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Money and Power: A Xianxia Merchant Quest

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ROTH963 said:
Using it for something that we can get by doing the equivalent of a running exercise three times as opposed to one seems wasteful, you have a lady to ask what you want from, and this is what you ask?
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While I still think you are massive underestimating the teotl required, you have a point that there are many thing we could ask for that only she could provide, whereas we can always get teotl elsewhere.

wrecksalot said:
Do the local rivers have Abyssal problems? if not, then convincing her to give us some oysters to set up near us in exchange for a share of the profits. It would be a nice reversal of the usual option, making her income more stable in exchange for us getting a cut. I know they are presumably salt water oyesters, but I imagine that cultivators could find a way to make it work.
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I believe that the clams needed access to fairly undistributed ocean, and be in the ladies domain to grow quickly.

kitsune9 said:
My idea wasn't that she would personally teach each scrub. Her domain is a combat area and she is known to have a large number of perfect veterans that are very good at there jobs. Assuming that she has a working system in place to train more combat personal seems pretty normal given she's in constant combat.
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Our security folks could always use more training.
 
Sigil said:
I believe that the clams needed access to fairly undistributed ocean, and be in the ladies domain to grow quickly.
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looking back on the update in question it does say that they absorb "the diffuse power of the sea" as an explanation for why they couldn't all just be planted at a defensible point, and it does seem that she can will them to grow quicker, and while several of our elixers also help with that they would grow slower than the original deal, even if we had the resources to spare to stuff them full of elixers.

All in all, nowhere near the slam dunk I thought it was, but with some elbow grease it might be workable.
 
I tend to close votes a bit after voting winds down and I feel like I can start working on the next update. Or I don't close it at all if I think the chances of an upset are slim.

I'll close it in a few hours if anyone wants to get a last minute push in.
 
I would offer to sell her a walking fortress to transport her clams in, but she is probably too poor to afford one, but being able to move around should allow the clams to collect the diffuse power of the ocean even if they are all stored on the fortress. Combined with her father potentially helping out and the clam scheme might be valuable?
 
wrecksalot said:
I would offer to sell her a walking fortress to transport her clams in, but she is probably too poor to afford one, but being able to move around should allow the clams to collect the diffuse power of the ocean even if they are all stored on the fortress. Combined with her father potentially helping out and the clam scheme might be valuable?
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I say don't offer anything now, offer to start the deal next turn, we will bring the money with the anti abyssal towers (that might be even better than they would have already been if heaven forged diamond is chosen like seems to be going).

We don't have a reason to start now and risk the money, while we are in rush, rushing this too much could harm our profits.

She isn't exactly in position to refuse it.
 
[X] Reject Heaven's Light

Yes taking the reforge will likely be stronger long term, but we're be able to capture some of it later in Harmonic anyway (to what degree? 50%ish?) and already be ahead of the curve.

But we have a very strong need to be flexible in the near future. I feel like we can't afford further inflexibility even until Transposition - we still have two Merge steps to do associated acclimation (≥4 actions?), which may be even harder with heaven diamond (more actions?).

e.g. immediate stuff I'm concerned about:
* mom's covert stuff - will we be compelled to shut the whole thing down after a reforge?
* wayward brother - we're approaching this quite subtly - will we feel the need to go loud and hot?
and who knows what the near future brings that we end up really constrained by heaven

Like this seems the thing to do if we had a lesser degree of pressure / were in a sect or something where we could just bunker away from the world until done with it all and in Transposition (ignoring xianxia protagonist convention ofc)
 
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[X] Heaven-Forged Diamond Spirit

This is explicitly very compatible with the Forge, and since Chachi and her Forge are going to be carrying the clan on their backs for the foreseeable future, strengthening them is just common sense.
 
Mr. Prokosch said:
"The Mountain King killed my father?"

"Yes."

"Tell me about him."

"Strong. Many warriors. Big from walking people. Live in mountain. Trade metal for meat. Good trade. But mean. I think he think if walking people find new trade, no need old trade."

"Are you sure it was him? No doubt?"

"Mountain people warriors. Skin like…" he looked around, finally settling on a bed of flowers in the garden, he pointed at a bright white petal, "many hair. I kill four. Mountain people."

"No chance they were acting without orders?" He looked a bit confused so she rephrased, "You sure Mountain King say to kill?"

