all the disciples in the auditorium "Stay away for this type of oath before you achieve your seventh oath, there is no task you may complete now that would be worth the prize and task oaths are more often then not dead ends and can not be sworn into a higher order"
"Which neatly bridges the gap into our next topic, higher order oaths, at its most basic higher order oaths are oaths swore upon an existence oath, doing so is limited by the number of oaths you have sworn and your will alone"
"You will not be able to swear a second order oath until you have either refined your will or swore your second oath so this will be all that I say upon this topic, you'll be taught about in more in depth in a month or two".
"No, what we'll be doing in the next hour is going over historical oaths known to the sect and analyzing the benefits and downsides to them"
It was a disciple form the backrows that interrupted then "you still haven't told us how to swear a second oath"
The look the elder sent the offending disciple screamed 'are you stupid' "how else can you grow your soul but by living?" shaking her head she continued "to return to our topic of discussion, emperor Servius of the fifth dynasty has sworn seventeen known oaths, his third was a restriction oath that…."
In contrast to all of the other methods of cultivation in this quest (and most others) there is not one way to unlock your oath slots, there is also not a specific action for it.
In essence you must gather experience by doing actions that challenge you or doing something new and undergoing exotic experiences.
You require 10 such experiences for the second oath, 50 for the third, a 100 for the fourth, 500 for the fifth, 1000 for the sixth and so on.
Practically challenging tasks or really new stuff can give more than a single experience.
Higer order oaths.
Thers not a lot to say here (mostly because you don't know enough) but higher order oaths are oaths sworn upon other oaths and represent a continuation of a certain oath line, they have specific rules but either ask Apsa about it or wait until the school gives you a lesson about it (should be around 4-6 turns form now).
What you should know is how its restricted, basically your max oath order on a particular oath is (will tier+ total number of oaths- the number of the oath itself) to explain it better here's an example, assuming we have someone with T2 will and 3 oaths unlocked, his first oath can go to order 4 (2+3-1) which means it can support 3 paths sworn upon it (order 1 oath is just the normal oath) but his second oath can only go order 3 (2+3-2) while his third oath can only do order 2 (2+3-3)
The next day Aurora awoke far to early -Octevia climbed through the window to her room to avoided the blocked door- and was dragged into the exercise session.
By the time they ended Aurora was dead on her feet and needed some help to reach the medical pavilion.
Under the expert hands of Aspa she has been revived and feeling a lot better and with nothing else to do Octavia and Gallus managed to cajole Aurora into checking out the contribution center.
The contribution center was a small building situated at the entrance to the sect proper -where the actual members resided- its entrance was composed of a large arch way in which stood two large plain red doors.
At the time of its operation the doors stood open but aurora knew spirit wood when she saw it, and if ever closed those doors could stand to a great deal of punishment.
At the back of the building there was a long Woodend counter with several receptionists sitting behind it.
On the right wall there was a large board filed with mission notices.
Aurora did the sensible thing and approached the secretaries first.
Approaching the first one that wasn't occupied, a young women adorning blue robes with gray eyes, aurora waved her hand to catch her attention "hey, I'm here to pick the stipend"
The receptionist looked at her for a moment before recognition flared in her eyes and a smile adorned her face "oh good you've come, this makes two of the noble in this batch that possess common sense"
"Excuse me?" Aurora exclaimed, totally surprised by the familrty in the tone of the secretly.
The receptionist either not noticing Aurora interruption or -far more likely- ignoring her continued without pause "you would not believe how many noble pass through the sect who don't bother picking up their stipend" sometime during her speech she started rummaging tough the cabinets on her side of the counter "I swear, sometime too much gold just rots the mind, who gives up free stuff?"
The question hung in the air and Aurora found herself agreeing, free stuff was the best stuff after all -Aurora could hear Gallus snickering in the background.
Before long the receptionist pulled two small colored packets -one red and yellow- and presented them for Aurora "okey choose, effort or result?"
"I'm sorry? But I don't understand what I'm I choosing?" Aurora asked.
"that's fine dear" the receptionist said smiling all the while "the school offers two different stipends, effort and result, chose effort and you'll given a pill that will improve your efforts in Horkos cultivation, choose result and you'll be given a pill that will stuff your body so full of energy your reserves will naturally expend"
"Now chose".
