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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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

I just think this is the best option. Cai is a big girl, and has an even bigger man with her, so they should be able to handle things; not even counting other interference from either Xuan Shi, or Huang Da. Sun Liling is also more limited than the initial fight due to not being able to use her plant, as doing something that got you slapped down for a month by the Elder's, then doing the exact same thing right after returning means she'd be in serious shit with what is a powerful sect.

There's also the value within the discussion itself. This girl is involved in a faction that seems to be pretty much ignored by the crowd Ling Qi hangs around with, other commoners. And because of that they're looked down upon, so there's a great deal of potential in getting to know a faction we haven't interact with much, who seems to be quite generous with what we've already seen of her particularly as Ji Rong doesn't lend himself to making great first impressions.

She also seems like a trustworthy person given she likely wants to develop a relationship with us given she desires to talk with us and us being a commoner, thus I don't see her really lying about Sun Liling not going after Bai Meizhen, so I don't particularly see an urgency in running away.

Realistically - not taking into account narrative contrivance - the chances of us even finding the Sun Liling/Cai battle when we're in the mountain, getting there in a reasonable time where we can have an impact given fights don't tend to last longer than a couple minutes, and being able to meaningfully contribute having not expended much Qi or lost health while being chased seems like a pretty poor bet. Given she was able to find us she likely has a sensor art, and even if that weren't the case she likely has a good idea of where the Sun/Cai fight is going to happen, we'd just drag another couple participants towards it where she may feel her word was broken and thus interfere with the fight. Worse is that she probably wouldn't restrict herself to not using her spirit beast given she only agreed to that with a duel.

I just don't see it as being a worthwhile outcome, even if we do escape. If we can't escape from the three of them and her spirit beast, then we just generally fucked up.
 
Shadell said:
We have a third realm cultivator and her minions sent here to occupy us, presumably because those cultivators will not help elsewhere, or because they've decided this is a good use of forces.
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Or because the forces aren't Sun's to command, and they were willing to do this but not actually fight for them.

Note that in such a case, given that Song is honor-bound to stop us, by successfully running away we might just be getting these forces involved on Sun's side as the only way to maintain Song's honor.
 
PrimalShadow said:
Or because the forces aren't Sun's to command, and they were willing to do this but not actually fight for them.

Note that in such a case, given that Song is honor-bound to stop us, by successfully running away we might just be getting these forces involved on Sun's side as the only way to maintain Song's honor.
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Again, stopping us to interfere doesn't mean helping Cai's forces directly if we do manage to interfere. It means, at most, trying to fight us. Not fighting Cai's forces.
Neptune said:
Realistically - not taking into account narrative contrivance - the chances of us even finding the Sun Liling/Cai battle when we're in the mountain, getting there in a reasonable time where we can have an impact given fights don't tend to last longer than a couple minutes, and being able to meaningfully contribute having not expended much Qi or lost health while being chased seems like a pretty poor bet. Given she was able to find us she likely has a sensor art, and even if that weren't the case she likely has a good idea of where the Sun/Cai fight is going to happen, we'd just drag another couple participants towards it where she may feel her word was broken and thus interfere with the fight. Worse is that she probably wouldn't restrict herself to not using her spirit beast given she only agreed to that with a duel.

I just don't see it as being a worthwhile outcome, even if we do escape. If we can't escape from the three of them and her spirit beast, then we just generally fucked up.
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It's not just one fight. A lot of things are happening right now, and helping Gu Xiulan/Meizhen with what's happening is important. We might not be able to directly help Cai's fight in time even if we escape now, but we will be able to help out the overall battle.

Moreoever, Song Chu knowing where we are is not really hard, and we have ways to counter tracking, so that's not a concern even if she has such arts.
 
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Neptune said:
I just think this is the best option. Cai is a big girl, and has an even bigger man with her, so they should be able to handle things; not even counting other interference from either Xuan Shi, or Huang Da. Sun Liling is also more limited than the initial fight due to not being able to use her plant, as doing something that got you slapped down for a month by the Elder's, then doing the exact same thing right after returning means she'd be in serious shit with what is a powerful sect.
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We have no clue what other delays there are, what forces from the older outer sect Liling has mustered or what's going on.

