Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
Then how would we attract potential talent, vassals, peasants, or other forms of worthwhile subordinates of our own?
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
This is a fair point.
I'll concede that it would probably be out of character.
The thing is thats a strength all its own.
If we establish Ling Qi's fief as a safe, promising place for people to go we can follow Cai Renxiang's lead and establish a system designed to reliably churn out skilled commoners for us to draw on for talent and fill in necessary positions and functions for her territory.
TimEd
Meteor maker
Heck, we have Cai. Just ask for help setting up or something. Its not like Cai doesnt know of our deficiencies, so surely she has either solutions or suggestions we can use.
No need for complex recreation of a functional society when we can just copy what already works. And if we find something we dont agree with? We are certainly free to change it. Ling Qi is after all, the ultimate authority in tbe household.
No need for complex recreation of a functional society when we can just copy what already works. And if we find something we dont agree with? We are certainly free to change it. Ling Qi is after all, the ultimate authority in tbe household.
- Location
- Yes
Any competent administrator will know that a fief on the border will be the opposite of safe. Finding someone willing and competent will be difficult no matter what selection method we choose.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
It's close to impossible to consistently pay someone more than what someone else could offer for a one-time favor.Why wouldn't we pay our administrator enough that they wouldn't need to take bribes?
- Location
- Earth
that's why we randomly spy on them. and if they do something they shouldn't we can assign an appropriate punishment.
Well yeah. But if we're going to be doing so much work checking on the administrator, we might as well pick them ourselves by finding prospective candidates and investigating them thoroughly.
Rather than letting randoms get elected and then having to suddenly gather info on them, we'd know everything we need to know about the administrator before he gets the job offer.
Interesting trivia in the first elder lesson.
Fan Yu cultivate earth, and as such, him being an ass hurt him, not only socially but cultivation wise too.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Fan Yu definitely dedicate himself to the well being of his ingroup. It's just that he is an ass to the outgroup, but that shouldn't hurt his cultivation.
Hmm, others brought it up, but the most interesting part of it is that the way its written suggests she's ALWAYS hated mirrors, either her looks/gender, or the front she's putting up.
The Ajna is the Third Eye, so thats her Perception/Mental Defense art. Seems to do similar things to Argent Mirror, but if we're going with Dubious Indian Flowers, it probably emulates an opium high
Lu Feng is going to get endless shit...but I'd actually put the blame for that event on Liling. She had a pretty damned good idea of who's in what preliminary rounds, so its entirely her fault for not taking into account that if her two champions beeline for Gan, they won't be watching out for the OTHER notable unit.
...not that Han Fang is considered notable by most. He's got a remarkable talent for fading into the background for someone with such fine abs.
Not a single scratch. Hehehe.
Despite knowing the matchup going in.
But then, was it any surprise? Ling Qi evaded and tanked some of her own blows and Sun Liling is way up there in offense power. Even the Ling Qi of when they last met had good odds of fending off the attentions of most Yellows, and the last time someone sicced a bunch of mooks on Ling Qi while she was going out on the mountain she didn't even notice they were trying to ruin her day(they just ruined their own day running into the natives).
The mistake was made in parallel for Cai. Cai Renxiang did not look underneath the underneath, and thus lost Ji Rong to be an enemy and thorn in her side for no reason. But then an administration of all Mountain cultivators tends to just accept the outer facade.
And linking with not liking mirrors...she wants to be a girly-girl but has to play the role of the macho badass barbarian. Which points to the fancy dress she used for the Cai surrender
And it IS a show of strength. Xianxia and Wuxia alike, the one who flouts cultural norms in dress, speech and behavior is giving off signals that challenges everyone to have a go at them...which generally also means that only the very foolish or strong would do so. An effective way to show strength, though not one that breeds many friends.
Heck, even her speech is a facade. She acts like a rude, crass barbarian to show that "yes, I'm rude, what you gonna do about it?" even to her strong peers.
And here we do see that Sun knows she fucked up her 'rebellion' and signaled weakness instead of strength strategically.
She could have been said to have won each fight, but lost the war.
But it wasn't really just Sun being a hothead. Thats the facade.
She was just applying tactical doctrine for an engagement to a strategic problem, which conveniently made CRX's reign easier to raise because its vastly easier to justify forming a government when there are bandits and barbarians threatening the peace.
And here we see that Cai Renxiang is the personal feud, driven I think, by being actually pissed off that the weaker fighter was dictating terms to her.
