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

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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.

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    Omake Writer Instructions:

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  • Threadmarks
    • Garlak said:
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    Konstantinos Papadopoulos
    Fate: Konstantinos Papadopoulos. Author. Newshound. Publisher of some scurrilous rumors, to hear many say it. He began several newsletters in the Stork Lands, distributing information for low prices - subsidised by the Clan - to assist the Storks in moving into their new lands. At the height of his printing efforts, he employed a staff of almost twenty cultivators, including a Foundation Expert who wrote stories for him. With Spirit Stones flowing in, he found it easy enough to take a princely salary, and was able to use the immense resources to push himself into the 9th Heavenstage.
    --------------------
    (Boy, won't Konstantinos be surprised when Manuel Konstantinos shows up and tells him "That newsletter thing you did? I want you to do it again. Except this time, make it about scorpions." like he's J. Jonah Jameson?)
    ("I want pictures, Konstantinos. Pictures of scorpions!")

    And of course, to explain how the scorpions show up for the Trials...

    "We saw how well they worked, so we decided to roll up the Bandit Tribe and take them for ourselves."
    "But, I mean."
    "Can you blame us?"
    *motions at the giant scorpion mount in the stable
    "Look at that sleek, shiny carapace. What a majestic creature."
    "As soon as I saw it, I knew that we had to have it for ourselves!"
    "And besides, we could employ them at the Scorpion Road for the merchandising! I'm sure you can understand the importance of branding."
    "And so, the Glorious Golden Devil Clan decided to roll in and wipe out this band of no-good outlaws, to help out all the various bordermarches and kingdoms, and to capture the glory of the scorpion for ourselves."
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    Since I really want Manuel actually ordering this I ask you @occipitallobe can we have a scene where manuel orders these newsletters to be produced? Flair it up if you want. Audacity is our only refuge after all.
     
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    BadAtScreenNames said:
    I feel compelled to point out that your plan doesn't have very much mitigation of the trials in it outside of the Scorpion Cavalry.
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    The Mortal Artifact Network lowers elite deaths in the Trials, so that's also Trial mitigation.

    >Occipitallobe — Today at 20:37

    But Casia offers a boost to recovery numbers, Xinya offers lower elite deaths, Destasia offers a better roll at the start of the Trials for weakening the invaders overall, and Heraclius offers a nice big buff across the board.

    occipitallobe said:
    Xie Xinya wants to...

    [ ] Broadcast from the Mortal Artifact Network (6 Wealth)

    "Mortals can in theory transmit information from one another if they have Spirit Stones and Arrays capable of doing so. It's normally not worth it at all, but I'm thinking of building a throwaway network for mortals for the Trials. If a few mortal spies can transmit information from occupied cities and the like, we're likely to be able to move our most valuable and talented juniors away from the brunt of the conflict. Mortals are beneath the notice of the invaders, so I think this is likely to work. It'd be an expensive and useless tool otherwise, though."
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    Pertinent parts highlighted.
     
    So, we've got elites covered. We've got Qi Condensation covered. And we've got Professor Manuel teaching Cultivators how to teach mortals spywork and signals intelligence...

    ... and also teaching Cultivators how to ride a giant scorpion and raid the enemy and look like a bandit.

    What a world, what a world. Still though -- that Technique Palace we got a century ago will come in handy. Manuel will probably be able to more effectively teach the Qi Condensation juniors, because he'll have a Technique Palace to refer them to, too. (This isn't my realization, somebody else had it, I'm just copying it.)

    Though, looking at the Chargen option...
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    Sect Technique Palace (Sect ONLY) - Your old Sect Master left a magical palace that carries a hundred cultivation techniques within it, each aligned to the cultivator who enters it. It assesses aptitude and gives out what is necessary. Your Sect disciples are three times as likely to break through great realms.
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    The Technique Palace shiny was originally meant to make it easier to break through. Sadly that doesn't have mechanical effects on our Good Seeds, but...

    ... we do have a few people planning to break through in Turn 10, don't we? So that will be interesting! Plenty more omake fodder there too. So, this is great narrative coherency/focus and seeds for writing. I like that.
     
