Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

At this point, I'm pretty sure the only thing that would have me changing my vote from running towards the big fight is a smart write in for how to specifically escape and join the battle. I'll do a short list to explain why.

1. The fight that actually matters is where Sun Liling and the other big hitters are. We're wasting our time here since that's probably happening now.
2. It's important to support our allies during these big fights, both because our Arts are suited to support, and for morale/friendship reasons.
3. Letting the enemy dictate who we fight and where we fight them is generally a terrible move.
4. We have a lot of Arts that are conducive to the purposes of escape, and a large enough Qi pool that we can afford to use a few of them. This woman is bad at stealth, while we're excellent at it.

Shadell said:

1. Song isn't willing to fight Cai directly, but will help out on the sides, hedging her bets and minimizing her involvement.
-This likely remains true even if we run. In this case, we can run and get into the fight with Cai without dragging Song into it (if we escape)
2. Song's help is broader, and she'd be willing to help in the fight proper. In this case, Liling decided it was worthwhile to commit her entire faction to stopping just us from getting to the confrontation.
-This implies that Liling, whose plans we don't fully understand yet, has reason to devote serious resources to keeping us away. It's best not tor run.

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3. Song's connection to Liling isn't strong enough to fight Cai directly for her out of hand. It is strong enough to come stop us since it aligns with her own goal of talking to us. Her word is important enough to her to fight Cai if we manage to get past her.

Sable Crescent Step doesn't add up right.

We didn't open the box to see just what we were planting? It could have been anything from an attack, evidence framing her (or us!) of something, or who knows what.

Right now, just by staying where we are, we have kept a third real cultivator and some of her friends from joining the fight on the other side. If we do manage to successfully evade them, they will just head to the fight and makes the numbers even worse. Would that be worthwhile? Is our help worth the additional presence of these enemies?

Not sure either way, myself. We did help out significantly last time, but surely other countermeasures have been taken by our allies since then...

We're actually in a quite good place to run though. With our glide, and difficult terrain avoiding the paths, we're actually fairly ideal for getting downhill fast while becoming untrackable. As long as we can get away, we can probably get away.

Fighting is almost certainly a bad idea, but moving strongly limits the ability of goons to catch us. We seem to be better at tracking them than they are at us, and we're known for our sneakiness now. It's one of our best traits. Let's use it.

Codex said:

We know next to nothing on the situation, so having Chu Song talk while planning a way out seems to be a good way to learn some more regarding the situation and leave.

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We know a hostile faction wants us to remain in place to the point of devoting serious resources to the task. Presuming that remaining in place is somehow going to do anything but benefit that faction doesn't really make sense.

We have clear gains to running (winning a fight would be best, but our odds there look quite bad) and we're really built for avoidance. Talking and planning is either going to be "this plan went off" or "Liling's plan failed despite Liling having every advantage going into this."

If we really want to talk with her, we can push a social to it next week.

A/N said:

Right now, just by staying where we are, we have kept a third real cultivator and some of her friends from joining the fight on the other side. If we do manage to successfully evade them, they will just head to the fight and makes the numbers even worse. Would that be worthwhile? Is our help worth the additional presence of these enemies?

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If they're willing to fight, then Liling decided they'd be better spent here anyway. If they're not willing to fight, then they're not willing to fight and won't be added to the other side.

Humbaba said:

Oh look not investigating what was going on with Ji Rong came to bite us in the ass. Who could have predicted such a thing.

I'm really not sure what I want to do here. On the one hand I don't give a toss about supporting Cai and actually think someone checking her rampant power building would be a good thing. The problem comes with that person being Sun Liling. On the other hand this woman is Ji Rong's friend and is doing Sun Liling's bidding, so fuck her on general principals.

Then again I can see some of Cai's lackeys causing a confrontation and being told to piss of on general principals, especially since we know she's not above blackmail and that attitude probably passed down to her subordinates. Plus Satsuki expy.

I'm inclined to the wait and talk option, especially given that we're unlikely to be in great shape to do much if even if we suceed in escaping from these guys. Duel is tempting for the potential growth, but cements the view of us as slightly too loyal to Cai for my liking. I think I'd prefer wait and talk, listen to what she wants with a view to seeing an opportunity to escape.

I wouldn't forget though that she ambushed us at our cultivation site, when she could just have easily stayed back and let us continue and we'd never have known anything was happening until it was too late. And whilst she can't use the site as a second year she might try and push it to Ji Rong (in which case they can both fuck off).