Liling got slapped down for a month by the elders because they can't actually punish her for real. If she misbehaves, she will get away with it, and she just got hard confirmation on that (and they didn't care about her starting a fight, just the technique she used).

Like, you're making a number of wildly optimistic assumptions here, particularly when we're firmly and publicly in Cai's camp. If that falls, we not only go back to anarchy (which was, if you'll remember, really quite bad for Meizhen), but we'll now be the losers that we were robbing before, the fair game. It's a very bad negative consequence for us.

We cannot win a fight here (FVM's tricks won't hold up against the auto-successes and I doubt we have the dice with FSA), so a duel is just dodging until we inevitably lose. Running, thus, is the only option with a chance of measurably effecting the broader conflict of unknown scope and intensity, that's probably pretty premeditated and that Cai doesn't seem to have a counterplan for (or at least one she kept from half of her inner circle if she does).

PrimalShadow said:
Note that in such a case, given that Song is honor-bound to stop us, by successfully running away we might just be getting these forces involved on Sun's side as the only way to maintain Song's honor.
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If they were willing to fight Cai, they'd have gone to fight Cai. We're also not moving straight to Cai, with the run away vote, so getting directly involved wouldn't really follow.
Adhoc vote count started by Shadell on Aug 13, 2017 at 12:27 AM, finished with 27864 posts and 53 votes.
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Arkeus said:
Again, stopping us to interfere doesn't mean helping Cai's forces directly if we do manage to interfere. It means, at most, trying to fight us. Not fighting Cai's forces.
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If you take it literally, yes. However, if Song fails to stop us from interfering, I would not be surprised to hear that she was joining the fight as due compensation for otherwise breaking her word.
 
Shadell said:
Liling got slapped down for a month by the elders because they can't actually punish her for real. If she misbehaves, she will get away with it, and she just got hard confirmation on that (and they didn't care about her starting a fight, just the technique she used).
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That's making an assumption though given just how powerful sects are, and how she isn't within her own province. It seems far more likely that they gave her certain tolerances due to being the heir to a province, due to it being a fight with multiple other members of the outer sect, and because it was her first time.

Disobeying the Eldar's is just stupid at that point, as they would have to escalate as they've already punished the transgression once. If they don't do it when it's been repeated and she knows that they don't want her to do it, it undermines their overall authority along with their prestige and standing with other organizations and people within the Empire as it's unlikely others within the sect would keep quiet about it. Particularly as she'd have used it against the heir to the Province (twice), where the Sect is actually located.
 
PrimalShadow said:
If you take it literally, yes. However, if Song fails to stop us from interfering, I would not be surprised to hear that she was joining the fight as due compensation for otherwise breaking her word.
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This is very true.

That being said, this doesn't necessarily make things worse for our team.

Like, us + our friends against Song + everyone else is possibly still a better fight for us than everyone fighting individually. We have pretty good teamfight here.
 
TheLastOne said:
That is to say... I feel the consequences for unsuccessful flight are more serious, to the point where while I prefer option three, I'll tactically vote for option one if it's obvious two is winning. I don't feel we own Lady Cai enough loyalty to take that level of risk.
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While I can only speak for myself I'm voting for escape, because I see no reason those with a grudge against Gu Xiulan won't take advantage of the ruckus, and I'm entirely opposed to leaving a good friend out to hang in return for a lower personal risk.
Neptune said:
She also seems like a trustworthy person given she likely wants to develop a relationship with us given she desires to talk with us and us being a commoner, thus I don't see her really lying about Sun Liling not going after Bai Meizhen, so I don't particularly see an urgency in running away.

Realistically - not taking into account narrative contrivance - the chances of us even finding the Sun Liling/Cai battle when we're in the mountain, getting there in a reasonable time where we can have an impact given fights don't tend to last longer than a couple minutes, and being able to meaningfully contribute having not expended much Qi or lost health while being chased seems like a pretty poor bet. Given she was able to find us she likely has a sensor art, and even if that weren't the case she likely has a good idea of where the Sun/Cai fight is going to happen, we'd just drag another couple participants towards it where she may feel her word was broken and thus interfere with the fight. Worse is that she probably wouldn't restrict herself to not using her spirit beast given she only agreed to that with a duel.

