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

[occipitallobe]

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[Katana1515]

Ancient Blood Devil sure is a bad ass name for a dude we call Old Cannibal, wonder what they call Old Gold.

Click to shrink...

I imagine whatever nickname they use, their going to invent some new ones after this next turn wraps up!

 

[No7sHere]

What's particularly shocking is that apparently the rightious sects only have access to 8 Nascent souls.

 

[adamashield]

While far more important things are talked. And a lot of info shared. And because I am tired.
What got me was the description of the best FE (npc) diplomat that we have. That is really favored from his previous and new contributions.
Have a office compared to centurion that second builder and the brotherhood creates for every single centurion that are under. (If they are allowed to do so. Like in the previous omake).

Because that would mean that they are acting reasonable. That part got me suprised. And I write these guys.

So they need to go even further beyond. Get even fancier rooms for their superiors. Become even better minions. Learn even better skills that one need as subordinates.

Just one more thing. Spirit stones for decoration? Jades instead of art and short resumes (with multiple bigger copies of the same relatories)? This much money would make some of the brothers physically ill. And I not Joking here. They only 'waste' that much if they must or for the youngers brothers.

 

[Katana1515]

We are ten Nascent powers against what is in truth six, and perhaps eight in terms of strength.

Click to shrink...

What's particularly shocking is that apparently the rightious sects only have access to 8 Nascent souls.

Click to shrink...

I could be wrong, but I think thats '8 Sects with access to 1+ Nascent Soul Cultivators' not 8 Nascent Souls.

 

[No7sHere]

Fair enough, I misread that.

 

[no.]

This is fantastic, truly.

I've changed my mind on economic policy after conquering the Jingshen. The Righteous Powers want to sacrifice efficiency for centralization? Let's punish that mistake, by skyrocketing the prices of stones and pulling out of any war contributions. Let them starve while Old Cannibal eats. Ensure a breakdown of the system, faster than would be possible before.

Then, once they are sufficiently weak, lower the prices to a fraction of what they were, so that they can make a huge comeback. Make the war apocalyptic in cost, so that no one to the north will be strong enough to face us once we finish revving up our hegemonic economy.

 

[Luxon]

Thoughts
Well everyone can see our invasion of Jingshen coming now.

They invite a demonic faction to their meetings.
1st meeting we're present they announce some righteous factions who don't contribute will be left to fight their own wars.
They set terms that everyone knows factions like Jingshen cannot agree to.
I mean even if we weren't planning an invasion before we would have to be tempted just after hearing that we won't get hit by a coalition in response.

SPS have to know that. Junjie has been yelling about how he's afraid of being invaded by us since before the Blood Cannibals got kicked out of the desert.

"We will be making it known publicly to all and sundry that any powers not part of the Pact will not have the protection of the Wei Princess even if Late Nascent Souls such as Sun Dixiang seek your destruction."

Click to shrink...

Yeah, this statement is going out when we invade the Jingshen.
So they're almost certainly using us as an example to make the rest of the Righteous path fall in line.
Especially as no one would believe them if we invaded now and they declared they never saw it coming.

Which I mean is pretty good. We benefit from more land.
They get to make a statement without causing the deaths of millions of mortals. Or sacrificing someone to the blood path.
They probably will look after the cultivators we sent.
And hopefully the rest of the Righteous powers start to fall in line after they see the first person cut off from the Wei Princess get invaded straight off the bat.

More likely because so far the Righteous side have been rather terrible, they refuse to unite and SPS faces significant blowback.
But in that case it pushes them into the same corner that we've been sitting in.
Righteous but not of the Righteous Path, and we probably end up even closer aligned with them.

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

Thoughts
Well everyone can see our invasion of Jingshen coming now.

They get to make a statement without causing the deaths of millions of mortals. Or sacrificing someone to the blood path.
They probably will look after the cultivators we sent.
And hopefully the rest of the Righteous powers start to fall in line after they see the first person cut off from the Wei Princess get invaded straight off the bat.

