NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

[Constenanto]

Would Farmwork alone let us make crop fields? Or does that take a specific skill-trick?

 

[Shard]

I would go with making the Fence now. It's actually replaceable if we make a suboptimal fence (~certain), which a rare, rare thing in cultivation. Being able to backtrack on your decisions means you can go ahead now while figuring out better ideas for next time.

 

[Constenanto]

I mean, I don't see any reason to complete it now... it's not like we're in a rush or anything. We lose nothing from improving our skills and then making a better wall, and making a wall early would do nothing for us, either. I'd rather have a better foundation and put those research dice into doing something else, rather than complete it now only to remake it later.

 

[Skippy]

Would Farmwork alone let us make crop fields? Or does that take a specific skill-trick?

Click to shrink...

I think a separate sub-skill just for laying out fields would be a little much, but we could ask.

I would go with making the Fence now. It's actually replaceable if we make a suboptimal fence (~certain), which a rare, rare thing in cultivation. Being able to backtrack on your decisions means you can go ahead now while figuring out better ideas for next time.

Click to shrink...

We should see if we can confirm:
(1) What the Security skill gets us when applied to our soul-perimeter.
(2) Does it take the same number of rolls/actions it takes to replace/upgrade a perimeter versus building our first one, or will it be less?
(3) Is it basically an inevitable part of Odr cultivation that we're going to have to do rebuild our soul-perimeter multiple times anyway?

Actually since I've just written them out, I'll do it now; @Imperial Fister, could we get answers to any of these? I'm happy to use a Reward Dice on any of them which need it; priority on (2) and (3) since I think those effect our decision the most.

 

[Alectai]

I mean, I don't see any reason to complete it now... it's not like we're in a rush or anything. We lose nothing from improving our skills and then making a better wall, and making a wall early would do nothing for us, either. I'd rather have a better foundation and put those research dice into doing something else, rather than complete it now only to remake it later.

Click to shrink...

I sincerely doubt readying a keystone of our Cultivation is going to be a mediocre thing. We should push this fairly hard until we are least get the first major breakpoint, so we can see what benefits it provides

 

[AeonIlluminate]

[X] He goes to Vestfold with his father
-[X] Tell him we're coming to visit Vestfold in the next few years (though he should keep it quiet as we do have enemies about in those parts), and will see him then and would welcome him joining us at that time if he wants to.

 

[Constenanto]

I think a separate sub-skill just for laying out fields would be a little much, but we could ask.

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I think this too, and we were capable of making fields back when we actually had a farm, but I'm not sure if that was because of Abjorn's presence/somebody else's presence, rather than Halla's. Asking just so that we're sure seems fine.

I sincerely doubt readying a keystone of our Cultivation is going to be a mediocre thing. We should push this fairly hard until we are least get the first major breakpoint, so we can see what benefits it provides

Click to shrink...

Uh, yeah, that was my point? Although I don't think it'll be crippling or particularly ruinous, seeing as we've actually half-assed one of said keystones you're talking about, and nothing has actually happened. Admittedly, I'm pretty sure that's because we haven't actually ascended yet, so no downsides have made themselves apparent.

 

[DeadmanwalkingXI]

I fully admit that I could be off-base here, it was just my gut read. To expand a little...

I would note that it's quite possible for Runar both care about his son, possibly even rely on him emotionally, and still constantly make Aski aware of his shortcomings; it's why I said "co-dependent", not "abusive". It's a pretty common dynamic. The particular bits which especially inclined me towards this were the fact that Aski mentions his mother's death in his reasons, and this not an external social stigma. Now of course it would make sense that Aski has deep personal feelings about it, but the fact that he lists it as a reason to stay with his father implies he associates his mother's death with a sense of obligation or guilt; or there would be no reason to bring it up.

