Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
If you PM me I'll give it a readthrough.
PM'd you. Fair warning it got a bit long.
- Location
- United States of America
So, in the interest of getting the discussion rolling forwards again, I'm going to pose the question "What's In That Shaman's BAG!"
I have a couple of things that I'm thinking are likely
1. Talismans to help the shaman complete his revenge mission and/or were keepsakes he saved from his tribe
2. Pills to help the shaman keep up his cultivation and further grow in his powers to take out the Argent Sect
3. Arts that he was able to save from the destruction of his tribe (traditional tribal shaman arts)
I'm hoping for the pills more than I am for the talismans, to be honest. We have a pretty good set up here, and an on the run shaman having better stuff then we have might be probable, but I don't think is likely.
I'm a little bit iffy should there be any arts in there. I'm sure they will be useful, but we have so many things on our plate already (learning AC, ZB+, and Yan's new art is pushing it for new arts to learn). I mean, I won't turn down the arts if they are there, but I'm hoping that there are medicines to help speed up our cultivation or give us pseudo actions more than I'm hoping there are new arts. Although ... learning how to sever the spirit from the body for a bit for scouting missions and information gathering would be extremely useful.
Any thoughts?
I have a couple of things that I'm thinking are likely
1. Talismans to help the shaman complete his revenge mission and/or were keepsakes he saved from his tribe
2. Pills to help the shaman keep up his cultivation and further grow in his powers to take out the Argent Sect
3. Arts that he was able to save from the destruction of his tribe (traditional tribal shaman arts)
I'm hoping for the pills more than I am for the talismans, to be honest. We have a pretty good set up here, and an on the run shaman having better stuff then we have might be probable, but I don't think is likely.
I'm a little bit iffy should there be any arts in there. I'm sure they will be useful, but we have so many things on our plate already (learning AC, ZB+, and Yan's new art is pushing it for new arts to learn). I mean, I won't turn down the arts if they are there, but I'm hoping that there are medicines to help speed up our cultivation or give us pseudo actions more than I'm hoping there are new arts. Although ... learning how to sever the spirit from the body for a bit for scouting missions and information gathering would be extremely useful.
Any thoughts?
Su Ling and the Pill Factory
Thanks to @PrimalShadow, who's beta work made this a significantly better and more readable piece. All credit for Fatty Hao goes to @FixerUpper. It's his character, I'm just borrowing him.
Su Ling and the Pill Factory.
Bold: Quotes
Italics: Thoughts
===========================
"To create a pill that will aid in the cultivation of mountain arts:
Use two large, fresh leaves of singing ivy, scraped lightly, to envelop the core of a windchaser goat. It should be heated slowly until the juices begin to bind to the core, then heated swiftly to bind them fully together. Place in a small amount of pure mountain water and slowly add finely chopped lakeside deergrass to help counteract the strong mountain qi whilst heating until the spirit qi is palatable for cultivators. The water must be boiled off without unduly weakening the result. Powder the resulting mixture and separate into appropriate pills, mixing in neutral powder as necessary for appropriate dosage."
Su Ling had only really become interested in pill making for the money. The logic was simple. She sold ingredients and cores to merchants like Fatty. They turned those ingredients into elixirs and pills and sold 'em for a tidy profit. She was really good at hunting and gathering ingredients. So if she cut out the middleman she'd be making a tonne of stones.
Fatty had laughed uproariously when she'd mentioned the idea to him, telling her that merchants like him didn't make as much on pills and elixirs as she seemed to think. But Su Ling, remembering the obscene amounts Ling Qi had casually mentioned spending weekly on pills, had insisted she would learn.
There were a couple of issues with learning how to make pills and elixirs.
The first issue Su Ling had to deal with was cost. Recipes for pills and elixirs could be found in the sect's archives. But regularly paying that cost, especially on top of the cost of using the production hall, would quickly get far too expensive. That was why she'd decided to talk to Fatty in the first place. He wasn't a master, but he clearly knew most of what she wanted to know to get started and he owed her a couple of favours. She wanted to see if she could get the knowledge for a better price than the sect would offer her.
"And if it saved her from having to give any effort or money to the assholes who ran the place so much the better."
That was where the second issue popped up. Much of the lore surrounding identifying plants for pill making was written down in manuals, rather than encoded onto Jade slips. But despite the tremendous strides towards literacy Su Ling had made with Li Suyin's constant help, she still had only a child's vocabulary. If she ever encountered something she didn't know the name for already she was going to have a lot of trouble working out what it was.
Fortunately, Fatty was in a good mood. He had offered to teach her one recipe for free straight off. He was plannin' something but it got her some of what she wanted without needing to call in any of her favours.
----------------------------------
She'd carefully gathered the ingredients, prepared them exactly as specified in Fatty's recipe and paid the exorbitant fee to get access to the production hall. She was led to a small room with large windows and a chimney above a countertop. She could smell the fresh air.
Her first look at a pill furnace was surprising. Everything she'd heard about 'pill furnaces' had them as some sort of small, portable marvel that skilled masters could use to construct pills in incredibly short time frames. The production hall versions were large things, almost as wide as she was tall, seeming like a curious combination of oven and cauldron. It looked like a squat counter with a deep circular hole in the middle, clearly a receptacle for ingredients. Placed off to the side was some sort of clear lid that could be locked into position via some clasps. Part of the front of the furnace was transparent, allowing the inside to be seen.
The base of the receptacle was studded with extremely small holes. Seven characters representing the numbers one to seven were arranged in a crescent around the front of the hole, as well as an eighth character she didn't recognise. On the front of the thing directly in front of the receptacle was was a door labelled "special fuel".
