Hmmph... this junior is a good seed [Cultivation Management Quest]

[occipitallobe]

Good Seed and Omake Spreadsheet Rules:

Firstly, if you have questions about Good Seeds and the like please read here. If that doesn't answer your question please ping me in thread, or on Discord.

If you write a new Good Seed, or write an omake, please update the spreadsheet if you have access.

If you do not have access, please ping a collaborator (Swordomatic, Alectai, Quest, TehChron, Insane-Not-Crazy, Humbaba, ReaderOfFate, Kaboomatic, no., BungieONI) letting them know what you want and they will update the spreadsheet here. To gain access, you will need a gmail account of some kind. Throwaway emails are fine (I'm using one for the spreadsheet), but to gain access it's as simple as sending me either your email via PM, via DM in Discord, or just in Discord's #spreadsheet-requests channel.

This is mandatory. If a Good Seed does not record their omake by pinging collabs (or just requesting access and editing things themselves - this is the preferred option), I won't give out awards. If a new Good Seed is not recorded here, they won't advance. By doing this it makes the whole thing manageable for me - it's gotten pretty unwieldy!

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Omake Writer Instructions:

There are four fields you need to fill out.

Omake Link, which is just a link to your first omake for the turn. This makes it easier for me to read them as I do the update - without this it's tough to know off the bat which omake were written this turn, and to properly

Requested Bonus, which is your requested bonus for your omake. You can leave it up to me if you like. You can see more info in the Good Seed infopost here.

Cultivation Aims. For those following unorthodox paths - higher than 9th Heavenstage or later than 7th Dao Pillar paths. Please put in what you are aiming for before you break through. I have left it as 'default'. If you do not edit it, I'll go with that.

Turn Notes - Do you want to do something specific? Enter a Secret Realm? Help the Clan out in some way? If you have something specific you want to accomplish on this turn, put it in turn notes so I can adjust your Fate around it.

All other fields are for QM use to record character information to properly run the flow of the game.

 

[LordEdric]

Magnus Centenius
Omake Reward - Cultivation Treasure (-4 turns to breaking through) - A Three-Pronged Lightning Rod, capable of attracting and storing some of Heaven's wrath, allowing a tribulation to be lengthened but reduced in intensity.
Fate - Somehow became the Wine Quartermaster for the Night Devil Fortress, shamelessly using the resources his position to concoct new poisons. As Wall 2 fell in the initial siege, he managed to refine his Bloody Death Bacteria Smoke Bomb to work on Devil Bees, eating away at their wings. Thousands of them were thrown into the air, forcing many Devil Bees to the ground - their comrades turning on them. Rewarded with the above treasure for his work.
Cultivation - 10th Heavenstage [3 turns from breaking through]
Health - Currently healthy.

Minervina Barda
Omake Reward - Cultivation Boost
Fate - In her defense of the Night Devil Fortress, managed something special. Ground up many bee organs, and created the Bee-Weakening Hive Killing Powder, a powder that when scattered on a Devil Bee corrupted its Qi, and even spread the effect to another 10 or 15 bees. Before the Devil Bees realised what was happening, Minervina had slain nearly a thousand of them in Qi Condensation. This was an immense boon to the Clan, and her Bee-Weakening Hive Killing Powder has now been listed as a Clan Recipe, to be used in great supplies in the east. Her contributions were massive, and she gained enough points and resources to build a second Dao Pillar.
Cultivation - Early Foundation Building [2nd Pillar]
Health - Currently healthy.

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Magnus has become so much more successful at wine making than I ever expected, becoming a Quartermaster was usually a pretty high rank in most armies. But yeah, I totally see my guy raiding supplies during seiges

I see some major poison synergy. My poisons knocked them out of the air and her poison finished them off.

I also see Min's crazy good fate rolls continue to eclipse my own.

Looks like this was a banner turn for Poison Masters! The Bee Hordes will dwindle and fail before our spiteful concoctions!

I think I might go for a Cool Thing next time around. I have this idea for a sentient venom that is totally not ripping off Long Chens matched pair of sentient flame and thunderforce tattoos.

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Poison buddies!
Sentient venom, super scary idea, I love it. Let's see if they can be put on my puppets. Also might be a good idea to put them on the puppets first as a test, could be a side project between battles.

 

[Katana1515]

I also see Min's crazy good fate rolls continue to eclipse my own.

