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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.

    If you write a new Good Seed, or write an omake, please update the spreadsheet if you have access.

    If you do not have access, please ping a collaborator (Swordomatic, Alectai, Quest, TehChron, Insane-Not-Crazy, Humbaba, ReaderOfFate, Kaboomatic, no., BungieONI) letting them know what you want and they will update the spreadsheet here. To gain access, you will need a gmail account of some kind. Throwaway emails are fine (I'm using one for the spreadsheet), but to gain access it's as simple as sending me either your email via PM, via DM in Discord, or just in Discord's #spreadsheet-requests channel.

    This is mandatory. If a Good Seed does not record their omake by pinging collabs (or just requesting access and editing things themselves - this is the preferred option), I won't give out awards. If a new Good Seed is not recorded here, they won't advance. By doing this it makes the whole thing manageable for me - it's gotten pretty unwieldy!

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    Omake Writer Instructions:

    There are four fields you need to fill out.

    Omake Link, which is just a link to your first omake for the turn. This makes it easier for me to read them as I do the update - without this it's tough to know off the bat which omake were written this turn, and to properly

    Requested Bonus, which is your requested bonus for your omake. You can leave it up to me if you like. You can see more info in the Good Seed infopost here.

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    All other fields are for QM use to record character information to properly run the flow of the game.
     
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    • The Butcher
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    • Ruined cities, arrays cracked open for beasts to enter, and tens of thousands of mortals eaten like they were nothing but cattle. Weeping Anvil looked down on the ruin of Goldenpath City, one of the largest mining cities within Sorrowful Blacksmith territory. It had been prosperous enough, but mostly yielded various ores for forging and so had been considered a minor target at most for the few Blood Path rebels Bloodhammer had left behind.

    They had been mostly quiet, except when the rebels needed to feed. They'd figure out where Weeping Anvil was, go somewhere else entirely, and slaughter as many people as possible for their Qi before retreating into the mountains.

    Still - even if Bloodhammer were to return he couldn't consume Weeping Anvil, for he had a glorious metal body. A powerful one, too. If he was to fight Bloodhammer in single combat he would simply destroy the other man, despite their equal cultivation. Glaring weaknesses aside, he was one of the strongest Nascent Souls in the Region, a fact that had left him with more bargaining power in the face of the Blood Defiance Federation than they'd expected.

    Goldenpath had been methodically dismantled, rooftops blown off houses as every man, woman and child were somehow taken into the Blood Path maw, their Qi and bodies alike consumed for power. Not a single corpse - or even a scrap of one - remained. Whether the rooftop was thatch or stone, it had been torn off and sat next to its house, and the rest was left alone. Windows went unshattered, yet every wall in the city still stood.

    Yes, Weeping Anvil knew that Bloodhammer was methodical, and his closest disciples would've been the same. He himself believed in the power of emotion, in pouring oneself into the forging. That his anger, his sorrow, and his joys were all as much part of his forging process as they were part of him, and this had made him the second greatest blacksmith in the Region.

    He flew down into Goldenpath City. Surely something here would yield clues. Something to let him track these damnable disciples of Bloodhammer, so that he might win some semblance of a bargaining position with the Blood Defiance Federation. If he could clean his own territory... well. The last talks had demanded he yield his Yang Blade and his Dao-Imbued Hammer, neither of which could be considered serious demands. Without them he'd be half the warrior - and half the blacksmith - he truly was!

    If he could restrain the Blood Path in his own lands, he could join the Federation on equal terms, and then he could push back on the damned Devils. He'd been forced to yield, threatened by the Droplet of Rust and Ruin, a weapon he thought only he knew about. Over the years he'd found and destroyed six partial records on it, and so it being rediscovered by the Golden Devils was terrifying. He doubted they had more than the name, but the name was enough for blackmail. If they released that information, people might start looking at it with more interest, and then eventually start wondering how to make it, and then-

    No, he had to keep the matter quiet. Even if it meant giving up some face and some relics he couldn't access, it was crucial.

    Besides, a little more time and he'd start to sort the matter.

    There was no warning, and suddenly a roiling droplet of brown-and-red came out of nowhere, flying through the air towards him. Out of sheer instinct he dodged upwards, leaping five li in a single desperate bound, but the droplet seemed not to care, and moments later settled within him, his movements grinding to a halt. He tried to move, and found nothing, his joints rusted over, unable to move in the slightest.