Off to the right hand side of the counter was a scoop for retrieving powder and a small press and separation assembly meant for creating actual pills from results of the ingredients. A small box of "neutral powder" was placed beside it. On the left were several more characters: "clean", "crush", and "create pill", with the last having several smaller numeric characters beside it.
She had to carefully scrape the surface of the leaves, causing them to release a small amount of juice. They were then wrapped around the core she'd brought and heated slowly. She'd ruined several leaves she'd practiced on by scraping too hard and having the juice practically explode out rather than gently weeping out as the formula called for.
The first stumbling block was the heat. She tried pressing the character for one set around the hole, reasoning that was the heat setting.
Nothing happened. Su Ling stared at it for a few seconds and held her hand above the hole. Nothing, no feeling of heat at all. She pressed seven and repeated the process. Still nothing. Then she tried pressing one again and channeled her qi into the character and felt as if she'd just slammed her qi into a brick wall. She leapt backwards, but nothing else happened.
Su Ling frowned, most of the qi she had channeled had dissipated, but a small portion of it seemed to have done something, moving in a way that very vaguely reminded her of when she used her foxfire technique. She moved carefully back into place and channelled a much smaller amount of qi into the character. It guzzled most of it down and seemed to want continuous amounts.
She looked to the side, and abruptly felt very stupid as she spotted a set of instructions placed awkwardly on one wall above the pill furnace.
""To use furnace: continuously channel Qi into the appropriate character on furnace. Excess qi will [unknown character] harmlessly. [Unknown character] qi will not heat the furnace.
For more direct control use the [unknown symbol around receptacle] and channel an appropriate amount of Qi.
To clean the furnace or dispose of mistakes press "clean". To powder an item in the furnace press "crush". To turn powder in furnace into a number of pills press the correct number besides "create pill".""
Su Ling carefully placed her ingredients around on the counter. She gently scraped the ivy leaves and wrapped the core in them, then placed it into the furnace and started to heat it.
Su Ling watched her leaf covered beast core like a hawk as it was slowly heated. After half an hour nothing much seemed to have happened, though it was surprisingly hard to keep up such a low output of qi constantly. With her free hand she grabbed a knife and gently tried to peel the leaf away from the core. It came away instantly and Su Ling frantically used the flat of the knife to push it back into place. Another half an hour passed and she tried to peel the leaf away again. This time it stuck. Instantly Su Ling slammed her hand onto the character for seven and channeled qi.
Her qi sputtered for a minute as she tried to figure out how much qi setting seven needed and strained to reach a new equilibrium. It was hard to adjust to outputting such a different level of qi after an hour of constantly trickling it out. Still she succeeded and watched it heat for about five minutes, then took off the lid to add the water and grass.
A burst of terrible smelling fumes hit her directly in the face and sent her reeling across the room. She burst into a coughing fit as her elevated senses tried to deal with the horrible burning stench. Luckily, the smell soon cleared, being sucked into the chimney by softly glowing characters she had not seen before.
She added the water and half a handful of grass and started carefully boiling the mixture, adjusting to new settings as she went. As it boiled it started to smell odd, like air from the high mountains mixed with with the slight smell of a deep rocky cave. It wasn't a bad smell and she took it as a sign it was nearly done.
She finished boiling off the water and pressed the crush button. Fatty's recipe said a core tended to make enough for six or so pills so she channeled her qi into the "create pill" formation.
Overall, she thought that making her first pill had gone rather well.
------------------------
"The sect declines to purchase these items due to them being of inappropriate quality." The disciple effected a bored tone, but Su Ling could see the hidden gleams of disdain and glee in his eye.
"What! Wadda' ya mean inappropriate quality." Su Ling half yelled, ears moving fractionally back as she drew herself up to her full height.
"I mean that the sect is not in the habit of selling poison to its members, miss." The older disciple tilted back his head, trying to look down his nose at her despite being seated at a desk. "Perhaps for someone of your… inheritance these pills are acceptable, but they would have a .. proper.. disciple vomiting up blood, or possibly their own stomach." He sneered briefly, the pauses in his speech making clear what he'd really like to say. "Now if you don't mind miss, I have people who wish to sell actually useable items waiting."
Cheeks hot with rage and embarrassment, Su Ling stomped off. She'd retreated into the mountains for several hours, hunting and tearing into anything she found to calm down. Assholes.
-----------------------------
She'd got more of an explanation of what was wrong out of the combined wisdom of Fatty and Li Suyin later:
Her pills were too powerful, too close to the energy beast cores they were created from. People with spirit blood could use cores to boost themselves directly, even if a lot of the power was wasted trying to wrestle it into boosting what you wanted it to boost.
Humans couldn't simply eat spirit beast cores. They couldn't process the energy. It made them ill. A large amount of effort was put into turning those cores into energy that could be adsorbed by a cultivator. Then further refined to direct the energy towards a specific purpose related to the abilities of the beast the core had come from.
Of course a great number of other steps were taken to accomplish this. Ingredients were added, the mixture was heated or cooled and all manner of processes were performed to multiply the energy and efficiency of the final pills.
The result, even for low level pills prepared by untalented cultivators by rote, tended to be almost as good as what simply eating the cores would give her - but at significantly greater cost.
But the truth was that a lot of power was lost in the conversion from spirit beast energy to something tolerable to humans. The ingredients, the refinement process and the fact these pills were often geared towards a single purpose could disguise this, could compensate for it. But the loss was always there.
