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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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That was an awesome update. Get to see more of Cai and Ling Qi and actual bonding between the two. Heavy sharing ending in a slightly lighter note. Ling Qi even found a line she doesn't want to cross.
 
CynicJ said:
I've been reading this story since it started, without bothering to vote or register because I never felt the need. Well.

Ugh at the pro-Cai people who believe coming completely clean is the only path to being her Vassal. I can't adequately express my incredulity at the people who believe Cai needs or even wants to know all the nefarious shit LQ gets up to, now and in the future. Letter of the law is fine. For lawkeepers. For a spy? I don't even. Spying is illegal at best. And spying is what Cai wants you for. The assumption that she is too dumb to realize she needs plausible deniability is hilarious. She has explicitly stated she wants you as a spy.

Coming clean, even in private, would challenge some pretty hard lines that Cai has already espoused and the fallout from such an action would make Ling Qi worthless as a spy in the employ of Cai for a long, long time, completely torpedoing any chance of being Cai's undercover operative, which seems to be the angle IC and OOC. Plus, you know, throwing someone who saved your life into the shredder isn't really something I see LQ doing, no matter how much she might dislike him on a personal level.

Not to mention it would completely screw over Ling Qi's cultivation in the now and if there is one thing LQ won't risk losing, it's that. Mainly because the thread consistently power games pretty hard, making for a very Xianxia protagonist. Which is great. But also clashes pretty hard with wanting to be Lawful.
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Ah, point of order, I don't think Fu Xiang saved Ling Qi's life. There are quite a few indicators that Sun Liling would have stopped short of murder.
 
Really great to see Ling Qi havign grown up and being able to sidestep contentious topic while making her point clear across, and CRX showing that she herself is growing up but still lack the friendship of equals to really leverage her experiences.

@yrsillar this was beautiful.
 
Sees it updated*

Too scared to read it*

Looks at comments*

Ten out of ten best update, everything didnt catch on fire*

HUGE sigh of relief*

Im gonna go read it!

Edit:... ah... the vote switched from confess. Hm.
 
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For the record, that conversation was exactly what we needed with Cai, although it was kind of awkward how we got there, but it worked out in the end. We had a great moment of personal understanding, and that kind of cleared the path for the future. And yeah, I'd be okay with confessing later, and that's entirely discounting Cai's thoughts on Ji Rong. At least, now we have some basis to actually talk to her on.

Also, Ling Qi really knocked it out of the park, just, blew me away. She's learned to argue philosophy, and to talk about ideals not in an airy theoretical sense but in a realistic one. Not merely draw on example and experience, like she's been frustrated by so many times in talks with Xiulan or Meizhen, yet not discounting them either. She's learned to read others, to understand their experiences, to contextualize her own, and to put that together into an abstract that doesn't depend on the underlying examples. I'm just so impressed by this :cry:.



Some more commentary:
yrsillar said:
Cai Renxiang's long black hair fluttered in the breeze, the aura of light pulsing lightly behind her shoulders as she looked down on Ling Qi. "I am curious what thoughts my words might have stirred to prompt such a question," she replied after a moment, and Ling Qi thought there was a touch of resignation in her tone, but it vanished so quickly that she might have imagined it. "We are alone. I will take no offense, whatever your words."

Ling Qi bowed respectfully in thanks. "In that case," she began bluntly as she raised her head. "I think that calling yourself a monster is childish," she said.
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Interesting that Cai expected some criticism here entirely different than what LQ gave. I suspect something along the lines of Chu Song - that her mother's way is evil or something. Good on LQ for breaking that expectation, though.


yrsillar said:
There was a reason she got along so well with Zeqing, why she found it so easy to play her songs. She knew on some level, that the way she acted was wrong sometimes. The way she simply allowed Li Suyin's quiet hero worship without gainsaying it, the tiny sliver of satisfaction that came from knowing she was the only real friend Gu Xiulan had anymore.