Poison buddies!
Sentient venom, super scary idea, I love it. Let's see if they can be put on my puppets. Also might be a good idea to put them on the puppets first as a test, could be a side project between battles.

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The Dice Gods are fickle. I have strongly considered picking up a second life saving treasure in preparation for the day they turn on me.

I didn't think of a way to add the puppet project to the previous Omake, but now we definitely know both of them served at the Night Fortress I have a few ideas. How do you feel about loading every 10th puppet with a Xianxia equivalent to Napalm that is self aware enough to slime towards targets and comes loaded with enough pill toxins it cripples those it injures? It seems a good way to christen Mins latest Pillar; Fire, as a crucible of change and purification.

 

[Gore17]

She's not being objective here.

I'm more poking fun at the unlimited efficiency of information gathering in a Xianxia setting, where some chucklefuck just needs to say "INVESTIGATE THEIR BACKGROUND!" and within minutes will know exactly who the protagonist is, and have a detailed dossier of their associations, strengths, and other abilities.

Sometimes it's more realistic and it takes 'Hours' to pull out all of the information from a nation a hundred thousand miles away that they had no relations with, but the point is that 'INVESTIGATE THEIR BACKGROUND' is pretty much a magic spell and I was poking fun at how "Why is is that when we screamed 'Investigate their background!' we didn't learn of the super formation that apparently let them sweep the Verdant South?"

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Because we don't have proper access to Heavens spy-network observations obviously. Spy masters just pray and get told. We have to do work, except for Manuel, and that's him using a backdoor.

But more seriously, how is Rina aware of stuff like the Clan being "Invaders", which I thought was restricted to only Clan Elders? And doesn't the info post say that that the knowledge of what happened to the Third Turtle was restricted to Dao Seeking?

And while it's fun to make mock, how would Rina be exposed to such things? Purely through stories? Are there "Young Masters" she's someone encountered?

 

[Alectai]

Because we don't have proper access to Heavens spy-network observations obviously. Spy masters just pray and get told. We have to do work, except for Manuel, and that's him using a backdoor.

But more seriously, how is Rina aware of stuff like the Clan being "Invaders", which I thought was restricted to only Clan Elders? And doesn't the info post say that that the knowledge of what happened to the Third Turtle was restricted to Dao Seeking?

And while it's fun to make mock, how would Rina be exposed to such things? Purely through stories? Are there "Young Masters" she's someone encountered?

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That's...

Hmm.

I think I got a bit confused at some point along the line. Part of my style so far has been doing little snapshots of the most interesting points (Like getting the discussion with the old Spirit Severing guy), and so I've gotten the impression that Rina's tendency of being catnip for old ghosts of the clan has had her piecing together a few bits here and there based on their comments, but lacking a broad understanding and much of the context.

So like, she knows that the big-ass sword jutting out of the continent was a bad thing that killed the land, hence why there's a dead desert in the continental center, but didn't know the land was also a turtle until the Spirit Severing guy sputtered about it. She knows that we're unwelcome and unwanted but not why or what they specifically did to justify it (Except that there was apparently an army that was out to conquer the Sea--except from what she knows of the Golden Devils now, she can't see that as having been a bad thing given how generally well we treat our subordinates)

I can change these if it's a big problem for Occipitallobe of course, I didn't really think it was an issue beforehand because nobody brought it up until now.

The "Young Master" bit though is mostly me poking fun at the meta details--she's done some adventuring by now (Hell, she spent a whole turn adventuring in one of the adventure hotspots! And then another turn in another adventure hotspot)--she has bumped into some of those Young Masters by now--it's just that the encounters weren't notable for her because she either had someone who wasn't to be fucked with nearby (Her friends back in the Turtlebone Mountain arc) which stayed their hand, or were trivialized because their bodyguard retinue wasn't around (Like in the Secret Realm) and so their demands just sort of bounced off of a scary smile and a "No " response that they had no recourse for.

 

[Shard]

You know, I think the clan would do great with a long-ranged Communications Array. That would allow it to be far more 'free' with scouting and guerrilla warfare in the desert.

 

[Mochinator]

The Dice Gods are fickle. I have strongly considered picking up a second life saving treasure in preparation for the day they turn on me.