More likely because so far the Righteous side have been rather terrible, they refuse to unite and SPS faces significant blowback.
But in that case it pushes them into the same corner that we've been sitting in.
Righteous but not of the Righteous Path, and we probably end up even closer aligned with them.

Click to shrink...

They're actually sacrificing two Nascents who would never risk themselves for the Righteous Path. There's an incredible amount of trust in us that we won't cast aside our honor in victory and descend into atrocities

 

[Lampshade]

And hopefully the rest of the Righteous powers start to fall in line after they see the first person cut off from the Wei Princess get invaded straight off the bat.

Click to shrink...

RP falling in line quickly is not awesome for us. We would prefer if they were in shambles while we settle accounts with Cannibal and when we invade them afterwards.

- He can sue for peace. (not likely to get him much)

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Do we really have to siege the Spirit Palace and dig Junjie out if we fail to assassinate him? Nascent Souls don't grow on trees and we've seen with Yao and Cannibal that you can always rebuild so long as you're alive. If we cut off the Underworld Spirit Palace and subdue the rest quickly, we can ping the SPS with an offer to house more refugees south, lower the rates on stones and Junjie + direct descendants + half of their hard cash get hauled off to make their place in the new world order of the plains.

Our objective here is to remove a dagger from our back, letting Junjie leave is even better than killing him, since SPS owes us for feeding the war machine and we don't risk that he blows everything up to spite us.

Of course, we'll have to see how we roll on the hit and whether he's actually willing to leave, but it doesn't sound completely out of the question to me.

 

[Katana1515]

They're actually sacrificing two Nascents who would never risk themselves for the Righteous Path. There's an incredible amount of trust in us that we won't cast aside our honor in victory and descend into atrocities

Click to shrink...

I mean, if you want to descend properly into paranoia.

Perhaps we are the fall guys?

Yes, SPS puts Jingshen in a vulnerable position, well aware of our intensifying feud with them.

We do the natural thing and take advantage. Maybe SPS is predicting something less dramatic from us than a full throated invasion, as thats pretty unusual for the Clan, but more raids and hostile nascent actions at a minimum. They might not now about our new Nascent or the Muyi Spear after all. They might be anticipating a drawn out conflict.

Either way, if we humiliate and pressure Jingshen, the Merchant Clan might have a great turn around in a turn or two. They publically kowtow to the Wei Princess, who then gets to come out of the plains, put the vile Devils back in their place and use that victory to convince other reluctant RP powers to fall into line?

 

[GlassOlive]

Is it possible for us to delay the war a couple years so the Jingshen have refused the pact before we attack? I don't want to jump the gun and start while they're potentially still under a mutual defense pact.

 

[Sirrocco]

Not necessarily that bad. I'm not sure Dao damage is an actual thing at the Nascent level, they're much more flexible than Core. The Princesses and Princes are present with him within his fortress, his favorite descendants. The Underworld Spirit Palace has 1/2-2/3 of all of Jingshen's wealth, with an absolute majority of the Nascent-level spirit stones.

Jingshen's clan and reputation will be crushed, yes. The loss of True Son Peak and Heavenly Beauty Palace will hurt the most. However. If he can stand the humiliation and loss, hunkering down in the USP is his best option. Stay there. Use the best stones to rise to Late, to boost Jiao to Mid. Wait until the war up north is finished even if it takes a couple hundred years, or wait for RP to come calling for the other half of their usual stone trade. And then rebuild.

Sitting in the USP is not a lose plan. It's a boring humiliation, but he and his daughter and all the rest of his kids that hit Foundation will be safe. He can wait.

Click to shrink...

We know that we were able to do damage to his daughter's cultivation by making it harder for her to trust. Similarly, the light trap would have done some Bad Bad Things to Manuel if he'd tried to investigate it with Heaven's Shadow. Dao damage is totally a thign for Nascent Souls.

"Spirit Stones paid into one treasury" isn't really plausible for the Jingshen. The Golden Devils would take a massive chunk of extra tariffs and they'd be incredibly impoverished from it.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if that's by design....

