That is a presumption you are making that I feel is untrue. The border areas will already be garrisoned, or the Wall would already be overrun. We will be granted a fief, and a garrison from the province's army will already be part of that fief. We will have to whip the area's garrison into shape, but I believe you are mistaking our authority here for something it is not. Furthermore, Renxiang herself said that she will be granted administration of a border area and that our fief would ultimately fall under her. So we have holdings, but Renxiang is the one who has to prove herself worthy of defending the province, and therefore it's likely she will need to exercise more control rather than less.
Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
So your claim is that we don't actually have any land, and we are basically just a renter? That seems pretty contrary to everything we have been told about noble houses.
- Location
- scrabbling
no that's literally how feudalism works
- Location
- US
I agree with this. Cai route and Gu Tai route at least have an objective to work toward (clearing out corruption, rebuilding ruins).
Sect just seems to be more cultivating. Which is, well, boring.
Man the Gu and the land they are uncovering are going to be quite surprised that they don't actually own any of it. We have responsibilities to our lord, but we aren't some random peasant stuck to the land.
The normal situation is that a landless baron asks a ducal house permission to establish a fief on their land in exchange for taxes, including a flat tax that each lower noble has to make every year. So yeah, the normal feudal situation kind of is that of a renter even if it's not called that. That's the facts. Those higher up the chain can call on pretty much all the resources below them if they need to.
Yup. That's feudalism.
e: Like, I would not be surprised if after they had uncovered some new land the Han patriarch called them up and said "okay we are increasing the amount we expect from you every year". That would be 110% par for the course.
Last edited:
Absolute? So you're saying being a sect employee is better than being the personal apprentice of the Empress? That's not an option for us, but that's what absolute means if you want to insist on it.
The bolded is rather the point, "right hand to the heir of a province" is not an option being considered.
Because we have been deliberately keeping it a secret. This is a consequence of that.
For that statement to be comparing the sect to CRX it would require him to A) have access to secret knowledge that he has no reason to possess and B) use that knowledge without ever actually mentioning her family or the offer at any point in the conversation, by pure coincidence. Plus, if he did somehow know, he would know that we consider the knowledge to be a secret and if he wanted to give us advice based on it he would first need to let us know that yes, he did indeed include this secret knowledge that we would otherwise consider him to be ignorant of in his advice.
Last edited:
- Location
- North Carolina
Do you really think we, as a player base, will let that happen? Or Yrsillar, as a QM, would let that happen?
- Location
- United States of America
Ehhh... I don't believe that we would be renting the land, and while I don't have a firm handle on the feudal method of land distribution, I don't think it was comparable to a rental either.
The Ducal house would not have the power to unilaterally kick us off the land that we take possession of, we would require to break the vassal contract before the Ducal house would have the authority to unilaterally remove land from our possession.
And taxing is not comparable to rent. A person may own the house they live in, in fee simple absolute, but would still be required to pay property taxes to the county or city. Is it the case then that the City or Council own the land and the homeowner is renting from them? That is a fairly ridiculous sentiment. The homeowner is free to divide the land, give out the land, rent the land, produce on the land, and give the land in inheritance which is not really feasible in a rental situation.
No, I am of the opinion that we would own the land and we would be free to do what we wished with that land without Ducal approval. We are not renting, but paying property and income taxes to the established government, even if we are a part of that government.
The Ducal house would not have the power to unilaterally kick us off the land that we take possession of, we would require to break the vassal contract before the Ducal house would have the authority to unilaterally remove land from our possession.
And taxing is not comparable to rent. A person may own the house they live in, in fee simple absolute, but would still be required to pay property taxes to the county or city. Is it the case then that the City or Council own the land and the homeowner is renting from them? That is a fairly ridiculous sentiment. The homeowner is free to divide the land, give out the land, rent the land, produce on the land, and give the land in inheritance which is not really feasible in a rental situation.
No, I am of the opinion that we would own the land and we would be free to do what we wished with that land without Ducal approval. We are not renting, but paying property and income taxes to the established government, even if we are a part of that government.
Gan Guangli told us this about raising soldiers:
So training and equipping soldiers is the responsibility of the landholder rather than something bestowed upon them up by the central authority. Less Federal and more Feudal.