Also I am so fucking tired of hearing about Ji Rong and how his social penalties did fuck all. [EDIT: To be fair if we were playing prisoner quest I'd almost certainly be saying the same thing about Ling Qi's social penalties doing nothing.]

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Perhaps I'm just bad at portraying this, but Ji Rong has like... exactly one friendly contact. He also got used as a disposable berserker in Liling's original gambit. You kinda beat the pants off of him in social as far as outcomes go.

Bob Saget said:

At this point, I'm pretty sure the only thing that would have me changing my vote from running towards the big fight is a smart write in for how to specifically escape and join the battle. I'll do a short list to explain why.

1. The fight that actually matters is where Sun Liling and the other big hitters are. We're wasting our time here since that's probably happening now.
2. It's important to support our allies during these big fights, both because our Arts are suited to support, and for morale/friendship reasons.
3. Letting the enemy dictate who we fight and where we fight them is generally a terrible move.
4. We have a lot of Arts that are conducive to the purposes of escape, and a large enough Qi pool that we can afford to use a few of them. This woman is bad at stealth, while we're excellent at it.

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I will point out my suggestion again, and I would appreciate your thoughts on how viable this tactic is.

Floom said:

So, I've got somewhat of an idea:

Accept the duel, allow our self to be pushed towards the cliff, then jump off and fly away. Any thoughts?

We can replenish the qi we use in this fight if we use EPC, and we are tanky enough that we could survive a round or two of battering, if we decide to spend a decent chunk of qi.

EDIT: Actually, we could just let our self fall off the cliff, and just use our featherfall gown to take the fall, and then we could just stealth away.

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Also,

@yrsillar Is it currently night or day?

Honestly, that's essentially GG for us. A top tier second year disciple, especially a brawler that should be able to easily cut through our smoke and mirrors to punch us in the face?

Not a great match for Ling Qi.

She came prepared to stop us, I'm pretty sure the other two are Late/Late as well.

No point in not talking. If, and that's a big if, we manage to scape, we will be down to nothing in Qi and Health.

Thor's Twin said:

More information we know from context!

She can find us pretty much wherever we are. She was able to locate us at the Argent Vent, something that we have been doing fairly well to keep hidden from other disciples. That means that either she has a long ranged sensory ability, or that she has a good close range one and knew that we were in the forest somewhere.

Furthermore, she came prepared to stop us from running. She bought at least a stealth talisman and is most likely confident in her ability to stop us from running, either through arts or other talismans.

She came prepared and ready for pretty much any outcome of talk/run/fight. So I'm uncomfortable about choosing any of those right off the bat. I think doing a write in that has a combination of those three or a new angle that is unexpected would yield the best results.

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She cannot find us pretty much wherever we are: we have a stealth art specifically dedicated for making that impossible. Furthermore, we are next to a cliff we can jump, and so on. She can't stop us from escaping, and she can't find us afterwards.

Chu Song wants to talk to us and stall us, but those are two different things: she wants to talk to us anyway, and her coming under stealth means she was planning on talking to us after making sure we weren't going to help Cai. Talking to her now is more or less abandoning the choice of helping Cai. I strongly suspect her plan is to convince her Cai is not someone to follow and we should ally with her instead, and she can fight off Sun Liling herself.

Grigori said:

3. Song's connection to Liling isn't strong enough to fight Cai directly for her out of hand. It is strong enough to come stop us since it aligns with her own goal of talking to us. Her word is important enough to her to fight Cai if we manage to get past her.

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That's flat out false though? Her word isn't what is forcing her, there, it's Sun Liling's help for Ji Rong. If she can't manage to stop us from going, this doesn't mean she'll fight Cai, this just means she'll have to find another way to help Ji Rong.

She might try to stop us from helping Cai until we get there, but as someone who has her own faction as strong as Cai's and stonger than Sun Liling's, she can't subordinate herself to Sun Liling.

TotallyNotEvil said:

No point in not talking. If, and that's a big if, we manage to scape, we will be down to nothing in Qi and Health.

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We are very good at escape, if we are escaping, we are not taking damage, and our escape arts are very cheap.

She, by contrast, is bad at stealth. We don't know capabilities as a tracker, but the terrain here is actually quite advantageous to us (downhill with a glider, foresty areas where CG will show off) and our escaping art is high tier. It's far from certain that we'll lose. If they don't have a counter to Trackless Escape, which is at least likely if not certain, we win as soon as we break contact more or less.

Arkeus said:

That's flat out false though? Her word isn't what is forcing her, there, it's Sun Liling's help for Ji Rong. If she can't manage to stop us from going, this doesn't mean she'll fight Cai, this just means she'll have to find another way to help Ji Rong.