----------------------
Fatty had actually been slightly jealous.
"You're sure you don't want to become one of my apprentices? Getting so close to an actual salable pill on your first try is a sign of great talent." He wheedled. "Actually you may have even done better than that. You might be able to use the pills yourself. You said they smelled right to you?" His voice took on a thinking tone. "That nose of yours has always been very good."
Su Ling refused him reflexively, but she was distracted by a thought that had taken root in her head.
"What if you didn't have to convert the energy from beast cores into a more palatable, less toxic form to begin with? If you could focus and use all the power contained within the core and refine it without that crucial loss of energy? How much more powerful could such a pill be?"
"But the sect are price gouging bastards. Pill making is expensive. There's a reason most of the people makin' the things have money to burn or join up with one of the existing gangs. Ya had to pay a premium to use the halls pill furnaces. A premium to visit the archives to learn more. They'd buy the pills, but at a price that meant Su Ling would barely make more back than she'd spent. Anything she made to suit herself alone? She wouldn't see a stone, and the experiments and failures could beggar her if that was all she made."
She'd have to get really good at pill making, but eventually she'd be able to make pills that were far better for her than the regular stuff. She'd be good enough to show the assholes who looked down on her. Good enough to be able to look out for herself and Suyin and everyone else the powerful assholes didn't care about and wanted to tread on.
=====================
Su Ling and the Pill Factory.
Bold: Quotes
Italics: Thoughts
===========================
"To create a pill that will aid in the cultivation of mountain arts:
Use two large, fresh leaves of singing ivy, scraped lightly, to envelop the core of a windchaser goat. It should be heated slowly until the juices begin to bind to the core, then heated swiftly to bind them fully together. Place in a small amount of pure mountain water and slowly add finely chopped lakeside deergrass to help counteract the strong mountain qi whilst heating until the spirit qi is palatable for cultivators. The water must be boiled off without unduly weakening the result. Powder the resulting mixture and separate into appropriate pills, mixing in neutral powder as necessary for appropriate dosage."
Su Ling had only really become interested in pill making for the money. The logic was simple. She sold ingredients and cores to merchants like Fatty. They turned those ingredients into elixirs and pills and sold 'em for a tidy profit. She was really good at hunting and gathering ingredients. So if she cut out the middleman she'd be making a tonne of stones.
Fatty had laughed uproariously when she'd mentioned the idea to him, telling her that merchants like him didn't make as much on pills and elixirs as she seemed to think. But Su Ling, remembering the obscene amounts Ling Qi had casually mentioned spending weekly on pills, had insisted she would learn.
There were a couple of issues with learning how to make pills and elixirs.
The first issue Su Ling had to deal with was cost. Recipes for pills and elixirs could be found in the sect's archives. But regularly paying that cost, especially on top of the cost of using the production hall, would quickly get far too expensive. That was why she'd decided to talk to Fatty in the first place. He wasn't a master, but he clearly knew most of what she wanted to know to get started and he owed her a couple of favours. She wanted to see if she could get the knowledge for a better price than the sect would offer her.
"And if it saved her from having to give any effort or money to the assholes who ran the place so much the better."
That was where the second issue popped up. Much of the lore surrounding identifying plants for pill making was written down in manuals, rather than encoded onto Jade slips. But despite the tremendous strides towards literacy Su Ling had made with Li Suyin's constant help, she still had only a child's vocabulary. If she ever encountered something she didn't know the name for already she was going to have a lot of trouble working out what it was.
Fortunately, Fatty was in a good mood. He had offered to teach her one recipe for free straight off. He was plannin' something but it got her some of what she wanted without needing to call in any of her favours.
----------------------------------
She'd carefully gathered the ingredients, prepared them exactly as specified in Fatty's recipe and paid the exorbitant fee to get access to the production hall. She was led to a small room with large windows and a chimney above a countertop. She could smell the fresh air.
Her first look at a pill furnace was surprising. Everything she'd heard about 'pill furnaces' had them as some sort of small, portable marvel that skilled masters could use to construct pills in incredibly short time frames. The production hall versions were large things, almost as wide as she was tall, seeming like a curious combination of oven and cauldron. It looked like a squat counter with a deep circular hole in the middle, clearly a receptacle for ingredients. Placed off to the side was some sort of clear lid that could be locked into position via some clasps. Part of the front of the furnace was transparent, allowing the inside to be seen.
The base of the receptacle was studded with extremely small holes. Seven characters representing the numbers one to seven were arranged in a crescent around the front of the hole, as well as an eighth character she didn't recognise. On the front of the thing directly in front of the receptacle was was a door labelled "special fuel".
Off to the right hand side of the counter was a scoop for retrieving powder and a small press and separation assembly meant for creating actual pills from results of the ingredients. A small box of "neutral powder" was placed beside it. On the left were several more characters: "clean", "crush", and "create pill", with the last having several smaller numeric characters beside it.
She had to carefully scrape the surface of the leaves, causing them to release a small amount of juice. They were then wrapped around the core she'd brought and heated slowly. She'd ruined several leaves she'd practiced on by scraping too hard and having the juice practically explode out rather than gently weeping out as the formula called for.
The first stumbling block was the heat. She tried pressing the character for one set around the hole, reasoning that was the heat setting.
Nothing happened. Su Ling stared at it for a few seconds and held her hand above the hole. Nothing, no feeling of heat at all. She pressed seven and repeated the process. Still nothing. Then she tried pressing one again and channeled her qi into the character and felt as if she'd just slammed her qi into a brick wall. She leapt backwards, but nothing else happened.