It's not entirely analogous, but I do not believe we are free to divide or give out land. We are free to make use of it and to pass the arrangement with the ducal house down to our descendants. It's not fully analogous to renting, but it is far far far more restrictive than owning land administered by a county or city. In addition, there are also material obligations with regards to the use of that land. Ultimately, if the ducal house is displeased with how the province's land is being used, or the conduct of those under them, or the fulfillment of obligation, they can kick you off, take back the land, and basically de-clan you, just like Shenhua already did to several of the existing clans.
Historically speaking, "feudal system" covers an incredibly broad series of idiosyncratic arrangements, to the point where some historians have argued that even calling it a system is a complete misnomer.
For example, you have absolute monarchs in the Louis the 14th style, where the army is paid for by the king and taxes are collected centrally. Any authority nobles have over the military is bestowed by the King, generally as part of a military office that subjects them to the chain of command.
On the other hand, did you know that some Kings didn't even collect taxes from their nobles? They didn't have the authority to tax any territory but their family land. Indeed, that land being wealthy and powerful in the first place is generally how they got to be King. They had to finance all kingly activities out of their own pockets. They could, however, demand that their vassals provide them with soldiers under the specific terms of their vassalage. These soldiers still belonged to the nobles though, and if the noble decided that the terms of their obligation had been met and that it was time to leave the soldiers would leave with them and the King would not be able to order them to stay.
Fealty also isn't quite the same thing as a chain of command. If the Duke of Wherever has posted guards at some location and the King comes by for a visit and orders the guards to move, depending on the time and place the guards may tell him "no". And if the king tries to have the soldiers punished for disobedience not only will the duke back them up but the other nobles will support the duke, because the King would be encroaching on the rights and privileges of the nobility. Their authority over their soldiers is how they maintain control over their land and if the King takes authority over their soldiers then he has taken their authority period.
It is even possible to have two entirely separate armies, one of royal troops and one of provincial troops, running around in the same area at the same time, with two entirely separate chains of command each insisting on doing their own thing. If that sounds like a mess, well, it was.
Basically, we should relax and wait for yrsillar to provide answers rather than arguing that things have to be a particular way because it's a "feudal" system.
For example, you have absolute monarchs in the Louis the 14th style, where the army is paid for by the king and taxes are collected centrally. Any authority nobles have over the military is bestowed by the King, generally as part of a military office that subjects them to the chain of command.
On the other hand, did you know that some Kings didn't even collect taxes from their nobles? They didn't have the authority to tax any territory but their family land. Indeed, that land being wealthy and powerful in the first place is generally how they got to be King. They had to finance all kingly activities out of their own pockets. They could, however, demand that their vassals provide them with soldiers under the specific terms of their vassalage. These soldiers still belonged to the nobles though, and if the noble decided that the terms of their obligation had been met and that it was time to leave the soldiers would leave with them and the King would not be able to order them to stay.
Fealty also isn't quite the same thing as a chain of command. If the Duke of Wherever has posted guards at some location and the King comes by for a visit and orders the guards to move, depending on the time and place the guards may tell him "no". And if the king tries to have the soldiers punished for disobedience not only will the duke back them up but the other nobles will support the duke, because the King would be encroaching on the rights and privileges of the nobility. Their authority over their soldiers is how they maintain control over their land and if the King takes authority over their soldiers then he has taken their authority period.
It is even possible to have two entirely separate armies, one of royal troops and one of provincial troops, running around in the same area at the same time, with two entirely separate chains of command each insisting on doing their own thing. If that sounds like a mess, well, it was.
Basically, we should relax and wait for yrsillar to provide answers rather than arguing that things have to be a particular way because it's a "feudal" system.
Last edited:
- Location
- scrabbling
Feudal land is not quite individual and not quite national.
As an individual landowner, yes, a farmer or minor noble would be able to treat it as a mostly personal possession...within certain bounds. He can't decide to take his plot to the next king over, for an extreme example.
And while it's true that a king (or duke) can't de facto unilaterally rescind a personal or familial claim on a fief, that's only because a king has agreed to give certain rights of protection to vassals of the realm, and that collectively they constitute a large amount of his country. The land is still de jure his, which is why he's the actual king and the lord is not just a king of a smaller country. Of course exactly which protections and privileges a vassal has changes from place to place and period to period.
But in China...in China during its unified stages, at least, the analogy to European feudalism isn't nearly as applicable. Especially post-civil exam, Chinese 'dukes' were not hereditary. Most Chinese titles were not nearly as familial as European equivalents, and a family had to earn the right to pass its titles on hereditarily, which was rescindable unilaterally. This might seem unrelated to a discussion about land use and soldiery, but...at the very least, it should reinforce how much you don't own the land granted to you by the Emperor.
