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

[occipitallobe]

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[Sirrocco]

Having more Nascents is important for getting more territory, which gives us more resources for that Spirit Severing plan. Continuing to spread means we have more Clansmen, which means more minds powering the shadow, which gives us new boons over time. Spreading also weakens the curses when without heaven's shadow.

Doing imperialist conquest aids every single one of our goals. If a couple of Nascent Souls sitting around thinking about what to do could solve the dying sea problem, someone would have already solved it. Clearly, something more drastic is needed.

Edit: getting more resources and Nascents also lets us militarily strengthen ourselves against the Trials more effectively. We're still in the position where a few overzealous Nascents from the Fifth Sea could end our civilization(granted, they would probably be killed for costing their region such a bountiful secret realm, but still).

Click to shrink...

If the thing that we needed to strengthen Heaven's Shadow and gain boons over time was just "more minds", then it would have been far more powerful back when we did hold dominion over the Third Sea. Clearly, that's not the only thing that's going on.

Doign Imperialist conquest gains us resources. It does not aid every single one of our goals. Even beyond the raw attrition that we take from carrying out a war, it costs time, it costs goodwill, and it has a cost in the philosophical makeup of our clan. All three of those costs are quite real, and we have goals for which those costs are greater than what they buy. The thing we are arguing here is whether or not the overarching plan of "escape the Third Sea, and solidly establish ourselves elsewhere" is one of those specific goals or not. I believe that it is.

I don't believe that the dying sea problem is solvable with the kind of resources we can access from within the dying sea. That makes this the "escape the dying sea" problem.

Military strengthening against the trials is shockingly unuseful. The trials sees us as a renewable resource, and so they limit the openings in order to keep from killing us too quickly. If we sprout enough Nascents, that just means that they'll start hunting Nascents again. Now, if you're talking about the specific case of young Bhigru, then yes, that's a situation that can be helped by having multiple Nascents rather than just one... but we have that now, and it's near-term enough that world-conquest plans aren't going to be part of solving it.

 

[no.]

If the thing that we needed to strengthen Heaven's Shadow and gain boons over time was just "more minds", then it would have been far more powerful back when we did hold dominion over the Third Sea. Clearly, that's not the only thing that's going on.

Doign Imperialist conquest gains us resources. It does not aid every single one of our goals. Even beyond the raw attrition that we take from carrying out a war, it costs time, it costs goodwill, and it has a cost in the philosophical makeup of our clan. All three of those costs are quite real, and we have goals for which those costs are greater than what they buy. The thing we are arguing here is whether or not the overarching plan of "escape the Third Sea, and solidly establish ourselves elsewhere" is one of those specific goals or not. I believe that it is.

I don't believe that the dying sea problem is solvable with the kind of resources we can access from within the dying sea. That makes this the "escape the dying sea" problem.

Military strengthening against the trials is shockingly unuseful. The trials sees us as a renewable resource, and so they limit the openings in order to keep from killing us too quickly. If we sprout enough Nascents, that just means that they'll start hunting Nascents again. Now, if you're talking about the specific case of young Bhigru, then yes, that's a situation that can be helped by having multiple Nascents rather than just one... but we have that now, and it's near-term enough that world-conquest plans aren't going to be part of solving it.

Click to shrink...

Gathering more power and more people so that more ships make it to the destination sounds a hell of a lot more feasible to me than "contact this one faction that might not be around in a century, hope that they know how to talk to sea monsters, hope that we can unilaterally convince all sea monsters to not eat ships".

Frankly, it sounds to me like you just want to play as Strength Purity. Totally righteous, very honorable, very morally good, etc. except we're not Strength Purity. Once the blood path is wiped out the Righteous Powers will turn on us to harvest our bodies. Want to stop them? That means getting strong enough to fight them all at once. I guess in theory we could have nothing but defensive wars where we wait for someone to attack us so that we can hit back… but again, only Righteous factions have to do that. The upside of being Demonic is that we can break the rules whenever we want. Playing it nice in the hopes that Heaven will confer blessings upon us will get us killed eventually.

Also, if the Chuan Clan can convince the sea monsters to not kill people, why haven't they done that already? Probably because they can't.