I didn't think of a way to add the puppet project to the previous Omake, but now we definitely know both of them served at the Night Fortress I have a few ideas. How do you feel about loading every 10th puppet with a Xianxia equivalent to Napalm that is self aware enough to slime towards targets and comes loaded with enough pill toxins it cripples those it injures? It seems a good way to christen Mins latest Pillar; Fire, as a crucible of change and purification.

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Personally speaking, considering each turn only runs the risk of 1 death unless it's a secret realm, i would suggest going for a Cool Bonus for healing. Wounded from fate rolls seems to be different from Death from fate rolls.

Like, i would try to aim for that once my stock of 1 LST is in Xiao Yi's inventory. Also, Fire + Snake equals the below

 

[LordEdric]

The Dice Gods are fickle. I have strongly considered picking up a second life saving treasure in preparation for the day they turn on me.

I didn't think of a way to add the puppet project to the previous Omake, but now we definitely know both of them served at the Night Fortress I have a few ideas. How do you feel about loading every 10th puppet with a Xianxia equivalent to Napalm that is self aware enough to slime towards targets and comes loaded with enough pill toxins it cripples those it injures? It seems a good way to christen Mins latest Pillar; Fire, as a crucible of change and purification.

Click to shrink...

True great minds think a like, fire was going to be one of my future pillars after change, definitely going to comment on my next Omake about getting Dao advice from you.
To expand on your fire idea, I was thinking of making pillars with all the traditional Chinese elements, Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, and Metal
Fire for poisons that need to be burned to work, water for liquid poisons, earth for dust based and other solid poisons, wood for plant based poisons, metal for metallic poisons like Arsenic
Think we can make 5 types of puppets?

 

[Mochinator]

Fire for poisons that need to be burned to work,

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If i remember correctly, poisons flames are a thing in Xianxia, so that's one twist that can be considered for Fire + Poison.

Personally, i think for Xiao Yi i'll go for Arrays for the 2nd Pillar but i'll aim for Battle Arrays in the style of moving men to form a giant Array. So unlike formations that rely on the Qi of all, the array will rely on Natural Qi being triggered by the Array taking shape.

But the short term, i wonder how plausible is it to use the blood splattered from killing a foe and shaping it into a 1 use battle array so that killing a foe allows Xiao Yi to buff or attack with the Qi of his enemies 🤔🤔

 

[LordEdric]

If i remember correctly, poisons flames are a thing in Xianxia, so that's one twist that can be considered for Fire + Poison.

Personally, i think for Xiao Yi i'll go for Arrays for the 2nd Pillar but i'll aim for Battle Arrays in the style of moving men to form a giant Array. So unlike formations that rely on the Qi of all, the array will rely on Natural Qi being triggered by the Array taking shape.

But the short term, i wonder how plausible is it to use the blood splattered from killing a foe and shaping it into a 1 use battle array so that killing a foe allows Xiao Yi to buff or attack with the Qi of his enemies 🤔🤔

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You would probably need to inject Qi into your opponent's blood as you cut into them so you can shape it into array in midair before it lands, and the Qi should let you activate it without touching it again

 

[Shard]

Savvas Nicolidis - The Patient Hunter

Bacterial Poison. Poison. One intended for armies, one intended for individuals. Magnus Centenius' insight was that poison need not be solely be relegated to assassination tasks.. Traditionally, with poison, the entire matter was in delivering the poison. There were numerous innovations on that matter, but it was always hard. But being able to semi-reliably strike above your realm was certainly worth it.

So here he was, practicing the first of several techniques for a style that was still unfolding in his mind's eye. One that could be used in the desert and freely on the battlefield, not just in cities.

The first. Desert Tortoise Hibernation. An almost entirely useless technique that was excellent at suppressing your cultivation, getting a good night's sleep as well as conserving Qi and energy. This was a technique used by the desert tortoise quite often, whenever the environment became poor. It was easy to adapt for humans, and was readily available in the clan's archive for free, though Savvas earned quite some many looks when he acquired this specific technique. It wasn't hard, but wasn't practiced much either. Mostly by cultivators who had reached the end of their path and were extending their lifespan.

But with this technique, one could also remain essentially undetected by cultivation senses in the desert. It was an important part of how the Desert Tortoise survived, after all. Savvas had chosen this technique both for it's stealth and it's ease of use. You had to be somewhat stationary to use it properly, but that was that.

