Do remember, the town in question is just beside the border, and is right next to a Great Sect.
It is not so strange if viewed in that light.
Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
Do remember, the town in question is just beside the border, and is right next to a Great Sect.
It is not so strange if viewed in that light.
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
It's not a all or nothing situation. Someone with talent 1, which will cap out at Red or Yellow (with much luck) will also not be any kind of threat, but still benefit from vastly improved relevant skills.
Yes, I was thinking something like that was a possibility. I.e. cultivators may be more skilled, but mortals are more suitable due to other factors (loyalty, lesser material needs, weak enough to easily remove, replaceability).
Mind you, reds should be close to mortals in terms of ease of removal and replaceability, and I'm not sure why they would be less loyal. That only leaves the point you mentioned about not needing resources - and I can kinda see it. Mortals can steal cultivator wealth, but they would have to fence it afterwords instead of consuming it themselves; that should decrease the risks there somewhat.
... sorry, but can you explain how that makes this less strange?
You mean talent 2. Talent 1 can't cultivate at all; they need to roll zeros on a 1d10 to succeed.
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- Location
- Inside my own head
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Into the forest, full of life and joy. She did not want to leave her friends waiting.
[X] Into the sky, unfettered and free, to visit where ever she wished, at the time she wished
I actually prefer the sky but forest is ok as well. Hell I'd even be ok with the village. Not the mountain in the lake though. It feels as or possibly even more isolated than sky and I really don't like that it focuses on a thing we do and on something thrust upon us rather than who we are.
[X] Into the sky, unfettered and free, to visit where ever she wished, at the time she wished
I actually prefer the sky but forest is ok as well. Hell I'd even be ok with the village. Not the mountain in the lake though. It feels as or possibly even more isolated than sky and I really don't like that it focuses on a thing we do and on something thrust upon us rather than who we are.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Red are also not really more skilled. Their attribute caps are just the same, they just get there faster. We also know that some people consider reds 'mortals' still, so it's very possible he was a red/yellow, not a 'true' cultivator.
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
We, as a lowly nobody, already found multiple breakthrough rolls enhancing stuff. I'm sure someone in a political position of power can easily find similar stuff too.
Regardless, one or two point(s) talent people will be able to enjoy the low hanging fruits of cultivation benefits like increased skills and almost non-existent sleep (iirc food was also mentioned), all of which would make them much much better minions, and their low realm cap will assure they remain a non-threat for any Noble.
Heck, considering there's thousands of such in the armies, their replaceability is also guaranteed.
While the gouvernor might "eat" a few ressources, we've seen that RSS, and even YSS, and very easy to provide.
Heck, you might even consider those needed ressources as an additional security for the gouvernor's loyalty.
That could be it, but have we seen any such exemples ?
@PrimalShadow
The way I see it, the town in question is too small and too insignificant to merit an immortal governor.
The one possible reason for a cultivator governor would be to protect the settlement, which is unneccessary due to the Great Sect nearby.
Finally, it could be that the governor is actually red/yellow, but isn't considered a true immortal since he isn't a green soul (and thus a real noble).
The way I see it, the town in question is too small and too insignificant to merit an immortal governor.
The one possible reason for a cultivator governor would be to protect the settlement, which is unneccessary due to the Great Sect nearby.
Finally, it could be that the governor is actually red/yellow, but isn't considered a true immortal since he isn't a green soul (and thus a real noble).
"Head to market" is a minor action, and could be attached to the Favor.
You are confused. Talent 1 doesn't need to think about breakthroughs - they can't cultivate AT ALL. To gain a point of cultivation XP, you need to roll under your talent on a d10. That can't happen if your talent is 1. And we have yet to see any medicine that would change the above formula.
Sure, a pill that gives autosuccesses to cultivation probably exists, but I wouldn't be surprised if you need to have awakened as a Cultivator to take one, and you need 10 XP to awaken.
Even if you can figure it out somehow, a talent 1 cultivator is going to be beyond rare, and by no means are the base measuring stick from which one should work.
I'm pretty sure we have to look for pills sold outside the standard market, since market pills are what we have been looking at so far. That said, if I'm wrong, that does help with our Minor issues, yes.
But it still has a community of low level cultivators, including red/gold guards.
- Location
- Malaysia
Perhaps cultivators have their own separate hierarchy and the governor's job is mostly to manage mortals? Even Ling Qi is finding it difficult to relate to the everyday concerns and needs of mortals these days.
I'm very much in favour of getting bronze as soon possible. 3 actions is the bare minimum I'd want to have. Apart from the bonuses locked behind bronze (and the autos for stealth which is always good) the cap on our attributes is going to cause Xp to vanish into the ether.
