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

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New Good Seed and Omake Rule Updates
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    • 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!

    -----------------------

    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.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • BungieONI said:
    Not sure. First omake will be about purchasing and using the Coffin, then training to prepare for the trials. Second Omake will come to start murdering the Trial Hunters I think. More after that depends I think.
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    Yeah, the biggest barrier with regards to writing what's going on in the Trials is that we don't exactly know how it goes yet, or who gets teamed up with who.
     
    FixerUpper said:
    @occipitallobe I keep forgetting to summon you.

    @Liliet Edited a bit.

    Link to omake.
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    Still wrong about "paying", the healer's tent is a charity (the entertainers earn money, the healer earns goodwill), though I guess the guy did look wealthy, but the point of Eirene calling him in the hypothetical I described was in case he DIDN'T have money to go to a "licensed practitioner"... I'll stop nitpicking XD

    <3 <3 <3
     
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    Eirene of Nowhere 6 - the wheel turns ever onward
  • Sidestory
    • @occipitallobe ; also may I ask to switch the title of the second omake I wrote to "can't stop won't stop"?

    Eirene of Nowhere sixth omake: the wheel turns ever onward​

    It had now been twenty years since Eirene started her training with the clan.

    She met with her family a second time, and the time that passed smacked her in the face like walking into a wall without looking. Her age peers were now full adults, the core of the carnival; Healer Xia Fan had trained another apprentice, and the boy had mostly taken over for him, as the man grew older and frailer, even if his mind was still as sharp as ever. Teenagers who barely remembered meeting her as toddlers stared at her in wide-eyed adoration: she was their own cultivator! New small children clamored for being shown real magic; she obliged, showing off with the simpler but grander version of her illusion technique - even a mortal could see through it, but why would they want to? She told stories of her adventures, adults wide-eyed like the children she remembered them as and elders she still remembered as elders smiling with pride.

    She was one of theirs, she was always going to be.

    Her cultivation was going well to the point that Andronike brought up the legendary further realms of Qi Condensation - apparently they would make Tribulations much harder, but firm her foundation until she could be nearly unmatched within her small realm in greater realms ahead. The Clan did not encourage their juniors to take this path, for Tribulations already claimed way too many, but she could, perhaps?...

    Eirene was still undecided about her path, disproportionately so to her advanced cultivation. Thoughts were flickering in her head about the Dao of indecision, the dao of choosing multiple options instead of one; she'd need to figure this out in the years to come, especially as more and more conversations arose about the coming Hundred Year Trials.

    It was still odd to her to think of something twenty years away as "soon", as it was over half her lifetime, but to older cultivators it might as well have been tomorrow. She still didn't have a static mentor, choosing jobs from the contribution board here and there, hoarding knowledge and experience and stories like the greedy storyweaver she was; but she did have friends, peers and near-peers in cultivation. Andronike Kairos, who was still treating helping her refine the illusion technique as though it was her personal project; twins Andromeda and Daphne, stocky and reliable beast master Diophantos, too many to list. They did not stick close together all the time, but all gossip was inevitably shared, and any of them could count on any others for help and support in need.

    Eirene was the youngest of them, 8th and 9th Heavenstage cultivators sticking together around the sharing of sparring. She was conversely the least experienced, although they all agreed she was one of the most talented. It was odd to them that she neither chose a particular mentor or occupation to pursue nor took the path of the wandering cultivator - most of them had patrons of their own or at least patrons of choice that they were trying to impress, and even among those some left as years advanced to seek adventures of their own, sometimes returning; some did not.

    But for Eirene, this was what she was most comfortable with. The eternal student, making up with diligent study to firm the foundations of her lightning quick progression. Her cultivation was rock-solid but she did not have skills to match, and she wanted to. She dabbled here and there, trying to pick low-hanging fruit off all paths; it was not particularly productive, but her Dao was becoming clearer, bit by bit.

    Bit by bit indeed; it would be a long time before she felt even remotely confident enough to try breaking through into the next great realm. She had confidence she would, eventually, assuming she survived the Trials ahead - or even survived to face them.

    And so she cultivated, trained, contributed, healed and sang, not running towards the dangers nor from them, allowing time to flow around her as she watched.

    (The world was a story, and she audience, storyteller and character all at once)
    end omake​
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Savvas would probably try his original assasination tactic again in the Trials, since he is, 8th Heavenstage vs potentially 9th+ Heavenstage with combat boosters? The gap is too far for him to look at it seriously with cheat code(s) at his disposal.

    (No, a lifesaving treasure + fighting across realms does not cut it).
     
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    BungieONI said:
    Thank you for commenting!

    And tbh I didn't put much effort into Merena since she was meant to be a mouth piece for the stress of the mortals. Set dressing basically.