Most of all, the way she treated Meizhen, it was ironic, but on some level she knew that her friend was fragile… and she took advantage of that. Instead of flatly rejecting her interest in the days following that incident, she had instead given a half hearted response designed to leave room for hope. It wasn't even conscious really, she just wanted her friend to stay as close as possible.
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Self-awareness is good. Ling Qi has danced around these thoughts before, but Green breakthrough seems to have brought them to the fore. I wonder if we could have had this conversation before it, probably, but maybe not as articulately.
 
yrsillar said:
"For the record, next time we have a friendly chat, maybe sticking with discussing tea might be for the best."

The shadow on the heiress' features disappeared, and her expression returned to normal. "I believe that may be for the best."
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I don't know...
That must have felt cathartic to Cai in someway, to openly discuss her regrets and her fears.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Self-awareness is good. Ling Qi has danced around these thoughts before, but Green breakthrough seems to have brought them to the fore. I wonder if we could have had this conversation before it, probably, but maybe not as articulately.
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I think if we had chosen Village we might have an easier time having lesser but deep attachement, and Wind we would have a very easy time having temporary attachments. If anything, it's the music/moon option that necessitates extremely deep attachment, but those would be permanent.

Also, as @DarkLight140 aptly put, " In which we review that like everyone else who plays Exalted, @yrsillar thinks that infernals are the best splat and that Freedom Lets Go is a fun charm."
 
Honestly my favorite part of this was Cais earnestness to be what she sees as human but her resignation at what she sees as her inevitable role in life, and what that makes her.

It's a very...subtle form of rebellion, imo

Ling Qi would be a fantastic influence on her. Like Xiulan was for her.
 
yrsillar said:
Cai scoffed. "Not at all. The west is volatile, and that girl more than most. No, I regret the harshness of the penalty inflicted upon Ji Rong."

She hadn't even considered that the girl might regard that as something worth regretting. "Why?"

"Because it accomplished nothing," the heiress replied. "Some might say it solidified the appearance of my authority, but I think them wrong. Detestable as it is, the simple overwhelming force of my council was enough for that."

"I thought the point was to make sure everyone understood that corruption was unacceptable," Ling Qi replied, thinking uneasily of her own crime.

"It is," Cai agreed, dipping her head. "However, it is the duty of lords to consider circumstances, and in that incident I was overzealous, and in doing I destroyed any chance that he might have come to be educated properly. Like Mother's order it was overwhelming and absolute… but I wonder at times, what is lost when its crushing weight comes down."
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I just wanted to call out this bit for a moment. Obviously we don't know exactly what would have happened if we had chosen Confess, but I think it is a good sign that the worst case scenario people imagined would indeed be underestimating CRX.

Would we have been punished? Absolutely - but not in a way that "accomplished nothing" or failed to "consider circumstances".

On the other hand, it turns out that silence didn't lead to a dead-end in terms of character development as others had feared, so I can't say that our final vote was wrong, in the end.
 
Arkeus said:
I think if we had chosen Village we might have an easier time having lesser but deep attachement, and Wind we would have a very easy time having temporary attachments. If anything, it's the music/moon option that necessitates extremely deep attachment, but those would be permanent.

Also, as @DarkLight140 aptly put, " In which we review that like everyone else who plays Exalted, @yrsillar thinks that infernals are the best splat and that Freedom Lets Go is a fun charm."
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Well, in that case, Yrsillar would hardly be wrong, wouldnt he?

Also, to be clear, tournament is which week? 51? 52? Sooner?
 
Thor's Twin said:
The tournament is scheduled week 52. I don't know if we will have the 52nd week to prepare, or if the tournament encompasses the whole week, so I would like to be ideally ready for the tournament by Week 51.
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Well, obviously others have done more math, but assuming we breakthrough next week, we have one full quarter of our total time left to prepare(ish). Been out of thread for a bit, are we going to attempt 3-2 in bronze and/or green? Going for green 2 sounds correct with the bonus successes from perfect breakthrough, and being able to use another GSS is huge (or do we need green /and/ bronze two for that?) Where would we acquire them though... I think we would have the funds to (briefly) run two GSS a week, given our pill furnace business, if we can buy them. Maybe Fu Xiang will broker a deal for us, or we can buy the discounted monthly stone off of someone else who knows they aren't going to make tournament cut this year.
 