So Strength Purity is making a power grab.

Not surprising given the other Righteous Path Powers weakness

Click to shrink...

First of all, it's not surprising because they simply cannot afford to let things be run as they have been any longer. Second, by rebuilding the coalition in such a way that the Jingshen are not in it, the SPS is doing us a tremendous favor on the eve of our battle with them.

They are trying very hard indeed to be our friend, and we should let them.

woulod that mean they are free to go bloodpath?

Click to shrink...

Technically they could, but why would they? The point of going Blood Path is that it lets you power up off of human resources, rather than things like spirit stones. They're really short on human resources. Spirit stones they have in abundance.

Is it possible for us to delay the war a couple years so the Jingshen have refused the pact before we attack? I don't want to jump the gun and start while they're potentially still under a mutual defense pact.

Click to shrink...

It's been pointed out that the Jingshen fundamentally cannot afford to just hand us the amount of spirit stones that we'd get for them shipping their treasury to SPS. "Jingshen join the pact" is a dead issue.

 

[Ct613hulu]

They're actually sacrificing two Nascents who would never risk themselves for the Righteous Path. There's an incredible amount of trust in us that we won't cast aside our honor in victory and descend into atrocities

Click to shrink...

A successful Golden Devil conquest of the Jingshen may not necessarily end in the death of the two Jingshen Nascent Souls. The history of past Nascent Soul combat and common reliance on Life-Saving Treasures indicates that it is far easier to place a Nascent Soul in a position where they cannot achieve victory and must flee to survive than it is to outright kill them.

It is quite probable that one of Jinghsen's current Nascent Souls or a new Nascent Soul who was elevated at the last minute will decide to flee out of a desire for personal survival or hope for a long-term reversal from exile once a Golden Devil victory becomes certain. We can assume that any Righteous Path faction would love to boost their power by giving a fleeing Jingshen Nascent Soul shelter in exchange for service. I don't believe there is any pressing reason for a Jinghsen Nascent Soul refugee to reject such a trade. This would be a mirror to how the Golden Devils took in Yao after the destruction of her Bandit Sect.

The end result of the Golden Devil conquest of the Jingshen could easily end up helping the Righteous Pact as the desperate Jinghsen refugees fleeing the Desert can be freely exploited by the Pact leadership without concern over reprisal from their home faction or conflicting loyalties. This could end up as anything from completely insignificant to a massive boon depending on the how many high-level Jingshen cultivators are able to escape or allowed to go into exile in the final peace negotiations. The addition to the Righteous Pact of a few elite Core Cultivators or even a Nascent Soul who must totally depend on this new alliance for resources and direction could have some serious implications for its future as an independent force that transcends traditional Sect or Clan loyalties.

 

[Katana1515]

It's been pointed out that the Jingshen fundamentally cannot afford to just hand us the amount of spirit stones that we'd get for them shipping their treasury to SPS. "Jingshen join the pact" is a dead issue.

Click to shrink...

I think what Olive is saying is that if Jingshen hasn't given a formal answer before we invade (even if realistically everyone knows what it will be) then technically they might be able to demand support under the terms of their original deals with the RP. I think it was the Oasis informational that pointed out they had negotiated guarantees of SPS aid in case of GD invasion before.

Either way, I don't think its a huge concern. Manuel is going to get this information pretty early on, and we can trust the old monster to put it to best use.

 

[Lampshade]

It is quite probable that one of Jinghsen's current Nascent Souls or a new Nascent Soul who was elevated at the last minute will decide to flee out of a desire for personal survival or hope for a long-term reversal from exile over a desire for immediate victory once the Golden Devil victory becomes certain.

Click to shrink...

*Ulysses Klaue has entered the chat.*
*Ramsay Bolton has entered the chat.*

 

[Sirrocco]

So... what does this all mean?