    Not super into raiding Jingshen this turn since we'll take some losses from that and right before a trail which will hurt us even more. Also I'm not sure if we'll have deniability cause even if the Righteous Path can't do anything to us right now with their current situation I feel raiding their ally and one they're depending on Spirit Stones would be bad for diplomacy
     
    Jingshen is dangerous. We're blind to them and don't know how many turns it'll be before they have enough wealth and stones to support another Nascent Soul. Old Jingshen implied that he would get one within six turns at +10 Wealth per turn. I assume he's lying and that he might get one within three. He's already had one turn. This will be the second turn, and our recovery from the Trials will be his third. This means that if we do not interrupt their wealth gain this turn, we may be faced with Jingshen's third Nascent the moment we look up from licking our wounds. We'd have given them sixty years to profit off of their new lands. Turtling isn't safe.
    occipitallobe said:
    If [The Scorpion Gamble] pushes the Jingshen over the edge to gaining a third Nascent Soul, you might lose everything. High-risk.
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    So, I would like to cut the Jingshen off their new lands as quickly as possible, before they have the chance to properly profit off of, colonize and fortify them, by empowering the Grand Scorpion Sect and the Heavenly Bandit Kingdoms to make a huge nuisance of themselves. Those two territories are enemies of the Jingshen Clan, they were used as ablative shields for the core Jingshen Clan against the Battle Blood Cannibals, and have struggled to hold onto their lands until now. I want to give them arts, wealth, arrays, fortifications, whatever they need in order to make passage through them and colonization as difficult as possible for Jingshen. If the rest of their fortresses are as unguarded as the ones guarding the Bloody Scar Mines, they might raid as well.

    This move will cut Jingshen off from, or at least heavily hinder their profit from, three of their territories, possibly coopting two of them. This, if we're lucky, will limit their ability to raise another Nascent. They will be forced to put time and effort into breaking back through rather than building up money for their win condition or messing with us while we're busy with the Trials. They will further have to put time and effort into ensuring we don't repeat the trick with the Sixty Kingdom Alliances and cut them off from the Spirit Oasis.

    This is still an indirect move. It doesn't touch their core territories, it's not an attack. It doesn't disrupt their ability to send spirit stones to the Great Battlefield. At worst it's poaching their vassals. As such, it's still up in the air whether or not they'd be willing to call in Righteous backup to solve their issue (for which they'll want to be paid richly) and whether Righteous Sects would be willing to send reinforcements away from their own fraught war. And if they do want to respond, they'll either have to limit their attacks to their rebels or wait for the Trials to end so they can get to us.

    I'm putting both Manuel and the Clan on it. I do not think we'll be able to flip both The Grand Scorpion Sect and The Heavenly Bandit Kingdoms and empower them to a useful state with a single Action or Focus. It is important that both be done simultaneously. For one, we're on a tight clock, and Jingshen will be on guard against the tactic if we have to repeat it second time. This is a job that we'll get more out of it the more we put into it. On the low end, we might get some bandit gangs that prey upon Jingshen transportation in a single territory with no commitment. On the high end, we successfully vassalize both countries and fortify them against an actual attack, forcing Jingshen to actually fight their way through. They might even raid into Jingshen. The more we put into it, the less likely it is that we'll get a repeat of the Oasis Rebels.

    [ ] Plan Treat Your Vassals Well
    -[ ] Both Manuel and the Clan will work together to befriend and empower Jingshen Clan's southern vassals enemies, the Grand Scorpion Sect and the Heavenly Bandit Kingdoms, in an attempt to make passage to and colonization of Jingshen's new southern territories as difficult as possible. And if they decide they would prefer to be our vassals instead of Jingshen's, all the better.
    -[ ] These stones, formations, fortifications, arts and arrays we gift to you do not come with the demand that you attack Jingshen lands directly, only that you do what you would have done anyway. Make Old Jingshen weep tears of frustration as supplies disappear, as roads are blocked, as borders are enforced. How long have they kept you between their walls and the hungry cannibal armies? How long have they mistreated you, stolen your wealth, humiliated your elders? With no other option, you were forced to serve as their disposable shields, and now they demand passage through your lands to reap the wealth of a war they did not participate in. No longer are the Battle Blood Cannibals your alternative. Consider how the Jingshen have treated you, and consider how well we treat our own allies.
    -[ ] Don't
    -[ ] Lay the Foundations of Recovery (10 Wealth)
    -[ ] Build the Scorpion Cavalry Brigade (8 Wealth)

    -For one, I'd rather the Trials not get even worse. For another, I'd prefer that Strength Purity Sect stay embattled. I'd rather not make things easier for them.
    -We can't afford to spend a turn recovering, we're on a doomclock.
    -It's a toss-up between getting scorpions for a better initial attack or saving our elites with the Mortal Network. And the people appear to be calling for scorpions. Maybe working with the Grand Scorpion Sect will help with that?
     