    He tried circulating his Qi, trying to clear up rusting meridians and found it possible, but only just. He levitated himself, but as he began to move a cloaked figure walked out in front of him.

    Damn it! He couldn't feel the figure's Qi, couldn't guess who he was. He could barely move!

    His body hidden from sight, the other man moved in close, drawing an ornate sword. Gold in colour with gems set in the hilt, several runes written on the blade as well forming some sort of array. A tap on the blade, and it glowed bright red, and then a blinding white. A hand came down and restrained him with ease. What little motion he could managed was completely restrained, and he couldn't even reach into his Nascent aperture to grab an item. Oh, he could open it, but what little Qi he could muster to move things was smothered by the figure's, and simply throwing out all his forged items would avail him nothing.

    The sword was jammed into his forehead. Despite the blinding heat, it moved less than a hair's depth into him. The figure stretched, and stabbed down again.

    Another hair.

    And another, and another.

    Weeping Anvil thought desperately. This had been well-planned, but there had to be an escape. If only he could gather enough Qi, he could throw out his Spatial Compass, and the motion might set it spinning. If it struck the ground hard enough, it would warp space around him and might teleport him away far enough to get away. As the sword stabbed into his skull for a fourth time, it gouged more deeply, taking chips out of the unfeeling bone. No, this might save him. It was his best chance in any case.

    He felt the Qi come together, and let it loose in one burst, the Compass flying out.

    The figure threw a bag at it of some sort, containing it within yet another space.

    The sword came down again, breaking through his skull. This time the figure leaned in, leaning down even harder. It broke through his skull, white-hot blade impaling his brain.

    One of the advantages of being a Nascent Soul of course is that the brain was only the seat of part of your thought. Being able to separate spirit and body to a small degree meant one could operate independently of the other, so Weeping Anvil was still alive. The blade was withdrawn, and the same process began on his heart.

    A few minutes later, he was quite dead, not nearly mostly.


    Manuel walked away, corpse over his shoulder. One of the problems with Nascent corpses is you couldn't store them in your aperture for the simple reason that they too contained an aperture - and the corpse plus aperture would generally be larger than your own.

    Weeping Anvil had died surprisingly easy. It made a sort of sense - the man had spent a huge amount of effort making himself all but invincible in Mid Nascent Soul, and concentrating all his weaknesses at a single point. That sort of thing worked incredibly well until it didn't all at once. He had set up a number of countermeasures in the city itself, as well as twelve items he would've thought to use to counter Weeping Anvil's known equipment, but the Droplet had been utterly decisive.

    He had gained a Nascent corpse, and one of surpassing quality. The metal body would be worth an immense amount of wealth if it were saleable in any real sense. It wasn't, of course. Nobody knew of this, and nobody would know. He had used none of his weapons, none of his signature techniques, and had ensured that Weeping Anvil's death had come in the middle of a city recently devastated by the Blood Path. Anyone sensible would assume it was an assassination from Old Cannibal or the Altar Lord, not him.

    It took him several weeks to return to the Clan at a crawling pace, moving slowly and with little Qi to ensure he was not noticed as anything more than another trader. When he arrived, he quietly set up a meeting with Destasia, the corpse hidden in a wagon he had taken all the way back to the Dawn Fortress. Powerful cloaking arrays on the inside, wrapping space around itself so that anyone peering in would see only emptiness, and two Qi-draining artifacts he had looted from the Jingshen absorbing the Qi leaking from the corpse.

    Once they were somewhere private, he spoke.

    "Destasia, I want to you to see if you can open Weeping Anvil's Nascent aperture with Kleisthenes. Be careful, but it will be an excellent project for the two of you. Emptying out a Nascent aperture safely will teach you a lot, and I imagine you will have ideas for the corpse. I'm obligated to release any information I give to the Council as a whole to the Yuan, so I'll simply say we managed to discover a massive amount of high-grade metal, and that the finder has been rewarded with as many Contribution Points as they desired. By that time come up with a project or two - I want this done before the Yuan think to question it overmuch."

    Her smile went wide.

