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

[occipitallobe]

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[will408914]

So, just to be clear
Your plan is to force the altar lord, a man able to easily kill us, to stop his disciples from cultivating.

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He needs us. We have leverage.

And we don't need to ask him to stop them from cultivating, just slow them. Reduce the rate at which they kill mortals.

He doesn't really care about his disciples anyway.

 

[Kaboomatic]

He needs us. We have leverage.

And we don't need to ask him to stop them from cultivating, just slow them. Reduce the rate at which they kill mortals.

He doesn't really care about his disciples anyway.

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Oh, that isn't my problem
I'm just curious as to how he'd be able to enforce something like that.

 

[wrecksalot]

He needs us. We have leverage.

And we don't need to ask him to stop them from cultivating, just slow them. Reduce the rate at which they kill mortals.

He doesn't really care about his disciples anyway.

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Why would he go for that when what he gets out of our agreement is slowing the cultivation of the righteous path though? Also the agreement mentioned in the update contains no such clause, so arguing about a potential alternate deal seems irrelevant to the question of whether we accept this one or not

 

[Prospalz]

Not just slowing down - anyone who can't actively cultivate regresses instead. The important people are going to get their lion share anyway, ofc, but for some rising prices on the spirit stones and such might be pretty devastating.

 

[Olivebirdy]

So, just to be clear
Your plan is to force the altar lord, a man able to easily kill us, to stop his disciples from cultivating.

Click to shrink...

He definitely likes us better.

And we don't need to ask him to stop them from cultivating, just slow them. Reduce the rate at which they kill mortals.

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He's not going to do that. For one, this is a binary Yes/No vote. Second, he seems to think that he needs to grasp at every edge he can to gain breathing room. Not that I see why he thinks his situation is that dire.

 

[BadAtScreenNames]

This is a fair position, but I'll throw in some further thoughts:

The Golden Devils have also been characterized by the matter of survival. Doing what needs to be done. The Greater Good. If we pass up this opportunity to improve our chance of success and the Clan doesn't achieve its goals, the countless oppressed souls under Heaven's bootheel won't be thankful or appreciative of the Clan's spotless reputation, holding on to short-sighted righteousness.

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Also a fair position, but let's be honest here, short-sighted righteousness is still "allowing millions of mortals who are alive now get farmed and used as cultivation fuel". And while Altar Lord has some good corroborating evidence that he's telling the truth, I'm not sure it's good enough to risk everything we've built so far for it. He believes it, but he's not necessarily right. Even if he is, we're still talking twenty turns in which every single word of omake powers up Heaven's Shadow, so we don't definitely have to throw in with the Blood Path.

 

[cheesyme]

We never have time to do what we should, and often gamble hugely to try to make time.

Altar Lord hates dealing with his literal xianxia antagonist "equals" and had to beat them into submission to hold his plan together. A plan which isn't even to keep the Blood Path alive, because he admitted it will end up gone either from Heaven crushing them or us cleaning house afterwards. He just want to reach out and destroy Heaven's grip on everything like the Sea-Conquering Army did. To Reach Heaven Through Violence.

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Worth noting here, while that is indeed his goal, the Sea-Conquering Army failed. he is merely a Nascent Soul, not a Spirit Severing or anything else great for this Sea, we're in the weakest part of the Sea, and the Heavens can and do pull on other Seas to punch down at anyone seeking to so obviously violate Heaven's will.

Taking his offer and working with him is absolutely not guaranteed or even particularly likely to succeed, its just that he has even lesser chances without Heaven's Shadow.

 

[Olivebirdy]

The Cost of True Peace

Juturna Cerintha sits on a mat, contemplating. There had been rumors passing around that her Clan was going to cut off sales of Spirit Stones, which raised their price. It had been expensive, but she'd bought a large stockpile of them in case it happened, and the price rose further.

Other adherents to Peace had been aghast at the news. That they might weaken the Righteous Path at such a critical juncture, when their enemies were harvesting mortals for power? This was not the path to peace, this was condoning the perversion of the world. The cries for mercy tore at their souls.

She had shaken her head at the news. It was true that it would be a destructive wind, that millions of mortals would die when they should not. Their souls destroyed for the sake of destroying yet more. And yet. Her path-friends of the Dao were mistaken. This was not a cruel wind, an anomaly. This was the way things were under the Heavens. This was allowed, condoned. There was no peace in this world. The world had been rotted from the start, allowing death and the loss of peace from the start. This would be no different, this was only a matter of timing and scale. Her soul was already torn.