So in Chinese feudalism...no, the Gu don't have any soldiers. They command in the name of their lords, who in turn command in the name of theirs, and so on.
Which is entirely beside the point, because the Celestial Empire or whatever it's called isn't China. It's a pointless discussion about minutiae at the moment.
Last edited:
Yeah it seems presumptive to make declarative statements on whether or not we will own the land as while it's a noble system we don't know very much about it other than some broad strokes
- Location
- United States of America
I just imagined how..useful ling qi could be to any land she settles. She has zhengui who can burn down rotting forest or useless ones and regrow the trees there . Most likely with better quality wood.
And if we actually manage to bind with the dragon , then we'd have a river dragon that could most likely increase the growth of the land and water zeh plants.
Money shouldn't be too horrible an issue hopefully if we can sell the wood , especially to our golden fields contacts who may need it more.
And if we actually manage to bind with the dragon , then we'd have a river dragon that could most likely increase the growth of the land and water zeh plants.
Money shouldn't be too horrible an issue hopefully if we can sell the wood , especially to our golden fields contacts who may need it more.
- Location
- Malaysia
Remember the interlude where Jiao and Xin were clearing out spectres and Jiao was complaining that this was disciple work and Xin commented that all core disciples were fully deployed? I expect that staying in the sect would involve a wide variety of missions performed on behalf of the sect and possibly even ones that involve significant journeys far from the sect itself. I don't think the QM's imagination would fail us in this regard. Possibilities include journeying as an ambassador or champion to other sects, tutoring a noble family in a faraway province, being assigned to a city guard unit for a difficult case, and much more. Depending on how much leeway we get in choosing sect missions, it would the closest we could come to a wandering cultivator.
Last edited:
- Location
- scrabbling
I don't think wood is in short supply in the Emerald Seas
obviously this means that Ling Qi should go to Golden Fields, so as to better leverage an undersupplied demand
I don't think wood is in short supply in the Emerald Seas
obviously this means that Ling Qi should go to Golden Fields, so as to better leverage an undersupplied demand
Tai Bro needs to do a million crunches to make that viable
So when she was in the yellow stage Ling Qi noticed that mortals while not moving in slow motion to her eyes moved in ways that was incredibly predictable.
To such a degree that she seemed hyper sensitive to every misstep and action they would take seconds before it occurred.
I wonder if this effects compounds and grows as a Cultivator rises in rank to becoming actively detrimental in a social interactions with mortals?
Like to the point that a high ranking Cultivator can see every thought and dialogue that would pass from a mortals lips before they even opened their mouth?
To such a degree that she seemed hyper sensitive to every misstep and action they would take seconds before it occurred.
I wonder if this effects compounds and grows as a Cultivator rises in rank to becoming actively detrimental in a social interactions with mortals?
Like to the point that a high ranking Cultivator can see every thought and dialogue that would pass from a mortals lips before they even opened their mouth?
On Imperial Power Structures
In regards to the precise nature of the the empires feudal structure... it's complicated. @tricholysis described the otl situation pretty well, but ultimately the Celestial Empire isn't really an exact mirror despite cultural trappings and some other similarities.
Ultimately, this boils down to the fact that even running on a high tier protagonist grade bullshit, the Sage Emperor was only really able to weld a half dozen odd neighboring kingdoms together under fairly grudging circumstances, and while many of the original ruling families are no more... well that just makes the ones that are still around even more jealous of their power and privilege, and the newcomers, for all that they might be willing to make concessions in the name of their own power... well they want that kind of power and privilege, there are limits to how much they want to let that erode.
Like... take the Bai for example, they are getting fucked about a lot in their moment of weakness. Meizhen's mother, the scattering of their scions, etc. But the fact remains that the Imperial Court has to measure their moves carefully, because if pushed to far Meizhen's grandad is absolutely capable of doing the angry asian patriarch version of raising both middle fingers and saying 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'
...And the court can't be sure that the Zheng and the Xuan wont give them the side eye if they actually went all in on extermination, even ignoring the whole Ancestor problem. After all, if the imperial court is so brazen and domineering, they might be next, maybe the folks talking about the decline of third dynasty under Emperor An's father were onto something.