    "You're probably the best boss I've ever had, you know old man? Hmmm, puppet, spearpoints, no, shields, ooh! A swarm of metal wasps imbued with arrays so they can strike with the force of a Nascent together! Yes!"

    Manuel raised an eyebrow.

    "Are you sure that would work?"

    She shrugged.

    "Probably not. I don't know how I'd scribe enough arrays onto the wasps. Too fine. Maybe I should just build lightning rods for people challenging the Heavens and then store the Heavenly lightning? I'm sure I could put it into some form of battery and use it to power-"

    Manuel cut her off.

    "Keep this a secret, Destasia. And do come back to me with some ideas."
     
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    • Amusing thing is that just how much we gave to the Yuan in terms of what's seen as 'Don't do this, it's dirtying your Sect/Clan's Prestige' when combined with this is... Well, it feels to me like it's very much selling the impression that we'd learned the Blood Path were going to do something to remove the Blacksmiths as a threat but weren't sure what so just mustered as a precaution... And because we can use that mustering for other purposes that are beneficial. Meanwhile we're also going to the Yuan desperate to ensure we don't get completely cut off because we know actually know how the attack is going to fall on them and can thus prevent it from hurting to the same degree.

    Of course, the best part about this is that it's got more truth in it than even half-truths. And everyone knows that no one tells the whole truth in cases like this so those aren't going to be that strange. Meanwhile the truth is that we'd learned the entire actual plan and decided to be 'Classically Xianxia' about it this time. Which the Golden Devils just don't do. Because that causes them to be seen as an actual serious threat whilst pissing off people that they don't have the usual allies or internal strength to survive. Only we've managed to turn that around. More so in terms of the internal strength and vassals than peer allies, but we've got some that approach that level.
     
    Now that the sorrowful blacksmiths are gone are we going to be able to hold the pass or regain any of our old fortresses?
     
    No giveaway weapons, big cloak, generically ostentatious sword, in a recently-ruined-by-blood-path city. No quips. Only death by mystery assailant.

    And yet probably still a better way to go than if he'd gotten eaten by Blood Path.
     
    A good interlude, with the start pointing to the very real human cost of our actions.

    With Weeping Anvil gone, Bloodhammer will be at least temporarily free to rampage. Our actions have condemned hundreds of thousands more men, women and children to horrific and brutal fates at the hand of the blood path, many of which are unlikely to be quick. To be sure many of them would have been doomed when Old Cannibal attacked anyway, but we shouldn't forget the weight of those lives on Manuel's conscience.

    Also, I love the irony here:
    occipitallobe said:
    He'd been forced to yield, threatened by the Droplet of Rust and Ruin, a weapon he thought only he knew about. Over the years he'd found and destroyed six partial records on it, and so it being rediscovered by the Golden Devils was terrifying. He doubted they had more than the name, but the name was enough for blackmail. If they released that information, people might start looking at it with more interest, and then eventually start wondering how to make it, and then-
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    Destroying evidence, preventing all but one person from knowing, in most cases this might be the best way to keep a secret, but against Manuel specifically it is self-defeating. For Manuel, the less people who know the secret, the easier it is to find.

    Part of what makes Old Gold so formidable: what is good tradecraft against most is actively counterproductive against him.
     
    Aklyon said:
    No giveaway weapons, big cloak, generically ostentatious sword, in a recently-ruined-by-blood-path city. No quips. Only death by mystery assailant.

    And yet probably still a better way to go than if he'd gotten eaten by Blood Path.
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    He died as quickly and painlessly as a near invincible, for his level, man of steel can be expected to. I Xanxia that about the best way to go that you can get.

    Say what you will about Manuel's morales but he is not the type to inflict pain unnecessarily. What he considers necessary in a whole other issue.
     
    No7sHere said:
    Now that the sorrowful blacksmiths are gone are we going to be able to hold the pass or regain any of our old fortresses?
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    I don't think so. We're not at the stage that we can feasibly maintain a credible defense line in two spots on the mountain. We're committed to Yuan so wee will likely just throw up spoiling attacks to the Grand Abyssal Invasion and then let the Blood Defiance Federation decide whether cutting off the desert is too much for them to stand idle. Reclaiming the lands after occupation is harder but less costly political-wise.
     