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As I said, it's pretty certain other people regularly do blame Aki for this and the kid's both smart and psychic, he'd know. His father doesn't have to get in on it for him to feel this way. His father is, in fact, from description, the only one who doesn't give him crap or blame him about that. Which definitely means he feels he owes his dad...but he feels he owes us, too, he's in a headspace where he doesn't really deserve care and thus he owes an obligation to those who have shown it to him (both his dad and us). I don't think that implies anything bad about his relationship with his dad any more than it implies bad stuff about his relationship with us.

Furthermore, we know from the vote that Runar will be angry if Aski does not come with him, which is an odd reaction for a parent who wants their child to flourish and become independent. At a minimum, it implies a degree of overprotectiveness; Runar does not think Aski can thrive and succeed on his own as an adult man in Norse society. (It also possibly indicates that Runar relies a lot on Aski emotionally for comfort and does not want to lose him, which is understandable, but again see "co-dependency".) The way Aski said his father was angry during his disappearance also made me suspect that this is a household where Aski is often aware keenly of his father's temper.

Lastly, note that Runar did not come and thank us for voyaging into the underworld to save his son. When you think about it for a second, that's actually pretty extraordinary, given that what Halla did was actually pretty exceptional. It's an odd reaction for a parent who really loves their child and should be overjoyed to get them back. There are two possible interpretations here; either he's a prick, or he's so overprotective that he was furious at us for getting Aski into danger in the first place. Neither is great.

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Runar is moving largely because he's pretty sure Aki would do better in Vestfold. Full stop. Him being upset that we're getting in the way of him removing his son from a toxic and dangerous environment in his view (and he's not wrong) is pretty understandable, I think.

It's also worth mentioning that Aki is not an adult man by most of the standards of Norse society. He's still a child at 15...he's getting closer to adulthood there than he would be in our society, but he's not there yet. Runar treating him like a child when he literally is one is not indicative that he'll always treat him like a child even when he's an adult.

And I think the second reason for Runar not to thank us is also pretty understandable, honestly. Aki is, once again, a child, even by Norse standards taking him into a major battle isn't great. We didn't expect it to be as bad as it was, but his dad blaming us is a pretty reasonable reaction, honestly. Especially this soon afterward. The combination of anger and gratitude inclining him to just stay away lest he say something unforgivable (fighting words are a thing in this society after all) seems quite reasonable to me.

So yeah, on consideration, playing Internet Psychologist I think it's possible their relationship is more on the "co-dependent, overprotective" end of the spectrum rather than "co-dependent, constantly belittling" end. But it's certainly not healthy, or letting Aski become an independent adult. Even if we really do think Runar is a saint, which is not my reading, and that Aski's guilt and feelings of obligation are all internal - that's a lot of guilt for a young man to have to bear, so is it really doing him any favours staying wallowing in it?

It's possible that in the end, something like your write-in is the better course, because Aski needs to actually decide for himself to leave, rather than staying with us having and having guilt towards his father loom over him for the next few years. If he's feeling caught between two obligations and two strong senses of guilt right now, maybe the kindest thing we can do is absolve him of his sense of obligation to us and say that he's free to go. This is something his father, notably, is clearly not willing to do.

But I do worry about how he'll fare cut off from his friends.

Click to shrink...

Aki's not in a good place emotionally, it's absolutely true. The thing is, I think that's true in general, not just in regards to his relationship with his father. He's also pretty messed up about his relationship with Halla, with society, with the Norse conception of manhood...lots of stuff. I don't think either staying or going magically fixes that. The question is whether we or his dad are better suited to helping him deal with all that, and whether the relocation will actually provide a better environment to do it in.

In terms of us and his dad, I'd say we don't know for sure, but we've been in his life a lot less time, so I'll maybe give an edge to his dad...but more importantly, I think his dad's plan isn't completely unreasonable. He has actual family in Vestfold. It's possible that, given Norse society's notions of family, they really will support Aki better than the people here in The Hading will, and if so his total situation will probably be improved at least a bit.

