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...and there's definitely some potential Chaos theming in "people fly around in the belly of dragons and exit via loading ramps. Also, dragons occasionally get fractious and squabble and bite each other."
 
Drawing lots like this implies to me they need manpower and don't care much about quality - which speaks to me of war, experiments, or something else quite risky.
I think they either want us for experiments or to eat us, maybe send us to some dangerous new legacy place to trigger the traps before sending their own scions.

[X] Volunteer to go now

That seems like the most interesting choice, worst we brutally die as someone's dinner.

And we are the protagonist, if we want to get string we need to act like one, I don't think there is a single xianxia protagonist who wouldn't volanteer in the first wave and benefit greatly for it, at most some might be pressured into volanteering.

Also, Va is probably going and us being a jade beauty's lacky is one of the things that made this quest stand out to me, ditching her the first opportunity is boring.
 
[X] Leave the situation up to fate

Dis shit? Yeah. No. They want to do what that core disciple did and use us for unethical experiments. We got lucky and survived once, probably not again. We actually know what we're doing here and we've got enough tricks that we can continue to rise.
 
So my WH40K knowledge is sparse and mostly learned through osmosis.

Assuming we are in such a crossover, what does that make the sect? A psyker training facility? What sort of event is an we expect for being recruited? Helping pilot an oversized ship?

I mean being warm bodies in a war seems the most likely outcome, but any other possibilities?
 
Sufficiently advance magic and tech kinda ends up having a lot of overlap that's currently what I'm assuming is up with higher realms. They just have a more complete understanding of things and better resources.
 
So my WH40K knowledge is sparse and mostly learned through osmosis.

Assuming we are in such a crossover, what does that make the sect? A psyker training facility? What sort of event is an we expect for being recruited? Helping pilot an oversized ship?

I mean being warm bodies in a war seems the most likely outcome, but any other possibilities?
If they want us for a warhammer war.

Throw us in wave tactics under the command of barely trained inbred noble and a guy looking for an excuse to shoot his soldier.

We would be sent against monsters we have no chance against for rule of cool combat style instead of the better methods even 21 century earth developed.

We would be given no resources and our lives will be spent as wastefully as possible.
 
That's imperial guard. We're chaos cults.
Than sent into the meat grinder of unending demon wars for the amusement and favor of dark gods who wilk transform us into a parody of ourselves and who's favour can change in an instance, leaving us insane and tortured blob of flesh.

Having died a meaningless death for their amusement.
Also, I'm pretty sure that we're looking at aesthetic/altverse/crossover rather than "this actually takes place in WH40K".
Maybe, I personally don't think it will by WH40k aesthetic, I think the implied power of cultivators and the causalness in which they killed mortals guvd me a pretty different image, wh40k does kill mortals, but even they are rarely so careless when they could instead waste them in combat.

In wh40k, mortals have use, here it seems more like mortals where ants the human couldn't be bothered to stop himself from stepping on because he has already lifted his leg and intended to walk in a place with ants.
 
Basic 1 New
[X] Volunteer to go now

Yon has experienced being sold once before in his life, and this time he's going to get the most out of it personally as he can.

He isn't the first, or even really among the first, but he is solidly in the first half of outer disciples who move forward to take a red ball. For a time he is worried that he might not make it, before he realizes that it does in fact seem that the Envoy is taking a third of all outer disciples immediately.

He wonders at what benefit there might be, but as he reaches the front of the line he is immediately shuffled into another line where a core disciple from the Artisan Annex is rapidly weaving together signifier tokens. Rather interestingly, Yon got a premade and significantly more ornate token in Medical Pavilion blue compared to the disciples from the Hunting and Internal Security Divisions ahead of him. It looks like specialty matters, and most of the volunteers have been from the more combat focused divisions.

Immediately after getting his token an inner disciple from security shoves him further along into a side building where a number of other dazed looking outer disciples with similar tokens to him, only varying in which division they were a part of. There were very few from Medical and Artisan, and no one he could see from Scriptorium, which made sense given how relatively unadventurous those groups were.

Eventually a core disciple from Huntingang rang a gong to get everyone's attention. The seemingly middle aged man had a pained look on his face that seemed only slightly relieved to see everyone eager to get this over with. "Attention everyone! Attention! You are here because you were within the first one hundred to volunteer from your division. The sect will be providing you with a small supply of cultivation resources, while the Celestials will be providing additional training and you will start out with a higher rank than those less eager." The disciple looked at a scroll and said, "I believe the translation is 'Common Twenty Man Leader', and if any of you are from noble families and don't like that name, shut up about it, you're serving under Celestials."

Yon had a strangely prophetic feeling that a lot of young masters were going to die in short order because they had no idea how to shut up and keep their heads down. They might understand differences in power, but any noble scion caught up in all of this would have simply been a recent addition to the sect and would see the situation as being a temporary inconvenience. Yon was certain that the first wave of outer disciples were fresh and young and presumed that by volunteering they would be swept up to whatever equivalent of Core Disciple the Celestials had in short order. He could already tell the Envoy and his vassals did not think that way.