    The reason we're doing all this with Yuan is because its incredibly defensible and it wont have a Late Nascent attacking the area (presumably)

    Our countermeasure for the Pass is denying them the asset of Weeping Anvils corpse, and then using the resources it represents to strike back against the Grand Abyssal Invasion before the Desert restriction on Old Cannibal runs out. We just dont have a way to stop them, so we swap to asset denial instead
     
    Insane-Not-Crazy said:
    I don't think so. We're not at the stage that we can feasibly maintain a credible defense line in two spots on the mountain. We're committed to Yuan so wee will likely just throw up spoiling attacks to the Grand Abyssal Invasion and then let the Blood Defiance Federation decide whether cutting off the desert is too much for them to stand idle. Reclaiming the lands after occupation is harder but less costly political-wise.
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    The land of the Sorrowful Blacksmiths is old Golden Devil land, which has already been confirmed to posess fortifications the Godlen Devils can activate. It's their homeground so if the Godlen Devils were to try to hold two fronts, they should be able to hold because one is their old homeland with impressive stuff the Sorrowful Blacksmiths still hadn't unlocked.
     
    Marlin, we dont have the Nascents available to man any such defenses in time, and the Blacksmiths remain a political entity until the end of the turn at the very least

    We might be able to occupy it later, but now? Now just isnt happening, frankly
     
    TehChron said:
    Marlin, we dont have the Nascents available to man any such defenses in time, and the Blacksmiths remain a political entity until the end of the turn at the very least

    We might be able to occupy it later, but now? Now just isnt happening, frankly
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    End of which turn, the current turn that already had the decisions decided on, or the next turn whose decisions have yet to be chosen? Cause yeah, not being able to do anything right now is obvious, but as soon as the turn options are open maybe then... but if you say no, you say no.
     
    Marlin said:
    The land of the Sorrowful Blacksmiths is old Golden Devil land, which has already been confirmed to posess fortifications the Godlen Devils can activate. It's their homeground so if the Godlen Devils were to try to hold two fronts, they should be able to hold because one is their old homeland with impressive stuff the Sorrowful Blacksmiths still hadn't unlocked.
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    we really cant afford to turn on the rightous path at the moment.
    yuan are neutral and isolated enough that we thought we could take the hit to our relations in return for denying the blood path their territory and slowing the growth of the chosen.
    That we managed to do so peacefully buys us time that we would end up throwing away if we grab a closer rightous power like the smiths,.

    As for defending the pass it would have to be done with only manuel in terms of nascents as we will have to post klei to protect the yuan and well...
    he would have to beat 5 nascents on his own with 2 being mid and one being late.(Old cannibal, old fish, bloodhammer,and the devil twins)
    That is not something we really wan't to risk unless we know the nature of the defenses.

    Manuel is good with the spear and even better on the defense , but he is not solo 5 nascents good.
     
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    The rightful know if we get those lands the Devils will recover many treasures of the past. If they know about those treasures. They probably will invest some of their own troops to deny us those things.

    So they probably will not willing to allow us this since we about to deny them a SR.

    This is my believe.
     
    occipitallobe said:
    -snip-
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    ....shit, he was higher up in his own as than i thought.
    and not only that, but REALLY overspecialized. probably messed up his brain when he reforged his body.
    Like, how the hell does he not have anything to track a WHOLE DAMN CITY! And a PROSPEROUS ONE to boot after a blood path raid on it?
    This is just... baffling.

    And, of course he was on the "kill the devils" side of the fracture that created his sect.....

    Gods, i got the chills running up and down my spine just thinking how fucking nightmarish of a problem he would have been later, if we warned the RP about the coming invasion. Not only fanning any fire against us, but most likely gifting stuff for the chosen and favored as well.

    OR OC don't just eat him or feeds him to one of his underlings, after catching him anyway....
     
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    Ah yes, nothing like black-bagging one of the stronger Mid Nascents in the region without anyone knowing what happened.
     
    adamashield said:
    The rightful know if we get those lands the Devils will recover many treasures of the past. If they know about those treasures. They probably will invest some of their own troops to deny us those things.

    So they probably will not willing to allow us this since we about to deny them a SR.

    This is my believe.
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    Actually no. They are generally going to believe that our defeat is only a matter of time with the heavens specially empowering our enemies. Which means that they don't feel the need to go to extra effort to make stop us.
     
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