- The Righteous Powers are on the back foot, in a pretty big way, and that's not going to be fixing itself quickly. We don't actually know how bad it's going to be for them, because we don't know who is and who is not going to sign up for this thing, but we really don't need to put in any extra effort to make the Righteous Powers fail. At this point, the only thing that should be holding us back from making contributions to the SPS is if we don't want to spend the resources and/or commit/risk the troops.

- The Seven Divine Saber Sect has just taken a brutal blow, and Lod Cannibal is certainly not above kicking them while they're down. They... might still exist as a meaningful entity 40 years from now? I wouldn't bet on it with money I couldn't afford to lose. Regardless, they've taken a huge amount of damage to their ability to express their disapproval of us in any sort of meaningful way. That leaves us with no particularly influential Righteous Powers that hate us personally, which combos really very well with having an observer on the council and continued efforts to build goodwill.

- Let's suppose we go for the plan where we conquer enough of the Jingshen that we can just bottle up the rest, and then allow a peace treaty that gives free passage to the survivors that want it over to the Righteous lands to the west. That's probably going to beef the Righteous types up a bit, but not as much as you might think. The Jingshen have been living in their mines for Nascent generations, and Old Jingshen's Dao is something about Patriarchy. Breaking his dominion and sending him elsewhere would be like sending Old Fish to the desert. He'll still be a Nascent, and he'll still be pertinent, but he'll be much reduced. I suspect that we can pull it off without having to siege the Underworld Palace if we can give them the choice of "sit in your hole and rot forever without any of the things you can get from trade" vs "leave for the lusher coastal areas of the Righteous Powers, taking your treasury with you". That'll let them use those spirit stones as something of a dowry, and give a significant shot in the arm to the Righteous Powers... which is good, because if they don't get something like that, I suspect they're going to kind of collapse. In any case, it gives us the desert, free and clear. It means that the Jingshen are out there hating us, but the associated CB is not going to be amazing, and we're going to keep on demonstrating that attempting to siege the Golden Devils is a bad plan, while being able to make diplomatic moves of our own. They're not going to want to mobilize against the blatant meatgrinder that is the Golden Devils while said devils are the only thing keeping them from destruction at the hands of the Blood Path.

- Here's the fun part. The Sorrowful Blacksmiths? The SPS only needs them for their part in keeping the Scorpion Road open... and they're kind of pissed about how little the Blacksmiths have been contributing. "The Sorrowful Blacksmiths are members in name only, and speak of protecting their mountains." So... if the Sorrowful Blacksmiths don't shape up, and the Golden Devils already own the entire desert and the Scorpion Road then what good are the Blacksmiths, exactly? This is the sort of situation that makes it plausible that we get those lands back... while still being on good terms with the other Righteous Powers.

Still... it's more complicated than that, because of course it is. In particular, SPS sees us growing, and we've hit a pivot where they can't afford to let us not grow. The lands and stones that we can take from the Jingshen are going to do amazing things for our money situation, our cultivators, and our population numbers, while solidly anchoring our rear. Oh, and it'll also do some pretty shiny stuff for our power ratios with our allied sects. By the time Old Cannibal comes after us, we're going to be well and truly entrenched with those advantages, too. SPS is consolidating power mostly because they cannot afford to not be the most powerful non-Blood Path in the region. It's their whole schtick. With a shared treasury, and a shared missions board, suddenly it becomes much, much harder for any of the groups that join to back out. Not impossible - they're in the part of the world where you can actually cultivate with the qi around you, rather than the part where losing your treasury means starving - but they'll basically be able to wield the lot of them, which means that they'll still be stronger than us when we come to chat next. That's okay, though. They won't be enough stronger that they can actually afford to attack, and they'll still have Noble Knowledge and two Late Stage Nascent Blood Path to deal with.

 

[Insane-Not-Crazy]

A successful Golden Devil conquest of the Jingshen may not necessarily end in the death of the two Jingshen Nascent Souls. The history of past Nascent Soul combat and common reliance on Life-Saving Treasures indicates that it is far easier to place a Nascent Soul in a position where they cannot achieve victory and must flee to survive than it is to outright kill them.