He also really hoped that Va was okay.

Soon enough the approximately two hundred and fifty of them were being shuffled further into the sect compound. Already there were whispers that those who had volunteered later from their divisions were going to be 'Common Five Man Leaders', and that there were discussions about the possibilities of fights breaking out over slower but more noble disciples taking offence.

The group entered into a major antechamber, one of the study halls and arming rooms that lead towards the Deep Archives. The regular furniture had been cleared out of the way, with the primary point of interest being the dozen or so mortal servants whose bodies were stacked in a bloody heap on one side of the room. They had been flayed and their skulls broken open, with their skins twisted around an arched doorway and their brains being used to write upon the macabre parchment. The author of the atrocity was a man of stooped mortal stature so buried within his robes that his face could not be seen, his limbs atrophied but his spiritual presence so great he was moving the viscera that was his ink with his mind alone.

Yon didn't know where to look, since everything was unpleasant. The script was simultaneously fascinating but also made his head spin to gaze upon it. The bodies taunted him with their ghastly anonymity: had he known any of those servants, had he interacted with any of them? He knew from personal experience how little the lives of mortals could mean to those spiritually greater than them, but this was different.

It was the looks in the eyes of the other disciples that finally clued Yon into what was different. If an elder wanted to run an experiment on mortals, it was generally seen as a courtesy to other disciples to not make a public mess. This display showed that fundamentally the Celestials saw the disciples as little better than the mortals, meaning that perhaps for the first time in their lives these disciples were feeling empathy for the flayed and shattered bodies on the floor, and they did not like it.

The Celestial sorcerer finished scribing, at which point there was a flare of light and the archway was limned in flickering violet flames, the passage beyond replaced with a strange image that swam and flickered like it was beneath a layer of turbulent water. The outer disciples who had volunteered were promptly herded through the portal, a thoroughly unpleasant experience that left many nauseous on the other side. Yon was one of the few with a tough enough constitution to power through the disorientation, which let him get a better appreciation of the place.

He had absolutely no idea where they could be, other than far from home. They were in a massive chamber that had to be multiple li long and made of stone, the vaulted ceiling at least as high as a dozen men were tall. There were no windows anywhere, although there were many doorways leading into the chamber, and glowstones provided illumination. There were all sorts of structures and scaffolds made of all manner of materials, and Yon immediately clocked the place as being a physical training chamber of some sort.

Hard faced men clad in strangely chitinous plate watched the disciples spilling in through the sorcerous portal and clearly thought nothing of it. Most were up on gantries observing from a distance, but several were at the same level as them, and were notably armed with unpleasant looking clubs. Several of them were grabbing incapacitated disciples and hauling them over to strange mechanisms that seemed to be like metal spider legs surrounding a face mask mounted on a pedestal. They roughly shoved disciples face-first into the artefacts, the mechanical legs closing around heads, at which point the victims started to scream.

One disciple tried to protest, and got a jab from a club. The young man easily blocked the strike, but to everyone's surprise there was a loud crack and the wayward disciple was knocked to the ground, his muscles seizing up as he screamed in surprise and pain. He was immediately seized and shoved into one of the devices.

One of the first disciples shoved in was released from whatever it was he was experiencing, collapsing to the ground in the midst of a seizure. At this Yon's Medical Pavilion training kicked in, and he gestured towards the young man on the ground. Somewhat surprisingly the Celestials just shrugged in indifference and made an allowing gesture, and Yon was able to attend to him.

The majority of the first batch of disciples failed to wake up, and several died, but Yon got the feeling that the fact that the transit had incapacitated them meant that they had the weakest constitutions. However, when one man about his age managed to get his eyes to flicker open, one of the guards barked something in their weird language. The disciple had a funny look on his face before he nodded and said to everyone else, "I… I understand them."

Ah. Obviously the Celestials would need to communicate with their conscripts, so implanting the knowledge into the intended leaders made sense. The indelicate manner of doing it was not exactly comforting, but senior disciples could just be like that, so it wasn't exactly a new experience, especially not for Yon. As such, Yon made sure to get into line for the devices, because he had a feeling the Celestials were not going to be particularly tolerant of the last few disciples finding their feet afterward.

The experience of having his head wrapped up in unyielding metal and his face pressed into the mechanism was distinctly unpleasant all on its own, but once the lights began to play before his eyes the experience went from uncomfortable to excruciating. It was like his skull was being drilled into through his eyes and out the back so that molten metal could be injected. He could distinctly feel memories being called up and then foreign ones being hammered in on top, crudely welding them together.

Diamond Body and Iron Kettle let him endure, but just barely. While Iron Kettle was mostly about physical digestion, it inherently also included spiritual digestion to incorporate the metaphysical elements of consumed items into the body and soul. Yon barely managed to hold on, and even then when the mechanism released him he tottered away and had to throw up thin bile out of sheer, undeniable biological reflex. The guards laughed at him, but one of them commented, "Ha! Got the first one of these savages that might be able to hold onto being a sarge!"