Edit:
A in a more petty sense… yes, I do think conquest is fun. Our people are well acquainted with war, a little bit of offensive bloodshed won't taint their precious little hearts. I don't want a "and then the Devils sat in place for two thousand years trying to think of how to solve the problem without hurting anyone" ending, both because that doesn't suit them as a faction and because that's boring.

 

[TehChron]

The great thing about these kinds of discussions is that they're purely academic, and thus largely superfluous when it comes to crafting actual policy.

Criticizing hypothetical methods we're going to employ anyway in the short term on the basis of a hypothetical future is great and all up to the point of actual plans being crafted to meet determined objectives.

At which point, in the absence of presenting an alternative to meeting those objectives they get passed over until the short term plans have been put into action and the hand wringing begins anew

Not that I'm saying said hand wringing about hypothetical courses of action no ones undertaking yet are without value, as theres a chance that some wholly unserious individual may be thinking along the very lines that are attempting to be dissuaded.

It's great for saving time and effort better towards more productive discussion.

 

[Olivebirdy]

Just looking at the spreadsheet, I don't think anyone has the capacity to support a Soul Severing cultivator. To support a Qi Condensation cultivator, you need a hundred mortals. To support a Foundation Building cultivator, you need a hundred Qi Condensation cultivators. To support a Core Formation cultivator, you need a hundred Foundation Building cultivators. To support a Nascent Soul cultivator, you need a hundred Core Formation cultivators. It's likely, judging just by the spreadsheet, that we'd need a hundred Nascents to support a Soul Severing cultivator. I don't think there is enough wealth and Qi in the region to support that many Nascents. Even if we conquered the entire region, we might not be able to get that far.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Gathering more power and more people so that more ships make it to the destination sounds a hell of a lot more feasible to me than "contact this one faction that might not be around in a century, hope that they know how to talk to sea monsters, hope that we can unilaterally convince all sea monsters to not eat ships".

Click to shrink...

Accumulating more power so that we can spam more ships to get predictably eaten by Spirit Severing sea monsters sounds like a good way to waste all the power we just accumulated.

The underlying problem here is that getting to the other realms of existence by crossing the sea is not simple or easy, and the resources of the Third Sea do not make it straightforward to undertake such a project. Even if we had all those resources, we'd still have a problem. By your own arguments, if it were easy someone would have already figured out how to do it.

Frankly, it sounds to me like you just want to play as Strength Purity. Totally righteous, very honorable, very morally good, etc. except we're not Strength Purity. Once the blood path is wiped out the Righteous Powers will turn on us to harvest our bodies. Want to stop them? That means getting strong enough to fight them all at once. I guess in theory we could have nothing but defensive wars where we wait for someone to attack us so that we can hit back… but again, only Righteous factions have to do that. The upside of being Demonic is that we can break the rules whenever we want. Playing it nice in the hopes that Heaven will confer blessings upon us will get us killed eventually.

Click to shrink...

This wraps back to you applying an uncharitable take on their motivations. "Simping for the Righteous factions" is not the actual point here. "Avoiding getting squashed by Heaven's blind mechanistic smashy action until we can finish dissolving the curses laid upon us" is the point here.

Also, if the Chuan Clan can convince the sea monsters to not kill people, why haven't they done that already? Probably because they can't.

Click to shrink...

Or they don't care. The Third Sea is fine unless you worry about multi-millennial timescales on which even a Nascent Soul will probably die of old age before it happens. Figuring out a way to placate Spirit Severing sea monsters may well not be a problem they've ever considered before, even if they'd be good at it.

Just looking at the spreadsheet, I don't think anyone has the capacity to support a Soul Severing cultivator. To support a Qi Condensation cultivator, you need a hundred mortals. To support a Foundation Building cultivator, you need a hundred Qi Condensation cultivators. To support a Core Formation cultivator, you need a hundred Foundation Building cultivators. To support a Nascent Soul cultivator, you need a hundred Core Formation cultivators. It's likely, judging just by the spreadsheet, that we'd need a hundred Nascents to support a Soul Severing cultivator. I don't think there is enough wealth and Qi in the region to support that many Nascents. Even if we conquered the entire region, we might not be able to get that far.

Click to shrink...