Click to shrink...

A Jingshen without their mines is a non entity. They might beg to join another force but they would never be their own power which works out for both us and SPS. I don't see the pride and Dao of Junjie letting him abandon all that he has built easily. If he leaves, it's because he has absolutely nowhere else to retreat

 

[Katana1515]

Just hashing this out on the discord and I thought I would share my summary of SPS's current offer to its allies. Feel free to @ me if I missed anything or get something wrong

So looking at the proposal again. It basically boils down to this.

•'One Banner': I'm reading this as ceding all military control to SPS.
• All Contribution Points come from SPS
• All wealth must be sent to SPS for 'safekeeping'
• 'Impartial' SPS elders decide all forms of remuneration. They set parameters and rewards for all missions.
• Death or ruin for anyone who holds back wealth or orders their own disciples to do anything other than what SPS wants

I think I am fair in calling this pretty much subjugation? It goes way beyond even a master and vassal relationship.

I think we might see a reasonable number of sects choose to take their chances or try and negotiate with the NDA for peace deals in return for tribute before signing on to this.

Its worth noting the Elder dropping the message didn't even try and soften her pitch with the 'only during the current crisis' line beloved by strongmen and dictators everywhen. Probably because its evident to anyone with eyes that while the Altar Sect might be about to go into hibernation, both Old Cannibal and the new Suped Up Noble Knowledge Sect are going to be long term problems.

And thats before we wipe out Jingshen and give them a convenient 3rd 'terrible evil' to rally with the troops with.

Edit: Changed the 4th bullet point in line with @Sirrocco suggestion.

 

[Ct613hulu]

A Jingshen without their mines is a non entity. They might beg to join another force but they would never be their own power which works out for both us and SPS. I don't see the pride and Dao of Junjie letting him abandon all that he has built easily. If he leaves, it's because he has absolutely nowhere else to retreat

Click to shrink...

That is exactly my point. If we place Junjie in a position where he must either die or abandon his life's work by fleeing he could easily choose to prioritize life and the hope of an eventual come back over the certainly of failure with his death.

We should also remember that any Nascent Soul is a uniquely valuable resource that is essentially impossible to reliably produce. It shouldn't be that difficult for them to leverage the desire for their service to begin reestablishing the Jingshen Clan or start turning some factions of the Righteous Path against the Golden Devils.

 

[no.]

So... what does this all mean?

- The Righteous Powers are on the back foot, in a pretty big way, and that's not going to be fixing itself quickly. We don't actually know how bad it's going to be for them, because we don't know who is and who is not going to sign up for this thing, but we really don't need to put in any extra effort to make the Righteous Powers fail. At this point, the only thing that should be holding us back from making contributions to the SPS is if we don't want to spend the resources and/or commit/risk the troops.

- The Seven Divine Saber Sect has just taken a brutal blow, and Lod Cannibal is certainly not above kicking them while they're down. They... might still exist as a meaningful entity 40 years from now? I wouldn't bet on it with money I couldn't afford to lose. Regardless, they've taken a huge amount of damage to their ability to express their disapproval of us in any sort of meaningful way. That leaves us with no particularly influential Righteous Powers that hate us personally, which combos really very well with having an observer on the council and continued efforts to build goodwill.

- Let's suppose we go for the plan where we conquer enough of the Jingshen that we can just bottle up the rest, and then allow a peace treaty that gives free passage to the survivors that want it over to the Righteous lands to the west. That's probably going to beef the Righteous types up a bit, but not as much as you might think. The Jingshen have been living in their mines for Nascent generations, and Old Jingshen's Dao is something about Patriarchy. Breaking his dominion and sending him elsewhere would be like sending Old Fish to the desert. He'll still be a Nascent, and he'll still be pertinent, but he'll be much reduced. I suspect that we can pull it off without having to siege the Underworld Palace if we can give them the choice of "sit in your hole and rot forever without any of the things you can get from trade" vs "leave for the lusher coastal areas of the Righteous Powers, taking your treasury with you". That'll let them use those spirit stones as something of a dowry, and give a significant shot in the arm to the Righteous Powers... which is good, because if they don't get something like that, I suspect they're going to kind of collapse. In any case, it gives us the desert, free and clear. It means that the Jingshen are out there hating us, but the associated CB is not going to be amazing, and we're going to keep on demonstrating that attempting to siege the Golden Devils is a bad plan, while being able to make diplomatic moves of our own. They're not going to want to mobilize against the blatant meatgrinder that is the Golden Devils while said devils are the only thing keeping them from destruction at the hands of the Blood Path.