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    [] Plan Cupidon's Little Helper
    - [ ] Don't
    - [ ] Clan : Repopulate the Blighted Lands
    -- [ ]     Organize the movement of millions of mortals form the core lands to the blighted lands and incentivize population growth.
    - [ ] Manuel : Court Lady Yao to have her marry into the clan
    -- [ ] Have Manuel himself and/or other bachelors from the clan try and rope in Lady Yao into the Golden Devils Clan through marriage.
    - [ ] Prepare the Ten Million Forts (20 Wealth this turn)

    As far as clan actions go, repopulating the Blighted Lands should be our go to. The territory can hold about 25 millions mortals and support a corresponding amount of cultivators (that's almost half our starting population). Right now, it's sitting at 800,000/25,000,000 mortals. Natural growth won't cut it if we want to profit from the territory in a reasonable time frame, the sooner we boost the base population, the faster it starts to grow on it's own.

    As for courting Lady Yao, we helped her to step into Nascent Soul and she just had her gang destroyed and her life saved by us once again. Let's strike while the iron is hot and really bring her into our great family. We can support an extra Early Nascent Soul, let's make use of it and make all of Jingshen's plan into ashes.

    As for the Ten Million Forts, we paid a lot to keep Heraclius' expertise, let's use it to survive the trials as a true powerhouse of the desert.
     
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    [] Plan: students and masters.
    - [ ] Send the Clan's best Array-Engineers to the Great Battlefield.
    - [ ] clan focus: Training Soldiers.
    - [ ] Manuel action: lecturing (Casia ascension)    .
    - [ ] Broadcast from the Mortal Artifact Network (6 Wealth)
    - [ ] Build the Scorpion Cavalry Brigade (8 Wealth)
     
    occipitallobe said:
    "Strength Purity are offering tremendous concessions to send array masters north. Forgiving our loans in full - all the concessions we made to them wiped out. It would be a risky thing, though, before the trials."

    [ ] Send the Clan's best Array-Engineers to the Great Battlefield.

    Regain +1 Income per turn as the Strength Purity concessions expire. Suffer worse in the Trials, especially among Qi Condensation.

    [ ] Don't

    Strength Purity will have to do without you. The Trials matter more than the war in the Plains.
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    Who do they think they are kidding? They might as well say "Kill half your disciplines for us to forgive a loan". Really if they offered wealth this turn I can see us taking it if only to buy other defense options. This though no way.

    Being in debt to Strength Purity isn't even that bad a thing. Yes the income loss stings a bit, but so long as we are paying them they have a 'however small' vested interest in our survival. As the saying goes owe someone a hundred dollars and he has power over you. Owe them a billion dollars and you have power over them.
     
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    Gaius & Maria Collab - A Private Correspondence(Part 6)
  • Sidestory
    • BadAtScreenNames said:
    snip
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    Gaius and Maria Collab: A Private Correspondence, Part 6

    The next letter arrives after two months. It's shabbier than the previous ones, and in many places, words and phrases are scribbled out and replaced. Sometimes, entire sentences are replaced.

    ----


    Maria,

    I'm so sorry to hear of what happened to you. You have my dearest condolences, though you seem like the type to grow sick of pity, so I will keep it at that.

    I must also thank you for the medical supplies you sent me; you saved me a good deal of time I would have spent gathering these things, and to people like us there is nothing more valuable than time.

    As for the vision you received, you are entirely right: that's not something that happens. And yet it did, so where do you go from here? To answer this question, we must first seek to define the nature of this phenomenon. I do not have the means to classify it in anything approaching scientific, so forgive me if my words get a little tangled.