Every moment, someone died. Every transaction, both lost. Every life was pain and every soul was shaken. This was not a world worth preserving.

And so she sat, legless, accepting that her Clan might allow Blood Path to prosper, in the name of a future in which they won. In the name of the destruction of the Heavens, in the name of a world in which blood could not run. In the name of a world where death was unimaginable.

A world which would make everything worth it. A world of stone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A/N: Having a Dao which yearns for Peace doesn't make you a deontologist. I'd like a LST, please.

 

[Sparsebeard]

I'm conflicted. Joining the Blood Path Alliance is a hard no for me.

However, it's hard to deny that the conflict in itself is a huge opportunity for us. If we could get the Demonic Lord to kill Jingshen nascents WITHOUT joining them in exchange for lesser concessions like lowering our exports (perhaps have him fake an attack on us too) I might agree.

Thing is, I'm not sure we can even afford to take the Jingshen lands militarily EVEN if both nascents are dead. Our manpower woes are downright disastrous and will take hundreds of years to correct naturally. If the neighbouring righteous forces send even the slightest forces at us while we are trying to take and hold ANOTHER power our size in the same century, I fear we'll just buckle under the pressure... and that's not even considering the trials. It's just too much land to hold while embroilled in a larger conflict.

If we can get the Altar Lord to kill Jingshen while nominally staying on the Righteous side of the war we might be able to seize part of their territory peacefully in the name of protecting the mortals from depredations of the blood path. And while the Righteous path might not be happy and it WOULD mean problems down the line both, we might be able to escape an immediate state of war since the Righteous Alliance have their hands full right now (especially if we still continue to give nominal support). Hell, with Manuel's Dao, there is a slight chance we might obfuscate enough and have the righteous pact truly believe that we are not involved and that it's a plot by the Blood Path to turn the Golden Devils and the Righteous Path against each other and fish in muddled waters...

@occipitallobe Would something like this be possible :

[] Negotiate the murder of the Jingshen Nascent souls by the Altar Lord for lesser concessions and nominaly stay at war with the blood path

 

[ReaderOfFate]

So, one thing I think is important to recall is that the Strength Purity Sect, and all of those other Righteous Sects? They banded together in response to us saving the Xin Kingdom after the Seven Saber Divine Palace left them to die and headed over to the Mountains to wipe us out.

By the way, their intent wasn't just to push us out of the Mountains, it was literally complete annihilation. The only reason the Golden Devils survived was because our sole Spirit Severing Elder sacrificed his life to buy us time to move into the deserts enough not to get wiped out in our retreat.

I don't think we should forget that, tbh. Or rather, I think that IC, the grudge from something like that, in addition to the general scorn that they have for us as well as the curses that Heavens put on the Golden Devils with us getting a third of our population murdered every century in addition to other things, is enough to make accepting the deal an IC decision.

It could go either way, though, that's for sure. This is just my perspective on how they may feel about the Heavens and the Righteous Powers.

 

[DangerKitty]

The sea conquering army fought heaven becayse heaven was immoral and they wished to be truly righteous. Allying with the altar lord. No matter how tactically tempting is far too compromising to what we are supposed to stand for. We will find another way.

 

[BadAtScreenNames]

-Good Argument Snipped For Brevity-

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Sure, and if it was just them getting hit by this I'd agree. But it's them and every mortal living in their territories. The collateral damage here is horrific, and unavoidable - even if we kill every single blood path cultivator afterwards, and none of them resist, *during* the war they'll need resources.

 

[TehChron]

Thing is, I'm not sure we can even afford to take the Jingshen lands militarily EVEN if both nascents are dead. Our manpower woes are downright disastrous and will take hundreds of years to correct naturally

Click to shrink...

You're underestimating the gap between Nascent soul and Core Formation

Without an opposing Nascent Soul, Manuel can unironically solo the remaining Jingshen elders entirely on his own for a full turn, especially given his Dao letting him ferret them out before they can manage a significant threat

Individually, Jingshens combat strength is incapable of harming Manuel. And they'll likely blow any contingencies on trying to stop Altar Lords initial alpha strike.