"Mountain people no like leave mountain."

"He wasn't afraid of killing someone from the Empire? The Patriarch of a clan? He had to know we'd retaliate."

"I no know he think. But trade man have no Mark. Not from big God. What you do? Garcino more strong than all trade man people. Mountain King have 5 [gibberish]… Like brother but no real. All 5 hard fight for Garcino. I no know I win."

Feel free to ask specific questions about the Mountain King or the beast lands.
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Reading back, it looks like the Mountain King has five clones and is potentially afraid of a Mark a Lord can leave.

wrecksalot said:
I would offer to sell her a walking fortress to transport her clams in, but she is probably too poor to afford one, but being able to move around should allow the clams to collect the diffuse power of the ocean even if they are all stored on the fortress. Combined with her father potentially helping out and the clam scheme might be valuable?
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Hah! If we can't bring the defense to the clams, bring the clams to the defense!

wrecksalot said:
This is explicitly very compatible with the Forge, and since Chachi and her Forge are going to be carrying the clan on their backs for the foreseeable future, strengthening them is just common sense.
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I'm still worried about the mysterious consequences. We are planning to do something huge and we have neither a fate-reading, nor state-reading divination blocker. What if the coneheads jump us the moment we make the first heaven-forged diamond?
 
Sigil said:
Reading back, it looks like the Mountain King has five clones and is potentially afraid of a Mark a Lord can leave.



Hah! If we can't bring the defense to the clams, bring the clams to the defense!



I'm still worried about the mysterious consequences. We are planning to do something huge and we have neither a fate-reading, nor state-reading divination blocker. What if the coneheads jump us the moment we make the first heaven-forged diamond?
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This is a reward, not a trap. Don't assume the GM is out to get us.

"Mysterious consequences" will be in line with what we've learned. It's the logical extension of becoming more aligned with Heaven and Order. We lose out on the opposite of Heaven and Order. The most obvious consequence of this is "peace was never an option" towards the Abyss.

There's also probably some level of loosing our "normality". Chachi might gain Heavenly attention for this, and powerful people may take note. That'd definitely change out our current problems for new ones
 
Blonddude42 said:
There's also probably some level of loosing our "normality". Chachi might gain Heavenly attention for this, and powerful people may take note. That'd definitely change out our current problems for new ones
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We also get protagonist tier merging to added to our protagonist tier foundation.
 
ROTH963 said:
Our boss probably didn't expect it when he gave us a simple advice.
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Lol, even though he's an animals kind of guy, I bet even he would be shocked if we gifted him one of the the heavenly diamonds as thanks for his advice.

Although I'm curious if we'd be able to send the gift privately to just him. It might not be a good idea for the inevitable spies around him to find out we did the thing and can just casually give those diamonds out now.
 
A big question we have after acclimating is which to pick, diamond body, or diamond mind, a diamond body would be invaluable in the beast lands, both by giving us a massive power boost and making most beasts not interested in eating us, on the other hand the main risk are enemy humans, in which diamond mind comes.

Diamond mind would allow us to neutralise our brother when we catch him more easily, we can force him to answer about any backups, his contracts and so on (provide he doesn't mind wipe himself to spite us), but we can guarantee safety to his family if he cooperates (or death if he doesn't) and it can be used to make agreements with the humans in the beast lands.

In the other hand, diamond mind leaves us weaker and more likely to have mental side effects on us we will want to minimize (by getting past diamond mind fast to the next stage).

Thoughts?
 
[X] Reject Heaven's Light
Use your insights to rush through Diamond cultivation. Bank your Transcendent Insight to gain further control over the final Harmonic powers
 
An idea for technique we can make or find is something that will give us more processing power, basically A.I powers, so we can say, fork our consciousness to do multiple mental things at once (like possibly keeping our mediation for long time while acting normally) or increase Teotel control by focusing on every part of the process of something separately.

Maybe even improve reaction times by the world slowing down from our perspective (which will work well with art of evaluation, which can extract more information but doesn't speed up our mind).

Might be worth to look into something like it if it already exist, or make it by trying to figure out computers (like our make golems smarter project).
 