Su Ling frowned, most of the qi she had channeled had dissipated, but a small portion of it seemed to have done something, moving in a way that very vaguely reminded her of when she used her foxfire technique. She moved carefully back into place and channelled a much smaller amount of qi into the character. It guzzled most of it down and seemed to want continuous amounts.
She looked to the side, and abruptly felt very stupid as she spotted a set of instructions placed awkwardly on one wall above the pill furnace.
""To use furnace: continuously channel Qi into the appropriate character on furnace. Excess qi will [unknown character] harmlessly. [Unknown character] qi will not heat the furnace.
For more direct control use the [unknown symbol around receptacle] and channel an appropriate amount of Qi.
To clean the furnace or dispose of mistakes press "clean". To powder an item in the furnace press "crush". To turn powder in furnace into a number of pills press the correct number besides "create pill".""
Su Ling carefully placed her ingredients around on the counter. She gently scraped the ivy leaves and wrapped the core in them, then placed it into the furnace and started to heat it.
Su Ling watched her leaf covered beast core like a hawk as it was slowly heated. After half an hour nothing much seemed to have happened, though it was surprisingly hard to keep up such a low output of qi constantly. With her free hand she grabbed a knife and gently tried to peel the leaf away from the core. It came away instantly and Su Ling frantically used the flat of the knife to push it back into place. Another half an hour passed and she tried to peel the leaf away again. This time it stuck. Instantly Su Ling slammed her hand onto the character for seven and channeled qi.
Her qi sputtered for a minute as she tried to figure out how much qi setting seven needed and strained to reach a new equilibrium. It was hard to adjust to outputting such a different level of qi after an hour of constantly trickling it out. Still she succeeded and watched it heat for about five minutes, then took off the lid to add the water and grass.
A burst of terrible smelling fumes hit her directly in the face and sent her reeling across the room. She burst into a coughing fit as her elevated senses tried to deal with the horrible burning stench. Luckily, the smell soon cleared, being sucked into the chimney by softly glowing characters she had not seen before.
She added the water and half a handful of grass and started carefully boiling the mixture, adjusting to new settings as she went. As it boiled it started to smell odd, like air from the high mountains mixed with with the slight smell of a deep rocky cave. It wasn't a bad smell and she took it as a sign it was nearly done.
She finished boiling off the water and pressed the crush button. Fatty's recipe said a core tended to make enough for six or so pills so she channeled her qi into the "create pill" formation.
Overall, she thought that making her first pill had gone rather well.
------------------------
"The sect declines to purchase these items due to them being of inappropriate quality." The disciple effected a bored tone, but Su Ling could see the hidden gleams of disdain and glee in his eye.
"What! Wadda' ya mean inappropriate quality." Su Ling half yelled, ears moving fractionally back as she drew herself up to her full height.
"I mean that the sect is not in the habit of selling poison to its members, miss." The older disciple tilted back his head, trying to look down his nose at her despite being seated at a desk. "Perhaps for someone of your… inheritance these pills are acceptable, but they would have a .. proper.. disciple vomiting up blood, or possibly their own stomach." He sneered briefly, the pauses in his speech making clear what he'd really like to say. "Now if you don't mind miss, I have people who wish to sell actually useable items waiting."
Cheeks hot with rage and embarrassment, Su Ling stomped off. She'd retreated into the mountains for several hours, hunting and tearing into anything she found to calm down. Assholes.
-----------------------------
She'd got more of an explanation of what was wrong out of the combined wisdom of Fatty and Li Suyin later:
Her pills were too powerful, too close to the energy beast cores they were created from. People with spirit blood could use cores to boost themselves directly, even if a lot of the power was wasted trying to wrestle it into boosting what you wanted it to boost.
Humans couldn't simply eat spirit beast cores. They couldn't process the energy. It made them ill. A large amount of effort was put into turning those cores into energy that could be adsorbed by a cultivator. Then further refined to direct the energy towards a specific purpose related to the abilities of the beast the core had come from.
Of course a great number of other steps were taken to accomplish this. Ingredients were added, the mixture was heated or cooled and all manner of processes were performed to multiply the energy and efficiency of the final pills.
The result, even for low level pills prepared by untalented cultivators by rote, tended to be almost as good as what simply eating the cores would give her - but at significantly greater cost.
But the truth was that a lot of power was lost in the conversion from spirit beast energy to something tolerable to humans. The ingredients, the refinement process and the fact these pills were often geared towards a single purpose could disguise this, could compensate for it. But the loss was always there.
----------------------
Fatty had actually been slightly jealous.
"You're sure you don't want to become one of my apprentices? Getting so close to an actual salable pill on your first try is a sign of great talent." He wheedled. "Actually you may have even done better than that. You might be able to use the pills yourself. You said they smelled right to you?" His voice took on a thinking tone. "That nose of yours has always been very good."
Su Ling refused him reflexively, but she was distracted by a thought that had taken root in her head.
"What if you didn't have to convert the energy from beast cores into a more palatable, less toxic form to begin with? If you could focus and use all the power contained within the core and refine it without that crucial loss of energy? How much more powerful could such a pill be?"
"But the sect are price gouging bastards. Pill making is expensive. There's a reason most of the people makin' the things have money to burn or join up with one of the existing gangs. Ya had to pay a premium to use the halls pill furnaces. A premium to visit the archives to learn more. They'd buy the pills, but at a price that meant Su Ling would barely make more back than she'd spent. Anything she made to suit herself alone? She wouldn't see a stone, and the experiments and failures could beggar her if that was all she made."