The second. Eagle's Eyesight. A common technique used by many of the clan's scouts, it was simple yet still effective, a highly efficient technique that simply extended your senses far further than your normal limits. The downside was that it was totally useless apart from that. Especially in combat, when you needed to put your full and utter focus into what was happening in front of you that very moment. Or you died. And of course, it was once used by Eagles.. long ago in the clan's history. They could fly, and could swoop, so extending their sense was superb for that animal.

It was an essential technique, though not practiced to it's extremes as Savvas was doing so right now. After all, you only needed a single person at most for everyone to benefit, and maybe a few backups if they died. So most knew the technique and it's basics only.

The third. Spitting Spider's Spit. Originally.. it was used to spit poison made by the spider itself over a short range. Nobody cultivated it except for elaborate pranks, it had too poor a penetration to do real harm, and putting poison in your mouth was just asking for it. Savvas, however, found this technique to be exactly what he needed. While thinking of how he would deliver poison from afar, he thought of the bow and arrow, but it was cumbersome and also hard to train with. He thought of a sling, or throwing, but it would have been too clumsy. He thus settled on using a blowgun, with which he only needed to aim properly to deliver the payload.

So Savvas adapted the technique to simply shoot a projectile instead of liquid poison. It was an easy technique to learn, but mastering it into order to maximize the velocity of the projectile.. no, not maximize the velocity. To precisely and exactly tune the speed at which he fired darts and other weapons at a minimum cost in energy, that took real effort.

Together, the three techniques would form the core of Savvus' assassination style that he would demonstrate to the clan, proving it on the battlefield. The Cultivation-Supressing Qi research task didn't work out, but Savvas had high hopes for his budding new style.

---

Savvas wore mortal clothing. He had on himself just his a blowgun that he made himself, more a focus than a tool, if he was being honest. For ammunition, he had a mix of vials with various poisons in them, some of them conventional poisons for assassination, and some of them bacterial poisons for armies that Magnus had generously loaned him for live testing. Here, on the border with the Devil Bees that made their raids and attacks, Savvas waited, hidden underneath sand.

His senses stretched far and further out, even as his body hibernated as the tortoise in the desert, his cultivation undetectable unless someone expressly searched where exactly he was. If that happened, he would be dead. Savvas hoped that did not happen. But he hoped even more that he would be able to at least demonstrate the merits of his new style before anything happened to him. Certainly, he did not fancy waiting here in the desert dunes, but that was the very heart of his new style. Patience. Like a natural disaster, Savvas had to be undetected until he struck.

So he waited. Waited for weeks. Until he felt it at last.

A large concentration of Qi moving in the distance. Blood Qi, the surest sign of a Blood Path Daemonic Cultivator. Or an army of them, in this case. Breathing out, then breathing in carefully, not disturbing the sand that barely buried him in the slightest, Savvas took aim at the main concentration of the army, where the Bacterial Poison could do the most harm in the chaos it would cause. But he didn't shoot yet. It wasn't time. Yet. Right now, from his estimation of his own clan's setting up of camps, they would probably still be alert, and would react in good order to his attack.

So he waited. Waited for hours. Until he knew it was time.

The Qi in the enemy camp was mostly subdued now, and they hadn't moved around much. From what he knew of the Devil Bees' disorganized nature, this was as good as a time as he was going to get. Concentrating the air in the blowgun, he fired. Nearly invisible, free of actual Qi and far faster than the reaction speed of any unfocused cultivator, the vial flew through and shattered against what Savvas thought was a tent of some sort, releasing the bacterial poison spray. Nearly instantly, the Qi grew agitated as they poison spread randomly and afflicted people in the chaos. He fired all the remaining Bacterial Poison vials into the camp, before they could come to their senses and start looking for where the attack had come from. The chaos grew, and Savvas spotted scout and/or panicked Devil Bees fleeing the camp to search for their invisible assailant. Towards even him.

So he waited. Waited for seconds, minutes and then hours.

The Devil Bees were panicked, looking for a cultivator, looking for anyone - But Savvas was just hidden underneath them as they ran, right where they didn't think to look. They thought that the attacker was fleeing with haste right now, after making a deadly sneak attack. Perhaps using advanced cultivation techniques to speed their movements and hide themselves from vision and senses. They ran and flew quickly, but their assailant was too quick, too swift. An assailant that fled. An assailant that in truth was simply hiding all along, whose skills were but imaginary in their minds and thus undetectable.

When the chaos finally stilled and the Devil Bees had long moved onwards to somewhere safer, Savvas finally moved his limbs for the first time in two months, and crept away in relative silence.