- Here's the fun part. The Sorrowful Blacksmiths? The SPS only needs them for their part in keeping the Scorpion Road open... and they're kind of pissed about how little the Blacksmiths have been contributing. "The Sorrowful Blacksmiths are members in name only, and speak of protecting their mountains." So... if the Sorrowful Blacksmiths don't shape up, and the Golden Devils already own the entire desert and the Scorpion Road then what good are the Blacksmiths, exactly? This is the sort of situation that makes it plausible that we get those lands back... while still being on good terms with the other Righteous Powers.

Still... it's more complicated than that, because of course it is. In particular, SPS sees us growing, and we've hit a pivot where they can't afford to let us not grow. The lands and stones that we can take from the Jingshen are going to do amazing things for our money situation, our cultivators, and our population numbers, while solidly anchoring our rear. Oh, and it'll also do some pretty shiny stuff for our power ratios with our allied sects. By the time Old Cannibal comes after us, we're going to be well and truly entrenched with those advantages, too. SPS is consolidating power mostly because they cannot afford to not be the most powerful non-Blood Path in the region. It's their whole schtick. With a shared treasury, and a shared missions board, suddenly it becomes much, much harder for any of the groups that join to back out. Not impossible - they're in the part of the world where you can actually cultivate with the qi around you, rather than the part where losing your treasury means starving - but they'll basically be able to wield the lot of them, which means that they'll still be stronger than us when we come to chat next. That's okay, though. They won't be enough stronger that they can actually afford to attack, and they'll still have Noble Knowledge and two Late Stage Nascent Blood Path to deal with.

Click to shrink...

I don't fully understand how we're supposed to convince Jingshen to just... pick up his Elders and move across the region. Him personally fleeing, I could see, but he's not just gonna give up instantly and move all his dudes. This feels like having our cake and eating it too, where we get rid of them as enemies but also get to fully make use of their resources in a way that gives us good PR. Even if we could pull all this off, we would get more goodwill by just sending our own dudes to help the RP out, assuming we wanted to.

We're going to make the Righteous Powers mad, just less mad than we thought we would. It's still in our best interest to keep things simple and erase the Jingshen as a geopolitical entity. Or, at the very least, reduce them to a vassal the size of the Hong Xuan Clan.

 

[Sirrocco]

•'One Banner': I'm reading this as ceding all military control to SPS.
• All Contribution Points come from SPS
• All wealth must be sent to SPS for 'safekeeping'
• 'Impartial' SPS elders decide all forms of remuneration. How much a mission is worth in rewards or how valuable your sides contribution was.
• Death or ruin for anyone who holds back wealth or orders their own disciples to do anything other than what SPS wants

Click to shrink...

I just want to note here that it's a bit fairer than that. On bullet-point 4, the prices are determined before the missions are taken. "How valuable your side's contribution was" is going to be based on the results of those missions. So... they can skew things (like, decide that weaponcrafting isn't worth as much, thus making the blacksmiths worse off as compared to others) but it's not as bad as waiting until you do your thing and then deciding how much they're going to give you for it. If you go out and do the missions that they want to promote, you'll be repaid accordingly. If you don't, you won't... and SPS prides itself on fairness. This is much more about being able to pretty much decide which tasks are worth doing, and thus being able to wield the membership of other sects like a weapon, than it is about being able to arbitrarily grant advantage to one group or another.