Alectai said:
3/2 is a huge stretch, because Appraisal requires 1,100 successes.
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Assuming we want appraisal for at least a little while to let us train arts up to snuff before the tournament (and not just for the bonus success), if we average around 125 successes a week we will have two full weeks of it, and with two or three spiritual cultivation actions a week (and a GSS, assuming we can find them), would we able to make it? (Assuming we detour to grab EPC next level and some other stuff of course)
 
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Chaoswilldevour said:
Been out of thread for a bit, are we going to attempt 3-2 in bronze and/or green?
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@yrsillar recently retconned the threshold for Appraisal to be 1200 successes, up from 600 - which means reaching Green Appraisal would be a significant struggle. Between overflow, multiple uses of the Silverblood Pill, and regular bonuses from the Black Pool, we would still end up having to take a good number of Spiritual Cultivation action right now to make it. Practically speaking, I don't think that it would be worth it; better to spend our time improving our arts.

That said, if we can find, purchase, or otherwise receive pills boosting Spiritual Cultivation, we might be able to cut down the number of Spiritual Cultivation actions we need down to a manageable level. If we can do that, I think we will aim for Green Appraisal.
 
PrimalShadow said:
@yrsillar recently retconned the threshold for Appraisal to be 1200 successes, up from 600 - which means reaching Green Appraisal would be a significant struggle. Between overflow, multiple uses of the Silverblood Pill, and regular bonuses from the Black Pool, we would still end up having to take a good number of Spiritual Cultivation action right now to make it. Practically speaking, I don't think that it would be worth it; better to spend our time improving our arts.

That said, if we can find, purchase, or otherwise receive pills boosting Spiritual Cultivation, we might be able to cut down the number of Spiritual Cultivation actions we need down to a manageable level. If we can do that, I think we will aim for Green Appraisal.
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Thanks, this makes a lot of sense. I'm just worried we will cap out our arts for our cultivation and make it about 30-50% of the way to appraisal. Which is better? Appraisal and two or three arts at that cap or all at early green cap, do you think?
 
We should be getting most of the way to Green 2 from training Black Pool arts and Silverbloods to get it with a few deliberate training actions. @SynchronizedWritersBlock should be able to put it more accurately but iirc we could get there as early as week 45 if we rush, or around 48-49 if we don't.

Whether rushing or going for Appraisal is a good idea depends on rare drug availability from the market and Tower.


Oh and absolutely wonderful update. Cai could really use someone like us as a friend.
 
Black Noise said:
We should be getting most of the way to Green 2 from training Black Pool arts and Silverbloods to get it with a few deliberate training actions. @SynchronizedWritersBlock should be able to put it more accurately but iirc we could get there as early as week 45 if we rush, or around 48-49 if we don't.

Whether rushing or going for Appraisal is a good idea depends on rare drug availability from the market and Tower.


Oh and absolutely wonderful update. Cai could really use someone like us as a friend.
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Does 2 GSS a week takes both Bronze and Green appraisal or just one of the two? I recall vaguely something about being limited by lowest cultivation?
 
Chaoswilldevour said:
Does 2 GSS a week takes both Bronze and Green appraisal or just one of the two? I recall vaguely something about being limited by lowest cultivation?
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Just one of them. Getting to Bronze Appraisal and Green Appraisal both (which is impossible for us) would increase the total number of stones we can use but not the number of GSS. Getting to Green Appraisal alone lets us swap a YSS for a GSS.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
Just one of them. Getting to Bronze Appraisal and Green Appraisal both (which is impossible for us) would increase the total number of stones we can use but not the number of GSS. Getting to Green Appraisal alone lets us swap a YSS for a GSS.
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That seems rather potent for us, and depending on how wildly GSS fluctuate, it might be worth rushing appraisal (/might/), because while we /could/ end up slightly behind on arts and other stuff by the end of it, if we can run double GSS back week after week (funds permitting), I wouldn't be surprised if cap ourselves early. And importantly (though someone else's Matt would need to verify), we wouldn't be behind too much if our gamble flopped. We will have to wait and see though, to what pills and bonuses we start racking up in green.
 
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