Given we got the perfect breakthrough bonus to spiritual I'd certainly much rather have an additional breakthrough action than a spiritual roll this week like someone suggested.
Honestly my ideal week would be something like:
[]Breakthrough x4 including recovering progress. If you fail twice after action 3 or succeed at breaking through in 3 actions switch to EPC.
[]Favour
-[] Minor, look for pills suited for green cultivatiors
-[] Free, Make ossuary scouts and deploy them to scout your targets property. Pick them up when you leave the market.
With space for other minors as needed.
Given we got the perfect breakthrough bonus to spiritual I'd certainly much rather have an additional breakthrough action than a spiritual roll this week like someone suggested.
Honestly my ideal week would be something like:
[]Breakthrough x4 including recovering progress. If you fail twice after action 3 or succeed at breaking through in 3 actions switch to EPC.
[]Favour
-[] Minor, look for pills suited for green cultivatiors
-[] Free, Make ossuary scouts and deploy them to scout your targets property. Pick them up when you leave the market.
With space for other minors as needed.
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- Location
- United Kingdom
Even then, it can't hurt to ask in-market (maybe Fatty Hao?) whether they know where to go for better pills. Either that or one of our friends might know.
Action-wise, I'm in favor of:
1) 3 devoted to breakthrough, resulting in one of
a) success x3 (successful breakthrough)
b) success, success, fail (2 of 3 sux gained, cultivate back up next week)
c) success, fail, cultivate back up (1 of 3 sux gained, ready to try again next week)
d) fail, cultivate back up, succeed or fail (either 1 of 3 sux gained, or none gained, though the latter only has a 21% chance of happening)
2) Favor for Fu Xiang x3 (Get it out the way, hopefully the fact that we're doing breakthrough distracts from the possibility that we might be the culprit, assuming we're not caught red-handed)
3) Cultivate EPC (Get started on this, apply stealth/larceny sux here as well, get closer to a potential virtual GSS in EPC5)
Assuming we devote 3 actions to breakthrough (incl. physical cultivation if needed), these are the chances we have of getting at least that number of successes:
3s 16%
2s+ 29%
1s+ 79%
With a corresponding 21% chance of no successes, though this assumes we'll successfully cultivate back to peak if we fail a breakthrough roll.
0s 21%
Why in the world would we prioritize the Favor over EPC cultivation? We have to do the favor once, and can fit it in any week when we have a free action. In contrast, EPC needs to be worked on each week for a while. I.e. if we drop EPC this week, we can only "make that up" a month plus.
Favor really doesn't have the urgency to warrant that.
As an aside, even if we can attack the pill-search to Favor (which is a big if), that still leaves you with one minor that you haven't attached anywhere. Ew.
I would not oppose this, assuming we can get minors attached properly.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Depending on the stone uses and other things, EPC cultivation gives around 30-40 successes. Favor gives 30. Clearly the optimal choice is to do both Favor and EPC cultivation for 70~ successes, but if we can't do that there is a argument for Favors over EPC cultivation.
- Location
- United States
I think the big reason is the fact that we've been putting it off for a long time. Close to about a month in game since we told Fu Xiang we'd do it if I remember correctly.
People were holding off until we hit green so that we could have less of a chance of being caught when we did the heist. Now that we've hit green a lot of people will probably be pushing to get it done ASAP because we told Fu Xiang we'd do it, but haven't actually done anything to repay him for saving our ass yet.
So there's another element to this CRX-Sun Liling competition that we don't seem to really be considering.
And that is the parallels between the two of them.
On a most basic level, the Sun and the Cai are in pretty different positions, yeah? Sun Shao is King of the Western Jungles, is a White Cultivator of surpassing potency and has the strongest army in the Empire behind him with a long and storied legacy with a number of loyal subordinate families that he filched off the Bai way back when. Cai Shenhua is a second generation cultivator that pulled herself up by her own bootstraps by sheer audacity, became a white, and then literally hijacked the Emerald Seas province for herself and runs the thing as a tight fisted tyranny after purging most of the nobility of the region when they wouldn't fall in line behind her. On the surface, Sun Shao has an established base of operations, numerous achievements, and the Sun clan has an extremely established foundation. The Cai are newly ascendant by any meaning of the word, came from out of nowhere, have no noteworthy accomplishments outside of naked opportunism and a single, solitary genius, and the favor of the Imperial Family through what appears to be material contributions.
Once again, on the surface, they appear quite different.