ROTH963 said:
A big question we have after acclimating is which to pick, diamond body, or diamond mind, a diamond body would be invaluable in the beast lands, both by giving us a massive power boost and making most beasts not interested in eating us, on the other hand the main risk are enemy humans, in which diamond mind comes.

Diamond mind would allow us to neutralise our brother when we catch him more easily, we can force him to answer about any backups, his contracts and so on (provide he doesn't mind wipe himself to spite us), but we can guarantee safety to his family if he cooperates (or death if he doesn't) and it can be used to make agreements with the humans in the beast lands.

In the other hand, diamond mind leaves us weaker and more likely to have mental side effects on us we will want to minimize (by getting past diamond mind fast to the next stage).

Thoughts?
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I'd say that I'm back to a diamond body preference overall as out of the two Diamond Mind is likely to be harder on us then before the reforge well diamond body was originally the hardest to adjust to but the more perfect diamond with a connection to heaven is still a physical diamond and so getting used to it shouldn't change much.

Given the reforge is likely going to strengthen and change diamond spirit including our auras against the things that heaven doesn't like we might have a problem with making deals with an abyssal cultist. I'm not saying it's absolute, but if your pushing diamond mind first to deal with Tet and we don't have the ability to turn off diamond spirit he could melt before we can finish making a deal.


with the changes
 
kitsune9 said:
Given the reforge is likely going to strengthen and change diamond spirit including our auras against the things that heaven doesn't like we might have a problem with making deals with an abyssal cultist. I'm not saying it's absolute, but if your pushing diamond mind first to deal with Tet and we don't have the ability to turn off diamond spirit he could melt before we can finish making a deal.
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Melt him on sight is already the plan. Making a deal is just asking to be purged.
 
kitsune9 said:
I'm not saying it's absolute, but if your pushing diamond mind first to deal with Tet and we don't have the ability to turn off diamond spirit he could melt before we can finish making a deal.
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I am preferring diamond body actually, I think his family is enough leverage to make him not try to bring us down with him once we have him, what we do after it will depends, maybe he will have enough leverage to avoid execution and get by with wiping his memories, telling us everything and letting us burn his abyssal cultivation, more likely he will die.

Body meanwhile is the greatest power boost we will get for a while, as well as allowing us to avoid fights with beasts, which will be very common there.

I am not sure you do get more powerful until harmonic, mind doesn't give much of a boost in a fight, transportation allows us to turn it off, weakening us but getting rid of the consequences so we can do things like not have mental effects, heal or forge new pillars.

Limial will give everyone a different advantage, most major advantage for a fight in our case will be allowing us to use regular techniques while keeping diamond spirit on (provide that part stays the same with heaven forged diamond), harmonic is a power boost.

This brings the question, @Mr. Prokosch , do the later stages of transformation empower you in some way beyond doing the things they describe doing? Can we say fight a limial guy on equal grounds?

How strong is the harmonic transformation? is it considered basically impossible for someone before it to fight someone harmonic (the same way our victory against our sister was basically assured), or is it possible to get past the gap with conventional means (aka not by reforging our core until we are strong enough to win.
The Froggy Ninja said:
Melt him on sight is already the plan. Making a deal is just asking to be purged.
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I say give him to frog guy to make sure he doesn't have a way to reveal his misdeeds and bring us down with him, just killing him is still a risk.
 
A journey jump (Perfect to Transformation) is much larger than even two phase jumps (Merging to Harmonic). Like with Perfecting, a lot depends on your overall path. A Three Pillar Perfect Crafter would get their ass kicked by Oku, a Building fighter using a Supreme Combat Path. Oku likely could have beaten them at some point in Foundation.

Transcendent Cultivators don't have the same 'professional' specializations (those are newish anyway, back in Tlaloc's day everyone was combat + maybe a hobby). So you can't just go "I think the one that specialized their cultivation in fighting will win the fight." But your earlier Cultivation (Foundation, Pillars, Mastery) is still very significant. You would expect an Oku two steps into Merging to be able to fight evenly with a Teo at Harmonic. Beyond that it's all about seeing if the way you cheat can be used to beat the way they cheat. For that reason people tend to be extremely cagey about their transformation cultivation. A bit of planning and information can go a long way to winning a duel with another transformer.

Hoping to get the time to work on this tomorrow but I'd like to drop a new character sheet along with the prose, so I might not finish.
 
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