 

[GardenerBriareus]

[X] No. Stay the course you have charted so far. You will not throw your plans away on the word of a Blood Path criminal.

The blood path is evil. Genuinely, totally, fundamentally evil, not just because of they oppose heaven, but because they *CONSUME AND DESTROY MORTALS AND EACH OTHER TO ADVANCE*. Their nature fundamentally requires predation. And yes, it's possible to modulate that, we've seen blood path practitioners who aren't complete monsters, but they are the exception.

And here's the thing. The character of the Golden Devils so far has been a heroic one. We oppose the will of heaven because the world it has made is cruel, and brutal, and systemically unjust. It may not be what the sea conquering army were trying to do, it might just be propaganda, but it doesn't matter. It's still how we've played them thus far. I don't want to give that up.

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Again, I don't think that the Altar Lord is offering an alliance with the Blood Path. He's passing the torch of "fuck Heaven" to the Optimatoi because the Blood Path has failed - the Demonic Altar itself is withering away:

He would be the last Demonic Altar Lord. Time was running out.

Click to shrink...

Even without that, the Altar Lord himself has no intention of his Sect continuing, and sees the Blood Path for the crab bucket trap that it is. He won't be conducting this war with the intent of securing the future of his Sect or its affiliates - he will be conducting it with the intent of giving the Optimatoi everything they need to become the dominant power in the Third Sea. This alliance de facto already involves the Altar Lord agreeing to deconstruct the entire poisonous infrastructure that he's inherited, because if it survives the war then it will inevitably contest against the Optimatoi, undermining their power and thus endangering the Altar Lord's only goal here.

More importantly...

EDIT: I realised I needed to add to this quickly to make my point clear. Mea culpa and all that. Busy month.

Yes, Heaven is most likely going to try and kill us in the next few thousand years, after doing the same to the Blood Path. But allying with the Blood Path to stand against that is still a morally horrific thing to do. Some means cannot be justified ever, and this is one of them.

Click to shrink...

That millenial timeline isn't for the destruction of the Golden Devils as a meaningful power, it's for the Celestial Machine to finish picking out all the little deviant threads of Dao and Qi that their ancestors brought with them and burn them from existence. Reality itself will be amended to excise the Blood of Bronze, like a page cut from the spine of a book. There won't even be scattered Optimatoi practitioners or a hidden holdout, there will be at best a subset of the population who have aesthetic phenotypic connections to the Golden Devils, slowly fading into the milieu over the generations.

We'll be gone well before then, because the Righteous Sects act much faster than the Celestial Machine, and we just found out that the Demonic Altar is doomed. If we turn down this offer, then the Altar Lord will still do his best to lose in a sufficiently messy way that the Righteous Sects have to spend a century or two rebuilding before they come for the Optimatoi...

But we'll be rebuilding thanks to the Trials. And when they start pressing us, we'll have the Trials coming around again to grind us down and disrupt our entire war effort, while the Righteous Sects get to take a break, resupply, then fall upon us once the foreigners leave. They won't even have to do much beyond serving as a pawl to the ratchet of the Trials, tying us down and keeping us from ever growing our influence again while the Fifth Sea fucks are away.

There has to be a way out of that death spiral, because otherwise there's no point in continuing the Quest, but that would still make for a brutal, grueling time of hardships that we can not only avoid, but replace with an era of the Optimatoi ascendant, able to stamp out the Blood Path and force the Righteous Sects to leave us be.


EDIT:

Even if Altar Lord can keep all of his disciples in line, which I doubt, that still means that all the other sects are going to continue to eat tons of mortals. I don't think that joining the Blood Path alliance on the grounds that maybe we can convince all the blood path people to stop using blood path is a solid plan

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On the other hand, the Altar Lord's plan is for the Optimatoi to seize power over the Third Sea, whereas without him those Blood Path Sects will still be around and killing people for generations at least. This is our one chance to have a man on the inside of the Blood Path movement, actively helping us fuck them over. The war and this "Noble Demon Alliance" looks to me like a means of forcing the other Blood Path cultivators to rally behind the Demonic Altar, centralizing their authority and power by making it so that anyone who doesn't join gets mulched by the Righteous counter-bloc that's forming.

 

[Volta]

[X] No. Stay the course you have charted so far. You will not throw your plans away on the word of a Blood Path criminal.

