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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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TotallyNotEvil said:
Why not play at assassin also? Its a natural tie-in to our skills.
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I believe the more appropriate question is why play at assassin?

Assassinations are messy, leave unanswered questions, and since the people worth assassinating are going to be cultivators, extremely risky. If we want to deal with a person, then blackmail, exhortation, bribery, persuasion, and threats against loved ones are much more effective, and have the benefit of not having the question of "where did he go?"

Also, we aren't specced for assassinations right now, as we can't deal enough burst damage to justify an assassination attempt, and we have paltry medicine skills so poison is going to be tricky as well.

Finally, I don't think assassination is the way I want to have Ling Qi go. There will be killing, death, and various other morally questionable decisions. But I just don't want Ling Qi to go down the route of an assassin.
 
Regarding Cai vs the Sect...

Overall, I suspect that the Sect is probably better for our raw cultivation. The simple reason for that is that education is basically what the sect is geared for. The advantages of Cai lie more in temporal/political power and opportunities. These should not be underestimated - afterall, one of the big advantages of the old families is the resources that they possess, and serving Cai is probably the best path we have to acquiring our own little mountain of good quality.

In terms of access to things like pills and crafters, they're probably both just as capable of fueling our insatiable lusts.

The big difference really comes down to the educational opportunities, in particular Arts. Having libraries and teachers available to disciples is one of the things the Sect does. Outside the Sect, such things are likely mainly kept within families, or taught to apprentices only (well, other than low level trash used to train your armies). Moreover, even if she was inclined to share, Cai's family likely doesn't have much of a library outside of her mother's arts due to how young it is.

This is mostly a problem in the mid-term. Long term you end up doing your own Arts for your own Way. Short term we can almost certainly get all the arts that we need from the 3rd floor archive before we leave. The issue here lies in the likely gap between the end of 3rd floor arts, and making our own Way.

This can, of course, be dealt with if we're awesome enough that the Sect is like "we'd really love for you to continue post-graduate study with us. Part-time is fine."

But yeah, trying to compare Cai to the Sect on a single metric is the wrong way to loom at it. They have different advantages and disadvantages.

And, of course, the narrative differences are possibly more important, and this should not be forgotten.
 
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TheLastOne said:
Anything that old and treasured has to have a mighty spirit, and probably a haughty one as well. Can anyone alive even wield something that ancient? Or does the spear love the Bai enough to hold it's nose for them?
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Pretty much this, object spirits grow incredibly slowly, but given enough time...

It lets itself be used in defense of the province, and its one of the key foci for awakening Grandmother Serpent.
 
yrsillar said:
Pretty much this, object spirits grow incredibly slowly, but given enough time...

It lets itself be used in defense of the province, and its one of the key foci for awakening Grandmother Serpent.
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So what you're saying is that there's a secret facility where cultivators try to accelerate the passage of time on weapons and armor, to develop and strengthen spirits in the gear.
 
Thor's Twin said:
I believe the more appropriate question is why play at assassin?

Assassinations are messy, leave unanswered questions, and since the people worth assassinating are going to be cultivators, extremely risky. If we want to deal with a person, then blackmail, exhortation, bribery, persuasion, and threats against loved ones are much more effective, and have the benefit of not having the question of "where did he go?"

Also, we aren't specced for assassinations right now, as we can't deal enough burst damage to justify an assassination attempt, and we have paltry medicine skills so poison is going to be tricky as well.

Finally, I don't think assassination is the way I want to have Ling Qi go. There will be killing, death, and various other morally questionable decisions. But I just don't want Ling Qi to go down the route of an assassin.
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I'm not saying we go full time HitQi, but merely that I don't get the abject disgust to killing this guy and that on their sleep. I'm sure no one will object to killing people in combat, the only difference is how much you stack the deck.

Ling Qi (and we as well) gets quite the thril from sneaking around. Stealth kills are much the same.

I like the pair of Grinning Moon and Bloody Moon, they are the twin crescents!

Ultimately, it's a good fit for our skillset (as soon as we patch up our damage), it's a good fit thematically with following the two aspects of the crescent Moon, and stealth playthrough is downright awesome.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
Why not play at assassin also? Its a natural tie-in to our skills.
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So far Ling Qi does not appear to have a killer's mindset. She was quite concerned that Gu Xiulan had apparently killed a competitor in combat for example and felt somewhat bad about pushing that boy down that well. I could see her contemplating assassination if someone had seriously harmed someone she truly cared about but it would need to be justified in-story and would certainly not be a casual decision.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
I'm not saying we go full time HitQi, but merely that I don't get the abject disgust to killing this guy and that on their sleep. I'm sure no one will object to killing people in combat, the only difference is how much you stack the deck.