Will that happen? I don't know. But I think he'd regret not trying to make his dad's plan work, and he can always fall back to coming with us when we go to Vestfold if it doesn't.

In terms of his father making choices, note that if Aki stays, Runar is mad rather than actually preventing him from doing so. I think he's definitely letting Aki make this choice, he just has a distinct preference.

And I definitely worry how he'll do without his friends, but I also worry how he'd do without his dad, and let's not exaggerate: I'm pretty sure Aki sees us as his only real friend. Abjorn is too quiet and Halla-focused, the Twins seem to care but they're also full adults he just met fairly recently, and not people he has a lot in common with, and everyone else involved is definitely not his friend. If he had an expansive support network I'd be much more inclined to ask him to stay...but then, if he had a much more extensive support network, his father might not want to take him to a place he thinks there might be one in the first place.

Yep, and also, the better your foundation, the better the gains usually. Committing like, 4 dice per turn on that project seems doable.

Click to shrink...

For the fence/wall? I actually see no reason to do this as of yet. It would get the project done faster, not better. Indeed, since we're increasing the skills involved it would likely get it done worse if anything (though, really, I suspect the quality is the same regardless of how fast it gets done). I'm all for investing, like, a die a turn and seeing how quickly that gets it done, personally. We are not in a rush to try for the next Realm here. I'm pleased to have discovered what's almost certainly one of the steps, but we should take the time to get it right, not rush it.

If we hit the point where we're not gonna raise our Labor or Design any more for a long while and have Security completed, then we can go a bit harder to try and get it done, but that's a bit away.

 

[Skippy]

Well, speak for yourself; personally I am absolutely eager to get to the next realm, because it's exciting and opens up new challenges and mysteries.

There's likely some opportunity cost to stalling our own Cultivation, but more generally, it's a cultivation story, so I personally would like us to actually do that.

 

[Alectai]

Realistically, the real danger to increasing our Cultivation is increasing the amount of resources that the Enemy is willing to spend to squash you. Realm 1 isn't a serious danger because it doesn't actually seem to do anything that you can't do with Orthstirr and training, it just lets you accelerate the learning curve somewhat. Hence, the Enemy's responses and attention is mostly automated at this stage, as long as you don't try to do Disclosure, which apparently is one of the few things that will always get its immediate attention and reaction.

So we don't want to spend forever in Saga Establishment, especially once we've more-or-less mapped out the path to advance in it, which locks it in for future characters. Hence, while we don't necessarily need to focus on having the absolute most perfect foundation possible, we should at least try to cover all of the major traits before we push forward. The Walls especially feel very important, because if there's going to be a Tribulation of some kind, that seems like the biggest thing between us and obliteration.

But yeah, it's four major things, right?

1) A Perimeter
2) Fields
3) Buildings

The question is if the 'Trigger' is separate from all of these or not. We've not seen anything suggesting that the Seed is something that we directly plant in Realm 1, which suggests that the actual trigger is filling the Well to its limit (Which I would bet is going to be 81 Odr). We already know, after all, that getting 9 Odr was the requirement to enter Saga Establishment in the first place. It'd be fitting if the trigger for Realm 2 is having 81 Odr (9 times 9)

Because if that's the case, Number 4 will probably be "A Full Well"

Does anyone want to spend a Reward Die to see if we can get a hint as to whether this is the general outline?

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more this feels sound actually.

What does a Farm require before it's considered to be a Farm?

It needs a perimeter to divide the inside from the outside and protect the former from the latter, it requires fields producing goods to sustain life, and it requires a place for the people working it to stay and keep the tools they use. Finally, you need a source of water to sustain everything involved.

These four traits are the most fundamental things a person needs to survive, Food, Water, Shelter, and Safety. This also seems to be why you can theoretically advance without these, but you're likely to cripple your advancement if you're missing anything. At the end of the day, you can survive with just food and water, but you're neither going to be comfortable or secure just living out in the open, and you might just wake up one evening halfway down some predator's gullet because there was nothing stopping it from just walking in and eating you.