She might try to stop us from helping Cai until we get there, but as someone who has her own faction as strong as Cai's and stonger than Sun Liling's, she can't subordinate herself to Sun Liling.

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Admittedly we have limited understanding of the situation but in response to it being about Ji Rong not her word:

yrsillar said:

I will have to stop you if you try to leave," Chu Song said casually, likely reading her expression. "I gave my word and all,"

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Where has this "it's a deal regarding Ji Rong" idea come from? We know she seems closer to Ji Rong than Liling from how she referred to them but that's it. It's about her word and talking to us according to her and we don't currently have any other sources of information to go by.

yrsillar said:

"Nah, I just promised that bloody princess that I'd keep you out of the ruckus she's raising, you know?" The girl responded with a shrug, striding forward out of the underbrush, Ling Qi backed up, keeping an even distance. Chu Song wore a pair of dark grey baggy pants tucked into knee high armored boots. "I didn't mind doing her a favor, since I wanted a chat with you anyway."

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yrsillar said:

Very Nice @Erebeal , points well earned.

Anyway, I'm going to be posting the update shortly, but it has come to my attention that I haven't been giving the thread the love it deserves over the past few days for one reason or another. If some could collect any questions I've missed in the past few days I'll try to answer them today.

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I don't recall all of them, so other people should poke you about them, but a couple I was thinking of:

Erebeal said:

@yrsillar Here's some questions we've been discussing in the Discord regarding things we'd like to ask Elder Ying if possible:

A big thing I want to know is how we should be approaching the Archives. Like, we've been thinking about a mantle art, and people have suggested going straight for the 3rd floor.
Is this a good idea? Would it be better to start lower and build our foundation first?

There's the obvious stuff with successions of arts, as @CircleTheSkies put it:
"The question is - let's say that there's Zephyr's Breath, Zephyr's Heart and Zephyr's Soul (each at a different level of the archives)
You skip to Zephyr's Soul, get strong passives and more powerful (and more expensive!) techniques
But, if you go through the sequence, do you have more passive bonuses and a wider range of techniques?"

But even outside of explicit sequences, would trying to jump straight to, say, a 3rd floor fire art be problematic if you've got no experience with fire arts?
So while, as @Arkeus noted, we could probably grab higher level music arts, since we've got the experience with FVM and good expression, trying to jump straight up to a complex mantle art might be problematic?

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Arkeus said:

We don't know, yeah. We do know some arts are not 'successors' though, and that some second floor arts begin at late red. So there should be a difference between, say, ASA and a second floor arm/lung wind/fire art that begins at late red/gold that's on the second floor. What, though?

Anyway, let me do an sidenote here on how much Formless Shade got stronger this turn. Now, this relies on a particular reading of Formless Shade:

Formless Shade: ooo
Cost 8 qi
The user infuses their bodies with dark qi, and allows the edges of their existence to fray, blending with the night around them. Can only be used in low light or darkness. While active, the user gains a three die bonus to all attempts to escape from any effect that impedes mobility in any way, in addition the user may move through spaces which would otherwise be too small for them, so long as they have line of sight to the destination. The user may also choose to ignore up to one point of damage from any physical attack that successfully hits them while this technique is active. This includes techniques that would otherwise pierce armor, unless it would effect incorporeal targets. lasts four turns

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First, there is obviously the 'it only costs 3 Qi' part. Second, though, is that we get 2 armour now. So here is what I want to ask @yrsillar, to see how it works:
Scenario : We get hit with 2 success by a technique that does 4 additional damage that can't be mitigated by Qi and also pierces 4 points of armour.

A°) As we are in Formless Shade, our armour cannot be penetrated, so we get -3 damage, then get 1 damage that's be mitigated by Qi, then mitigate the 2 left over damage. This would be a total cost of 7Qi and 1 lethal damage (3 formless shade cost, +2*2 for mitigating by Qi).
B°) We Ignore one damage, but our armour is still pierced for 3 unmitigated damage by Qi. We then pay 4 Qi to mitigate the 2 leftover damage. total result : 7 Qi used + 3 lethal damage).
C°) We can't mitigate the 4 damage that can't be mitigated by Qi, but one of the two left over damage is ignored. Total result: 4 lethal damage+ 2Qi used.

I think it should be A considering how expensive the technique is, how it can only be activated in low light and is vulnerable to anti-ethearal (though the wording implies it's not vulnerable to anti-etheral that don't pierce armour?) and the supposedly high quality of the art, but it would be nice to know beforehand.