    You have essentially received a message from your future self. Not literally, in the sense of consciously sending information into the past, so much as...


    (Quite a lot is scribbled out here, a couple of paragraphs' worth of text.)


    It's like an unborn baby, I think. Stirring, quickening in the womb, waiting to be born, to become itself. A baby that hasn't been born doesn't really have a name yet; perhaps the mother decided on a name already, but such documentation only exists after the birth, and the fetus certainly doesn't know it. While a vestigial energy field which will later give rise to the soul does form above the tailbone, it's... not really anything, yet. Nameless, thoughtless, the unborn live in a state of Not-Being, of Super-Sleep. And yet, even with no identity, having not taken a single breath on its own, it still exists.

    The first thought, the first primordial stirrings of instinct from the brain, which gives rise to a rudimentary mind and with it, a true soul. This is like the Dao, the real one, used by Cultivators with a sophisticated enough cultivation base to unleash it upon the world. In that sense, what you felt that day, which I often feel as well, is pre-thought, pre-Dao. The stirrings of something waiting to be born.

    There is no need to be afraid. A Dao has desires - it is desire, in a sense - but I believe it also feels affection. Your Dao loves you, Maria; it wishes to be with you, to be exulted by you and to empower you in turn. It is a symbiotic relationship which hones humans into something greater. Not greater then humanity, but a purer form of it.

    At least, I believe my Dao loves me. Even as it puts me through pain, it understands that this is what I needed, this push to keep moving forward through life no matter what. Reflect, my friend; open your heart and listen; what is your Dao telling you? What is it trying to give you? You are a King-in-Waiting; be confident, be arrogant. Accept that desire, that stirring, and with it, find your path.

    I know what you're thinking: 'Gaius, you're going too far. You need to see a brain doctor.' But the fact is, to construct a fully-formed, perfect Dao within yourself and then bring it forth is completely backwards to how it's meant to go. You and I are already operating in a place far beyond common sense. Cultivators don't become Kings because they want to be strong; that's not enough to get past the Eleventh Heavenstage. Cultivators who become Kings do so because there is something within them which needs to be expressed with utmost clarity. The question is: what are you trying to say?

    I'm not asking you to tell me these things; like you said, these matters are all extremely personal. These are questions you must confront yourself.

    As per your question as to the mundanity of the Dao...


    (An entire four paragraphs have been scribbled out here)


    It has been observed time and again that a Core Formation or Nascent Soul requires surprisingly little qi to activate their Dao's unique effect, and in some cases the cost is so infinitesimal it cannot be picked up without special instruments of measurement. Compared to using dedicated techniques to achieve the same effects, using one's Dao abilities is substantially more efficient.

    To this, we must ask why. Why does influencing the world with a completed, awakened Dao come so much more easily than doing it by channeling qi through a formalized pattern? (I know that techniques are far more complex than that, but please bear with me for now) The answer is that between the two, only a technique changes the world.

    Qi is raw creation, the most foundational form of existence, a primordial energy so simple that there exists no equipment ever created which can look closely enough to observe its individual particles. To change the rules of the world, one releases qi and overwrites something. Qi is needed because this is an inherently unnatural interaction.

    On the other hand, I believe that the reason releasing a Dao effect uses up far less qi is that the Dao already exists, within its bearer. All you are doing is exposing it to the external world. And if we follow the line of reasoning that there is no true boundary between the self and the world, then we must concede that the boundary between the internal dwelling of the Dao and the external world does not naturally exist - it is purely constructed.

    That is the most insidious wall of all, the one which hinders those of the orthodox Foundation Establishment. To ascend to Single Pillar, we must break that wall down, and to break that wall down, the first step is to stop thinking of the Dao as something external, as an Other. The Dao is mundane because it already exists, rather than needing the world to be channeled through the application of qi in order to come into being. Even now, your Dao pre-exists, and that gestating idea is as real as your own limbs.

    Gaius, of House Antonius.

    PS. I apologize for the messiness of this letter. I sent it in this state rather than transcribe the final version because I wished to express to you my own turmoil, in a way that words never could.
     