So lets look at rise of Sun Shao and Cai Shenhua for a second, shall we? On the surface, we know that Sun Shao led his army against the Western Barbarians and conquered them utterly in revenge for his wife being killed or something, with an army rising to his call for vengeance. The western nobility rose up and followed him ofc, obliterating the Western Barbarians in their seat of power even as the fearful Bai clan sought to prevent them from doing so. This led to the Bai trying to censure them, and then getting swatted down for trying to bring Sun Shao to heel.
Even here we can already see some narrative similarities to the story of Shenhua's rise, in that we have a single talented cultivator rising to power, and moving against an old and established family and doing so with the backing of the Imperial Seat. The similarities in that narrative sense end there, however, what matters is more the meat of the background details.
Specifically, the how, rather than the why.
Sun Shao's entire powerbase, indeed, his own clan, existed on the sufferance of one of the Elder Clans in the Bai. His charge into the Western Jungles severely depleted the Thousand Lakes and its associated provinces of the nobility that ran it. It may not have been a literal purge, but the damage to the administration of the territory was likely just as bad as one. Plus, Sun Shao's conquering army would have needed to put down their own roots in the Western Jungles, and watch over their new holdings. Bereft of the infrastructure left behind in the Bai Clans territory. So while not as straightforward as Shenhua's own execution, Sun Shao's own administrative infrastructure is starting from a very similar position to that of the current Emerald Seas province.
So we know that Cai Shenhua and Sun Shao suffer from different flavors of the same problem in running their newly acquired holdings (getting competent people into a position to run things smoothly for them).
Similarly, we know that Cai Shenhua and Sun Shao got into their current positions by means of stepping over the toes of long lasting Clans. The Bai in Sun Shao's case, and the previous holders of the Emerald Seas Ducality in Cai Shenhua's. So there's two obvious parallels to them. We can be comfortable with drawing lines of comparison to them, as they can be considered peers in this time period. Which will become more important in this next part.
Now since we know that broadly speaking, the Cai and Sun clans face similar long term consequences for their own legacies. And those are the inherent instability caused by a lack of heirs. Sun Shao's own sons were killed by the Jungles he paid so much blood (and other potential costs) to conquer, and Cai simply doesn't seem to have any contingency plans if her schemes with CRX fall through. Sun Liling can be killed by many things, although it seems that her own cultivation, as steeped in Western Barbarian flavors as it is, seems to have taken steps to avoid being especially vulnerable to the Western Jungles. I imagine her Spirit conveys some kind of territorial boon to her with its obvious connection to the Jungles "Goddess of Love" or something. Cai Ranxiang, similarly, is likely extremely vulnerable to people who would like to use her as a proxy to act on grievances against Cai Shenhua.
So let's assume, for a second, that Sun Shao and Cai Shenhua are not able to trivially produce heirs on the level of Sun Liling and CRX, or hell, even non-trivially. For whatever reason. Those two girls represent a serious investment for their parents.
How do Cai Shenhua and Sun Shao gamble their potential legacies?
Well, we know that the problem in the Western Jungles is that its very much a "must be this swole to not die" kind of environment, and as a result, Sun Liling is built very much towards being as killy as possible. And being as good at making those around her as killy as possible, hypothetically. The need for conflict and combat is very much a driving force for the girl. She's tomboyish, outgoing, very Yang-y.
Emerald Seas, by contrast, is more tame by comparison. Personal combat excellence is not necessarily the be-all, end-all even if a certain level of martial power is needed to maintain the borders against enroaching Wind Tribe barbarians. Ogodai was no small threat, after all. No, whats needed in the Emerald Seas is an administrator par-excellence. Someone who can plant a genuinely excellent foundation for governance and can raise up new nobility and other subordinates to truly rule those holdings. As such, a flawless tyrant fits the bill nicely, and CRX's demeanor is most certainly that of a near-ideal boss to work for for most people who would be interested in the kind of work that being a noble entails.
I suppose when one considers that all evidence points towards Cai Shenhua being a superlative Production Talent, the fact that she crafted her daughter to be perfect for the role she was intended to fulfill shouldnt be that surprising. More importantly, let's assume that as far as Sun Shao and Cai Shenhua are concerned, their heirs are exactly what they were gunning for in raising them. Perfect successes, so to speak.
And wouldn't you know it, both of those heirs are exactly the same age!
So why wouldnt two incredibly ambitious and proud individuals who are assured of their own superiority pit them against one another in the most meaningful way possible? What better way to prove their superiority than to have the crystallizations of their own ambitions for their still nascent legacies compete against one another?
I mean, heck, the Sects are supposed to be playgrounds where the Nobility get to dip their toes in for the Real World later on, so why not make the stakes even more real by tossing in a member of the Bai Clan? They're being carted off all over the place anyway.