The first thought that flashed through Yon's head was 'There are going to be so many dead young masters if the Celestials call us that!', followed shortly after by the somewhat more immediately pertinent 'Oh, I could understand that'.

It took about an hour for the disciples to all be processed through, the men-at-arms watching them with dispassionate amusement the entire time. On occasion they would pass pieces of metal or script back and forth among each other, apparently some sort of gambling. Ten of the disciples died outright, but they had all been from the first batches who were scooped up after being disoriented from the portal to this new realm.

The leader of the Celestial armsmen seemed to eventually decide that the process was well enough in hand that his words would be properly conveyed to the survivors in one way or another.

"All right you primitives! I am Sergeant Major Gosrick of the Forsaken 178th! You will address me as 'Sergeant Major' or 'Sir', is that clear?" The burly man barked out at them all. Yon and the majority of the disciples all immediately chanted out some sort of confirmation, but there were a few who were young and confused or just too proud. The armsmen laid into those lacking with their clubs.

"Ha! Not bad, not bad! Not bad for a bunch of ignorant savages who don't even know how to wipe their own asses that is! I think the majority of you might survive this!" Sergeant Gosrick said while giving a harsh chuckle. "Now that your freebie is over, let's get this right. The first and last thing out of your mouth when you address me is to be 'Sir!', is that clear?"

Several more examples were made when the chant was not "Sir, yes, sir!" This went on for a few minutes before eventually Sergeant Gosrick said, "Well, we might make something of your lot yet! I hear you savages think that the Gods have blessed you, and that makes you strong, but let's see if that is actually the case, shall we? We have a series of challenges for you lot, so let's see what you're really made of."

How does Yon perform?
[ ] Push to do as best as he possibly can
[ ] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job
[ ] Sandbag a bit, be underestimated
[ ] Hang back to help those struggling
 
[X] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job

I am not sure if doing best is good idea given how this boot camp probably will test our endurence. I am not opposed to helping people in the back
Were committed, don't see why we should hold back
Because this is test (or rather a set of tests) number one of we don't have a clue how many so going all out now would be like sprinting from the start in a marathon
 
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[X] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job

I am not sure if doing best is good idea given how this boot camp probably will test our endurence. I am not opposed to helping people in the back

Because this is test (or rather a set of tests) number one of we don't have a clue how many so going all out now would be like sprinting from the start in a marathon
I read as that we will be tackling all of them at once, not choose the amount of effort for the first one and then be able to change it for a 2nd test
 
[X] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job

So the thing with basic, and drill sergeants like this cunt Gosrik, is that the entire point is to break you and then rebuild you into whatever they want. You fundamentally cannot please them by excelling (or at all actually) - they will just invent excuses and errors on your part and come up with the most psychotic statements and reasons in order to punish you for the explicit purpose of breaking you.

Be worse than anyone else? Get hammered. Be better than everyone else? Get hammered.

Do everything exactly how they say one day, then again the next? Get hammered because the rules changed on day two. It is intentionally unfair as fuck.

Passing through the do a good job will make him simply be part of the crowd and made an example of less often. Yon will still be punished, but this is a way to reduce how often he is.
 
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[X] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job

This is military boot camp. Standing out and falling behind will both fuck you, the goal is to just get through it.
 
[X] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job

Yeah, good point. Excelling here isn't going to get us a promotion or accolade. They'll want us to perform to an expected level and that's all they'll care about.

We in 40K boot camp now - I don't know the factions well enough to know our best course of action, but I do think our motto should be survival and making sure we don't stick out enough.
 
Hrrm.
[ ] Hang back to help those struggling
The Celestials won't be impressed given their callousness, but at least we'll make friends.
[ ] Sandbag a bit, be underestimated
Good if we want to sucker-punch anyone we think might try and cause us trouble but uhh…
Last guy who angled for that position over us we slapped his pride.
[X] Don't stand out one way or the other, just do a good job
Probably the wisest notion.
[ ] Push to do as best as he possibly can
I think Yon has been the boytoy before and he didn't care or it and this will lead to more of that. Best way to get his name noted by the Celestials perhaps but…
 
[X] Push to do as best as he possibly can

I dont really see a negative to just trying our best
Getting Yon thrown around, yelled at, and fucked over for being a "hotshot". Get given a temp command and then fucked when we break a rule that didn't exist before because Gosrik isn't satisfied yet.

There are no rewards in boot camp.
 
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Getting Yon thrown around, yelled at, and fucked over for being a "hotshot". Get given a temp command and then fucked when we break a rule that didn't exist because Gosrik isn't satisfied yet.

There are no rewards in boot camp.
the problem is here is i doubt were the best here, i understand if we were but like im pretty sure 99% of the people we came with are probably better then us in most things.

But maybe they can tell weather were trying our hardest, maybe there rewards for doing our best, maybe there punishment for not. Or maybe its as you say, you can never tell. Assuming that this is like real life might be wrong.

Then again it might be as you say, but it could be that they will do what you said they will do anyways.

Edit: Sorry for rambling lol
 
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