I just don't see it as being a worthwhile outcome, even if we do escape. If we can't escape from the three of them and her spirit beast, then we just generally fucked up.
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So Sun Liling plan including at a minimum a method to delay Gu Xiulan like say bringing those with a grudge against her into the plan, or us being in a weaker position when she comes for Bai aren't reasons enough to intervene?

Realistically in order to create a ruckus you need to do so in a area where it will be noticed, which pretty much limits it to the living areas, or other similar locations.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Killer_Whale on Aug 12, 2017 at 7:00 PM, finished with 27803 posts and 34 votes.
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Shadell said:
If they were willing to fight Cai, they'd have gone to fight Cai. We're also not moving straight to Cai, with the run away vote, so getting directly involved wouldn't really follow.
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Being willing to fight Cai doesn't mean having a reason to fight her. Besides, she already proved her willingness to fight Cai when she refused to hand over Rong.
 
[X] She has outright said that she is here to stall you. Escape and join back up with as many of your friends as you can manage. Even if it means dealing with her two lackeys too.
-[X] Tell her we'll have to postpone your talk before escaping.
 
Ugh. I really don't care about Cai, or her "order" at all. To be honest I don't really want to back her at all. If that was all that was at stake I don't think it would really be worth taking any risks to help. But that isn't all that is at risk, we are friends with Bai and given that Bai and Sun are basically mortal enemies, so backing Cai means backing Bai by extension.

So we have three options.
1) Talk. This means that Chu succeeds at her goal of delaying us.
2) Fight solo against her. Even if we win, this means that Chu succeeds at her goal of delaying us. And we are very unlikely to win. Chu is third realm and we aren't, that means that even assuming she is a early third realm she gets at least 2 successes over us in any clash. This is pretty clearly the worst option given that depending on her mood it can end up with us badly hurt and missing stuff.
3) Run. The only option where Chu fails if we succeed, that kind of means its the option to pick. To top it off its one where we have a good chance of success given that we have a ton of escape/stealth abilities.
And I'm fairly sure that option three is why she is even giving us option 1 and 2 as opposed to just attacking us with her minions is because we are slippery, and even with her mooks she isn't confident that she can tie us down.
TheLastOne said:
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.
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Haha. No. Running away from a fight against someone a realm ahead of you and older will not make us look shifty. Now, if we had say, just insulted them or slept with their fiance or something you may have a point. But she has no connection to us to claim a proper duel, nor do we have any reason *not* to run away.
Plus, given our extreme specialties in stealth and running we can probably escape her even with her higher cultivation.
Of course, it isn't a given that we can escape. She *is* a realm above us, but given that she is bad at the whole stealth thing (and presumably the things accociated with it) I think we have a good shot.
TheLastOne said:
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.
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Yeah, winning in a proper fight is far less likely then escaping.
Now, best case scenario she is a early green, and her arts are around the same level as ours. In this case we may manage a win with great difficulty.
More realistically she isn't going to even be in our league. She probably isn't early green (even mid green will give her a solid +4 successes over us in every clash), she almost certainly has better arts (because she can level them up to green), she almost certainly has better equipment (aside from our dress) and certainly has 1 more talisman then we do, and she may very well have a flying sword. Most importantly she is probably more focused on 1v1 combat, so even without all those massive bonuses she would have a good chance at victory.
And again, even if we do beat her she still beats us given that we won't be there for the fight.
PrimalShadow said:
If you take it literally, yes. However, if Song fails to stop us from interfering, I would not be surprised to hear that she was joining the fight as due compensation for otherwise breaking her word.
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I disagree. I suspect there is a reason that she isn't in the fight proper and instead is off here delaying us, that being that she either doesn't want to be in the fight or can't be in it (probably due to politics or family).
Her failing here is unlikely to change her core reasons for not wanting to be in the fight in the first place.
 
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[X] She has outright said that she is here to stall you. Escape and join back up with as many of your friends as you can manage. Even if it means dealing with her two lackeys too.
-[X] Tell her we'll have to postpone your talk before escaping.
 
Erebeal said:
That being said, this doesn't necessarily make things worse for our team.