  • Sidestory
    • Aristoteles 'Aris' Kalokagathos 11 - In and Out
  • Sidestory
    • Aristoteles 'Aris' Kalokagathos

    In and out
    A 20 second adventure

    --​


    Aris fell through the bright, formless sky of the Qiguai Secret Realm, large shapes of islands, beasts and stranger things flitting past him.

    He counted the seconds of his fall.

    One.

    Two.

    Then, suddenly, he landed on an idyllic green hill, his momentum inexplicably exhausted. He didn't even make a crater, merely two shallow footprints in the grassy loam.

    Around him, a many-colored sea swirled. He stood at the top of the hill, which continued to slope softly downwards for a few dozen meters, then disappeared into the swirling aether that seemed to make up this part of the secret realm.

    A small wooden chest was perched on top of the highest point of the small hill, some five metres away from him.

    Aris looked around hesitantly. The hill was completely abandoned, and the shapes in the technicolor sea seemed far away, their distant shadows flitting hither and to, then vanishing from sight.

    He crossed the distance to the cache, inspected it briefly, then tried opening the lid. It opened without the least bit of resistance.

    Inside were multiple tiered layers of pills, three pills arrayed per small, narrow shelf. He counted twenty-four in total.

    He reached out with his perception art and felt the Qi signatures of the assembled small globules. The first row felt the most potent.

    A green-pearlescent one in the upper left, which seemed to be a variation on the Verdant Stillness pill. That one heightened ones Qi respiration potential significantly while subtly sharpening the mind and making one more open to introspection. The scent of Yin and Wood energy, with hints of Earth and Water emanating from the small sphere before him seemed to suggest a similar effect. Rare and powerful – a very lucky find.

    The middle one on the uppermost row was a royal purple, matte and large. A Five-Elements Pillar Sovereignty pill, clearly. The Qi signature was almost identical to the ones he had seen before. One of the most potent pills known in Foundation Establishment, it provided a massive reserve of neutral Qi and subtly detached one's dantien from the Qi of the world without hampering Qi respiration. As a result, the metaphysical activity of constructing a pillar was made significantly easier. With sufficient willpower and Qi reserves, one could flash-forge multiple Pillars almost after one another, granted one had the insight.

    The one on the right of the uppermost row was brightly red, veined with black streaks. Yang and Fire, almost aggressively so, with a low note of Beast. He didn't recognize this one, neither from medicinal tomes, nor from the pillforges, nor from the contribution board. Yet it was powerful, probably the most powerful one there, though he felt a note of discordance with the Qi in his own dantien. He wouldn't be able to make use of this one effectively, even if he figured out what it did.

    Useful for bargaining away or to pay the toll with.

    In the rows below were restorative pills, some lesser cultivation pills – which many of his peers would still find extraordinarily valuable – some more esoteric ones, and some where he couldn't even begin to guess at the purpose.

    Aris didn't dare cheer at his preposterous luck yet – ten seconds in a secret realm and already such a bounty? That was almost unheard of.

    He checked the chest again for traps – it would be too obvious entirely for a trap to be readied only after the lid was opened, when the thief-to-be would too blinded by greed to check again – but found nothing.

    He looked at the side and inside of the chest, but found only plain wood. He toggled his spiritual perception art off, then on again, but his reading remained the same.

    With a swift movement, he drew the pills of the first row into his storage ring. A pang of triumph ran through him as he swiftly moved to the second row.

    Then, suddenly, he tasted anger on his tongue, pricking headily against his spiritual perception.

    Before he could complete the movement, a sharp rumble threw him off balance.

    Then, the mountain under him exploded in a ball of white energy, and he was flung upwards.

    He looked backwards where he was flying to, and saw a distant opening in the shifting sea, a gateway to a more mundane world with muted browns and greys. He was speeding towards it at a neckbreak pace, the small patch of normalcy becoming larger at an alarming rate.

    He tried to shift and move, but the laws of the World worked differently here, and he could not adjust the direction of his movement.

    He blinked, and suddenly he was soaring through the air of the Qiguai Clan's entrance hallway, built around the Doorway.

    Aris soared for a few moments, parallel with the floor, before he started dropping. He shifted in midair, and landed on his feet, sliding a good dozen metres across the rough stone before coming to a standstill. For a moment, he wondered how being thrown near-vertically into the doorway had caused him to be expelled from the Secret Realm horizontally. Thinking about it probably wasn't very useful.