Okey originally, I was planning to also put the third lesson in this update but by the time I got to it this update already seemed too much infodumpy for my liking, so I decided to do it later but it did revel information that is important for the following vote, so I've decided to put it here.
Mainly Horkos cultivation is a meditation (will) check, which requires X+1 successes to expend to the next point, where X is the current max number of your reserves. Another relevant piece of information is that for every AP used for Horkos cultivation you gain 2 rolls.
Choose 1. (this cant be changed later, so choose wisely).
[] Effort- gain the strengthened meridians pill (2X modifier for all Horkos cultivation in a turn, -0.2 to the modifier for every AP spent over the first).
[] Result- gain the Horkos gathering pill (+20 successes worth for Horkos cultivation upon consumption).
"Good, good" the receptionist began "if you wish to take a job feel free to pursue the offerings"
Auora -whose already been on her way out- stopped and thought about it, she didn't want to take a job but she was already in debt to the school and she was already here "I might just, gallus if you would please"
Rolling his eyes he nevertheless complied with her commend, with his memory it didn't take him long to come back with a few options.
The first job he pitched was… Aurora grimaced, the first job was to help in the greenhouses, a job that was as beneath her as the low pay it gave, only three contribution points although according to Gallus the job also promised the tutelage of an inner disciple in herbalism, which might be valuable if she cared about growing plants.
The second job was about "a dryad?"
"A neophyte one" Gallus corrected.
"Can we even beat that?" Aurora asked.
In response Gallus shrugged "they are fairly fragile creatures that like to hide in trees, so long as it is in fact a neophyte" pausing Glaaus looked to Octevia who nodded to him in accent "then we should have no problem if we can find it, although we might not come out unscathed".
Tempting, tempting, even with the condition of not keeping the core this mission is the best paying of the lot, for a total of fifteen contribution points.
The third mission was some combination of the first two, apparently some spiritual fertilizer was needed to be placed in the eastern forest to help the spiritual regents there grow, the mission pays 8 contributing points because some beasts are apparently drawn to the smell of the fertilizer but the chance to draw anything threatening is low.
In the end Aurora choose the---
[] Gardening mission (3 contribution points +inner disciple tutelage on herbalism, no risk).
[] The dryad subjugating mission (15 contribution points, medium risk).
[] Effort- gain the strengthened meridians pill (2X modifier for all Horkos cultivation in a turn, -0.2 to the modifier for every AP spent over the first).
Wish we had this before the massage. That'd give us a 4.0X bonus.
[X] Effort- gain the strengthened meridians pill (2X modifier for all Horkos cultivation in a turn, -0.2 to the modifier for every AP spent over the first). [X] The dryad subjugating mission (15 contribution points, medium risk)
[X] Result- gain the Horkos gathering pill (+20 successes worth for Horkos cultivation upon consumption). [X] The dryad subjugating mission (15 contribution points, medium risk)
"Elder Artus likes hard work, invest more time than your oath requires and he'll look favorably upon you but he very rarely takes the time to give personal lessons and tends to look at hard work as its own reward"
proooooobably not worth doing. We already spend a lot of time on it, so unless we get something like a time-limited buff we probably won't want to spend more time than we have to there. We just have other things to do
"Elder Valla is a little harder but I can tell you what not to do, don't use learning enhancements in her presence, pill, treasure or oath, she absolutely hates them"
"Other than that show dedication and she'll at least offer you some advice"
"I know nothing of Elder Zerveas, but I can look into it if you want"
Valla is the meditation teacher... and this is actually VERY valuable info, as we might have eventually used our oath power in her presence... That's pretty weird though.
Zerveas would be the alchemy/enchanting/combat teacher.
Siting on the small bench just aside the door leading back into the house and started speaking softly "I see that you manage in your task".
Beside sending her a single glance Gallus didn't stop in his practice as he answered her "yeah I did, wasn't that hard to find the library, the jade should be on the bench" sure enough it was just next to her "I would recommend going to the library sometime soon, apparently they also let you claim a basic technique if you go there in the first three weeks, something ,something about showing incitive and effort"
Stopping the flow of Horkos and parsing the information dumped into her brain Aurora cam int a few conclusions about the iron body method.
The first was that as was in its name, the iron body method was a physical cultivation technique meant to transform one skin and muscles into iron or to at least possess its properties.
The second was that many of the exercises and methods of refining seem to fall completely under the preview of her oath.