    And yeah I had a lot of fun getting into a state of war mindset in order to write this.

    I haven't gotten my question answered yet, and thank you for the offer. I'm not sure formatting it like you have really works in a mechanical sense, it'd probably be a binary is it given or not, but I do appreciate it!

    I've been pretty interested to see how you would take him while he didn't have Ferenike around, so I'm curious to see where that goes and I'm curious to see how stuff changes when she is in the picture with him. Among other things once I figure out how healed up I am I'm going to be writing omakes about Ferenike cultivating and then ripping through the Trial hunters, and him encountering her during such an incident sounds plausible.
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    Well, we do have an answer so the cool thing trade is unnecessary.

    And regarding Merena: yes, she's a prop, but, taking a tropical example, in the original Mulan, Merena would be that child's doll Mulan finds right at the end of the song 'A Girl Worth Fighting For.'

    That scene punches you in the gut without being gratuitous because of all the lead-up. Who is the girl worth fighting for? Not the one paler than the moon, not the one with beauty and grace, not even the one that cooks amazingly.

    You don't go to war to woo girls.

    If you must go to war, if you must commit this evil, then it has to be for something meaningful.

    It has to be a girl truly worth fighting for.



    If I'm elaborating at length about this it's because Ferenike's themes demand no less. She cares about her juniors and about people in general. For the writing to get real weak there when it comes to the victims of the war is to toss the reader out of the flow because things suddenly seem flat where they should be the best-defined.

    But it's a thing that can get fixed in the editing process later so please don't feel like I'm bullying you about this, I'm making it sound important when it isn't, really. :V

    Liliet said:
    Still wrong about "paying", the healer's tent is a charity (the entertainers earn money, the healer earns goodwill), though I guess the guy did look wealthy, but the point of Eirene calling him in the hypothetical I described was in case he DIDN'T have money to go to a "licensed practitioner"... I'll stop nitpicking XD

    <3 <3 <3
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    Oh dear, I'll come back to it later?

    Short note: Your omakes are all really comfortable to read. They feel homey in a way few others are. I'm curious how you'll write something big and dramatic later down the line though.
     
    Hmmm. For an omake bonus, you guys think I'd be better off picking a cultivation boost or a lifesaving treasure, with the Trials coming up? I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, a lifesaving treasure would, well, save my life once if it came down to it. But on the other hand, I'm weak as hell right now, so unless I boost my cultivation I feel like I'm going to end up in numerous possibly deadly situations while the Trials are taking place.
     
    TheDuke said:
    Hmmm. For an omake bonus, you guys think I'd be better off picking a cultivation boost or a lifesaving treasure, with the Trials coming up? I'm a bit torn. On the one hand, a lifesaving treasure would, well, save my life once if it came down to it. But on the other hand, I'm weak as hell right now, so unless I boost my cultivation I feel like I'm going to end up in numerous possibly deadly situations while the Trials are taking place.
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    Good points, both.

    otoh, if you can afford it, you could simply write a bunch of omakes and dump them into your cultivation roll and pick up the lifesaving treasure as your cool thing.
     
    * dump then into your fate roll, I don't think cultivation is impacted by omakes?

    said the offensively lucky 9th Heavenstage Good Seed handler

    FixerUpper said:
    Oh dear, I'll come back to it later?

    Short note: Your omakes are all really comfortable to read. They feel homey in a way few others are. I'm curious how you'll write something big and dramatic later down the line though.
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    Thank you <3 <3 <3 ^^

    I'm... also not sure how I'll write something big and dramatic later down the line. But y'know when there's a prompt for it I'm sure I'll manage :3
    I already have plans for Eirene's determination to surge after the Trials even if literally nothing happens to her~

    Incidentally, my background post now includes recap of everything that happened / everywhere Eirene has been and a description of her personality. This is definitely a lot more reasonable than expecting everyone to remember every detail I've written including the ones I haven't because I think the only actual dialogue I've written was during the ghost encounter lmao
    Thank you <3
     
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    Hmm. I think my plan for Savvas shall be that he will go for 11th Qi Heavenstage, 8th Pillar, then just stay at Core Formation while subsidising someone to zoom through 13th Qi Condensation and then experiment on 9 pillars.
     
    I want Eirene to go for the 11th Heavenstage, then once she's there go "I might as well" and go for 12th, then break through ^^
     
    Keiros Cole Emendator 5 - Perspective Shift: Bucephalos Emendator
  • Sidestory
    • Perspective Shift: Bucephalos Emendator
    A Keiros Cole Emendator Omake
    @occipitallobe

    -------

    Bucephalos yawned.