    He dusted himself off, and looked around him.

    Every eye in the disproportionally large hallway was fixed upon him.

    The group of Saber experts that had eyed him like prey had not moved an inch from where they stood a minute ago. They stared at him with mute astonishment. One of them was gaping quite openly.

    One of the supervising Qiguai elders on the edge of the raised platform around the Doorway squinted suspiciously at him.

    Another elder had produced a clipboard with a thick stack of papers clipped on top of it and was leafing through it vigorously, looking for some record or another.

    Some onlookers' eyes flitted between the doorway and him. Some had started whispering, hushed questions and muted exclamations of surprise echoing through the cavernous hall.

    Well then.

    Aris put on his best imperious look, a smug smile creeping onto his features.

    He felt the tickling feeling of his uncle's luck slowly fading, all of it expended for this moment because of some arcane mechanism he would never know nor understand.

    A handful of moments for a handful of exceptional treasures, not a bad tradeoff, he thought pleasedly. He would arrive at the Fearless Line only a scant few days after his centuria did.

    That he had to spend the next two hours convincing the supervising Qiguai Clan elders that yes, he was in fact Aristoteles Kalokagathos, the Gold Devil who had just moments earlier entered the Doorway and not some imposter, did little to dampen his mood.

    --
    @Humbaba
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Sending the Array-engineers cripples our defense. More to the point... see how they screwed over the Flood Dragon Gang. See how little is being done in repayment for that slight. "We'll totally pay you after the war (if you still have pull then)" is not a valid response to "I allowed all of your underlings to perish and then left you to die when you were doing something that I'd asked you to do and also probably haven't even paid you what I promised for the job."

    Given that, how are we supposed to trust that our own people won't be thrown under the bus at first opportunity?
     
    Garlak said:
    Man, I really want to combine an anti-Jingshen action with a pro-Flood Dragon action this turn.

    Because, after I typed up the rest of everything in the post below, I realized that being generous and supportive towards the Flood Dragons? Can go to shine a mirror against the Jingshen instead. It could be a way to diplomatically out-maneuver the Jingshen regionally; because the Golden Devils are contributing to help out somebody who was fighting in the Plains War. It could diplomatically out-maneuever the Jingshen locally; because it has the Jingshen being shit to their vassals, while the Golden Devils are promising how good an overlord they'd be.

    So with one stone, we manage to:
    -Drastically put their "Get 3 Nascents, then stomp" plan into question
    --Make them have wasted a ton of wealth on the Nascent plan
    -Cut off their regional support by contrasting the Golden Devils against the Jingshen
    -Lower their local power too, by getting some of their vassals to come to us instead
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    To be fair, the Jingshen just having three Nascent Souls is a pretty good plan overall, if they can manage it.

    Purchases: Flood Dragon Gang + mortal broadcasting network (21 total wealth, the only thing we can afford)
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    Might be a good combo, since it preserves our elites which is kind of a big deal (our hopes of getting a second Nascent Soul ourselves kind of got chewed up last Trials precisely because of casualties among our elites).

    There could be some real good narrative set-up here though, couldn't there be? The story just writes itself. Flood Dragon support + Jingshen vassal destabilization...
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    Yeah, that makes sense.
     
    @occipitallobe

    I would like to have my current Good Seed, Diogenes Aparámillos, be retired from play. I haven';t put out much omake for him, and honestly I haven;t been feeling writing him much, if ever.
     
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    Cao Wei - Good Seed Background
  • Sidestory
    • On related news, have a new Good Seed sheet! :V

    Cao Wei​


    Ah, the Goatmen! Mortals fear and scorn them, and Cultivators ignore or exploit them as they feel like. To be a Goatman is to live your life surrounded in the cast-off dust, barely grabbing enough resources to survive, with any wealth obtained carefully horded as for it to not be taken by some passing-by human Cultivator. Strong in flesh yet weak in power, the few Cultivators among your people only rarely reaching the 5th Heavenstage of Qi Condensation - if that!


    In such lands, many Goatmen rise up, dreaming of becoming Cultivators and casting off the fate that all Goatmen are damned to face. All fail, usually failing to Cultivate at all - for it is rare for any two Goatmen to possess the same type of body that could Cultivate the same way. Any commonalities are one-offs, constantly diverging as all Goatmen diverge. Those few who do manage to Cultivate inevitably fall, either to true human Cultivators or to their own people.