@occipitallobe

There we go, what I was thinking about what Savvas might do with Bacterial Poisons and like. I think I'll just go for QM's choice this omake bonus time instead of a cultivation speed bosot (Or it can be that if it makes the most sense).

 

[Kaboomatic]

Omake

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How many other good seed omakes have you made so far?
I need to know for organization/threadmark purposes

 

[LordEdric]

Savvas Nicolidis - The Patient Hunter

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Very impressed with how you used that, Keep up the mayhem

 

[ReaderOfFate]

How many other good seed omakes have you made so far?
I need to know for organization/threadmark purposes

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The threadmarks tell me that this is the third of his omakes. Don't worry though, I've dealt with it myself.

 

[TheDuke]

Phew, was busy for the last couple of days, but back and ready to post. Got some good ideas for how to make 'Castor fights a beaver and gets his ass kicked' more interesting.

 

[The Fourth Monado]

Actually writing it isn't that hard. Practice typing without looking at the keyboard (there is a website for that). Get good enough that you don't pause. Then just write a lot of words. Cut down on the words. Write more words. Clean up grammar and punctuation. Clean up the flow, done. Use a dictionary and thesaurus when needed. Mostly time consuming though.

Writing is mostly time consuming without practice, experience in socializing, lack of ability to entertain, and ignorance of word definitions. Here's an example of professional writing by Terry Pratchett, just to show how simple writing in english is, when done by a professional "And only now did he have time to take in the room. He had never seen a tavern before in his life, but that is what it was. The bar ran along one side of the room. Behind it were the typical trappings of an Ephebian bar - the stacks of wine jars, racks of amphora, and the cheery pictures of vestial virgins on cards of salted peanuts and goat jerky, pinned up in the hope that there really were people in the world who would slatheringly buy more and more packets of nuts they didn't want to look at a card board nipple." - from "Small Gods, p 155-p. 156".

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> is bitching about how I'm having difficulty with the Actually Writing part

> You: "Lol just write"

ok

 

[BungieONI]

> is bitching about how I'm having difficulty with the Actually Writing part

> You: "Lol just write"

ok

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Before I developed the habits I did which help me keep writing, I basically psyched myself up when I sat before the computer screen and wanted to write.

It can vary a lot from person to person but things I found that helped me get started on writing and putting things onto the page were:

• Talking to myself and playing with the mouth-feel of what I was thinking.
• Pacing around when I got excited and thinking, then sitting down and putting that energy into putting words on the page. This became one of my habits.
• Listening to music that gets me hyped for writing. This also became a habit.
• Writing like I'm posting a response to a forum, I didn't do this very much but it helped really early years ago.

Basically the idea I operated with was to find ways that pulled my brain away from anxiety about the result so that I could have the confidence to put down my words. Its basically tricking your brain into being interested in something else, and guiding it to be interested in the action of actually pressing keys.

 

[Mochinator]

You would probably need to inject Qi into your opponent's blood as you cut into them so you can shape it into array in midair before it lands, and the Qi should let you activate it without touching it again

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Heh, perhaps! Right now i have a tentative idea of Hell-Sender being a Demonic Axe & it's wielder a Blood Path cultivator. That cultivator is the same Servering Soul who's dream XIao Yi got caught in, and as part of the dream he had to spend years in the head of the guy as he slaughtered his way though.

Right now, i'm thinking that the cultivator had a Blood Path art that allows he to drain the Blood Essence from foes he wounded and killed and swallow it to top up his own Qi + use it as a buff to his stats. When Xiao Yi got out of the dream, his mind was so conditioned that he instinctively draws out the blood concentrated with all the Qi of the slain cultivator when in combat, but he has enough self-control to not absorb it and turn Blood Path. Instead he forces it into a crude array that can provide him with a minor portion of the buff he could have gotten from absorbing it. TLDR, his combat instincts got WRECKED.

Before I developed the habits I did which help me keep writing, I basically psyched myself up when I sat before the computer screen and wanted to write.

It can vary a lot from person to person but things I found that helped me get started on writing and putting things onto the page were:

• Talking to myself and playing with the mouth-feel of what I was thinking.
• Pacing around when I got excited and thinking, then sitting down and putting that energy into putting words on the page. This became one of my habits.
• Listening to music that gets me hyped for writing. This also became a habit.
• Writing like I'm posting a response to a forum, I didn't do this very much but it helped really early years ago.

