Remove ads

Humble Beginnings, a Cultivation Quest

Reader mode
Learning/Improving is mostly under the purview of Intelligence, and Resolve to a lesser extent. A Flavorful Optimization has both, A Light in the Dark has neither.

Those mechanics could change, that's true, but there's not much point in taking that under consideration.
 
I'll be closing voting at 6 pm pst, so ~90 minutes for any last-minute votes. If my count is correct, barring a last-minute swing, it's looking to be ALITD over AFO.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
There's little reason for the gunsmith to decide to focus on swords over guns, for instance.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Counterpoint:

Plus ammo, reloading, and ranged damage may not be suitable for peer level fights after the MC hits a certain stage of cultivation.

Alright fine it's terrible in a single weapon but having a sword and magic revolver aren't terrible for clearing enemies and I'd be interested to see what high level crafting could come up with. Especially if mega mantis shrimp are a thing.
 
Alright, votes are closed!

...Looks like we have a tie, I'm honestly not sure how to deal with this, lol.

Adhoc vote count started by Ubiquitouch on Dec 22, 2023 at 9:02 PM, finished with 79 posts and 45 votes.
Click to expand...
 
So keen! Gun-fu lets fkn go. I wanna take this character towards Oratory so we can deliver deadly verbal takedowns while we gun-fu our enemies.
 
ngl i'm kinda suprised the gun write in was allowed. That's a REALLY major world defining element to just let people write in. we're no longer high fantasy, but now magic industrial era?

I'm a little curious, but pretty hesitant. A big draw of xianxia and fantasy for me in general is your typical high fantasy setting. So this makes me more than a little worried. Just how high tech are we all of a sudden? Steampunk, magicpunk, modern era, futuristic? Are guns mainly used by mortals only or by everyone.

Cus if its by everyone then i feel like things will quickly dive into futuristic super soldier combat where the thing that makes soldiers super is how high their cultivation is.

Crossing my fingers that we stay grounded in high fantasy and don't stray too far into sci-fi elements.
 
Last edited:
DangerKitty said:
ngl i'm kinda suprised the gun write in was allowed. That's a REALLY major world defining element to just let people write in. we're no longer high fantasy, but now magic industrial era?

I'm a little curious, but pretty hesitant. A big draw of xianxia and fantasy for me in general is your typical high fantasy setting. So this makes me more than a little worried. Just how high tech are we all of a sudden? Steampunk, magicpunk, modern era, futuristic? Are guns mainly used by mortals only or by everyone.

Cus if its by everyone then i feel like things will quickly dive into futuristic super soldier combat where the thing that makes soldiers super is how high their cultivation is.

Crossing my fingers that we stay grounded in high fantasy and don't stray too far into sci-fi elements.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Early firearms were established as a plot element during the intro prologue.

To be clear about the tech level, we're talking about really early, like 13th century handcannons, not muskets or revolvers.
 
Last edited:
Literally the whole third paragraph was talking about guns
Ubiquitouch said:
As his comrade and he closed the distance to where the guards had stopped to fire from, easily slicing down the two mortals, Ren Guowei couldn't help but marvel at the deadly power of the weapons. Harnessing the properties of fire-drug, handcannons allowed even mortal soldiers to pose a credible threat to cultivators such as himself. Indeed, it was Liushan's invention of these weapons that had allowed the state to hold back the Empire's initial forces. They were no match for even second-realm cultivators, but the Empire was hesitant to commit any more than needed to conquer an entirely-mortal state, not when their borders were besieged on all sides.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
Ubiquitouch said:
Early firearms were established as a plot element during the intro prologue.

To be clear about the tech level, we're talking about really early, like 13th century handcannons, not muskets or revolvers.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

sure, but we're a gunsmith. It'd be a pretty natural progression for our mc to try and develop more advanced guns. Yet if guns are only useful on the mortal level, then our background basically does nothing.

Not only including guns, but also having the MC have a canonical interest and reason to further the progression of guns feels like a recipe for guns to become the center of the story, or a feels bad background choice if they are quickly made obsolete by cultivation.

again, its not a dealbreaker or anything for me. I'm interested to see how this turns out. I'm just worried that this will turn into dr. stone xianxia edition.
 
DangerKitty said:
sure, but we're a gunsmith. It'd be a pretty natural progression for our mc to try and develop more advanced guns. Yet if guns are only useful on the mortal level, then our background basically does nothing.

Not only including guns, but also having the MC have a canonical interest and reason to further the progression of guns feels like a recipe for guns to become the center of the story, or a feels bad background choice if they are quickly made obsolete by cultivation.

again, its not a dealbreaker or anything for me. I'm interested to see how this turns out. I'm just worried that this will turn into dr. stone xianxia edition.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I can see that being a concern. I can say that I don't really intend for technological advancement to be a huge plot element or anything. Guns, to cultivators, are simply a different form of weapon - a gun might become less useful to them if the quality doesn't match up to their needs, but that's true of all weapons.
 
Also, improving on gunsmithing is hard, there's a reason it took hundreds of years - guns are not actually a magic bullet solution to problems, no matter how time travel media treats them. Especially when they are competing with actual magic powers.
 
I mean, one point is that we're going to be a cultivator with a gunsmith background. Which opens up the possibility of designing improved magic guns for ourselves without advancing the general tech level.
 
Agreed, if we have to kill rare spirit beasts for raw materials and learn high level refinement or runescripting sorts of stuff then we can make something custom that's slightly impractical but still usable without necessarily figuring out mass production of rifling, drum magazines, and armor piercing rounds. I wouldn't be surprised if we needed to make new guns every so often similar to how we'd need to acquire improved versions of any other weapon (outside of fists) as we progressed.

But even if we hit a stage where our gun becomes useless for cultivator fights

KarmaA said:
Plus ammo, reloading, and ranged damage may not be suitable for peer level fights after the MC hits a certain stage of cultivation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

the background opens the door for characterization for us having related knowledge similar to something like clockmaking or ships in bottles might have done. We could have understanding of basic smithing, carving, etching, and how guns are usually used in setting or what sorts of improvements are valued. We could sell more expensive guns as prestige pieces, making guns could be a nice hobby, or we use it as a gateway for other types of crafting.
 
Last edited:
I'd imagine that a large majority of our lifetime will be spent working with musket and musket-adjacent weapons. Volley guns and pepperboxes will likely be our first 'power spike' so to speak, and after that, the best we can look forward to are probably figuring out cartridges and then revolving cylinders in the later stages of our life.

Or something like that, probably.

What I'm saying is that I doubt we'll ever make it past mid-19th century gun tech. Pour one out for poor Xiao, as she will never hear the siren song of the Garand Ping.
 
Volume of fire isn't usually so good with cultivators. If the shot can't penetrate, it doesn't matter if you had one or a hundred.

Literal magic bullets on the other hand ..
 
Also, nothing actually prevents picking up some melee skill as well. Honestly, those are probably a good idea, and combining guns with them should be fun.

Probably not a high priority early on, but certainly something we'd want anyway long before guns start getting obsolete if they ever do (and I bet they never do completely).
 
Classical pirate captains are often depicted with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other for a reason.
 
Yep, gun for thinning out mooks at a distance, harassing ranged attackers, or assisting allies that are some distance away and something else for stronger or closer opponents.

Edit: We'd likely run out of ammo if facing a swarm type spirit beast but the gun could give us the ability to make a break for it after our arm gets tired.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top