Ling Qi (and we as well) gets quite the thril from sneaking around. Stealth kills are much the same.

I like the pair of Grinning Moon and Bloody Moon, they are the twin crescents!

Ultimately, it's a good fit for our skillset (as soon as we patch up our damage), it's a good fit thematically with following the two aspects of the crescent Moon, and stealth playthrough is downright awesome.
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Because killing is Evil ?

More seriously, killing closes opportunities. For exemple: i'd much rather have Yan Renshou sign one of his contracts under Ling Qi than simply kill him.
 
Yeah, but she is still a kid.

We have years if military service and brutal warfare against barbarians ahead.

Popping officers and chiefs greatly ups our own chance's of success, and significantly Improved survivability for our troops.
 
Erebeal said:
Regarding Cai vs the Sect...
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More thoughts on this!

We know that even should we be Cai's vassal, we can also be a part of the sect. It will just take a lot more work and effort on our part in that regard. However, this also handily helps with concerns that we won't have access to arts to choose from should we be Cai's vassal. Problem with this is that if there is a conflict between a Sect interest and a Cai interest we would have to choose the Cai interest, which may severely hurt our reputation and standing in the Sect.

Another thing to note is that we are aware that the Sect is struggling financially, so I'm not sure how much support they can afford to give us even if we stick with them for 8 years, while it appears that Lady Cai has nearly limitless cash at her disposal. Alas, that cash comes with strings attached, lots of strings attached. I'm sure that the sect will have strings attached to their funds as well (sect missions come to mind) but probably not as many strings as being a vassal to Cai.

TotallyNotEvil said:
I'm not saying we go full time HitQi, but merely that I don't get the abject disgust to killing this guy and that on their sleep. I'm sure no one will object to killing people in combat, the only difference is how much you stack the deck.

Ling Qi (and we as well) gets quite the thril from sneaking around. Stealth kills are much the same.

I like the pair of Grinning Moon and Bloody Moon, they are the twin crescents!

Ultimately, it's a good fit for our skillset (as soon as we patch up our damage), it's a good fit thematically with following the two aspects of the crescent Moon, and stealth playthrough is downright awesome.
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Well, I'm going to have to disagree with you on the difference between assassinations and killing in combat.

I do agree with you that stealth runs are extremely awesome, but I feel that assassinations are a bit too... boorish for the level of complexity and choices that FoD supplies.

For instance, instead of killing a person we can instead plant incriminating evidence that he is a traitor who is supplying critical weapons and talismans to rebels against the Emperess or Duchess. Rebels, I might add, that we created specifically for this purpose by creating a false contact point for dissent against the tyrannical regime. In this way, we call down the Ministry of Integrity, and rather than assassinating all of the dissenters one by one we capture them all in one fell swoop.

We let some escape, of course, to tell the tales of the false contact furthering the distrust between members of a rebellion and fracturing the rebellion further creating a situation where they can not trust any other "dissenters" outside of 2 or 3 people. This effectively cuts off the rebellion's ability to get organized and pose a legitimate threat to the Cais or the Emperess.

Much smoother than crawling through 30 houses and assassinating each one.
 
Well, the whole "number of years" thing is tricky. The big issue here is that we would expect cultivators to slow technological progression to some degree - when all of your elite class is mostly interested in honing their personal Dao and learning how to punch mountains in half, this tends to distract from the development of the rest of society.

More interestingly, a case can be made that there's really only so far you can get in terms of scale, organisation, and power of a civilisation without actually industrialising. Ian Morris's "Why the West rules - for now" suggests that (at least in broad terms) this level was what the Roman Empire and Tang Dynasty achieved before their respective falls, and that they really couldn't be surpassed until industrialisation changed the rules of the game.

Under this logic, all you need to limit the growth of a society is for them not to industrialise. This doesn't mean that they can't develop and evolve in many ways - it just means that ultimately their scale and ability to accomplish shit is limited to a certain level, and this imposes certain constraints upon things.
 
Am I the only one who does not mind the assassin route?

Clinging to morality does not suit this setting.
 
Yeah. I mean, unless Renshu does something really awful, like hurting Zhengui, I'm gonna have to weigh in on not choosing Bloody Moon for now. Regardless of what offer we take, we're still spending some time in the inner sect before we go on to the military. If the sect doesn't even like letting outer disciples die, then assassinating an inner disciple would be way worse. Better to follow New or Hidden Moon for now, stay nice and respectable while we're in inner sect. Bloody Moon can be during military service, or if someone really, really deserves to die.
 