Basically the idea I operated with was to find ways that pulled my brain away from anxiety about the result so that I could have the confidence to put down my words. Its basically tricking your brain into being interested in something else, and guiding it to be interested in the action of actually pressing keys.

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Personally for me, i have the most trouble starting without sounding awkward. It's slightly easier now that i start from someone elses POV instead of Xiao Yi. Actual writing itself, for me i can only do so when a scene pops up in my head.

For example the one above would spin into what happen into the Qiguai Realm, because of the scene of learning of Hell-Sender's history and the scene of Xiao Yi being trapped and seeing such slaughter firsthand

 

[BungieONI]

Heh, perhaps! Right now i have a tentative idea of Hell-Sender being a Demonic Axe & it's wielder a Blood Path cultivator. That cultivator is the same Servering Soul who's dream XIao Yi got caught in, and as part of the dream he had to spend years in the head of the guy as he slaughtered his way though.

Right now, i'm thinking that the cultivator had a Blood Path art that allows he to drain the Blood Essence from foes he wounded and killed and swallow it to top up his own Qi + use it as a buff to his stats. When Xiao Yi got out of the dream, his mind was so conditioned that he instinctively draws out the blood concentrated with all the Qi of the slain cultivator when in combat, but he has enough self-control to not absorb it and turn Blood Path. Instead he forces it into a crude array that can provide him with a minor portion of the buff he could have gotten from absorbing it. TLDR, his combat instincts got WRECKED.



Personally for me, i have the most trouble starting without sounding awkward. It's slightly easier now that i start from someone elses POV instead of Xiao Yi. Actual writing itself, for me i can only do so when a scene pops up in my head.

For example the one above would spin into what happen into the Qiguai Realm, because of the scene of learning of Hell-Sender's history and the scene of Xiao Yi being trapped and seeing such slaughter firsthand

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Yeah. I've had enough practice and enough development of habits that I've basically trained my brain to not really think about the end result and the responses to it until its sitting in front of me, and that's how I get most of my writing done by focusing on the beginning and middle.

 

[Katana1515]

True great minds think a like, fire was going to be one of my future pillars after change, definitely going to comment on my next Omake about getting Dao advice from you.
To expand on your fire idea, I was thinking of making pillars with all the traditional Chinese elements, Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, and Metal
Fire for poisons that need to be burned to work, water for liquid poisons, earth for dust based and other solid poisons, wood for plant based poisons, metal for metallic poisons like Arsenic
Think we can make 5 types of puppets?

Click to shrink...

The Elemental theme seems sound for someone following an Alchemical Dao like the Poison Dao. The clever way the QM has the bottleknecks laid out has made me think a fair bit about the order though, since a mistake or mismatched set of pillars are described as being a common reason why people stall out at this stage.

Different types of puppet seems like the way to go if you want using them to be nasty terror tactic. You could have them set up to blow up in various unpleasant ways when destroyed.

I have had this rough plan for Minervina's Pillars rattling around in my head for a while. Curious what you would think. The core idea was that each was something that can cause or catalyse transformations either externally in the material world or inside a person.

The rough sketch is for a (unlikely and ambitious) 9 pillar path, with the pillars broken into sets of 3. The Flesh, The Soul and the World.

The Pillars of Flesh would be Life, Fire and Water. I think that's a nice little circle, with the opportunity for me to display an initial conflict between the Life-tree Pillar and the Fire Pillar, that is then balanced when the Water pillar emerges. I like the idea that this then actually reinforces and elevates the Life Pillar, since the conflict between fire and ice bringing forth the spark of life is a pretty common piece of mythological symbolism.

The Soul Pillars would be Death, Intent and Revelation. These would be about the internal forces that can change a person. Death is the ultimate transformation for mortal creatures, and I would also be leaning on its Tarot symbolism, which is usually about transition and life changing events. Xianxia novels have this weird but fun thing where both Willpower and Eureka moments are simultaneously abstract and mysterious but very tangible concepts; hence the last two pillars.