She'd have to get really good at pill making, but eventually she'd be able to make pills that were far better for her than the regular stuff. She'd be good enough to show the assholes who looked down on her. Good enough to be able to look out for herself and Suyin and everyone else the powerful assholes didn't care about and wanted to tread on.
=====================
AN. I started thinking about why Su Ling got into pill making, and what we know about it and beast cores and this was the result. I'll admit I liked the idea of giving Su Ling her own good fortune and path to power.
As an explanation of what Su Ling's thinking: pills are very good at focusing their energy towards specific goals; whereas when Su Ling absorbs energy directly from a core she has a harder time focusing it towards the areas she wants (say specifically towards fire techniques). But pills take a hit to the energy they have available because they have to convert the core energy to be non-toxic to humans. If she took out that key step then she could have much more powerful pills for herself than a normal cultivator could get from those ingredients.
Whilst Su Ling thinks of the sect as price gouging asses that give a huge advantage to nobles she is being slightly (but only slightly) unfair. The production hall requires payment in points and gives it out in the same manner. This means to start production even a noble must put in actual time and work rather than just money. Whilst they generally provide below market price this isn't unexpected.
The Noble advantage tends to come from prior education and a lack of need to convert sect points out into cash, reducing their overall time investment before they can start the next batch and giving them more access to the archives. Su Ling partially overcomes this disadvantage through skill at hunting (less time advantage) and natural talent at making pills.
The sect is using the lack of access to try to prevent people from experimenting much with pill recipes in the outer sect. This is partly a safety issue and partly a talent one. Pills are dangerous, you wouldn't want a tonne of experimental (possibly fatal) ones flooding the market.
You may have noticed Su Ling is still having trouble overcoming her illiteracy. The unknown character on the pill furnace is "manual" as in manual control. The pill furnace is also set up to help train production disciples on things (the settings on controlling the fire with just Qi) whilst still letting early disciples use it with a fair degree of ease. This "training" aspect is also why there is both an automatic pill creation apparatus and the equipment to do it manually. Some of the things it does can be replicated by pure Qi control, which is one reason pill furnaces used by better disciples can be smaller with less interface.
Her illiteracy is also a problem because it prevents her from keeping notes on her experiments (less of an issue for a cultivator than a mortal). Lack of ability to know what plants are needed due to usage of old names or plant names she doesn't know (even if she knows the plant). Ironically if she goes to the archive it's better for her as she can understand jade strips just fine.
As to why she hasn't asked Ling Qi to borrow her archive pass? She hates owing people, and she owes Ling Qi enough already.
Also another quick reminder. Su Ling really doesn't like the sect. She hasn't forgotten that it's built to encourage crushing people who can't fight back, or the fact that they don't give a toss about enforcing their own rules unless it suits them. Like the one about no crippling or killing people.
As an explanation of what Su Ling's thinking: pills are very good at focusing their energy towards specific goals; whereas when Su Ling absorbs energy directly from a core she has a harder time focusing it towards the areas she wants (say specifically towards fire techniques). But pills take a hit to the energy they have available because they have to convert the core energy to be non-toxic to humans. If she took out that key step then she could have much more powerful pills for herself than a normal cultivator could get from those ingredients.
To give a very simplified and probably overstated example:
A beast core gives +3 dice to meridian clearing. There is actually more energy in that core, enough for a 7 dice boost to something the beast was good at, but because she has to wrestle the energy into clearing the meridian rather than it just going everywhere in her system the actual benefit she gets out of it is only a +3. A pill made from the core also gives a +3 boost to Meridian clearing (depending on quality) because the process of making that pill focused the energy to that end.
But the process of pill making has to convert the beast energy into energy that humans can tolerate. No energy conversion is 100% efficient. So let's say for our example the conversion takes the energy in the core from +7 to +2. The effect of the rest of the ingredients serves to focus the broad energy of the core down to a specific effect (meridian clearing) and multiply the effectiveness taking the boost back up to a +3.
But if you never had the conversion to energy humans tolerate you could use the pill making process to get all (or nearly all) of the +7 energy out of the core and focused into Meridian clearing, possibly even using other ingredients to get it to +8.
A beast core gives +3 dice to meridian clearing. There is actually more energy in that core, enough for a 7 dice boost to something the beast was good at, but because she has to wrestle the energy into clearing the meridian rather than it just going everywhere in her system the actual benefit she gets out of it is only a +3. A pill made from the core also gives a +3 boost to Meridian clearing (depending on quality) because the process of making that pill focused the energy to that end.
But the process of pill making has to convert the beast energy into energy that humans can tolerate. No energy conversion is 100% efficient. So let's say for our example the conversion takes the energy in the core from +7 to +2. The effect of the rest of the ingredients serves to focus the broad energy of the core down to a specific effect (meridian clearing) and multiply the effectiveness taking the boost back up to a +3.
But if you never had the conversion to energy humans tolerate you could use the pill making process to get all (or nearly all) of the +7 energy out of the core and focused into Meridian clearing, possibly even using other ingredients to get it to +8.
Whilst Su Ling thinks of the sect as price gouging asses that give a huge advantage to nobles she is being slightly (but only slightly) unfair. The production hall requires payment in points and gives it out in the same manner. This means to start production even a noble must put in actual time and work rather than just money. Whilst they generally provide below market price this isn't unexpected.
The Noble advantage tends to come from prior education and a lack of need to convert sect points out into cash, reducing their overall time investment before they can start the next batch and giving them more access to the archives. Su Ling partially overcomes this disadvantage through skill at hunting (less time advantage) and natural talent at making pills.