Of course, this means that individual cultivators are effectively "member of the pact" at least as much as they are member of any one sect. They can get resources by performing missions, and get training based on those resources, without ever necessarily having to pay attention to what the technical elders of their own sect want. That might be a pretty good deal for the lower-tier cultivators, especially if their sects were mistreating them. Rather less of one for anyone who wanted to retain a significant degree of autonomy.

 

[Katana1515]

We're going to make the Righteous Powers mad, just less mad than we thought we would. It's still in our best interest to keep things simple and remove the Jingshen as a geopolitical entity. Or, at the very least, reduce them to a vassal the size of the Hong Xuan Clan.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure why we have this urge to 'preserve' the Jingshen like they are some kind of endangered species in need of nature reserves or relocation to alternative habitats. Leaving a significant Jingshen prescence in the desert is just going to make a RP restoration campaign look more attractive down the line.

Its probably tempting fate to start dividing the spoils before the first blow has even been struck, but we need to take and hold every single one of those mines that we can.

Conveniently, the clans core economic model seems pretty damn efficient at suppressing and annexing conquered cultivator populations in the medium to long term. A relic of our Optimatoi's warmongering past perhaps?

 

[Sirrocco]

I don't fully understand how we're supposed to convince Jingshen to just... pick up his Elders and move across the region. Him personally fleeing, I could see, but he's not just gonna give up instantly and move all his dudes. This feels like having our cake and eating it too, where we get rid of them as enemies but also get to fully make use of their resources in a way that gives us good PR. Even if we could pull all this off, we would get more goodwill by just sending our own dudes to help the RP out, assuming we wanted to.

We're going to make the Righteous Powers mad, just less mad than we thought we would. It's still in our best interest to keep things simple and remove the Jingshen as a geopolitical entity. Or, at the very least, reduce them to a vassal the size of the Hong Xuan Clan.

Click to shrink...

I think you may not be understanding what I mean. It's like this.

- We go to war with the Jingshen. It's a slow, grinding, painful thing. It takes a significant number of turns. Good thing the last Trials were so recent. We proceed to do terrible things to any Jingshen Nascent that comes out to face us until they stop doing that.
- Over time, we take just about everything other than the Underworld Spirit Palace, by war, by stealth, by diplomacy, or by some combination. Old Jingshen is left with what is effectively an enormous, wealthy hole in the ground. He's got a ton of spirit stones, but spirit stones are the only resource he can get more of. His dao is injured. He is quite possibly crippled. The only famly he has left is trapped down there with him.

This is the point where we discuss options with the man. His position as-is is pretty untenable. We're growing stronger, he's growing weaker, and he can't get any of the stuff that the Jingshen "spirit stones and merchants" economy is supposed to be based on. His family is getting increasingly miserable for lack of creature comforts, and he can't even have any kids because even if he does impregnate one of the close relatives he has down in the pit with him, the kid will die almost instantly upon being born. The only thing he has to bargain with is that the Golden Devils really, really don't want to fight their way into the Underworld Spirit Palace, through all the traps, while also dealign with Old Jingshen on his home turf.

So that's when we make the deal. We offer to let him go, along with any of his family that he can get to go with him, and probably a pile of spirit stones to ease him on his way. Any who stay, we'll take as vassals. Details will probably vary based on the situation. Anyway, we offer him save passage down the Scorpion Road, and a promise of a warm welcome from the SPS (and they really will welcome them warmly, shortly before putting them to work) on the other side.

For the Jingshen who leave: they get the ability to experience things that aren't the inside of the palace, get to eat things not made of spirit stones, get to have sex with people who aren't their relatives, get to bear children who don't instantly die, and so forth. Also, they don't have to die, or watch yet more of their family die, in war with the Devils. They get to do this setting out with a nice pile of Spirit Stones, and a lot of their family, rather than having to flee in the night with whatever they can carry, and probably leaving a lot of that family to die. Also, saving whoever you can is probably a lot less damaging to the Patriarch Dao than utterly abandoning your family too their fate would be. They do this at the cost of having to give up the last of their lands without that one, final, bitter fight, and probably having to disable a decent number of the automatic defenses on the way out.