Fast forward to Thunderdome redux, where those philosophical differences flare up into straight up conflict. One which seems to favor the Sun Clan paradigm of subversion and conquest through martial might in True Cultivator Fashion.
Its an almost perfect stage, right?
Fast Forward to the last update.
And the definitive loss that Sun Liling's surrender represents.
And who else should be at CRX's side but a scion of the Bai clan themselves?
After all, isn't that the Bai's stance on the situation in a nutshell? Even if there is one explosive dustup, they can be patient. Eventually circumstances will favor them once again, and once they are in that position of strength, they'll visit upon their foes a terrible vengeance. Sun Liling's powerbase was all but broken save for a vassal and an unwilling ally of convenience in terms of relevant combatants.
By contrast, how many of CRX's subordinates did she have to pay ransom for?
None.
Like, when you look at the Outer Sect for its intended purpose, to serve as a microcosm of the Empires Cultivator society...This result is such a hilariously massive fucking repudiation of Sun Shao's entire approach to how he raised Sun Liling to serve as his heir. Literally the only shot Sun Liling has left to save face is to do what Sun Shao did, and double down on the face punching for the tournament and eke out a win there.
After all, strength is the only thing that matters, right?
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that if we take the Outer Sect literally as a microcosm of the Empire in general...Then if Sun Liling fails to be victorious in the Outer Sect tournament at the end of the year, that's roughly equivalent to saying that the Sun truly have no future. Not compared to someone like Cai Shenhua who came literally out of nowhere.
And not compared to the Bai, who will be all too happy to team up with the next, or even the current, Cai Shenhua and act upon their grudges that way.
Sun Shao has every reason to pay very close attention to the tournament, as it is his only way of knowing whether his choices up until now with Liling will be validated.
Or not.
And that is the parallels between the two of them.
On a most basic level, the Sun and the Cai are in pretty different positions, yeah? Sun Shao is King of the Western Jungles, is a White Cultivator of surpassing potency and has the strongest army in the Empire behind him with a long and storied legacy with a number of loyal subordinate families that he filched off the Bai way back when. Cai Shenhua is a second generation cultivator that pulled herself up by her own bootstraps by sheer audacity, became a white, and then literally hijacked the Emerald Seas province for herself and runs the thing as a tight fisted tyranny after purging most of the nobility of the region when they wouldn't fall in line behind her. On the surface, Sun Shao has an established base of operations, numerous achievements, and the Sun clan has an extremely established foundation. The Cai are newly ascendant by any meaning of the word, came from out of nowhere, have no noteworthy accomplishments outside of naked opportunism and a single, solitary genius, and the favor of the Imperial Family through what appears to be material contributions.
Once again, on the surface, they appear quite different.
So lets look at rise of Sun Shao and Cai Shenhua for a second, shall we? On the surface, we know that Sun Shao led his army against the Western Barbarians and conquered them utterly in revenge for his wife being killed or something, with an army rising to his call for vengeance. The western nobility rose up and followed him ofc, obliterating the Western Barbarians in their seat of power even as the fearful Bai clan sought to prevent them from doing so. This led to the Bai trying to censure them, and then getting swatted down for trying to bring Sun Shao to heel.
Even here we can already see some narrative similarities to the story of Shenhua's rise, in that we have a single talented cultivator rising to power, and moving against an old and established family and doing so with the backing of the Imperial Seat. The similarities in that narrative sense end there, however, what matters is more the meat of the background details.
Specifically, the how, rather than the why.
Sun Shao's entire powerbase, indeed, his own clan, existed on the sufferance of one of the Elder Clans in the Bai. His charge into the Western Jungles severely depleted the Thousand Lakes and its associated provinces of the nobility that ran it. It may not have been a literal purge, but the damage to the administration of the territory was likely just as bad as one. Plus, Sun Shao's conquering army would have needed to put down their own roots in the Western Jungles, and watch over their new holdings. Bereft of the infrastructure left behind in the Bai Clans territory. So while not as straightforward as Shenhua's own execution, Sun Shao's own administrative infrastructure is starting from a very similar position to that of the current Emerald Seas province.
So we know that Cai Shenhua and Sun Shao suffer from different flavors of the same problem in running their newly acquired holdings (getting competent people into a position to run things smoothly for them).
Similarly, we know that Cai Shenhua and Sun Shao got into their current positions by means of stepping over the toes of long lasting Clans. The Bai in Sun Shao's case, and the previous holders of the Emerald Seas Ducality in Cai Shenhua's. So there's two obvious parallels to them. We can be comfortable with drawing lines of comparison to them, as they can be considered peers in this time period. Which will become more important in this next part.