Maybe a culture clash? Someone raised in the Survival of The Fittest Jungle would find something like Cai's order reflexively repulsive, because the strongest(Bai) is content to play second fiddle, cultivate and smash the odd target, while the weaker(Cai) is dictating terms to both her superiors.
Would probably explain her being annoyed at Ling Qi as well.
And the Bai being continuing to be disrespected is a Sun Shao plot. Naturally.
People did remark that this is self sustaining, everyone knows the Bai leave no enemies behind them, so once you get someone to kick the Bai down you can usually assume they'd be strongly invested to keep kicking in the hope that they never get back up.
Asura, so she's probably going even further down the multi-attack tree. Classic image would be three heads, six arms, each with a different yet devastating weapon.
I wonder how the audience would take her kidnapping a bunch of ammo packs to use for ambush.
But Ling Qi doesn't have enough War to think of that yet. She probably should have shifted to defending a cluster of Cai loyalists once it became clear she couldn't whack a mole hard enough to force him to confront on her terms to pass the stage...well if her objective was to actually get rid of him and potentially make an enemy rather than to show off.
Not at all 'poor'!
The Sect wants this. When ducal clans are ALL leaning on the Sect it actually gives the Sect a lot of leeway to fuck with the outcome and then blame the other duke. It gives them leverage to bargain beyond their means by hinting that if a deal is not offered their rival would gladly take the deal.
Sun Shao, you might remember, is the one leading an army which had ALL gotten super swole under great pressure in the bloody jungle. He's absolutely capable of it, and as a White, he can exert such pressure very effectively.
Mostly agreed. CRX's mistake in focusing on long term cultivation because she assumed she won the round is akin to the tortoise and the hare, particularly when she was rewarded with White Room usage. Which is to say that Shenhua basically told her "get swole"
What she SHOULD have done was to double down on her lead, used the White Room and gotten strong enough to decisively crush all possible rivals. She could always cultivate in preparation for Green 3 after the tournament. Theres no reason for her to take it easy and focus on building a government that wouldn't matter in the Inner Sect(granted her morality would point to such being anathema).
Thus, Cai Shenhua's lack of intervention in the rigging is a wake up call. She's not to merely succeed. She has to EXCEL.
There are literally bureaucracy cultivators.
Its objectively superior to acquire one for an administrator, or if given time and resources, to raise one from scratch from common or low noble origins whos loyal to you.
Eh, if he hooked up with Yan Renshu, who he visibly despises, he really was abandoned going forward as well. Thats not a thing you'd do if you were left hanging because your boss was pressured by a superior. You'd join Renshu if you felt there was no alternative
Thats...literally Meizhen's situation though? We wound up being her primary source of emotional support while she navigates a toxic and abusive relationship with her family.
Can confirm as an Asian. Communalist culture is in DEEP. The most visible modern symptom is that whenever a corporation fucks up big, their executive takes responsibility and resigns, while smaller fuckups are covered up systematically by those below in order to preserve the communal 'face' and present a unified front.
Would be very appropriate if his cultivation art involved long periods of hibernation like Zhengui does for breakthroughs!
- Location
- somewhere over there.
- Pronouns
- They/It
While a lot of people are talking about Senhua not helping her daughter as part of her being a bitch, it's actually a wonderful strategy if you're either supremely confident in your child's skill, or utterly uncaring of how they do. Everyone else that matters in the tournament will be getting help from their family, so publicly not helping your entrant is the type of thing that gets noticed. If CRX does modestly well, it's something that can be pointed at as the reason for her shortcomings. If she does very well, then everyone knows she did it without needing help from anyone. The downsides are that you're breaking with tradition and people may dislike your methods, but let's be honest, Senhua's done worse than this. No one who still liked her will be put off like this.
Except the Bai are explicitly "resurgent", that is to say, they are recovering.
And people are less willing to continue to antagonize them, which kinda implies that it isn't an all or nothing scenario for those who did.
I watched that circle jerk of conjecture involving the Bai, but the fact of the matter is, we know nothing of their foreign policy, and little of their internal policy.
I kinda get the feeling that they are becoming more insular, however. Based on Meizhens interlude, they feel like outsiders will always stab them in the back. Considering a large chunk of their sworn vassals up and left them (presumably discontent with the way they handled the regular raids from the death jungle.), followed by members of the empire they helped found shitting on them when they were down, their distrust is understandable.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
My impression is actually the other way round. We don't really know much how the Bai were before, of course, though Yrsillar did say they never meddled in dynastic changes of the empire.