You're probably right- and notably, this is likely the reason why Spirit Severing breakthroughs are very rare, and why Spirit Severing cultivators tend to just leave. They're powerful enough to have a reasonable chance of surviving the ocean crossing, and nothing on this continent can feed them for as long as it would take for them to conquer the entire continent and bend its resources to the task of feeding them.

Of course, Righteous cultivators who reach Spirit Severing have the advantage that they can probably go to the other Seas and abide there without being gratuitously murdered by the locals just for existing. Neither the Blood Path nor the Golden Devils has that luxury.

The great thing about these kinds of discussions is that they're purely academic, and thus largely superfluous when it comes to crafting actual policy.

Criticizing hypothetical methods we're going to employ anyway in the short term on the basis of a hypothetical future is great and all up to the point of actual plans being crafted to meet determined objectives.

At which point, in the absence of presenting an alternative to meeting those objectives they get passed over until the short term plans have been put into action and the hand wringing begins anew

Not that I'm saying said hand wringing about hypothetical courses of action no ones undertaking yet are without value, as theres a chance that some wholly unserious individual may be thinking along the very lines that are attempting to be dissuaded.

It's great for saving time and effort better towards more productive discussion.

Click to shrink...

Did this post have any purpose other than to provoke other people?

It seems kind of provocative.

 

[no.]

Accumulating more power so that we can spam more ships to get predictably eaten by Spirit Severing sea monsters sounds like a good way to waste all the power we just accumulated.

The underlying problem here is that getting to the other realms of existence by crossing the sea is not simple or easy, and the resources of the Third Sea do not make it straightforward to undertake such a project. Even if we had all those resources, we'd still have a problem. By your own arguments, if it were easy someone would have already figured out how to do it.


This wraps back to you applying an uncharitable take on their motivations. "Simping for the Righteous factions" is not the actual point here. "Avoiding getting squashed by Heaven's blind mechanistic smashy action until we can finish dissolving the curses laid upon us" is the point here.


Or they don't care. The Third Sea is fine unless you worry about multi-millennial timescales on which even a Nascent Soul will probably die of old age before it happens. Figuring out a way to placate Spirit Severing sea monsters may well not be a problem they've ever considered before, even if they'd be good at it.


You're probably right- and notably, this is likely the reason why Spirit Severing breakthroughs are very rare, and why Spirit Severing cultivators tend to just leave. They're powerful enough to have a reasonable chance of surviving the ocean crossing, and nothing on this continent can feed them for as long as it would take for them to conquer the entire continent and bend its resources to the task of feeding them.

Of course, Righteous cultivators who reach Spirit Severing have the advantage that they can probably go to the other Seas and abide there without being gratuitously murdered by the locals just for existing. Neither the Blood Path nor the Golden Devils has that luxury.


Did this post have any purpose other than to provoke other people?

It seems kind of provocative.

Click to shrink...

Other Seas still have Demonic factions, you know. It's not wham bam Righteous City out there. It's the Blood Path that can only flourish here, and there are lots of Demonic factions that don't use the Blood Path.

Anyway, your own words have just proven the right way to go about things: conquer enough territory to support hundreds of Nascents, and thus a few Spirit Severing. Send those Spirit Severing on ships with some Nascent Soul subordinates to scout out other Seas. The ones that make it can quietly build up a power base in those other seas(and not get instantly ganked, because that's absurd paranoia) then send more Spirit Severing to pick us up and carry us out. This way, bit by bit, we will evacuate ourselves to other Seas.

The way to get rid of the curses is to keep expanding. We know for a fact that taking new wealth was weakening the Curse of Poverty because it had to spread itself further. The more Devils there are in this dead sea, the more energy Heaven has to expend to get a fraction of the usual effect here, which will eventually break the curses, in addition to empowering the shadow.

For both of these reasons, it is in our best interest to take much, much more territory. More than the whole flipper. Even the entire Great Cloud Empire won't be enough. It's certainly a lot more feasible than sitting around blindly hoping that our Deus Ex Machina will keep accumulating strength without us doing anything to empower it, and also trying to do diplomacy with sea monsters.