The last 3 are the ones I am currently most uncertain about and Pillars 8 and 9 are unlikely since the requirements to follow that path are likely to be strenuous. These are meant to represent abstract, otherwise untouchable elements of the outside world that can change and impact a persons soul. I figure the 7th and 9th pillars would be Fortune and Tribulation respectively. Good and Bad Luck is basically a heavenly law in most Xianxia settings and can be a major deciding factor in a persons fate (our clan being a major example.) I like Tribulation for the mythical 9th pillar because its the Heavens own preferred transformative process, the destructive baptism that elevates Cultivators to the next stage of their existence. Currently not certain what the 8th Pillar would be, though I had some notion it might be about people or family, acknowledging that other humans have mysterious ways of changing the people around them.

Its worth noting this is all drafted on the back of the proverbial fag packet and could change at any moment. Symbolically it only makes so much sense and wouldn't stand a lot of scrutiny, though in a way I don't mind that. Its meant to be a very individual Path walked by a lone expert, it only needs to make sense to her, as opposed to a major credo that might be the core of a Sect or Clan.

 

[Shard]

My planning for Savvas' Dao Pillar(s) are: Discovery, Darkness (Finding vs Hiding)
Revolution, Evolution (Fast vs Slow change)
Destruction, Creation
7: Understanding
8: Manipulation
9: Mastery

The basic idea of the Dao being 'Understanding, taking apart and putting things back together'.

 

[LordEdric]

The last 3 are the ones I am currently most uncertain about and Pillars 8 and 9 are unlikely since the requirements to follow that path are likely to be strenuous. These are meant to represent abstract, otherwise untouchable elements of the outside world that can change and impact a persons soul. I figure the 7th and 9th pillars would be Fortune and Tribulation respectively. Good and Bad Luck is basically a heavenly law in most Xianxia settings and can be a major deciding factor in a persons fate (our clan being a major example.) I like Tribulation for the mythical 9th pillar because its the Heavens own preferred transformative process, the destructive baptism that elevates Cultivators to the next stage of their existence. Currently not certain what the 8th Pillar would be, though I had some notion it might be about people or family, acknowledging that other humans have mysterious ways of changing the people around them.

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So my basic outline for 9 pillars if I go that far is
1: Change
2: medicine/healing
3-7: 5 Elements
8: Yin
9: Yang

change is like your transformation, I explained elements earlier, and medicine should be pretty straight forward for a Dao

I picked yin and yang for my last 2 and it could help you too. I'm going to focus a bit on chemistry first. Most poisons mess with reactions, like slowing things down or speeding them up. You know what else slows and speeds up reactions? Temperature.

An exothermic reaction releases heat into its surroundings making things around it speed up. An endothermic reaction takes heat from its surroundings, cooling and slowing things down. Anyways, what this lesson is going for is to tie into yin and yang.

Yin, represents cold, dark, spiritual, soft, passive, water, earth, women, death, and the moon. Yang, represents warmth, light, physical, hard, active, fire, sky, men, life, and the sun. As you can see, old guys wrote this. Still, you can see how yin is slowing of reactions and yang can be speeding up reactions.

Then my thoughts on yin and yang poisons. I think yin poisons would generally be slower acting poisons, like assassination poisons, stuff you get people with at night, also Qi/soul based poisons. Yang poisons are more direct, like the battle field stuff, also it can be the stuff that burns through Qi quickly to fight off.

lastly when you mix and match the different pillars. For example, Yin/Fire would end with a spiritual flame poison the slowly burn through a person's cultivation until they are powerless and die, or Yang/Wood where you need to burn some herb to cause hallucinations or death.

I think I can put just about anything in this, acupuncture for example would be healing/yin/metal. Metal needles go into the body to clear spiritual veins. Also, just about everything can connect to my first pillar of change.

wow, thing got away from me. If my guys lives long enough to form a soul, I will need to reference this post

 

[Shard]

I have a personal suspicion that Yin Yang 5 Elements should be the first 7 pillars if you do have them. 8 and 9 seem special.

 

[LordEdric]

I have a personal suspicion that Yin Yang 5 Elements should be the first 7 pillars if you do have them. 8 and 9 seem special.

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That is why I put yin and yang last, in these worlds, yin and yang are basically one step down from the forces that made the universe

 

[Mochinator]

Since i'm going for the whole general ideal, Xiao Yi's will probably be

Formations
Array
Nature (For Terrain)

Still gotta think on the rest

 

[Shard]

Very impressed with how you used that, Keep up the mayhem

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Hmm, thinking about it, the logical extension is upscaling, then timing Formation-Cultivators to attack camps after they are forced to scatter. Synergy!