However, we do know of a few recent things: Bai Suzhen recently (within Xiulan's memories) went to the Gu for talks, Bai Suzhen seems to be working for a ministry, and Meizhen is going to try to be an ambassador at Shenhua's court. Likewise, Meizhen is the daughter of someone from outside the Bai clan, and she might have been married off to the Xuan if things were different. It suggests to me that they are slowly deciding the need a stronger inter-provincial presence. It wouldn't surprise me if the Bai accepted to send their scions all over the empire for such a reason, too.
This means Bai Suzhen works for a ministry right @yrsillar?Meizhen Interlude said:
Last edited:
- Location
- Earth
I think she is referring to her Aunt Suzhen there. So at best her aunt is working for a ministry.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
- Location
- Lickwidget
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Pretty decent summary, aside from the Elder Ying/Su thing which was already mentioned.
From my read on him the biggest con he has is that his cultivation style encourages passivity (Lake/Earth), and thus we get a lack of initiative which leads into him simply not making connections on his own. He doesn't seem like a character who reaches out first to others.
As for Talent 5 being mediocre? Ehh. Sort of. It is definitely rare to find a Talent 5. Not as rare as us, but he wouldn't have particular difficulty opening his first meridian or awakening. For some context Talent 3s need something like 20+ dice to have a 50/50 chance to open their first meridian if they have Argent Soul 3. Talent 2s need about twice that. And I presume that something similar to the reverse is true.
So, yeah I'd definitely say he's lesser talent, but not exactly mediocre. Talent 4 or 3 I'd consider mediocre.
On a different topic, specifically the one you brought up @Aranfan, it is good for us to discuss these things since we need them hashed out ahead of time. Before we get to the fief. Thanks for bringing it up.
There is also another facet we need to consider when it comes to the fief, which people got at sort of obliquely. And it applies to everything in the fief which runs on social connection, which is pretty much everything of importance. So, moving on from the election thing.
Face culture. That hard to define communalism where the appearance of respectable reputation and good prestige is really really important to the function of day to day life. In whatever barony we get put in, there will be several handfuls of mortal families. These guys are the bedrock of our face as a noble and our job is to protect them like a mama bear, more or less. Make sure they are productive and not getting eaten.
Then we'll have probably a single handful of "commoner" cultivator families, whose highest members are yellow somethings, and their job is to make sure the mortals ain't dying and to be our cultivator warriors. We give these families face by patronage of our time and resources and they give us face by doing their jobs right. There's more ways too, but those I am sure about.
Then there's the various green "nobles" we might have attached to us like Suyin, Su Ling and Shen Hu(though he might be Cyan). *Looks askance at all the Ss* Anyway, they'd be attached to us by personal loyalty bonds of fealty and or adoption into our smol clan. Their job is to lead the common cultivators and be big things we can throw at problems we find in our fief. They give us face by doing their jobs right and also by displaying initiative to improve everything below them(same applies to the commoners). And then for us we have to give them reciprocal stuff.
Now of course there is also the question of how we interact with noble clans of Emerald Seas who are above us in rank. Most of the time I figure they wouldn't really have to go through Renxiang, but us being her direct vassal might muddy the waters a bit. Not sure on that one. Pretty much my limit here as to what we would do with face culture here. Definitely can't turn away whatever delegation they send our way.
And for higher ranking nobles outside the Emerald Seas, I am nigh certain they would have to go through Renxiang first and that she is then obligated to get us in touch with them.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
I also always interpreted it as the Bai knew about the Eldritch Aztec Blood Goddess and her and the jungle's temptations and corrupting influence and THAT's why they forbade Sun Shao from taking the fight to them. How many times must they have seen the same shit happen to each subsequent conqueror over the past 15K years as they go mad and get killed by the next person they sufficiently piss off?
Hell maybe that's the Goddesses whole MO and she encourages it as some sort of twisted eugenics experiment to "breed" stronger and stronger followers.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
presumably Grandma Bigsnek and her are in the same Great Spirit knitting circle, competing over who can have the most powerful sociopaths as children.
Edit: fixed weirdness, phineposting can be a pain sometimes
Last edited:
- Location
- Florida
If they knew, why just take all the shit being flung at them lying down if they had perfectly valid reasons for what they did?
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
- Location
- Brighton, UK
Because SECRET CLAN LORE/ Bai cannot into people that are not snek sociopaths?