The sect is using the lack of access to try to prevent people from experimenting much with pill recipes in the outer sect. This is partly a safety issue and partly a talent one. Pills are dangerous, you wouldn't want a tonne of experimental (possibly fatal) ones flooding the market.
You may have noticed Su Ling is still having trouble overcoming her illiteracy. The unknown character on the pill furnace is "manual" as in manual control. The pill furnace is also set up to help train production disciples on things (the settings on controlling the fire with just Qi) whilst still letting early disciples use it with a fair degree of ease. This "training" aspect is also why there is both an automatic pill creation apparatus and the equipment to do it manually. Some of the things it does can be replicated by pure Qi control, which is one reason pill furnaces used by better disciples can be smaller with less interface.
Her illiteracy is also a problem because it prevents her from keeping notes on her experiments (less of an issue for a cultivator than a mortal). Lack of ability to know what plants are needed due to usage of old names or plant names she doesn't know (even if she knows the plant). Ironically if she goes to the archive it's better for her as she can understand jade strips just fine.
As to why she hasn't asked Ling Qi to borrow her archive pass? She hates owing people, and she owes Ling Qi enough already.
Also another quick reminder. Su Ling really doesn't like the sect. She hasn't forgotten that it's built to encourage crushing people who can't fight back, or the fact that they don't give a toss about enforcing their own rules unless it suits them. Like the one about no crippling or killing people.
Last edited:
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
I think there are good odds for their to be manuals/etc on crafting. We've seen the shaman was able to craft many yellow-ranked puppets, and was able to do quite the ritual, and I expect him to have taken quite a few manuals with him for doing both. Apart from that, Talismans/Pills/Arts are all quite plausible. I'd say that given he managed to fin an actually very good stealth talisman before going, he probably did get another good quality talisman for something else, which could be damn nice, but also probably won't mesh with our actual fight style.
Art wise, I am more optimist than you: ultimately, each art we get means less need to get in the archive again, which means less need to use Sect Points. As long as the arts we get are good enough quality, that is. I don't think it's bad to get more art even if we don't have that much time to train them simply because while fully training an art take a long time, getting it to level 3/4 doesn't as long as we don't try training it at the wrong time. We might not really care about learning the art right now, but it will probably be learned to some extent before the tournament itself, even if after our breakthrough.
Also, I don't mind some Wind/Thunder arts at all
Probably should be Li Suyin there, not Su Ling. Apart from that, great omake, though I somewhat disagree on how you consider pill/core to works (e.g, I think they get stronger, not weaker).
Thanks, I could have sworn that was correct before.
Whilst I'm obviously biased the killer is the energy conversion. Pill making can actually have an additive or multiplicitive effect on the energy value that was contained within the core, but especially at low level the energy coversion to something non-toxic is hard. With better formulas, higher skill levels and simply greater cultivation (and ability to tolerate hgher toxicity levels) these problems become lesser (though still present).
Bear in mind also that Su Ling is comparing the cores to pills individually. But in some recipies you might be able to get multiple pills out of a single core. Giving you better bonuses overall though equal or slightly lesser when comparing a single pill to a core.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Yeah, we are seeing it very differently.
I consider the core maybe a main ingredient in pill making, but far from the only one, and other ingredient vastly increase both the potency of the pill and its direction, and likewise the skill in pillmaking is not about energy conversion but about energy multiplication/concentration/direction.
Now, shitty low level pills are probably to some extent like you described because the other ingredients are probably not as needed and the skill is next to no existent, but that's more a result of them being really bad.
I have no reason to believe I am correct though, it's just "rare pills do nice stuff" and "every relevant old family can eat cores and care about pills".
- Location
- United States
My guess on the purifying process would be the removal of spirit core impurities instead of a concentrating of the power in the spirit core. Impurities being the things in the spirit core that are inedible to most people. Whether or not those impurities have any nutritional/cultivation value would determine whether or not there is a net power loss when turned into a pill.
In Humbaba's story all Su Ling would have needed to do is add more neutral substance to the pills if power was a problem, but we know power is not a problem since we can eat as many pills as we want (except color pills). This is why I assume the cores must have impurities.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Can you explain why power of the pill is not a problem because we can eat as many as we want? After all, we can only eat pills of a certain level, not of anything more.
As for impurities, human have impurities, spirits do not. So a spirit core would not have impurities.
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- Location
- Spain
Spirit beasts have impurities. The only true pure beings are Great Spirits.
On Mobile so I can't quote it easily but in week 17 the paragraph starting with "Su Ling snorted..." She tells Ling Qi that the main point of the other ingredients is to render the beast qi to something tolerable to humans.
*De-lurks*
Here is the quote.
*Re-lurks*
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- Location
- United States
I am thinking back to when Elder Su said we need not worry about socialization issues from taking too many pills in a particular week.
By impurities I mean "things in the spirit core that are inedible" Not spiritual but physically inedible things.
As Vlagh999 just quoted from Yrsillar "all the preparation and side ingredients pretty much exist to let a human body take in the beast qi safely."
I am assuming one of two possibilities.
IF preparation removes powerful, but inedible parts of the core THEN Pills have less power than cores
IF preparation removes useless, and inedible parts of the core THEN Pills have the same power as cores
Based on the quote:
-Beast cores are composed of the pure elemental Qi blended with the beast's animalistic impurities.
-Beast blooded can consume the cores raw, because their own Qi already contains both bestial and human elements, and can thus digest them harmlessly.