Now since we know that broadly speaking, the Cai and Sun clans face similar long term consequences for their own legacies. And those are the inherent instability caused by a lack of heirs. Sun Shao's own sons were killed by the Jungles he paid so much blood (and other potential costs) to conquer, and Cai simply doesn't seem to have any contingency plans if her schemes with CRX fall through. Sun Liling can be killed by many things, although it seems that her own cultivation, as steeped in Western Barbarian flavors as it is, seems to have taken steps to avoid being especially vulnerable to the Western Jungles. I imagine her Spirit conveys some kind of territorial boon to her with its obvious connection to the Jungles "Goddess of Love" or something. Cai Ranxiang, similarly, is likely extremely vulnerable to people who would like to use her as a proxy to act on grievances against Cai Shenhua.
So let's assume, for a second, that Sun Shao and Cai Shenhua are not able to trivially produce heirs on the level of Sun Liling and CRX, or hell, even non-trivially. For whatever reason. Those two girls represent a serious investment for their parents.
How do Cai Shenhua and Sun Shao gamble their potential legacies?
Well, we know that the problem in the Western Jungles is that its very much a "must be this swole to not die" kind of environment, and as a result, Sun Liling is built very much towards being as killy as possible. And being as good at making those around her as killy as possible, hypothetically. The need for conflict and combat is very much a driving force for the girl. She's tomboyish, outgoing, very Yang-y.
Emerald Seas, by contrast, is more tame by comparison. Personal combat excellence is not necessarily the be-all, end-all even if a certain level of martial power is needed to maintain the borders against enroaching Wind Tribe barbarians. Ogodai was no small threat, after all. No, whats needed in the Emerald Seas is an administrator par-excellence. Someone who can plant a genuinely excellent foundation for governance and can raise up new nobility and other subordinates to truly rule those holdings. As such, a flawless tyrant fits the bill nicely, and CRX's demeanor is most certainly that of a near-ideal boss to work for for most people who would be interested in the kind of work that being a noble entails.
I suppose when one considers that all evidence points towards Cai Shenhua being a superlative Production Talent, the fact that she crafted her daughter to be perfect for the role she was intended to fulfill shouldnt be that surprising. More importantly, let's assume that as far as Sun Shao and Cai Shenhua are concerned, their heirs are exactly what they were gunning for in raising them. Perfect successes, so to speak.
And wouldn't you know it, both of those heirs are exactly the same age!
So why wouldnt two incredibly ambitious and proud individuals who are assured of their own superiority pit them against one another in the most meaningful way possible? What better way to prove their superiority than to have the crystallizations of their own ambitions for their still nascent legacies compete against one another?
I mean, heck, the Sects are supposed to be playgrounds where the Nobility get to dip their toes in for the Real World later on, so why not make the stakes even more real by tossing in a member of the Bai Clan? They're being carted off all over the place anyway.
Fast forward to Thunderdome redux, where those philosophical differences flare up into straight up conflict. One which seems to favor the Sun Clan paradigm of subversion and conquest through martial might in True Cultivator Fashion.
Its an almost perfect stage, right?
Fast Forward to the last update.
And the definitive loss that Sun Liling's surrender represents.
And who else should be at CRX's side but a scion of the Bai clan themselves?
After all, isn't that the Bai's stance on the situation in a nutshell? Even if there is one explosive dustup, they can be patient. Eventually circumstances will favor them once again, and once they are in that position of strength, they'll visit upon their foes a terrible vengeance. Sun Liling's powerbase was all but broken save for a vassal and an unwilling ally of convenience in terms of relevant combatants.
By contrast, how many of CRX's subordinates did she have to pay ransom for?
None.
Like, when you look at the Outer Sect for its intended purpose, to serve as a microcosm of the Empires Cultivator society...This result is such a hilariously massive fucking repudiation of Sun Shao's entire approach to how he raised Sun Liling to serve as his heir. Literally the only shot Sun Liling has left to save face is to do what Sun Shao did, and double down on the face punching for the tournament and eke out a win there.
After all, strength is the only thing that matters, right?
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that if we take the Outer Sect literally as a microcosm of the Empire in general...Then if Sun Liling fails to be victorious in the Outer Sect tournament at the end of the year, that's roughly equivalent to saying that the Sun truly have no future. Not compared to someone like Cai Shenhua who came literally out of nowhere.
And not compared to the Bai, who will be all too happy to team up with the next, or even the current, Cai Shenhua and act upon their grudges that way.
Sun Shao has every reason to pay very close attention to the tournament, as it is his only way of knowing whether his choices up until now with Liling will be validated.
Or not.
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