 

[atrophy]

Why dont we take both of nascents and jiao and go gank either the old devil or the other devil bee nascents ? Basicly have our new nascent ambush whoever jiao is fighting hopefully would be the basic plan and after that if they dont get super injured go after the other early nascent and atleast wound her even if killing her isnt possible and then try to wound the old devil ? Or if the devil bee nascents arent fast enough we could try to kill old devil with 3v1 advantage instead is another option for a devil bee raid ? This mostly possible since we have a secret nascent currently is my thought.

I also dont mind the plan of giving land to the flood dragon gang but my thought is , we do devil bee raid first for points with the righteous powers to mitigate the fallout of kinda crippling jingshen and going back on the treaty we made at the end of the war ? I honestly think this would the best sequence of actions to take , murder a devil bee nascent , preferably old devil and if not then atleast one the early nascents maybe even both if things go great . Then do the jingshen invasion to make jiao self suistanable and we would have a allied nascent soul available wich would be massive anyway in keeping the doomclock of jingshen having 3 nascents abit useless honestly thanks to that?

 

[ReaderOfFate]

- Killing off a bunch of Cannibals, and rescuing people from them, is easily justifiable. It is literally making the world a better place.
- Overcoming the Jingshen and depriving them or their resources is plenty justifiable. They've been actively trying to end us for a very long time, and are doing so currently.
- Wiping out a bunch of Devil Bees and taking their stuff is, again, easy to justify. This, too, is making the world a better place.

Once we start going on a war to conquer the Virtuous Flipper Region in general, though? That's just us spreading misery and death because we want more stuff. That's... kind of evil, don't you think?

Click to shrink...

Sirrocco, have you forgotten about what the Righteous Powers have done?

It's been a while, since I brought these arguments up, so that's reasonable, actually. I'll just talk about them again, then.

In order:
1. The Righteous Powers gathered in an alliance to wipe out the Golden Devils. Complete, and utter extermination. If Grand Elder Komnenos didn't sacrifice his life in order to let some of the GDs escape, they would even have succeeded.

(I'll note that Strength Purity sent their Late Nascent over on this expedition, which is why I'm a bit annoyed at everyone extolling their greatness. Apparently the Devils had a lot of good loot, so no one wanted to miss out on the stomping.)

Am I saying that we should do the same to them? Hell no, that's horrible. It's more as motive to conquer their territories, and give them the same treatment as we currently give our vassals (which I'll note is the max-happiness/most hands off option, other than for the mortals where we have literal arrays powered just for their benefit— we run those at a net loss, by the way, unlike every other power in the region who at best leaves mortals alone entirely. That, on the other hand, was something which was only in Discord, so I definitely don't blame you for not knowing that.)

2. So, you'd think that after the Righteous Powers conquered our territories and such, there'd still be a significant part of the populace that still has the Bronze Blood, yeah, just through dispersion?

Interestingly enough, very few people in our former territories still have the Blood of Bronze. I'll also note that killing individuals who possess the blood grants karmic luck, which is exceedingly difficult to get your hands on elsewhere, and well, uh. I think you can draw the rest of the conclusion from there.

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

I'm not saying we should do the same in response, because that would be remarkably dumb and horrible besides. But it is definitely something that should be weighed in the scales before calling us evil for conquering them, I think.

EDIT:
More bits:

Occipitallobe — 04/30/2021

It really depends on the Righteous Sect as to whether it
'Turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansing or using magic on mortals'.
Though there were no explicit campaigns, just... not noticing when the Blood of Bronze mortals were killed to boost someone's luck.

TL;DR: Not always literal ethnic cleansing, sometimes it was just turning a blind eye to others taking advantage, for some it was the use of bloodline-destroying magics.

3. I sort of already brought this up at 1, so, my bad. I'm mixing things up a whole lot.

But, you know how, proportion-wise mortals make up 99% of all of these groups? So, our treatment of mortals compared to their treatment of mortals matters a whole lot in terms of the relative morality of all of this.

Even for the better groups, the situation the mortals are in is that they're protected from spirit beasts and such and are generally left alone. For the worse groups among the Righteous Powers, they're basically second-class, and people often look away when a cultivator kills them.