Like, us + our friends against Song + everyone else is possibly still a better fight for us than everyone fighting individually. We have pretty good teamfight here.
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Song's microfaction consists of two 3rd stage cultivators (herself and her spirit) and two mid-stage cultivators. The only possible way we could possibly match up to that is if we grabbed Meizhen - and even then it might not be enough since Cui is shedding. And that relies on Meizhen needing a push from us to join the fight, which is kinda strange.
 
lemon10 said:
Haha. No. Running away from a fight against someone a realm ahead of you and older will not make us look shifty. Now, if we had say, just insulted them or slept with their fiance or something you may have a point. But she has no connection to us to claim a proper duel, nor do we have any reason *not* to run away.
Plus, given our extreme specialties in stealth and running we can probably escape her even with her higher cultivation.
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And actually, we've just gotten information to say otherwise. Song noted that the one's that had responded to Gu's provocations weren't the strongest. The key point here is that our duels were the result of provocations, that they could have chosen to ignore. Indeed, she seems to be indicating that she feels that they were hot-headed.

Running isn't going to lose us rep here. And joining up with our friends to crush as much face as possible would be far more valuable rep wise anyway. Similarly, our friends losing would be a much bigger loss rep wise.
 
lemon10 said:
Her failing here is unlikely to change her core reasons for not wanting to be in the fight in the first place.
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Apparently keeping her word is a major concern of hers. Thus, us escaping changes her "core reasons for not wanting to be in the fight in the first place" by adding the motivation to either not break her word or satisfactorily make up for breaking her word.


On that note. I am by no means confident that we can successfully escape here; I give us 30% odds, maybe. Song is within close range of us at this point, and I expect if we start moving she will lay down something that stops us from getting away. We know such things exist (see FVM), and we aren't exactly specced to resist them. Since Song put in the effort to get close to us and with a consumable besides, I doubt that she has no contingency for us trying to get away.
 
Erebeal said:
And actually, we've just gotten information to say otherwise. Song noted that the one's that had responded to Gu's provocations weren't the strongest. The key point here is that our duels were the result of provocations, that they could have chosen to ignore. Indeed, she seems to be indicating that she feels that they were hot-headed.
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I think you are mixing things up. It was the "business contact" who said our quarry wasn't the type of cultivator that has fallen to Gu's provocations.
 
PrimalShadow said:
If you take it literally, yes. However, if Song fails to stop us from interfering, I would not be surprised to hear that she was joining the fight as due compensation for otherwise breaking her word.
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She doesn't seem to like Sun Liling (nor Cai) and she wouldn't be breaking her word. Furthermore, she has enough power that Sun Liling can't go against her.
PrimalShadow said:
Song's microfaction consists of two 3rd stage cultivators (herself and her spirit) and two mid-stage cultivators. The only possible way we could possibly match up to that is if we grabbed Meizhen - and even then it might not be enough since Cui is shedding. And that relies on Meizhen needing a push from us to join the fight, which is kinda strange.
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Did I miss confirmation her spirit was third stage? I'm not seeing it.

Escaping shouldn't be too hard: we can jump out the cliff, and we are specced for getting out of binds.
Adhoc vote count started by Arkeus on Aug 12, 2017 at 7:35 PM, finished with 27815 posts and 38 votes.
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Arkeus said:
She doesn't seem to like Sun Liling (nor Cai) and she wouldn't be breaking her word.
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That is not an assumption that you can make.

She said that Sun had asked her to stop us from interfering in the ruckus that she's creating. Assuming that she will only do something if we specifically move to help Cai personally, and not anything else related to that, is rather questionable.
 
Oh well, didn't expect the write-in to get much traction

[X] She has outright said that she is here to stall you. Escape and join back up with as many of your friends as you can manage. Even if it means dealing with her two lackeys too.

But I do hope that we incorporate a bit of trickery here, as if we play our cards right, we could buy ourselves some valuable time if we can get Chu Song's goons to back off, make it harder for them to catch up.
 
Erebeal said:
That is not an assumption that you can make.

She said that Sun had asked her to stop us from interfering in the ruckus that she's creating. Assuming that she will only do something if we specifically move to help Cai personally, and not anything else related to that, is rather questionable.
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I meant that her failing to keep us from interfering does not mean she broke her word.
 
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