Scrawled in seemingly random locations scattered across the sect is a rather bizarre but potentially informational ramblings of a certain Disciple.
Wuyin's Declassified Sect Survival Guide
Hello! Or goodbye! I'm not sure. If you're reading this, then welcome to Red Dew Sect! You've arrived in a very interesting time, and time does not interest easily! But this interest could be good or lethal, and while you've been taught the basics, it's never a bad idea to have them all in one place! Don't worry if they don't make sense, you'll still know them in your heart. Or head. Or stomach?
The End of the Beginning. Or the beginning of the end?
Progress! It's probably what you're here for! Luckily, as an Outer Disciple of the Sect, you have already made a little bit of progress! Specifically, you, and everyone else, started out with a Clay Grade Body, Mind, and Fortune, though individual Disciples may start out with a Copper in any one of these attributes depending on their aptitude! You also start with no techniques, unless you have a gift for that, in which case, you have a single Clay Grade Technique, which I'll get into later. You also start out as a Tempered Peasant, which is the lowest Realm of Cultivation. Think of it like a power level, with your graded attributes representing where you fall within that power level. Here all the Realms of Cultivation so you don't have to memorize them!
Tempered Peasant <- This is you!
Forged Soldier - This is the highest realm Outer Disciples can be.
Iron Knight - This is the realm our Inner Disciples fall in!
Core Lord - This is the realm that our esteemed Elders are in!
Gold Baron - This is the realm that the late Red Dew Baron achieved. As of now, there no individuals in the Red Dew Barony that are in this Realm!
Jade Count
Nascent Marquess
Profound Duke
Sage King
Eternal Emperor
Tribulation Saint
True Immortal
Celestial Being
Generally, an individual who stands a Realm above another is largely untouchable unless they are ganged up on by many, and even then, it is likely that the Heavens favor those who stand at the higher realm! So tread carefully around our Seniors and our Elders, for we are but ants in comparison to them!
The Cult of Culture for Cultivating Cultivated Cultivators!
Now, I'm sure at this point you're saying "Aw, we're the lowest rung on the ladder? This sucks!" And to that I'd say you're already doing better than 99.5% of all of the people here in this Barony, so quite whining you giant man-children! But by that standard, I would also be a man-child. And I am not a man-child! So neither are you!
And luckily, you don't have to stay a man-child! You can advance through the realms through cultivation!
How do you do this? Well, you've already been taught the basics, but let me give you some clearer instructions:
Achieving an advancement in realm from Tempered Peasant to Forged Soldier requires all of the following, done in no particular order:
- Forge the 4 Organs: Eyes, Lungs, Heart, and Stomach. This is accomplished by Working on your Cultivation Base. Each success you generate with this action is cumulative, and when you have accumulated enough successes, you will Forge one of these organs, and will be allowed to raise the Grade of one of your attributes! Remember, that's Body, Spirit, or Fortune!
- Gain Enlightenment of the First Realm of your Path. This is accomplished by Meditating on the Dao to gain Insights, which represent your own beliefs and revelations regarding this world we inhabit and your own role in it.
Once both of these have been accomplished, congratulations! You can now initiate a Breakthrough to the next Realm! Don't expect it to be easy though!
How to Succeed or Fail in Cultivation while trying!
"But wait a minute Wuyin?" I'm sure you're saying. "How do I succeed at things? What counts as a failure? Am I a failure?" And my answer to that is yes! But every failure is a success waiting to happen! So how does that happen? Well, I'll tell you!
Success or Failure are the result of cosmic dice rolling above our heads. Specifically, 10 sided dice. When you perform any action, in order to determine if you succeed or fail at said action, and by how much, a certain amount of dice are rolled. This is determined by the Grade of the relevant attribute (Remember, that's Body, Spirit, or Fortune!), with higher grades awarding more dice, scaling linearly. So Clay Grade Body gives 1 die to roll for an action that requires you to roll Body, and Copper Body gives you 2 dice, Iron giving you 3 dice, and so on and so forth.
However, if you have a technique that you can apply to the action you are taking, it also contributes dice to this roll, on the same scale that your attributes do! So if you have a Clay Grade Technique that applies to an Body action, and you have Clay Body, you now are rolling 2 whole dice! By the way, Techniques can be raised in Grade by Training them, and aren't limited in the amount of times they can be raised in Grade like attributes! So go nuts! Just remember that techniques only make you better at actions, they don't contribute towards advancing in Realm!