Remember that whole thing with Old Fish, that the death of thirty-million mortals wasn't that big of a deal in terms of net loss so he let it slide? He's right, it actually wasn't that much in terms of net loss in terms of his clan's power, IIRC Occi said that we could straight up lose 90% of the mortals we have and we'd still be mostly fine. They spring up relatively quickly, and mortals don't really benefit cultivators as much as you'd think. However, if you are one of those mortals, you might (rather understandably) have a different perspective on the matter.

Occipitallobe — 05/21/2021

Mortals are to some degree necessary. They mine Spirit Stones, grow food, provide new cultivators, etc.
For the Clan we probably have somewhere between 20-40% too many.
in the sense they don't pay for themselves(edited)
you could probably get by without ~90% of the mortal population to be entirely honest

More stuff:

Occipitallobe — 05/09/2021

More notably the Clan does this and it's an explicit weakness for them. [In response to a question about improving the lives of mortals]
They spend a lot of Qi on arrays that keep mortals safer than they really need to be to extract maximum value, superior farms, higher populations than they strictly need.


That's why it's actually a pretty big deal that the Golden Devils maintain mortals at a net loss. Spending spirit stones on arrays for sanitation for their cities, on arrays of boosting farm productivity, these are only things that mortals will appreciate and honestly don't benefit the Clan as a whole very much. We do it nonetheless due to our ideals, but that's all.

In other words, I'm saying that after conquering the Virtuous Flipper region, the vast majority of people (mortals) would honestly be much better off than they previously were.

 

[TehChron]

Did this post have any purpose other than to provoke other people?

It seems kind of provocative.

Click to shrink...

I didnt quote anyone when making that general observation

That you feel provoked by it is interesting though.

 

[Sirrocco]

Gathering more power and more people so that more ships make it to the destination sounds a hell of a lot more feasible to me than "contact this one faction that might not be around in a century, hope that they know how to talk to sea monsters, hope that we can unilaterally convince all sea monsters to not eat ships".

Frankly, it sounds to me like you just want to play as Strength Purity. Totally righteous, very honorable, very morally good, etc. except we're not Strength Purity. Once the blood path is wiped out the Righteous Powers will turn on us to harvest our bodies. Want to stop them? That means getting strong enough to fight them all at once. I guess in theory we could have nothing but defensive wars where we wait for someone to attack us so that we can hit back… but again, only Righteous factions have to do that. The upside of being Demonic is that we can break the rules whenever we want. Playing it nice in the hopes that Heaven will confer blessings upon us will get us killed eventually.

Also, if the Chuan Clan can convince the sea monsters to not kill people, why haven't they done that already? Probably because they can't.

Edit:
A in a more petty sense… yes, I do think conquest is fun. Our people are well acquainted with war, a little bit of offensive bloodshed won't taint their precious little hearts. I don't want a "and then the Devils sat in place for two thousand years trying to think of how to solve the problem without hurting anyone" ending, both because that doesn't suit them as a faction and because that's boring.

Click to shrink...

I do not want to play Strength Purity. If I wanted to play Strength Purity, it would be easy. All we have to do for that is actually be willing to go Righteous. That would make everything easier... for a while. I don't want to make that moral compromise, however. I don't want to abandon our people. I don't want to abandon our principles. I don't want to give up on the dream of reforming the unjust heavens.

Of course, as the Altar Lord's issues have demonstrated, once you make enough severe moral compromises in your quest for power, you wind up worshipping the weapons rather than the goal. If we do somehow manage to fully conquer the dead turtle, by the time we're done, we wont' be fit to reform the heavens anyway. Having our change to the world be "the brutal overlords of the dying sea now have oddly colored skin" doesn't really appeal to me.

You take it as a matter of faith that the Righteous Path will necessarily turn on us with bloody intent once the Blood Path is done. Why? Because Altar Lord said it, and you believe it, and that settles it? The man has all sorts of reasons to convince himself that that is true, and we already know that Nascents are influenced heavily by their Dao. It is very important to him that his horrible moral sacrifices can somehow be made to have been correct and worthwhile. In the meantime, we've seen all sorts of evidence that the Righteous Path isn't nearly that unified. If, once the Blood Path goes down, we're not an active expansionist threat, then they're going to have to think if it's worth it. "harvesting our bodies" might give them some benefits, but the desert is brutal to fight in, especially if you don't have experience in it, or a good source of spirit stones. The Golden Devils are a heavily defense-specced group, and it shows. Whoever comes after us will do so only at great cost to themselves, and then they'll have to think about who actually gets the benefit of it. Given a choice between remaining peaceful with the Devils (and getting some benefits in trade) or attacking us, taking heavy losses, and then gaining nothing as some other Righteous Path politics their way into the lion's share fo the rewards? They're going to choose the first every time. That won't stop all of them, but it'll stop a lot of them - perhaps most of them, if we can maintain our diplomacy focus. That, then, can take the invading army down to the level that we can just have collapse in the desert sands as our walls hold... ad we have Manuel, which means that our ability to find and exploit fractures between our enemies is pretty good.