It would mean we could have taken Qi pills, and we don't use much Qi at all while fighting. We are incredibly Qi efficient.

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Arkeus said:

She cannot find us pretty much wherever we are: we have a stealth art specifically dedicated for making that impossible. Furthermore, we are next to a cliff we can jump, and so on. She can't stop us from escaping, and she can't find us afterwards.

Chu Song wants to talk to us and stall us, but those are two different things: she wants to talk to us anyway, and her coming under stealth means she was planning on talking to us after making sure we weren't going to help Cai. Talking to her now is more or less abandoning the choice of helping Cai. I strongly suspect her plan is to convince her Cai is not someone to follow and we should ally with her instead, and she can fight off Sun Liling herself.

That's flat out false though? Her word isn't what is forcing her, there, it's Sun Liling's help for Ji Rong. If she can't manage to stop us from going, this doesn't mean she'll fight Cai, this just means she'll have to find another way to help Ji Rong.

She might try to stop us from helping Cai until we get there, but as someone who has her own faction as strong as Cai's and stonger than Sun Liling's, she can't subordinate herself to Sun Liling.

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We really don't have guaranteed easy wasys to escape though. SCS is an art that does stealth, yes but it's more focused on escaping (by speed and making it had to follow i.e. by going through too small gaps or making tracking difficult). If Chu Song is decent at perception and speed and has a way to keep up with us (flying sword perhaps) we'd have a lot of trouble getting away from her. Judging by her physique she's probably physically strong enough to break through any barriers around a hole too small for us to fit through, so that's not likely to work either.

And lets be honest, I was stuck with another green cultivator is a perfectly good reason to not get to the Liling fight.

Honestly I'm actually considering the duel option again. With our current loadout we can basically spam SCS and FVM (from what I can tell every tech from those we have costs one qi due to equipment) and with thousand ring fortress we can tank pretty well whilst constantly draining her with Starlight elegy. With the hold ability we can also use our other debuff arts to help grind her down.

Grigori said:

Admittedly we have limited understanding of the situation but in response to it being about Ji Rong not her word:

Where has this "it's a deal regarding Ji Rong" idea come from? We know she seems closer to Ji Rong than Liling from how she referred to them but that's it. It's about her word and talking to us according to her and we don't currently have any other sources of information to go by.

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Well, I misread and assumed that after she got Cai to back off with Ji Rong she got Sun Liling to help her with that. I guess this wasn't said one way or another.

OTOH, we know she will 'stop' us from escaping. So that doesn't mean helping Cai fight.

Humbaba said:

We really don't have guaranteed easy wasys to escape though. SCS is an art that does stealth, yes but it's more focused on escaping (by speed and making it had to follow i.e. by going through too small gaps or making tracking difficult). If Chu Song is decent at perception and speed and has a way to keep up with us (flying sword perhaps) we'd have a lot of trouble getting away from her. Judging by her physique she's probably physically strong enough to break through any barriers around a hole too small for us to fit through, so that's not likely to work either.

And lets be honest, I was stuck with another green cultivator is a perfectly good reason to not get to the Liling fight.

Honestly I'm actually considering the duel option again. With our current loadout we can basically spam SCS and FVM (from what I can tell every tech from those we have costs one qi due to equipment) and with thousand ring fortress we can tank pretty well whilst constantly draining her with Starlight elegy. With the hold ability we can also use our other debuff arts to help grind her down.

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We are near a cliff. We can jump out of it without damage thanks to our new robe, and run super quickly. With SCS it then becomes super easy to lose her with trackless escape.

Even if she has a flying sword she shouldn't be faster than us jumping off a cliff.

Violet Lotus Gown said:

A many layered gown of water smooth black silk with white highlights and a dark blue mantle split down the center like a pair of wings and embroidered with white lotus petals. Made by an apprentice of the Duchess Cai, it's craftsmanship is near unparalleled. Armor 2. Reduces the cost of Darkness and Water arts by 2 to a minimum of one. Provides an additional four die to defense in low light and darkness, and two under normal light. Provides a two die bonus on intimidate and stealth tests. Self Repairs. Durability 8
-Wings in Shadow: At the cost of five qi per turn, provides flight at the user's speed, or negates any damage from a fall of one hundred meters or less​

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The problem is her two minions.

On a side note she seem to be friendly with Ji Rong so punching her in the face might mean friendship.

Arkeus said:

I don't recall all of them, so other people should poke you about them, but a couple I was thinking of:

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Okay, well to answer this. Art 'chains' typically require you to have mastered the previous arts. So it's kind of a moot point.