The iron body method.
Type: body.
Difficulty: easy ((11- body tier)*layer XP needed to complete a layer) evry 10 layers tripple the cost.
Quality: high.
Effects: upon refining a single layer of the iron body, physical armor go's up by 1, upon refining five layers of the iron body +1 body (this breaks the mortal cap).
She would need to set time aside to practice it later.
But for now, Aurora was content to watch Gallus train, maybe she could figure out his new technique?
so
+1 armor per layer
+1 body every 5 layers
triple cost after 10 layers (so we can consider it a temporary soft cap)
3 layers (branch member requirement) would then require 9+18+27= 54 exp total (assuming we start by paying 9 for the first layer instead of, say, 9 for the second)
5 layers (outer school member requirement) = 54+36+45= 135 exp.
10 layers (maybe inner school requirement? soft cap, in any case) = 135+ 54+63+72+81+90= 495 exp.
Would we roll Body for the exp? Or do we get automatic exp points like for attributes?
In any case, I think I'm missing something. Maybe there will be a teacher for it, or other boosts? it seems a bit too slow to train...
By the time the Auditorium was about three forth full, elder Septima arrived.
She took a single glance at the gathered disciples and clapped her hands, in response the doors to the auditorium shut close with a mighty bang, Aurora could hear banging from disciples wanting be let in but the elder seemed content to ignore it and dove straight into her lecture.
"This is done because the power of an oath is drawn both form how objectively difficult and risky it is, as well as how subjectively difficult and risky it is, I would recommend seeking an outer school member to tech you the mental gymnastics used to increase the power of an oath before swearing your second"
"To return to my previous question, a path walked in the dark is far more dangerous than one walked in the light, this is reflected in the power derived from your oath, should you have known what I will speak off today when you have sworn your first you'll have been lucky to derive half the power you received form it, for those of you whose sized this opportunity I commend you and for those of you who didn't" the eldar seemed to scowl while saying her next words "I would recommend steeping away from the life of an oath bearer for you clearly do not have the resolve to walk this road".
well, it seems like we made a good choice in taking a heavy (but not the heaviest) oath then!
Also it seems like there's a cultural element to it. Technically speaking even ignoring oaths there's plenty one could accomplish with cultivation and other arts, but it seems like taking heavy oaths is encouraged.
I have to wonder though... wouldn't it then be better for them to NOT teach us about this until we took more oaths instead?
"Now, let's switch to… yes?" elder Septima pointed at Gallus who raised his hand to signal a he had a question, she didn't seem happy at the interruption.
"Honorable elder, if the disparity in power and benefit is so large as you have claimed why dos the sect not dictates our next oaths?"
"Oh, a good question, a good question indeed" whatever annoyance at being interrupted the elder had seemed to be replaced with glee "it has a simple answer to, is walking in the footsteps of your ancestors risky? Is it dangerous? Is following the advice of your brothers and sisters any of those things? When you have sworn your oath you only of the sect through its reputation, now you are a part of it and whatever power could be drawn from ignorance's pales in comparison to the protentional of promising disciples crippling themselves"
Almost as an afterthought she also added "it would also be wrong for the school to force an oath upon a disciple beyond the first, one contribution point for the excellent question"
in other words, if we followed a "standard" path, that standard path would be considered by most to be inherently "safer" and thus less rewarding.
it's interesting... and also not that different from the normal "orthodos cultivation = safer, etherodox cultivation = more potential but also far riskier".
except USUALLY the heterodox path is heavily discouraged by sects... Oaths are a weird concept in that frame.
as another note, this specific elder seems to appreciate WELL THOUGHT/smart questions. good to keep in mind.
"Now that you know why you were kept ignorant, let me ask you what is an oath? Where does the power you gain comes from? How dos the oath know when it is broken? How dos the oath know anything at all?"
"I could stand here for a thousand years and well still won't have covered even a tenth of the theories and speculations about this matter, if you are curious seek the library and research the topic yourself, and so we will talk not of what an oath is but what it has become"
"Restriction is an oath much like your own, it restricts your actions, either by forcing you toward certain actions or forbidding them, oaths of restriction are powerful yet also dangerous for they stand the greatest danger of being broken" Aurora could see how they could be broken, her oath demands a great deal of time form her, what if she is occupied for a long time? what if she is in a place where she cannot practice the exercises or where doing it would place her at risk.