Similarly, "Just send out boats" is a terrible idea. Our goal should not be "get a few desperate Golden Devils into some other sea, so as to preserve the bloodline" or something. It should be to move to another sea and bring the clan along. As far as I'm concerned, if we lose 98% of our people in the crossing, that's a loss whether we started with 1 thousand cultivators or 100 million. I straight-up don't want to sacrifice the vast majority of our clan, regardless of what would come of it. Our last Spirit Severing elder stayed behind to protect the clan for a reason. Instead? Yeah. We try diplomacy with the sea monsters. Might not work? Sure - but it also won't necessarily take all that long. We're already planning on fighting the Bee-riders, and that's at least a bit of an in with Old Fish. We get some more diplomacy, we get in to talk with him, we find out what it'll take to get an audience with the sea monsters (and how they're likely to react), we go down and talk with them... all told, the entire process probably doesn't take more than about a century. Maybe somewhat longer if the answer is "well, go do this for us, and then come back". Now, maybe it wont' work. Maybe it will... but if it doesn't work, it still wont' have costed us a whole lot. In the meantime, we can be pursuing other pans, too. Better than throwing all of our people out in boats, to their near-guaranteed death.

I have no particular joy in conquest. I do want the moral high ground. I think that conflating "isn't actively conquering everyone" with "sits in place doing nothing" suggests that you really aren't trying very hard to come up with alternative paths of advancement... given that we've already been told about one victory condition that doesn't require us to expand our lands at all. I think that, given the faction that we are now, wars of aggression against factions who've done us no harm are are least as ill-suited to us as just sitting there.

Anyway, what is your real concern here? You're the one insisting that the Righteous Path is going to come mob rush us. If they try to wipe us out like that, then of course we need to go conquer them, just to prevent them from trying to do it again... and in that case, having them spend their lives and treasure assaulting the desert sands (and giving us an amazingly high-quality CB) is pretty much as ideal an opener to hostilities as we could hope for. I mean... we're really ill-suited to an offensive war. Really. We pushed the defensive spec about as hard as we could in chargen. We beat the Cannibals because they pretty much had to come out after us after they ate all of their own lands. We're considering going after the Jingshen only because the Jingshen are actually really bad at this. Our abilities on the offense are honestly kind of terrible. "Only eat other factions if they're attacking us" isn't just a moral high ground thing. It's a critical part of our only generally viable strategy.

 

[JanusIIV]

Bandits and Bandit Accessories
Heavenly Bandit Kingdoms, Year 218​

"Alright, you primitive screwheads, listen up," I said, holding my arm out. The muscles of my arm gleamed brightly under the harsh sunlight. "This is Reflected Purities."

I flexed with a slight creaking sound, and stabbed my fingers into a nearby boulder, then hauled it overhead. The crowd of men and women sat on the sandy soil in front of me, staring with rapt attention as I hefted a rock the size of my body over my head. I tensed my arms and shoulders, the muscles jumping and earning a few admiring glances, and twisted my fingers in opposite directions to secure my grip.

"To a Jingshen, this is probably the heights of bodily perfection," I said, trying to recall Remus' lecture on the technique. "Stronger. Tougher. Heavier. That makes you slower, and a lot of people think you have less stamina, but that's just because it takes you longer to get places. But despite what people think, being slower is a trick."

I bent my arms, balancing the rock on my head, so I could point at the crowd with one hand. "See, you know what makes you move fast?" I asked. I gave them a half second to think about it, then pointed at my own legs. "Your leg strength. And you know what this technique increases?"