-Pure blooded humans will be poisoned by the cores, because while they can digest the pure elemental Qi, the bestial Qi triggers an immune reaction with their human Qi, to the detriment of both.
As such, I believe the additional ingredients are there to neutralize the beast Qi by balanciing it with the right types of plant and mineral Qi, to attain a near neutral state, and to dilute the result so that it doesn't overload the human user.
If that's the case, the only cores humans can consume raw safely should be the dantian of other cultivators.
- Location
- United States of America
I've begun to think about medicine making as an interaction between three different sliding scales. Admittedly this is not Ling Qi's area of expertise and so we only have guesswork and the occasional quote to go off of.
There's the: 1 beast core for Infinite medicines <--------> 1 medicine for infinite beast cores.
Then there's the: Beast cores are essential for medicines <------------> Beast cores are not essential for medicines
Finally, there is the: Plant material increases power <-------------> plant material decreases power
We can be pretty sure that the extremes of these sliding scales are wrong, and that the actual point of medicine making lies between the two opposites. For instance, we know that one beast core cannot make an infinite number of medicines. Otherwise, there would not be a strong demand for beast cores. Likewise, since we have medicines we can assume that it does not take an infinite number of beast cores to make a single medicine.
We know from Su Ling that an essential part of elixirs is beast cores, but what about pills? Can you use multiple beast cores to make a single elixir, or can you use a single beast core to make multiple elixirs? Are plants only used for making sure the energy in the beast core becomes consumable, or could there be some that spike the power and make it less consumable?
There's the: 1 beast core for Infinite medicines <--------> 1 medicine for infinite beast cores.
Then there's the: Beast cores are essential for medicines <------------> Beast cores are not essential for medicines
Finally, there is the: Plant material increases power <-------------> plant material decreases power
We can be pretty sure that the extremes of these sliding scales are wrong, and that the actual point of medicine making lies between the two opposites. For instance, we know that one beast core cannot make an infinite number of medicines. Otherwise, there would not be a strong demand for beast cores. Likewise, since we have medicines we can assume that it does not take an infinite number of beast cores to make a single medicine.
We know from Su Ling that an essential part of elixirs is beast cores, but what about pills? Can you use multiple beast cores to make a single elixir, or can you use a single beast core to make multiple elixirs? Are plants only used for making sure the energy in the beast core becomes consumable, or could there be some that spike the power and make it less consumable?
Sun Liling: Asura
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
So, unless we get extraordinarily unlucky, we should get Thousand Ring Fortress second layer, Argent Mirror third layer, and Sable Crescent Step fourth layer this turn. Here is what I am hoping for each:
TRF2:
I think the best comparison there is SCS3. While TRF2 has one less meridian and the art itself is probably of lesser quality, TRF is a much more focused art that also has a much 'simpler' conceptual need. Success wise, it is also a bit more expensive (85 vs 70).
* Minor passive improvements. I suspect numbers of meridians are a bit tells for passives, and while it should improve it probably won't be quite like SCS3 yet.
* No new tech (should be TRF3) there.
* Significant improvements to each techs. Maybe DWV get to instant, maybe both its range and power increase. TRD could get AoE, its power could increase. Regardless, I think every techs will improve, and the most likely improvements are 'instant', 'range' for DWV, and 'becomes AoE', 'ease of use/power' for TRD.
AM3:
No good comparisons there. Given AM3 should get a new tech and it needs a head meridian, though, I'm thinking the tech should be perception-based.
*Significant passive improvements. It was minor last level, but I think this time it should be a bit more than that.
*Significant improvements to each techs. I don't think numbers of dots dispelled should increase quite yet, but maybe dispelling two effects with Serene Reflection, or maybe simply increasing the numbers of turns you get the bonus for there. Discerning Gaze should also get a significant upgrade, but unsure what that should be. Maybe further bonus for seeing the hidden.
* New tech: I think a active tech to see meridians/qi of opponent in detail is the most obvious, but there are other choices. Long range detailed Qi sensing, maybe some kind of 'formation discerning' ability that lets one have a bonus in seeing details of a formation (oh noes shaman bag).
SCS4:
The one I am most excited about. I think at this point it should be high level enough with high enough cultivation needed that its conceptual components should be more of a help than a hindrance. I am probably expecting too much out of it, but here goes.
* Significant passive improvements. It's its second level in yellow, and fourth level total, and it has had 3 meridians for a bit. I'm expecting quite a bit there.
*Significant change to each techs. I am hoping Trackless Escape to improve in a more combat-ready fashion (proc rolls to stealth when used and is instant?), GC to improve its' movement-based ability so that speed is increased further (10 instead of 5) and that we can walk on harder terrains (90°?), FS to be combat mainstay, either by improving its soak or by going instant, and hopefully both.
* No new tech.
Thoughts?
TRF2:
I think the best comparison there is SCS3. While TRF2 has one less meridian and the art itself is probably of lesser quality, TRF is a much more focused art that also has a much 'simpler' conceptual need. Success wise, it is also a bit more expensive (85 vs 70).
* Minor passive improvements. I suspect numbers of meridians are a bit tells for passives, and while it should improve it probably won't be quite like SCS3 yet.
* No new tech (should be TRF3) there.
* Significant improvements to each techs. Maybe DWV get to instant, maybe both its range and power increase. TRD could get AoE, its power could increase. Regardless, I think every techs will improve, and the most likely improvements are 'instant', 'range' for DWV, and 'becomes AoE', 'ease of use/power' for TRD.
AM3:
No good comparisons there. Given AM3 should get a new tech and it needs a head meridian, though, I'm thinking the tech should be perception-based.