"Oaths of condition, are the most powerful of the three, in return for only working under certain conditions they receive far more power, the oath of revelation is a particular favorite, in return for reviling one of your oaths to an enemy you may empower it" Aurora thought back to her oath, it being reveled doesn't seem like such a big problem -even discounting the fact that the entire sect knows it- and depending on how much her oath is empowered it could be worth more than an additional oath for the same benefit.
oh, I'm reminded of Hunter X Hunter. Kurapika's chains worked at their best only against "members of the Spider", and also put him at risk as side effects, and that made them far stronger.
as a matter of fact, restrictions and conditions were a bit part of the Nen power system there.
...wait, the Oath of Revelation... isn't that a Jujutsu Kaisen thing?
we can perform some mental gymnastic to make it sound more dangerous I suppose. People might imprison us to prevent us from training! they might force us in political situations where training is unviable or comes with a high social cost! They might hurt us so we could not train!
"The third and last type of oath, is that of the task, swear to complete some task and upon completion gain the benefit of the oath in perpetuality" the elder then sent a withering gaze at all the disciples in the auditorium "Stay away for this type of oath before you achieve your seventh oath, there is no task you may complete now that would be worth the prize and task oaths are more often then not dead ends and can not be sworn into a higher order"
All of those oaths really remind me of the contracts from Merchants of Divinity, yes. They basically work the same, really. I forget if they were meant to.
"Which neatly bridges the gap into our next topic, higher order oaths, at its most basic higher order oaths are oaths swore upon an existence oath, doing so is limited by the number of oaths you have sworn and your will alone"
"You will not be able to swear a second order oath until you have either refined your will or swore your second oath so this will be all that I say upon this topic, you'll be taught about in more in depth in a month or two".
"No, what we'll be doing in the next hour is going over historical oaths known to the sect and analyzing the benefits and downsides to them"
It was a disciple form the backrows that interrupted then "you still haven't told us how to swear a second oath"
The look the elder sent the offending disciple screamed 'are you stupid' "how else can you grow your soul but by living?" shaking her head she continued "to return to our topic of discussion, emperor Servius of the fifth dynasty has sworn seventeen known oaths, his third was a restriction oath that…."
In contrast to all of the other methods of cultivation in this quest (and most others) there is not one way to unlock your oath slots, there is also not a specific action for it.
In essence you must gather experience by doing actions that challenge you or doing something new and undergoing exotic experiences.
You require 10 such experiences for the second oath, 50 for the third, a 100 for the fourth, 500 for the fifth, 1000 for the sixth and so on.
Practically challenging tasks or really new stuff can give more than a single experience.
Higer order oaths.
Thers not a lot to say here (mostly because you don't know enough) but higher order oaths are oaths sworn upon other oaths and represent a continuation of a certain oath line, they have specific rules but either ask Apsa about it or wait until the school gives you a lesson about it (should be around 4-6 turns form now).
What you should know is how its restricted, basically your max oath order on a particular oath is (will tier+ total number of oaths- the number of the oath itself) to explain it better here's an example, assuming we have someone with T2 will and 3 oaths unlocked, his first oath can go to order 4 (2+3-1) which means it can support 3 paths sworn upon it (order 1 oath is just the normal oath) but his second oath can only go order 3 (2+3-2) while his third oath can only do order 2 (2+3-3)
Ok, so you basically judge what we do narratively and decide if they count as Experiences for the purpose of unlocking Oaths. I suppose this incentivizes us towards trying many new things and not stagnate. Contribution tasks, studying and practicing new skills, new feats, meeting new people, taking risks in general...
and yes, as I thought we CAN already do a second order oaths. Examples for it would be the one to reveal it, further restricting the type of training, maybe making the training more dangerous or difficult/tiring/intense...
in any case it seems like the "earlier" oaths can be built further up then the later oaths. This also explains why the Elder discouraged Task Oaths to start with, as they can't usually be built upon, so taking them early means you're giving up the potential to build more oaths on them.
The receptionist looked at her for a moment before recognition flared in her eyes and a smile adorned her face "oh good you've come, this makes two of the noble in this batch that possess common sense"
"Excuse me?" Aurora exclaimed, totally surprised by the familrty in the tone of the secretly.