I grabbed the boulder again with both arms, crouching and flinging it straight into the air. The crowd screamed, our would-be bandits scattering as the massive rock reached the peak and started to plummet.

"That's right," I said, crouching. "Your leg strength."

I crouched and kicked off the ground with moderate force, crunching the soil noisily as I surged upwards. I reared my arm back behind me, swinging my knee up, and hammered the rock with my elbow against the anvil of my knee. It shattered down the middle, pulverized to dust under the force, and rocketed the larger pieces off to the sides.

I landed calmly on the ground, resting my hands on my hips as I watched the still panicking bandits mill about in terror. A few rock fragments landed noisily around us, drawing their attention back to me and the now clear sky above us, my face the perfect portrait of peace.

Yes, I practiced that. I got offered the chance to gather a group of assorted ruffians, thugs, and other scruffy street roamers, and try to turn them into something functional. It was fantastic. It was one of the things I'd wanted ever since I was old enough to command respect and, if it wasn't for my induction into the Legions, probably what I'd be doing with the rest of my life. There was literally no way I was going to let myself make a bad impression, and if it meant owing Aelia a few casual favours, two hogsheads of beer, three Brightback Boars, and a massage at some point in the future then damn it, I was just in debt.

"There are no downsides to this technique. Not at your level. Not until you're well and truly beyond the point of needing to rely on it, and we're a long way from that."

The braver of the prospects regrouped in front of me, glancing at each other nervously, as I finished extolling the virtues of the technique and the peerless - or so they tell me - stature of the Blood of Bronze. "Any questions?"

One of the bandits, a scar-faced woman with an eyepatch she'd flipped up to reveal a functional eye of a different colour. "Yeah, I got one for you," she said. "What's that got to do with us?"

I opened my mouth - and closed it.

I frowned, thinking about it.

I put my hand on my chin, serious as a naked knife.

'...shit, they don't have the Blood,' I groaned mentally. 'How the hell am I supposed to teach these bastards?'

I could see Remus' smug grin, his honeyed words of how simple a mission this would be and how good a fit I was for it.

Foundation Building or not, I was gonna punch that guy in the goddamn mouth when I saw him, swear on Old Gold.

==============================​

A short scribble for the mission, because it's a fun idea for Janus. A tournament arc was too, but not at QC1 with no time to build up to it.

 

[Sirrocco]

That's why it's actually a pretty big deal that the Golden Devils maintain mortals at a net loss. Spending spirit stones on arrays for sanitation for their cities, on arrays of boosting farm productivity, these are only things that mortals will appreciate and honestly don't benefit the Clan as a whole very much. We do it nonetheless due to our ideals, but that's all.

In other words, I'm saying that after conquering the Virtuous Flipper region, the vast majority of people (mortals) would honestly be much better off than they previously were.

Click to shrink...

Okay. That's a fair point... and if we had a significant power advantage over the enire rest of the region, I'd consider that a reasonable CB. Of course, at that point, the actual fighting and dying that it would involve wouldn't be all that terrible... but that hasn't been the argument that's been made, that hasn't been the reason that was being pursued, and I don't think that's the intended timetable of the war party, here. If instead we turn it into a ruthless, anything-goes slog where we, say, try to win by backstabbing the righteous powers at just the right moment so that the cannibals can brutalize them allowing us to wipe out the cannibals in turn... that rather changes the overall moral calculus, yes?

 

[TehChron]

You take it as a matter of faith that the Righteous Path will necessarily turn on us with bloody intent once the Blood Path is done

Click to shrink...

...Because they literally have?

It's what drove us into the desert in the first place

 

[Tekomandor]

I didnt quote anyone when making that general observation

That you feel provoked by it is interesting though.

Click to shrink...

stop
This post is a violation of Rule Four: Don't Be Disruptive. Due to TehChron's previous infraction on similar lines in this thread, he has been issued a 25 point infraction and a three day threadban.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Foundation Building or not, I was gonna punch that guy in the goddamn mouth when I saw him, swear on Old Gold.

Click to shrink...

I mean, you can break your fingers however you want.

 

[Shaper47]

You take it as a matter of faith that the Righteous Path will necessarily turn on us with bloody intent once the Blood Path is done.

Click to shrink...

This,

...Because they literally have?