Considering material and cyltivation technology of the time, a wooden fishing trident probably had been repaired over and over.

I wonder how often it underwent a ship of Theseus' type of reincarnation before it even gained any kind of sentience...

Cai-wise, she is probably comparable to Bai, as she can be considered to be cultivating a possible vassal.

The difference is that Bai did it on her own limited resource, towards a peasant girl who attempted to be her friend, while Cai does so towards a surprisingly talented commoner, using resources that was.both given and cultivated by her own.
 
Don't really care for the moral hand-wringing going on here. Every quest protagonist eventually ends up the same whitewashed, idealised person with Perfect Morals that would never countenance doing the wrong thing or being selfish. I get that people like to make "better" choices where the expected cost/payoff is effectively happening to a character in a book and not actually to themselves, and end up doing great anyway because authors don't feel comfortable effectively punishing players for "doing the right thing", but it would be nice not to go down that route for once.
 
Regarding assassination:

The thing here is that assassination is, in general, strongly disapproved of by society relative to being an "honorable warrior". Ling Qi doesn't like killing in general, and in probably isn't wildly keen on becoming a murderer.

Now, the feelings of people and society aren't necessarily entirely rational and consistent in these regards. However, that doesn't mean that they don't matter.

An interesting point was made by Joshua Greene in his book "Moral Tribes". In a discussion of the classic trolley problem he noted that while, logically, one should kill the one person to save the five, most people really don't want to do that. If someone actually did kill the one to save five, he would have to say that they did the right thing. Nevertheless, he would still be leery of their character. They have, afterall, transgressed the norms of human behaviour in a way that is potential worrying, and raises red flags about what else they might be willing to do.

A similar point can be made here I would argue. Just because an action can be rationally justified as correct - and even good - doesn't mean that it necessarily says good things about the person's character. And someone who's comfortable sneaking into people's bedrooms and knifing them is definitely someone I would be leery of.
 
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Well a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of Ling Qi becoming an assassin (anti-ass, pro legs!) for narrative reasons. It would pidgeon hole us into the whole dark and edgy stereotype. Because assassination is such an effective tool, why would we be choosing anything but the most effective of our options.

Also on the more important meta side:
Personally, and I think this is something that other people might also feel, I don't think of assassins as cool. Thieves or Cat burglars? Sure, anytime. Heists and planning and action and stealth and loot. That is cool! But I guess in our time of drones and terrorists, people are just tired with sniping people out of the blue or suddenly opening fire at crowds or dropping bombs at gatherings. Sure, it is easy and sure, it is effective but it is real life. I dont need that in my story about flying pseudo-chinese immortal wizards. I wanna have fun not win with a spreadsheet.
 
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NotAlwaysFanfic said:
even accounting for cultivators slowing tech growth
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I'd say it's more likely that instead of tech slowing down, it's grown in a different direction.

I mean, leaving aside pissed off demigods occasionally have a Kung Fu Mahabharata necessitating a redrawing the of maps, the focus of things is probably considerably different.

Medicinal Pills, Formations, Talismans, Arts(Cultivation and otherwise) are probably the focus of technological interest and developments. I'm willing to bet things in those areas have all likely drastically improved over stuff in the old days, barring exceptions like the Bai artifact that Yrsillar just mentioned.

But that's more like the Talisman version of a Sublime Ancestor and shouldn't really count.

Lazy Minx said:
Am I the only one who does not mind the assassin route?

Clinging to morality does not suit this setting.
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It depends.

Killing has a time and a place and it's extremely likely that Ling Qi will have to bloody her hands at one point or another.

Assassination has slightly different connotations though. It entails picking a target, carefully observing them, and then striking when they are at their most vulnerable. Being an Assassin means Being a Person Who Kills, rather than Being a Person Who Can Kill, a subtle, but important distinction. Now, that's not to say the people we may be called on to assassinate wouldn't be appropriate targets. For example, if in the future when Ling Qi is considerably more badass and we are called on to kill the next Ogodei, the thread's main concerns would likely be along the lines of "How do we pull this off and get away in one piece?" as opposed to any moral waffling.
 
Thor's Twin said:
assassinations are a bit too... boorish for the level of complexity and choices that FoD supplies.