The receptionist either not noticing Aurora interruption or -far more likely- ignoring her continued without pause "you would not believe how many noble pass through the sect who don't bother picking up their stipend" sometime during her speech she started rummaging tough the cabinets on her side of the counter "I swear, sometime too much gold just rots the mind, who gives up free stuff?"
The question hung in the air and Aurora found herself agreeing, free stuff was the best stuff after all -Aurora could hear Gallus snickering in the background.
she's not wrong, really. At least check to see if the free stuff is useful (and it probably is) before giving it up! and even if you don't care for it, you can give it to your followers/retainers or something!
Before long the receptionist pulled two small colored packets -one red and yellow- and presented them for Aurora "okey choose, effort or result?"
"I'm sorry? But I don't understand what I'm I choosing?" Aurora asked.
"that's fine dear" the receptionist said smiling all the while "the school offers two different stipends, effort and result, chose effort and you'll given a pill that will improve your efforts in Horkos cultivation, choose result and you'll be given a pill that will stuff your body so full of energy your reserves will naturally expend"
"Now chose".
Okey originally, I was planning to also put the third lesson in this update but by the time I got to it this update already seemed too much infodumpy for my liking, so I decided to do it later but it did revel information that is important for the following vote, so I've decided to put it here.
Mainly Horkos cultivation is a meditation (will) check, which requires X+1 successes to expend to the next point, where X is the current max number of your reserves. Another relevant piece of information is that for every AP used for Horkos cultivation you gain 2 rolls.
ok, so generally speaking effort if we're training the skill enough, result if we're not... but then again, maybe we should just always take effort and then save it for the weeks in which we do heavier training instead?
Choose 1. (this cant be changed later, so choose wisely).
[] Effort- gain the strengthened meridians pill (2X modifier for all Horkos cultivation in a turn, -0.2 to the modifier for every AP spent over the first).
[] Result- gain the Horkos gathering pill (+20 successes worth for Horkos cultivation upon consumption).
...wait, doesn't the elder that teaches meditation hate pills?!
Does that mean we should skip on using them for the lessons with them, giving up the bonuses? Or maybe just that we need to take them BEFORE going to lesson and not let her see us taking them?
We have 3 (6) of Will. if we roll twice during the lesson, that means 12 dice, unless boosted by the teacher.
So the choice is between... +12 dice and +20 successes?
that kinda seems like successes is far better, at least for now...
Do we actually care about herbalism? if so, that's an acceptable pick.
Are we ready for combat? probably? we are 3v1 at least, and we have a fairly high Body...
I'm leaning towards combat. It's also likely to be a source of "experiences", and maybe it could give combat exp.
Are you SURE we want to vote for Effort? It seems to me like we'll only get +12 dice on the roll compared to +20 automatic successes.
...actually, let me check one thing... even with the training session we just had for body/Athleticism we got 14.6 successes on average per roll, that would be 29.2 successes per AP.
BUT we had FAR higher body than we have Will.
We had body 5 (10), while our will is 3 (6). basically half that. So we should probably get something like 0.6x the number of successes there (instead 29.2 successes, something like... 17.52).
And THAT is if the teacher is as good at teaching as the athleticism teacher... which, we've been told, is the best teacher in the sect with Grandmaster 3 teaching skill.
CONCLUSION: I think the Effort pill is only better IF we're doing at least 2 APs of training... or maybe after we raise our will a few points.
"Stay away for this type of oath before you achieve your seventh oath, there is no task you may complete now that would be worth the prize and task oaths are more often then not dead ends and can not be sworn into a higher order"
Okay so, there's the Objective Difficulty and the Subjective Difficulty, combined with an Obscurity Bonus.
Hypothetically, if we made our second Oath the Task of "I Will Join The Inner Sect By The End Of Our Onboarding Period", then we should get a hefty Oath Bonus from it, because:
1, going from "Applicant" to "Inner Sect" is honestly insane and the stuff of Super Geniuses With Massive Backing, not us middle of the road Noble Scion who's just trying to get by.
2, ICly we hate actually doing work, and going for the Inner Sect, on an Extremely Time Limited Task Oath, sounds like a fuck ton amount of work. Plus, our teacher even said that nothing we could actually do right now would be worthwhile as a Task Oath and that we should be vastly more experienced before we even begin to think about doing something like that, so I'm 50-50 on it being a PsyOp designed to actually allow those who do Task Oaths anyway to get their maximum value from them.