For us: We get the war over and the entire desert claimed, and we don't have to do the ugly, ugly assault and tunnel fighting and everything that would be involved in that last assault on the Underworld Spirit Palace. We make the SPS a bit happier (for whatever that's worth). We give the SPS a bit more strength (kind of a mixed bag, there. Depends on how the wars are going at the time). This comes at the cost of adding a few meaningful players to the Pact of the Righteous who will be of necessity contributing, and who have reason to strongly dislike us - a political cost that probably outweighs the political gain of not murdering them all, but is still, I think, manageable. It also has the cost of strengthening the SPS by their numbers. Again, it's a mixed bag. I wouldnt' go for it, except that tryign to take the Underworld Spirit Palace by main force is going to be so very ugly otherwise.

For the SPS: They get a bunch of recruits who, if not willing, at least have a lousy bargaining position. They also have reason to cut us a bit more slack if/when they need to - useful when they're going to be constantly wanting to hire our services. This is pretty much pure win for them.

Alternately... maybe Old Jingshen doesn't survive the opening exchanges of the war. Maybe Manuel can hunt down his daughter and murder her, and then clear out any other Nascents that may have popped up in the meantime. The "Jingshen have no Nascents left" version of this story goes very, very differently.

I'm not sure why we have this urge to 'preserve' the Jingshen like they are some kind of endangered species in need of nature reserves or relocation to alternative habitats. Leaving a significant Jingshen prescence in the desert is just going to make a RP restoration campaign look more attractive down the line.

Its probably tempting fate to start dividing the spoils before the first blow has even been struck, but we need to take and hold every single one of those mines that we can.

Conveniently, the clans core economic model seems pretty damn efficient at suppressing and annexing conquered cultivator populations in the medium to long term. A relic of our Optimatoi's warmongering past perhaps?

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There's a few reasons, really.

- They've got a lot of knowledge in how to exploit spirit stone mines, and a lot of spirit stone miners to do it with. Also, the Jingshen mines are kind of weird in some ways. Keeping a significant number of Jingshen as vassals will help get those mines back up and running a lot quicker, and in this case, time is quite literally money.
- If we accept surrenders and vassalization in some cases rather than having to wipe out every single one of the branch families... well, that could save us a couple of those ugly, ugly sieges. Those things consume time and lives that might be better spent elsewhere.
- The Xi in particular are useful, as they're a bunch of merchants who already know their way around the Righteous Powers. They also weren't particularly well-liked or well-treated. I suspect that we can pull them in to being appropriately loyal vassals with a bit of work (and possibly a "welcome to the Demonic Arts" gambit like we pulled with the Storks) at which point, again, they're really very useful for letting us plug the Jingshen "stones and merchants" economy into our own.
- Unnecessary genocide is a bad look. Honestly, this is probably the least important of the reasons, but it is a bad look.

So, yeah... if we could wipe them all out with one wave of our hand, and replace them with reasonably loyal non-Jingshen trained merchants and miners with another, that would be superior... but that's not on our list of options.

 

[Lampshade]

So... what does this all mean?

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Our dudes are not getting paid. In the future, we need to count the remuneration for our contribution to the battlefield in terms of rep and loot only because direct sponsorship is out of the question now.

I don't fully understand how we're supposed to convince Jingshen to just... pick up his Elders and move across the region.

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"GTFO or die."

"leave for the lusher coastal areas of the Righteous Powers, taking your treasury with you"

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[AlphaDelta]

"Spirit Stones paid into one treasury" isn't really plausible for the Jingshen. The Golden Devils would take a massive chunk of extra tariffs and they'd be incredibly impoverished from it.

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And so, we can now act.

The SPS can and will accept the war donations we send afterwards.

Ancient Blood Devil sure is a bad ass name for a dude we call Old Cannibal, wonder what they call Old Gold.

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"Ancient Golden Devil"