    Below, two young men bowed to each other. One was even his son, but, details. A Second Heavenstage against a First; it would be like watching children finger paint and about just as interesting.

    To his left, Vigilantia scowled at him with her eyes alone, her smile perfectly genteel. A charming ability: along with her house's ' fabulous wealth and her even more fabulous youth and beauty, it was what had attracted him to her some fifty years ago, after the death of his second wife. The spark between them had grown a little dull with age, but thus did time grind all things down.

    The gong rang. The duel began.

    His ugliest nephew - Keiros, was it? - surprised no one by going immediately on the offensive. For a First Heavenstage his form looked exemplary and if memory served, knife-fighting was not even his-

    He felt a pinch.

    Bucephalos looked down: Vigi had stabbed him a little, her glittering, diamond-studded bronzs nails casually digging into the meat of his palm. His Blood of Bronze ran thinly enough that even at his exalted level of cultivation he still bled red instead of gold or even verdigris.

    "Owch?" he said, for politeness' sake.

    "That is," she said through a gritted smile, "your son, and so help me if you embarrass him at his first honor duel."

    He suppressed a sigh and settled down to watch the lackluster opening. It was fine, a textbook show, like two instructors demonstrating the Twin Fang form for the edification of their students, but because of that very fact it lacked any element of sponta -

    Hm, wait.

    He stopped. Ran that thought through his head again. The Twin Fang form - meant for devastating, all-or-nothing frontal charges - boring?

    He blinked. Then a rare smile cracked through his face, a flash of lightning, dazzling and brief.

    Young Keiros was taking the piss on not only his son, but the entire Twin Fang Academy. What a cheeky child. No wonder his brother and sister-in-law dot-

    Another pinch. He stared at his wife. Her eyes hissed fury at him. He rolled his in response.

    Good gracious Vigi, not even in his own thoughts? It was not like anyone else could read him so easily.

    She simmered impotently at him before a cry of approbation had her flicking her eyes back to the match: Octavian had just scored first blood, a glancing blow across a shoulder.

    Octavian was a fine boy. But being her first son, and his eighth, their viewpoints on him were forcibly different. He had never thought himself as old - in some ways his Dao precluded such flimsy notions such as age - but he was, here at least, more jaded.

    The exceptional were, by definition, the exception, not the rule. Of his fifteen children, none had come close to his raw talent, his sister's genius, or his brother's determination - little Lily might someday form a ninth Dao Pillar and live long enough to challenge the heavens - but none would go any further than that. There

    As the saying went about the Emendator's generation of miracles:

    The Trials had taken Alexandria's strong right arm and she had stolen the Earth's wisdom in revenge.

    The Heavens had rewarded Bucephalos with talent and he had immediately declined their offer.

    Hell had laid claim on Lucianus and he had clawed his way out through sheer bloody-minded grit and determination.

    And now here they were, their sister dead, he a drunken, eccentric recluse, his brother more automaton that fulfilled the function of Core Elder than man and they were, of their generation, arguably among the most fortunate; but one dead, and none fallen into depravity despite their Ways.

    Bucephalos clapped politely as his nephew was knocked to the ground, rolling desperately as Octavian, scenting blood, went for the kill, glass daggers sparking as they repeatedly hit the ground. A good show, Child, but in the end, one could not challenge those of equal skill and greater strength. In the end, the difference in cultivation was telling.

    It was so for all things.

    One could see the coming darkness. It stretched out the length and width of the very world.

    The prominence of the Emendator line was unlikely to long outlive them. Another, greater line would take their place, and the little kingdom they had built up would be swept aside in that cyclical sea change that happened every few hundred years in that way dynasties rose and fell.

    The players might change, but the Clan endured.

    So it had been, and so it would always be.

    Keiros had contrived to get back to his feet, his stance surprisingly steady for how sloppy it was, both daggers held loosely, lightly balancing on the balls of his feet. The clockwork in his brain that seemed so eerily reminiscent of his sister's had not yet failed him. It was both the blessing and the curse of those genuinely possessing a spark of genius: so long as they could think, they possessed hope.

    Then, one of his arms drooped, fractionally, opening his guard.

    What a - surely Octavian would not -

    His idiot son leapt forward.

    The rest played out like a game of chess, with only one of the participants moving the pieces.

    A dagger tossed, as if in desperation, Octavian howling gleefully as he batted it aside, Keiros scuttled back, stance subtly shifting, that was the one-legged crane, a dancing stance - his poor son would be a laughing stock for days, if not years.

    Blood blossomed like a rose, Keiros had been hit, and quite badly, a dagger sticking out of his arm, but the trade had been worth it, the answering kick had struck the young man right in the family jewels: he would not be getting up in time for -

    There was a whumpf! as the air above the stadium, no, the very city, howled. A Phoenix appeared, regal and massive, its rider wearing a long-plumed feathered helmet and clad entirely in spirit bronze. An emergency projection, overriding the usual accesses.