NO! Why would we join a bunch of mass murdering psychopaths that revel in committing mass genocide upon defenceless mortals just for shits and giggles? Fuck that noise

 

[Kaboomatic]

[X] No. Stay the course you have charted so far. You will not throw your plans away on the word of a Blood Path criminal.

NO! Why would we join a bunch of mass murdering psychopaths that revel in committing mass genocide upon defenceless mortals just for shits and giggles? Fuck that noise

Click to shrink...

Moratorium is still up

 

[Volta]

Moratorium is still up

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It is? Oh shit. Sorry. Imma edit that now

 

[ReaderOfFate]

So, on the topic of the Righteous Powers wiping out everyone with the blood of bronze, for anyone curious.

Occipitallobe — 11/06/2020
incredibly thin blood isn't that uncommon among mortals
and yeah, blood of Bronze is pretty widespread in Clan core territories
Occipitallobe — 11/06/2020
usually you'll get something in Qi
even if its just cosmetic changes
Occipitallobe — 11/06/2020
now, I'm not accusing the Righteous powers of any misbehaviour
but the almost total lack of Bronze-blooded across all former Clan territories
Occipitallobe — 11/06/2020
sure is suspicious

You know, going even after the mortals with thin versions of the bloodline is really something. Like forget nine generations of extermination, that's on another level.

Are we just gonna let that slide because it's in the past? Because I get the impression that if we go the peaceful route with the Righteous Powers, we're going to have to either abandon retribution, or postpone it until long in the future.

 

[Sara]

NO! Why would we join a bunch of mass murdering psychopaths that revel in committing mass genocide upon defenceless mortals just for shits and giggles? Fuck that noise

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In fairness, we are currently allied with a bunch of mass murdering psychopaths that revel in committing mass genocide upon defenseless mortals.

It's just when the Strength Purity Sect and their lackies try to wipe out entire ethnic groups their doing it because out of tradationalism rather then getting higher power levels.

 

[Resonant]

Welp, it seems the voting moratorium isn't working very well due to coming out late and high reader investment

 

[TehChron]

NO! Why would we join a bunch of mass murdering psychopaths that revel in committing mass genocide upon defenceless mortals just for shits and giggles?

Click to shrink...

Which ones?

Because by siding with the Righteous Path we are kinda giving cover to those.types on that side of the aisle

 

[Sara]

Like, don't get me wrong, I totally understand the revulsion people have for even allying with a Blood path practioner that wants the the blood path to end and sees it as a atrocity.

But pretending that making allies with genocidal monsters is some moral high ground that the Golden Devils would never stoop too after literally backing the Righteous Path economically and militarily despite their ethnic cleansing pogroms feels kind of hollow.

 

[BadAtScreenNames]

-snipped-

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You're making a lot of assumptions about Altar Lord's motivations that I don't see juatified in the post. We know he thinks his disciples and followers are assholes and idiots, thst his sect is doomed, and that he's willing to let us murder the shit out of the blood path if we want after the war. There's nothing in there to suggest he'd be willing to dismantle it for us. We also don't know that heaven's going to burn us out of the tapestry of existence. Even when we were at our height, it just cursed the hell out of us. Isn't it reasonable to assume it'd just strengthen the curse?

And again, this conjecture is not enough to justify siding with people who's superpowers run on homicide.

 

[TehChron]

Righteous being an ironic misnomer was a very large part of our initial reasoning for being gung ho about everything as a matter of us being better than them.

Make no mistake the only morality that matters here is our own. Yes is a dismissal of the possibility that we could ever lead by example, and burning down the modern SPS' path to have both of us lead the region into a better standard.

No is to say that even if the future is unknown and unreliable, we're willing to bet that the efforts shown by the SPS this generation are good enough to leave past grudges aside and try to coexist with both the Righteous Path and the Heavens which actively suppress us and make this world really suck morally speaking.

Betting on War with Heaven being the proper path forward or Coexistence with Heaven being the correct method are the choices at hand. It's as simple as that.

 

[BadAtScreenNames]

Which ones?

Because by siding with the Righteous Path we are kinda giving cover to those.types on that side of the aisle

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Right, but it's not standard operating procedure for the righteous sects. Still dicks, don't get me wrong, and they're goinv on the ass-kicking installment plan, but there's a question of scale here.