*Significant passive improvements. It was minor last level, but I think this time it should be a bit more than that.
*Significant improvements to each techs. I don't think numbers of dots dispelled should increase quite yet, but maybe dispelling two effects with Serene Reflection, or maybe simply increasing the numbers of turns you get the bonus for there. Discerning Gaze should also get a significant upgrade, but unsure what that should be. Maybe further bonus for seeing the hidden.
* New tech: I think a active tech to see meridians/qi of opponent in detail is the most obvious, but there are other choices. Long range detailed Qi sensing, maybe some kind of 'formation discerning' ability that lets one have a bonus in seeing details of a formation (oh noes shaman bag).
SCS4:
The one I am most excited about. I think at this point it should be high level enough with high enough cultivation needed that its conceptual components should be more of a help than a hindrance. I am probably expecting too much out of it, but here goes.
* Significant passive improvements. It's its second level in yellow, and fourth level total, and it has had 3 meridians for a bit. I'm expecting quite a bit there.
*Significant change to each techs. I am hoping Trackless Escape to improve in a more combat-ready fashion (proc rolls to stealth when used and is instant?), GC to improve its' movement-based ability so that speed is increased further (10 instead of 5) and that we can walk on harder terrains (90°?), FS to be combat mainstay, either by improving its soak or by going instant, and hopefully both.
* No new tech.
Thoughts?
I agree about passive improvements and no new tech. I don't think that our techs are going to get instant at T2.
Other than that, the main thing I have to add to your comments here is that I expect TRD to start chaining with DV, either at this tier or maybe the next. You can see that the flavor text supports this; DV talks about linking with allies, and TRD mentions that it is supposed to "protect themselves and their allies from harm". I expect that in the future we will be using the link from TRD to propagate effects from our other techs (like DV).
Actually, one thing I'm curious about on that subject is how propagating TRD will work in terms of the Qi cost. Will WE be able to spend 3 Qi to prevent a point of damage to our allies, or will our allies be able to spend said qi to prevent damage?
I expect minimal passive effects here. Like you said earlier, passive upgrades should be concentrated on tiers that use a new meridian.
I would not expect nearly as much change to the techs as you suggested. FS is absolutely not going to get both soak and instant applied; that is totally out of line for a single tier of improvement. A speed increase of 5->10 is also excessive, though I could believe 8, and maybe the ability to take up to 60 degree slopes. I can see Trackless Escape gaining combat stealth; no objections there.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Considering I suspect most people have a soaking art of some kind with which they can use qi to prevent damage, I think it would be better if Ling Qi is the one who has to spend the Qi to prevent the damage. It also increases her 'support' ability even further, and makes her having a lot of Qi even better.
While there is no way to know which way it will go, DWV uses Ling Qi's dice for dispels of effects on friends, not just the ones on herself.
On the other hand - this sort of entanglement just complicates combat mechanics further. Not by much, but by enough that I'd be wary of adding it if I was yrsillar.
Okay, firstly, gonna apologize for any false hope this post brings.
While its not really an excuse, I have been getting womped by work for the past few days, and as such this update has gotten delayed way too much. I'll apologize for that too. I WILL have the update out tomorrow, one way or another though, and I won't let the update time stretch this far again.
Anyway, I'm glad you guys have kept the thread alive. I love the omake and art
While its not really an excuse, I have been getting womped by work for the past few days, and as such this update has gotten delayed way too much. I'll apologize for that too. I WILL have the update out tomorrow, one way or another though, and I won't let the update time stretch this far again.
Anyway, I'm glad you guys have kept the thread alive. I love the omake and art
- Location
- United States of America
Well, we know from FVM and FSA that there is not a strict correlation between getting meridians and learning new techniques in an art, so I'm hesitant to say that we won't be learning new techniques simply because we won't be opening up new meridians. I can't think of any techniques that would be added though so I'm not against the idea that we won't be learning any new techniques for SCS and TRF.
As for TRF, I think TRD is almost assuredly going to branch out to affect allies and the cost is either going to increase or decrease. I think that will happen with this level, but it might happen next level, we'll see. Also, simple dice increase in the passives would be nice and maybe get two extra health boxes instead of one? That will probably be later down the line though.
For AM, I'm pretty sure that we will get a new technique, as getting a new technique with a new meridian has been a fairly consistent constant (although I may be wrong). In that case, I'm not expecting significant improvements to the passives or the already existing techniques. I expect those to come at AM4. Generally, though, we have seen that we either get a new technique with minor improvements or no technique and substantial improvements, I don't think we have ever gotten both.
The technique though is going to be doing something with perception, since it will be taking up a head meridian. Since AM focuses our perception on sensing qi, I think it is a good bet that this technique will revolve around that concept. I'm thinking that it will be something like what Li Suyin already had that led us to our first training site. We currently have the power to sense active sources of qi (human beings and spirit beasts) and so a technique that lets us see the more lingering traces of qi in the atmosphere and in nature will be a natural step up.
This also fits well with finding more natural qi sites which the Argent branch seems to favor given our breakthrough bonus for learning 4 levels of AS. Also, it might help with our investigation, which is always nice.
As for SCS, while there may be a new technique, I'm going with your interpretation as I can't even see what new or amazing technique we would get that would not require a new meridian to balance it out. I'm thinking your placing too much expectation on TE, as I don't think that will ever become something more than a way to hide our tracks. We might get additional dice penalties to people trying to track us with it, but other than that not much. I'm hoping that FS becomes an instant as that will drastically improve its defensive abilities and make it much more appealing to use in actual combat.