    Vigi's hand, which had squeezed his own to near powder, grew tighter.

    The darkness was not coming.

    It had already arrived.

    As the litany of disaster was read out, his enhanced senses being fed additional information so that he might be able to muster the proper responses, a small, ignoble part of his attention was still focused below. Not on his son, no, on the other young man, staring defiantly up towards the phoenix, accepting this change of plans with surprising grace.

    Perhaps...

    He spun off a clone - the dust around him swirling until it formed a near perfect replica of himself before he thought better of it and began smearing some of its features around. His sister had left in his possession a certain book. It was to be passed down to 'someone worthy.' He had never planned for it to be from someone within the family, one needed to be more open-minded than that.

    But Keiros...

    His poor reputation aside, the boy more than fulfilled the minimum criteria to at least activate it. And it would, perhaps, be of some aid in keeping him alive.

    "We must return," his wife said. Her voice was sober, soldierly. "I will prepare the Talos-class automatoi and you-"

    He smiled thinly.

    Aikaterine had once been his prized pupil before she had eclipsed him. He could still recall her, spindly and thirteen, and already scarred with the rigors of battle.

    She had acquitted herself well in her final moments.

    The air flickered and crackled with power. When he spoke, it was with the voice of legions.

    "Dear wife, I go to war."

    ----------

    Author's note: Probably some weirdness in timeline for him to have such a young son, and yet also be the protostrator's drillmaster, but I thought it put a nice cap to the omake so kept it in.

    Figuring out how to organically include the Book of Ten Thousand Eyes was fun and tough. I didn't want it to feel like a random encounter, so it needed to have a weight I hadn't planned for. It worked out well enough though, I think.

    Continue adding to the Fate Bonus, I guess. Still can't think of any Cool Things to add.
     
  • Sidestory
    • FixerUpper said:
    I don't know if you noticed, but he's honestly kind of annoying. :V
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    Jokes aside? I see LSTs as a sound investment if you really want to tell a character's long-term story. If you're not as invested in such, then not going for an LST may actually create a more interesting narrative - especially if the death is well-handled in writing to give satisfying closure, allowing you to then explore a different character.
     
    Zephias said:
    Jokes aside? I see LSTs as a sound investment if you really want to tell a character's long-term story. If you're not as invested in such, then not going for an LST may actually create a more interesting narrative - especially if the death is well-handled in writing to give satisfying closure, allowing you to then explore a different character.
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    Although, if you really want a seed to die, the dice might just bless him with good luck just to mess with you, I'm sure we have all seen quests where a roll was so good it ends up skipping an epic fight or jumping part of the quest because the author mentioned that something was hard to do
     
    I mean, there are a few things that can be done with Keiros, but before writing him, I hadn't realized how un-fun the 'smart, bullied social outcast' archetype became once you took out the bullied part.

    I wanted a character with few to no sympathetic traits and as grating to read as he'd be to interact with and lo, I have succeeded and he is... a character with few to no sympathetic traits and kind of terrible to read.

    This is definitely one of those 'well, what else did you expect,' moments so I absolutely deserve it, I'm just not sure what's to be done.
     
    FixerUpper said:
    I mean, there are a few things that can be done with Keiros, but before writing him, I hadn't realized how un-fun the 'smart, bullied social outcast' archetype became once you took out the bullied part.

    I wanted a character with few to no sympathetic traits and as grating to read as he'd be to interact with and lo, I have succeeded and he is... a character with few to no sympathetic traits and kind of terrible to read.

    This is definitely one of those 'well, what else did you expect,' moments so I absolutely deserve it, I'm just not sure what's to be done.
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    The more unsympathetic he is, the more room to grow. You can always center the story about him having experiences that cause him to grow as a person.

    Worst comes to worst, you can have QM kill him off and start anew with a character you find more interesting.
     
    ninjastar said:
    The more unsympathetic he is, the more room to grow. You can always center the story about him having experiences that cause him to grow as a person.

    Worst comes to worst, you can have QM kill him off and start anew with a character you find more interesting.
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    Hrrrrm.

    HRRRRRRRRM.

    What if I just plopped him in a horror setting? I feel like if endless torture because the setting is out to get him doesn't do the trick, I'm gonna have to shelve him and restart with a slightly less annoying character.

    From what I understand, the Secret Realms we have access to have to be accessed voluntarily. I want, otoh, one of those 'and then he woke up and oh shit, a monster was trying to eat his face-' kind of openings and then just endless survival horror and maybe meeting up with other survivors that have spent years trapped in this mirror dimension.
     
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