    It is to this people that Cao Wei is born - the grandson of Kid Shen, a Goatman Cultivator in the 3rd Heavenstage and the elder of Stable, a rather prosperous Goatman Village (for it is rare that any Goatman Village could sustain a 3rd Heavenstage Cultivator). His mutation was both less and more bizarre than most, for he was born with the hind legs and ears of a goat. Walking and moving was hard for him from an early age, but in time he learned how to move, how to walk, how to run…


    And how to follow the heat he felt within the other Goatmen of the village, allowing him to get away with things an average Kid wouldn't, until one day he encountered a stone that radiated an incredible amount of heat to his senses. To a growing Kid like him, a Lowest-Grade Spirit Stone would be an incalculable Treasure… and would put him on the path of Cultivation.


    Name: Cao Wei

    Age: 116

    Starting Turn: Turn 10

    Cultivation: Foundation Establishment True 1-Pillar (Fortified Pillar)

    Impact: 0

    LST: 1

    Health: Healthy

    Cool Thing: Qi Flow Sense - innate ability to feel the flow of Qi within all things.

    Cultivation Goal: Orthodox Path into Foundation Establishment, seeks to develop a path of Cultivation that allows for Goatmen to reach Foundation Establishment and possibly beyond.

    Fates:
    1. Turn 10 - Wei proved bizarrely talented. Indeed, he was the most talented Goatman ever known to the Clan by some measure - reaching the 9th Heavenstage was practically unknown for Goatmen, and he did at ridiculous speed. Such a bloodline was investigated, and Cao Wei managed to finagle doctors of the best sort to go see his mortal mother in return for allowing them to test his blood and do other such things. Where others had great encounters, Cao Wei simply cultivated, and did so at a pace that was both dangerous for even a well-established cultivation method, facing each problem again and again with no rest. When asked why he did such a thing, he simply said 'I am very stubborn.'
     
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  • Sidestory
    • occipitallobe said:
    The Golden Devil Clan/Imperial Optimatoi:

    Clan Core Techniques and Bloodlines:



    Population & Vassals



    Treasures and Wealth



    Fate & Diplomacy



    Known Secret Realms


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

    You are Manuel Konstantinos, Archegetes of the Imperial Optimatoi. To outsiders, you are simply Grand Elder Konstantinos.

    Cultivation Speed -     Slow

    Age (Max) - 1,620 (3,500)

    Health - Healthy

    Intrigue - High
    Administration - High
    Secret Knowledge - High
    Teaching - Very high
    Warfare -     High
    Combat - Medium

    Personal Talents - You are a brilliant lecturer, and can help juniors both grow and solidify their foundations by lecturing on their cultivation.

    Weaknesses - Low stamina. Grasping opportunities to cultivate above your talent was a worthy endeavour, but in truth your body finds it hard to maintain the level of cultivation you have attained. You cannot fight in battle for as long as your peers. Penalty to Combat.

    Family -     None.

    Dao - Darkness. Many Cultivators seek a transcendent height of power--to cast out all that makes them weak and imperfect for the sake of living a longer life. Fools one and all who are blinded by the light of immortality! You and your kin have been oppressed by the Heavens, struck down by great lightnings and terrible trials for an ancient curse... And yet, you live still--the Heavens have not forgotten you certainly, but you no longer live under its active pogrom. Is it complacency? But even in the lightnings cast down--those who should endure their power still rise in might, your kinsfolk still occasionally stumble upon fortuitous encounters. There is some Shadow to the Heavens--a seed of nascent change brutally suppressed by the grand celestial machine, out of a desire to hold to a stagnant image of history for all eternity. You desire to set it free from its bonds, that it may aid your kinsmen in reforging this realm into a thing of beauty and philosophy instead of a barbaric wasteland. It is a futile task, one that will endure long beyond your life--but there is power to this belief, and if you cannot do it--you can blaze a trail for one who comes after you. As did your master, and his master before him.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    I feel like this is due for some updates. The golden eye, our new income, enemies, allies, trade partners. Alot has changed.
     
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