3, We don't actually know the Inner Sect requirememts, and they might actually be impossible for us, meaning that the Unknown Risk Factor is actually really high.
Altogether, I think if we make our 2nd Oath "Enter The Inner Sect On Completion Of Our Onboarding Period", especially in light of the fact that it might permanently cut off a very significant amount of higher order Oaths from us, that we'd get some massive benefits from it.
It would be a stupid, foolhardy thing to do, but I think that's at least half the power that Oaths get?
And essentially asking Octavia to tell us if it actually is a foolhardy thing to do would cut into the power of the Oath, I think.
As to "Why the hell would we aim for this Oath ICly?"
"That was a damned great massage, I bet the Inner Sect could be even more decadent (nonsexually) in their massages!", essentially aiming for a "Work Hard Nap Hard" mindset.
The receptionist looked at her for a moment before recognition flared in her eyes and a smile adorned her face "oh good you've come, this makes two of the noble in this batch that possess common sense"
The receptionist either not noticing Aurora interruption or -far more likely- ignoring her continued without pause "you would not believe how many noble pass through the sect who don't bother picking up their stipend" sometime during her speech she started rummaging tough the cabinets on her side of the counter "I swear, sometime too much gold just rots the mind, who gives up free stuff?"
The question hung in the air and Aurora found herself agreeing, free stuff was the best stuff after all -Aurora could hear Gallus snickering in the background.
"that's fine dear" the receptionist said smiling all the while "the school offers two different stipends, effort and result, chose effort and you'll given a pill that will improve your efforts in Horkos cultivation, choose result and you'll be given a pill that will stuff your body so full of energy your reserves will naturally expend"
[] Effort- gain the strengthened meridians pill (2X modifier for all Horkos cultivation in a turn, -0.2 to the modifier for every AP spent over the first).
[] Result- gain the Horkos gathering pill (+20 successes worth for Horkos cultivation upon consumption).
I'm glad @Pittauro already did the math here, so let's go with
[X] Result
Based on how the Gym Session worked and the words of our Senpai, I'm going to assume that our Meditation teacher has bonuses that rely on there not being anything but Hard Work involved in the training session, and the math currently prefers Result anyway outside of runaway crits, so this seems good for now.
We start and unlock this first thing, and we'll at worst get a AP discount that stacks with our current physical exercise regimen and at best be able to adjust our specific training to essentially being refining Iron Body layers instead while getting Teacher Bonuses.
I think there needs to be a bit of a mix accounted for by the Subjective and Objective bits of it.
Let's say we need to jump into a hole in the ground.
It's a dark hole, and anything could be in it.
Uninformed, it's scary, but it shouldn't be too bad, right?
"Informed", we know that it's actually the entrance to the Lair of the Demon Beast known as Eats-Children-Whole, and it's super freaking scary.
In reality, there's like a Qi Condensation Snake in there who ate a baby this one time.
If we're "informed", aka gaslit in just the right ways, we should be able to get a boost on the Subjective side that's greater than the loss on the Unknown side of things, while maintaining some of the Unknown benefit due to the "information" not actually being entirely correct on the Objective side of things.
All of that combined with my suspicion that "Informed Consent" is a reasonably important aspect of Oath Taking (with more known unknowns likely providing more bonuses to the Unknowing and Subjective sides of things, compared to just not knowing shit), this means that while there likely is a degree of deliberate misinformation, it's likely designed to best benefit us rather than only be a barrier.
we can perform some mental gymnastic to make it sound more dangerous I suppose. People might imprison us to prevent us from training! they might force us in political situations where training is unviable or comes with a high social cost! They might hurt us so we could not train!
That sounds like exactly the thing we were told to ask an Outer Disciple about!
Thankfully we have a direct in with one every week!
So, in conclusion for our next turn:
Go to the damn library and leverage Octavia's Lie Detection to grab the basic tech that will benefit us the most.
Go hunt the Dryad/whatever we pick unless the AP for going to the Contribution Center includes doing our mission this turn, which would be convenient.
Do our Classes, unless there's no benefit to attending a second time.
Figure out new Retainer actions/social our Retainers, and figure out a reward for Gallus likely giving up his free basic tech to get all of us the Iron Body Tech, unless he didn't need to do that @uri ?
Start the Iron Body Stuff now that we have access to it and can incorporate that into our Grindset.