So, once the massive hand in the sky has gathered the appropriate amount of dice to roll for your action, all the dice get rolled.
On a result of 1 to 5, that dice is a failure. Boo!
On a result of 6-10, that dice is a success. Yay!
Once all the dice have been rolled, all the successes are counted up, and that determine how well you've done on your action!
Time to tilt the scales! Oh wait, I hate math!
So, you've gotten your odds, and they're not good enough for you! Well, here's how you can change them, for better or worse:
Auxiliary Actions! Every turn (Don't worry, you'll know what a turn is), you can use your Auxiliary action to either move around, do something other than your main action, or help out your main action! Either way, whether you choose to do something different or the same as your main, your Auxiliary action also rolls dice to determine success just like your main! Except it has a -2 modifier on the results of it's dice. Poop. But, if you're using your Auxiliary to help out your main, any successes generated by it get added to your Main Action! Yay!
Friends! If you happen to have a friend who isn't another Player(Don't worry, you'll know what this means too), and they can help you out with your action, that's great! The sacred power of friendship awards a +2 modification on all dice rolled for that action! This can apply to Auxiliary actions as well, so if you spend both a Main action and Auxiliary action on the same action, and have a friend helping you out, your chances of succeeding go up by a lot!
Special Friends! If you have a friend, or multiple friends, who are Players, then things work differently! If you're all taking the same action and working together (Rather than competing or even sabotaging each other!), then you all combine your dice together, and the total amount of successes is either counted for the whole action, or distributed evenly among the group! If one person is just helping you out though, then you just get a bonus. I think this is just dice, but the giant hand in the sky hasn't said anything about it.
Circumstances! Yes, money can't buy you love, but it might be able to buy you successes! Depending on your actions, you may be able to spend certain resources on them to award you bonuses! What kind? Don't know! Probably depends on what kind of resource you're using. Maybe the Giant Hand will say which is which.
Red Dew, and You
This is getting kinda hard to write, so here's some information on the local environment you've found yourself in! Some of this comes from our Esteemed Elders, and some of it comes from the Giant Hand in the Sky!
"The Red Dew Sect is located on top of the mountain with the sect master's pavilion at the very top of the peak. Roaring Furnace city is much lower down at the foot of the mountain."
"The Red Dew is actually the nectar of a type of brilliant flower that grows on the sides of the mountain. When it blooms the mountain is swathed in crimson and mortal workers carefully harvest the flowers to extract the nectar which is then made into potent liquors that make up the Barony's main export."
There are roughly 8300 cultivators in the Red Dew Sect, ~8250 Outer, ~75 inner, and like a dozen elders right now.
"The other questions have been neatly answered so I will address religion. Basically the Empire officially recognizes that there is a heavenly court and heavenly bureaucracy full of gods taking care of various worldly aspects. There are temples and shrines scattered to them all over. Mostly used by mortals, but cultivators will occasionally pay their respects.
There are also local gods. Spirits that have basically cultivated divinity by getting mortals and cultivators around them to worship them. These are not recognized by the empire. But of course have varying degrees of influence over their areas depending on how powerful they are.
Finally there are the monks. They meditate on the Dao of the universe itself rather than any god. They spent their time attempting to gain enlightenment and become at peace with the world. The Empire does not particularly like them as cultivation is generally viewed as fighting against your place in the Dao.
Some monks and local gods are very powerful and banded together in the Crystal Palm War to force the Empire to acknowledge them and stop persecuting them. Ever since the Empire has basically looked the other way."
Beast don't get human rights unless they look human! Doesn't matter how smart they are!
"Duels yes, but ambushing and stealing are frowned on. I'll leave actual punishments up to the elders."
"We are beholden to the Empire in the worst way possible: Taxes. In more serious terms, the Sects are the Empire. The Emperor is a cultivator, and we are awarded lands and prestige in accordance with our cultivation."
"The local environment varies from "Killable to a peasant" to "Your elders are not entirely safe" Haven't seen anything that can murder us without a good fight yet... But the quest just started."
We don't know where those Ruins people keep talking about came from. Figure it out yourself! Maybe check the archives?
There's only 1 Sect in the Red Dew Barony, and that's the Red Dew Sect! There are neighboring Sects in nearby territories, but it's waaay too dangerous to travel to them if you're just a Tempered Peasant.
There are a little under 1.6 million people living in the Red Dew Barony. Wow!
Anyway, that's all for now. If you need anything else, just scream it into the sky! Maybe I'll hear it and write something else!