It's what drove us into the desert in the first place

Click to shrink...

Frankly the Righteous Path is Hitler and the Golden Devil's are the Jews.

We are the few survivors of the genocide they committed on us because they wanted our wealth and their ideals.

 

[Simon_Jester]

They were absolutely definitely like that centuries or millennia ago.

Whether they're still like that, whether cultural shift changes that, and whether they were nudged into being like that because Heaven's defense mechanisms were impelling them to try to kill us for the crime of being descended from someone who tried to fix Heaven... is a bit less certain to my way of thinking.

Lady Yao is a Nascent Soul leader of a Righteous faction.

She doesn't act like a Nazi Gauleiter.

 

[Shaper47]

Lady Yao is a Nascent Soul leader of a Righteous faction.

She doesn't act like a Nazi Gauleiter

Click to shrink...

The Flood Dragon Gang is the one exception because we saved them big time and got holocausted for it. Besides the Righteous Path hates The Flood Dragon Gang, there's a reason they blatantly keep backstabbing them to try and get them killed.

 

[fictionfan]

The rightous path seems to hate most of their members to some extent. The kind of hate that only happens when people scheme against each other for thousands of years without ever being able to do a final blow to finish things.

Everyone hates the Jingshen because they are greedy pricks. Everyone hates the seven sword palace because there are arrogant pricks. Everyone hates the flood dragons because they are bandits. Don't know about the others.

 

[Kaboomatic]

This,



Frankly the Righteous Path is Hitler and the Golden Devil's are the Jews.

We are the few survivors of the genocide they committed on us because they wanted our wealth and their ideals.

Click to shrink...

Sorry what
This is both incredibly wrong and also hella belittling the holocaust.
Even ignoring the fact that unlike the Jewish, our ancestors were an invading force bent on conquest, we're actively working with/helping the SPS to hold back the NDA.

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

Alright, to inject some fresh air into this salt mine.

1. Heavenly Stars are expected in the upcoming Trials. Big headache there.
Young Bhrigu is up to something since the Sage Bhrigu is hinting at an upcoming confrontation. Besides what we've seen of that arrogant prick means he can't let being defeated go. Aasmi's Pride demands revenge for the humiliation of her defeat. Probably new recruits at Core level. Legate Jin Muyi has a big target on his bushy head for foiling the hunters.

2. Deep Lore utility. Sell to Altar Lord? Weaponise as a memetic weapon? Trigger a tribulation in a prepared location to eat Heaven's strength?

3. Old Cannibal's plans: strike at Yu clan and obliterate them to set up his new sect? Run wild poking at the South and being a distracting pain in the ass?

4. Our Second Elder needs her beat-stick. Manuel's got his cleaver. Our lady of Sacrifice needs a scourge for maximum effect. I hear Gravebronze infused with Nascent owl parts is in vogue.

5. Strength Purity Sect is courting us. Let's court them back. I hear they've got a winsome lass called Scarletglyph who likes the idea of a disicple paired with lovely bronze flesh, maybe she'd personally prefer well seasoned expertise

 

[wrecksalot]

I'm pretty hyped for the Noble Knowledge map post. What kind of stuff do you guys think will be in it?

 

[Shaper47]

we're actively working with/helping the SPS to hold back the NDA.

Click to shrink...

I don't see why the current Golden Devil's being the equivalent of Abraham Gancwajch in collaboration with genocidal enthusiasts changes the Righteous Path's past and current ideological and political commitment to genocide.

 

[wrecksalot]

I know most of Noble Knowledge's stuff will be various poison or divination things, but if past map threadmarks have been any indication, they probably have a few vassals that play against theme. Maybe Wood aspected Cultivators who have secret techniques to navigate the Maze, or perhaps some poor righteous people holed up in their bunker palace ever since the Maze enveloped them, now having learned to subsist underground.

 

[jjffjhjf]

This,



Frankly the Righteous Path is Hitler and the Golden Devil's are the Jews.

We are the few survivors of the genocide they committed on us because they wanted our wealth and their ideals.

Click to shrink...

So I don't know if the recent dream sequence we got was direct history or not. But it certainly seems to suggest we were the naxi-esque ones back then. So just... Maybe don't assume things about folks right away?