Altogether, I think if we make our 2nd Oath "Enter The Inner Sect On Completion Of Our Onboarding Period", especially in light of the fact that it might permanently cut off a very significant amount of higher order Oaths from us, that we'd get some massive benefits from it.
It would be a stupid, foolhardy thing to do, but I think that's at least half the power that Oaths get?
And essentially asking Octavia to tell us if it actually is a foolhardy thing to do would cut into the power of the Oath, I think.
I'm glad @Pittauro already did the math here, so let's go with
[X] Result
Based on how the Gym Session worked and the words of our Senpai, I'm going to assume that our Meditation teacher has bonuses that rely on there not being anything but Hard Work involved in the training session, and the math currently prefers Result anyway outside of runaway crits, so this seems good for now.
Yeah, the short version SEEMS to be that the effort pill is better if we're dedicating at least 2 APs to it, otherwise results is a bit better.
That SHOULD change once our will goes from 3 (6) to... probably somewhere between 5 (10) to 6 (12) depending on how good the teachers we get are.
If we have to train WITHOUT teachers at all, then I suspect the results pill is going to be our best bet most weeks.
Maybe we can try going to the first lesson before taking this pill. Supposedly the teacher hates them, maybe we'll notice something if we go without taking it? we can always take it later.
We start and unlock this first thing, and we'll at worst get a AP discount that stacks with our current physical exercise regimen and at best be able to adjust our specific training to essentially being refining Iron Body layers instead while getting Teacher Bonuses.
while cultivation with the iron body method satisfies the oath, this doesn't necessarily mean our current teacher, who started by teaching us athleticism and Body, will actually teach this too.
maybe he'll just continue to offer different skills. We need to bring 3 of them to Expert or 1 to Master for inner school after all.
as of right now it seems to me that the physical exercise class should be constant. We might eventually skip some classes to instead train iron body IF it's not done during it as well, but generally speaking the teacher is too good not to take advantage of, so we'll probably attend as long as he's there... and, as a side note, if he ever offers different courses we definitely want to consider them.
Oath seems like the kind of class there's no point in attending again, yeah.
We'll see what the other two are like.
After we get introduced to the various "specializations" (the various crafting skills) we need to talk with our retainers and see if they have preferences. Ideally each of us will work on something different so we might cover a wider variety of specializations.
...oh, and we need to check if there's sommeone worth recruiting among the people from commoner background. Maybe we can get someone like the alternative poor origin, for example.
The physical teacher can help with it, somewhat at least you'll get a n option to instead of grinding your body to refine the iron body during his lessons getting both his motivation bonus (so +3 dice) and the bonus his third teaching talent gives for it (he has one specifically for this method).
Also it seems like there's a cultural element to it. Technically speaking even ignoring oaths there's plenty one could accomplish with cultivation and other arts, but it seems like taking heavy oaths is encouraged.
While you could manage without oaths (and there are factions that do) they just represent such an incredible power boost that they can't be denied.
Like the iron body method at 10 gives you 10 armor and +2 body, there are oaths that let you ignore damage, or multiply your attributes or a hundred different things and actually getting oaths isn't an action sink in the way body cultivation is, as you're advancing in ti by doing other actions.
All of those oaths really remind me of the contracts from Merchants of Divinity, yes. They basically work the same, really. I forget if they were meant to.
I first thought of this quest idea when I was rewatching jujutsu kisen before the second season came out and when I actually set down to develop it I took a few ideas from MOD.
All right I can see how I created this misunderstanding, she hates learning enhancements (iE: things that let you learn skill faster) cultivation aids are fine.
It one part exaggerating on the receptionist side and a lor of arrogance on the side of the nobles, most of them do actually end up actually picking up their stipend… by like the seventh week.
Figure out new Retainer actions/social our Retainers, and figure out a reward for Gallus likely giving up his free basic tech to get all of us the Iron Body Tech, unless he didn't need to do that @uri ?
The physical teacher can help with it, somewhat at least you'll get a n option to instead of grinding your body to refine the iron body during his lessons getting both his motivation bonus (so +3 dice) and the bonus his third teaching talent gives for it (he has one specifically for this method).
Mh... If he doesn't also affect the difficult I think we're better off training body with him for another couple weeks at least. We can raise body and athletics a bit first.