For instance, instead of killing a person we can instead plant incriminating evidence that he is a traitor who is supplying critical weapons and talismans to rebels against the Emperess or Duchess. Rebels, I might add, that we created specifically for this purpose by creating a false contact point for dissent against the tyrannical regime. In this way, we call down the Ministry of Integrity, and rather than assassinating all of the dissenters one by one we capture them all in one fell swoop.

We let some escape, of course, to tell the tales of the false contact furthering the distrust between members of a rebellion and fracturing the rebellion further creating a situation where they can not trust any other "dissenters" outside of 2 or 3 people. This effectively cuts off the rebellion's ability to get organized and pose a legitimate threat to the Cais or the Emperess.

Much smoother than crawling through 30 houses and assassinating each one.
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I think you are oversimolifying things to an extent here. Just because we are willing to do it, and capable, doesn't mean we are bound to do so.

Not having the ability costs us serious opoortunities when acting within our stealth role.
wankongyew said:
All the more reason that there's no point of talking about her becoming an assassin now while she is still a disciple in the sect competing in what are essentially war exercises against other disciples.
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Thing is, Bloody Moon isn't some bloodknight. For now, it's about extracting retribution, much like the more modern interpretation of it.

I'm not taking about killing disciples here. The Moon aint that shallow, or stupid as to force our hand like that.
 
I want to point out that I don't oppose the assassination thing for moral reasons. Instead I oppose because I think it doesn't suit Ling Qi, and because I think Ling Qi would be a more interesting and happier character without becoming an assassin. I think that a sneaky formations using Ling Qi, or a Ling Qi who discovers ancient secrets and reveals truths that her enemies don't want said is a lot cooler and fulfilling character. Plus, as Kian said, assassination is the easy way, and we didn't get where we were by taking the easy route.

Also if we kill them that means we don't get to see their rage faces when we make a mockery of their security.
 
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Kian said:
Well a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of Ling Qi becoming an assassin (anti-ass, pro legs!) for narrative reasons. It would pidgeon hole us into the whole dark and edgy stereotype. Because Assasination is such an effective tool, why would we be choosing anything but the most effective of our options.

Also on the more important meta side:
Personally, and I thing this is something that other people might also feel, I don't think of assassins as cool. Thieves or Cat burglars? Sure, anytime. Heists and planning and action and stealth and loot. That is cool! But I guess in our time of drones and terrorists, people are just tired with sniping people out of the blue or suddenly oppening fire at crowds or dropping bombs at gatherings. Sure, it is easy and sure, it is effective but it is real life. I dont need that in my story about flying pseudo-chinese immortal wizards. I wanna have fun not win with a spreadsheet.
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Those are perfectly valid reasons to not want to go the assassination route (even if I don't agree) as opposed to just wanting to "be good".

Nervaqus987 said:
For example, if in the future when Ling Qi is considerably more badass and we are called on to kill the next Ogodei, the thread's main concerns would likely be along the lines of "How do we pull this off and get away in one piece?" as opposed to any moral waffling.
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I'd like to hope so, but a significant portion of SV's playerbase would rather go all-in on that moral waffling. Which is fine, except it's so prevalent it's tending to drown out other viewpoints/routes, so the majority of quests all tend to go the same route.
 
Nervaqus987 said:
I'd say it's more likely that instead of tech slowing down, it's grown in a different direction.

I mean, leaving aside pissed off demigods occasionally have a Kung Fu Mahabharata necessitating a redrawing the of maps, the focus of things is probably considerably different.

Medicinal Pills, Formations, Talismans, Arts(Cultivation and otherwise) are probably the focus of technological interest and developments. I'm willing to bet things in those areas have all likely drastically improved over stuff in the old days, barring exceptions like the Bai artifact that Yrsillar just mentioned.

But that's more like the Talisman version of a Sublime Ancestor and shouldn't really count
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Yeah, Jiao casually made enormous holodeck simulations for the kids to train within.

I suspect simple farmers having Formations barriers on their properties, one and all, sounds absurd to your average ruler say, ten thousand years ago.
 
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Erebeal said:
Also, people realise that many of our gains have come from people/tortoises being impressed by how we aren't a selfish asshole, right?


I hope that you didn't mean that quite literally, because that is literally the Hard Men Making Hard Decisions attitude to a T. And we mock it for a reason.
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But we mock Hard Men Making Hard Decisions because they tend to tunnel-vision, to the point where they don't see/believe less drastic measures will work when really they would. The corollary to that is that the opposite viewpoint - that there's always a third option, and we never have to make Hard Decisions at all - is an equally fallacious viewpoint.

Also, wanting to read about a different viewpoint/type of character is not the same as subscribing to that viewpoint at all.
 
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