The same basically filters down into ducal politics. The nature of a Xianxia setting makes truly centralized government hard, especially since I've gone out of my way to ensure that you need a pretty hefty cultivation gap to be completely invincible to large numbers of lessers, if you don't have your own backup. Cai Shenua broke a whole lot of rules and traditions, and she's in the process of breaking many more... but if she didn't ultimately have backing from at least a significant minority of the count tier clans, she probably wouldn't have succeeded in her little coup. Though of course, not everyone got what they were expecting out of that backing.
So yeah, there's a lot of careful dancing around between lord and vassal, because the lord doesn't generally want to be seen as shitting on his vassals too much, or without a good reason, because that riles up all the other ones, and that can be bad. It all depends on the power disparities involved, and which province your in, and a dozen other factors, which makes any effort at actually codifying the rules... difficult. The Gu are a good example of this. They're powerful, wealthy and well connected enough that the Han Patriarch doesn't feel comfortable just stamping on their ambitions arbitrarily, and in turn the Han are powerful enough that the Guo are reluctant to do any blatant stomping either.
...Well that went on a bit
Ultimately, this boils down to the fact that even running on a high tier protagonist grade bullshit, the Sage Emperor was only really able to weld a half dozen odd neighboring kingdoms together under fairly grudging circumstances, and while many of the original ruling families are no more... well that just makes the ones that are still around even more jealous of their power and privilege, and the newcomers, for all that they might be willing to make concessions in the name of their own power... well they want that kind of power and privilege, there are limits to how much they want to let that erode.
Like... take the Bai for example, they are getting fucked about a lot in their moment of weakness. Meizhen's mother, the scattering of their scions, etc. But the fact remains that the Imperial Court has to measure their moves carefully, because if pushed to far Meizhen's grandad is absolutely capable of doing the angry asian patriarch version of raising both middle fingers and saying 'come and have a go if you think you're hard enough'
...And the court can't be sure that the Zheng and the Xuan wont give them the side eye if they actually went all in on extermination, even ignoring the whole Ancestor problem. After all, if the imperial court is so brazen and domineering, they might be next, maybe the folks talking about the decline of third dynasty under Emperor An's father were onto something.
The same basically filters down into ducal politics. The nature of a Xianxia setting makes truly centralized government hard, especially since I've gone out of my way to ensure that you need a pretty hefty cultivation gap to be completely invincible to large numbers of lessers, if you don't have your own backup. Cai Shenua broke a whole lot of rules and traditions, and she's in the process of breaking many more... but if she didn't ultimately have backing from at least a significant minority of the count tier clans, she probably wouldn't have succeeded in her little coup. Though of course, not everyone got what they were expecting out of that backing.
So yeah, there's a lot of careful dancing around between lord and vassal, because the lord doesn't generally want to be seen as shitting on his vassals too much, or without a good reason, because that riles up all the other ones, and that can be bad. It all depends on the power disparities involved, and which province your in, and a dozen other factors, which makes any effort at actually codifying the rules... difficult. The Gu are a good example of this. They're powerful, wealthy and well connected enough that the Han Patriarch doesn't feel comfortable just stamping on their ambitions arbitrarily, and in turn the Han are powerful enough that the Guo are reluctant to do any blatant stomping either.
...Well that went on a bit
- Location
- Cyberspace
I'd suspect so.
And if a mortal's actions are as predictable as the swaying of branches in the wind... well, it makes it harder to see them as individuals, doesn't it?
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
And from the other side, a Yellow Ling Qi's movements must seem inhuman and much more like the spirits they fear. And as it gets larger and larger the gap probably makes it so that mortals have extreme difficulty understanding what a Cultivator will do next, or even having basic empathy with them.
It's an interesting development for sure.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Eh, Cultivators are inhumanly good at anything they invest in, and that certainly includes presenting mortals with what they expect to manipulate and control them. Mortals are a solvable problem just like chess is a solvable problem. Or to put it more systematically, if your charisma or manipulation is 10, you're going to get 10 attribute dice. If such a cultivator wants a mortal to love them or look at them in a certain way, they probably get their way.
Mortals probably aren't usually worth that. Like, we'll do that for our mother, probably, and our sister if she has no talent. And that's it. That's the complete circle of mortals we'll care two wits about until we have children of our own (assuming we don't marry a spirit and skip the whole "start out as mortal" bit for them).