We'd reach expert 1 in the fourth week of the month. That would lower the difficulty.
Then again, adept 5 has higher difficulty but also 4 extra rerolls, so for the purpose of training iron body it might actually be better while we're at relatively low attributes.
...Uri, I'm not convinced about how the skills work. When at low attributes it seems to me like rerolls can be better than lower difficulty, but it feels weird that novice 5 might be better than adept 1 in any situation.
The fact that going from novice 5 to adept 1 means losing 4 rerolls comes with the weird side effect of, at least for mortals with mortal attributes, having novice 5 be better than adept 1.
Maybe change the benefits of the skill ranks and sub tiers slightly so that while going up a rank you don't lose the benefits from previous ranks? Not sure how I'd go about it though. Maybe have sub-steps give something like x% of your dice are rerolled, or x% extra dice rolled rounded up/down?
Example: each step gives +5% dice rolled, rounded up. Novice 5 means +25% dice, so if we have body 10 we now roll 13.
Then you reach adept 1, and the diff goes down but you ALSO keep the extra dice.
Ok, my piece said, back to current mechanics math.
10 exp per AP... assuming max bonus (*2), that means it would take us... calculated before, 640 exp, so 64 APs, which we can bring down to potentially 32. And we HAVE to train 12 APs per month, so that's... a bit less than 3 months to reach Body 10 at max effectiveness. Specifically 11 weeks.
So with 2 weeks of training we should reach adept 5.
With three weeks (our fourth week), expert 1.
In regards to body, if we continue to pay for the 10 points lotion...
Week 1: 60/96 to body 6 (this week)
Week 2: 24/112 to body 7
Week 3: 84/112 to body 7
Week 4: 32/128 to body 8.
So... If we wait until week 5 (next month) to train iron body, we can raise body by 3 (6) points (so 6 extra dice), and reach expert 1 (so another -1 to difficulty).
Another couple weeks would likely grant us another body point (two) and a few rerolls, but that might be delaying too much.
I'll recheck the math once I'm not on the phone and can do it more comfortably.
This is also not counting the possibility of other bonuses, exp gotten on missions, and similar things.
Oh, also worth pointing out, that when training body/athleticism we're also getting some will exp, which is obviously going to be nice too
While you could manage without oaths (and there are factions that do) they just represent such an incredible power boost that they can't be denied.
Like the iron body method at 10 gives you 10 armor and +2 body, there are oaths that let you ignore damage, or multiply your attributes or a hundred different things and actually getting oaths isn't an action sink in the way body cultivation is, as you're advancing in ti by doing other actions.
All right I can see how I created this misunderstanding, she hates learning enhancements (iE: things that let you learn skill faster) cultivation aids are fine.
In any case yeah, the results pill is better if we're training other stuff basically.
Maybe we should just NOT train it for now, at all? Just take the results pill and focus on our physical training with our APs?
The teacher is REALLY good there, more body and athleticism will help us once we start iron body, and it also doubles as will training, which is currently really low AND is the stat rolled on horkos meditation.
Basically we try the lesson now, but unless there's some special trait or bonus from the teacher, we then just... Stop going there, and do other stuff.
3 APs per turn on physical training, 1 on missions, and the remaining 2 on... Well, we'll see. Probably social+others
Once we're at body 7 I'd say we spend 1 AP for the first layer of iron body maybe. We should be able to get it in a single action at that point.
..Uri, I'm not convinced about how the skills work. When at low attributes it seems to me like rerolls can be better than lower difficulty, but it feels weird that novice 5 might be better than adept 1 in any situation
Keep in mind that you only reroll your failed dice and you don't keep rerolling if you didn't have enough dice failed, someone at the novice tier with an attribute of 5 would have a 30% successes rate and average 1.5 successes they would then reroll the rest of their dice (assuming their skill gives them enough rerolls) which would also have a 30% success rate and would average another 1 success to a total of 2.5.
So someone at novice 5 would average 2-3 successes on a roll, someone with adapt 1 will average in total 2.4, they would also have a talent.
I agree that it's a little janky for low attributes but it better for higher attributes so im not in a hurry to change it but I'll think about it.
It's admittedly not a big deal. Maybe we can justify it IC as the Sect teaching in a way that makes us a bit worse off while close to mortal tier, but will pay off in the future.
Like having bad habits that turn out to NOT be bad habit once you get better.