Going right for higher arts in areas you have no eperience with might result in a dice penalty, possibly a pretty significant one depending.

And in the above scenario B would happen 3 unmitigated with one prevented

I dunno how popular this opinion will be, but I'm more for Ling Qi to be about protecting those close to her. If we can be assured that Meizhen and the GF group aren't involved in the fight or likely to receive blowback in the aftermath, then I'm fine with talking to her.

Problem is, we can't really trust the girl whose job is to stall us till the fight is over to give an accurate assessment. And that while Meizhen might not be targeted specifically, it is possible she will join the fight, as we know she doesn't like Liling or her family, and is probably still holding a grudge over her hurting Ling Qi so badly in our last clusterfuck.

So I guess what those two paragraphs are really saying is that I'd prefer to run, but after talking to her a bit more. Reason being to ensure Meizhen and friends are alright and to see what is actually going on, and to avoid antagonizing Song while we're at it. In fact, I'd kind of like to shoot off something to the effect of, "Talk later, but I'm worried about my friends," before jumping off the cliff and doing our best to get out.

Arkeus said:

OTOH, we know she will 'stop' us from escaping. So that doesn't mean helping Cai fight.

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In our admittedly short time with her she emphasised giving her word twice. We don't know she won't be willing to fight Cai if she's unable to stop us and living up to her word seems important to her. Considering she was willing to fight Cai for Ji Rong after knowing him for such a short time I don't think she's afraid to fight Cai so much as she had no reason to.

yrsillar said:

"I will have to stop you if you try to leave," Chu Song said casually, likely reading her expression. "I gave my word and all," she drawled easily. "You shouldn't worry so much. That princess is only after that Cai demon at the moment. Miss Bai'll be fine."

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yrsillar said:

"You do have pretty sharp senses, don't you?" Chu Song replied with a sharp grin. "But no, you want to fight it out, we'll do it fair and square. On my word," she emphasized her statement by thumping a fist against her armored breastplate. "They'll only involve themselves if you try to run. I'll even leave out my spirit, since yours isn't exactly combat ready."

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if we do end up talking I want to ask "what's so great about living in chaos fighting constantly and getting houses demolished? I've only had a little taste of that and didn't really see the point."

Well, the moratorium is over now, so I guess I should vote.

[X] She wants to talk, then she can talk. You'll listen and plan.

So I want to know what she has to say, she's interesting. Anyone else up for talking to her whilst walking towards Meizhen? For now...

[X] She wants to talk, then she can talk. You'll listen and plan.

So we can talk, run or fight. Lets look at outcomes.

Talk ends with us avoiding conflict, and maybe making a contact. On the other hand, it could damage our reputation.

Run could let us escape, but we'll probably spend a lot of qi doing it. We also probably fail to escape - she's not great at stealth, but she was only using it to get close enough that would couldn't get away from her. She also has to people playing back up who are probably faster then her if lower level. This is the gambit they expect us to take, and so it's the one they've planned for. We look a bit shifty because we ran away from a fight, and we give up the 'honorable warrior' protection so they gang up on us and take all our stuff.

Fight. We probably don't win, but we might. They don't expect us to pull this, and remember this girl is outer sect. She probably isn't exceptional. We just learned a new trick that makes us vastly tankier and no one knows we know it. We protect our reputation - we tried to get free and didn't willingly leave Cai in the lurch. We might make a contact out of this girl - the whole honorable opponents thing. We might improve our skills with a real fight.

The consequences of losing are low. Lady Cai isn't going to be eliminated as a player by this move, even if she's marginalized a bit. And we don't really CARE that much about Cai.

Remember, we're allies of convenience, not loyalty. So we are invested only as much as it benefits us. We don't want things going bad for her... but it might be convenient if they aren't going great either. It makes us more important.

[X] Duel her, even if she is above you in cultivation you have a shot. If you can take her out her lackeys shouldn't interfere and she won't be causing any other trouble today.

If we lose... so what. We did our 'duty' by trying, so no one can call us a coward. If we win, we earn a bit of glory for doing well at something we aren't seen as good at.

[X] She wants to talk, then she can talk. You'll listen and plan.

I don't feel strongly enough about Cai to right a 3rd-stage cultivator for her. Especially when we have no prior grudge with said cultivator, and they have specifically prepared to oppose is.

BTW. We don't even know that she is early Green. She could very well be Mis...

TheLastOne said:

She also has to people playing back up who are probably faster then her if lower level.

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Also she has a spirit beast, which is probably grade 3. So that is two enemies a stage above us; joy.