If that's the case then... I suspect Realm 2 is introducing Life into it. Because they need food, water, shelter, and safety to survive after all, which are all what we're setting up in Saga Establishment. This might be the point where we can introduce the Demon Seeds as well, because they straddle the line between plant and animal.

Then Realm 3 I suspect is taking your living world full of life and making it a proper Realm, through the planting of a World Tree.

 

[Constenanto]

Well, speak for yourself; personally I am absolutely eager to get to the next realm, because it's exciting and opens up new challenges and mysteries.

There's likely some opportunity cost to stalling our own Cultivation, but more generally, it's a cultivation story, so I personally would like us to actually do that.

Click to shrink...

I'm eager too - I really want to hit the next realm on Halla at the very least - but I feel like we have enough time to take this part slow. We've got time right now.

 

[DeadmanwalkingXI]

Well, speak for yourself; personally I am absolutely eager to get to the next realm, because it's exciting and opens up new challenges and mysteries.

There's likely some opportunity cost to stalling our own Cultivation, but more generally, it's a cultivation story, so I personally would like us to actually do that.

Click to shrink...

I mean, obviously I also want to cultivate, but we've also been warned repeatedly and comprehensively by the QM that doing that is the most likely way for us to die instantly with no way out of it. Which makes me want to do so very carefully rather than rushing ahead as fast as possible. I do not want to die because we were casual with the risks inherent in cultivation in this setting.

This is a cultivation story, sure, but it's one where the cultivation system is explicitly booby-trapped and designed to kill us.

Realistically, the real danger to increasing our Cultivation is increasing the amount of resources that the Enemy is willing to spend to squash you.

Click to shrink...

That's not the only danger by any means. The process of increasing cultivation is very explicitly also littered with booby traps, some of which are highly lethal. That was done by the Enemy for the specific purpose of preventing cultivation advancement, so Realm Increases are one of the most likely places to find such things. Proper precautions clearly make advancement possible, but we need to be super careful here.

Does anyone want to spend a Reward Die to see if we can get a hint as to whether this is the general outline?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I'll do it.

@Imperial Fister do we have the structure approximately right at this point with a Fence, Fields, Buildings (probably including a proper well), and then filling the Well with 81 Odr to actually trigger things? I am spending 1 Reward Die on the hint.

 

[Alectai]

@Imperial Fister do we have the structure approximately right at this point with a Fence, Fields, Buildings (probably including a proper well), and then filling the Well with 81 Odr to actually trigger things? I am spending 1 Reward Die on the hint.

Click to shrink...

Our regenerating point has regenerated, I'm turning my key on it as well, so let's use that instead of your own pool.

 

[DeadmanwalkingXI]

Our regenerating point has regenerated, I'm turning my key on it as well, so let's use that instead of your own pool.

Click to shrink...

Sure. That works.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Given @Imperial Fister has said "fence" the last two times we asked him about this, I don't think we should necessarily assume that waiting until we can build the City Wall of Minas Tirith is the right way to go about this.

Constantly tinkering with your soul-farm's perimeters might be the intended method of cultivation; this is notably much closer to how farm walls actually work, where maintaining, and changing fences and walls as the farm expands is an omnipresent chore for farmers.

We don't know, which means we need to find out, rather than making assumptions.

Click to shrink...

While it's a classical genre convention that having perfect super-arts and strong foundations that take a long time to put into place is "right" in a cultivation setting...

Well, Norse cultivation seems to be much more focused on "quick and dirty" approaches. It's not designed around making you immortal. It's designed around the idea that everyone's eventually gonna die, that the Ginnungagap's full of indispensable men, and that what really matters is just being an all-round stand-up guy for as long as you live.

So don't stress about overbuilding without a clear need. You need a fence. Just build a damn fence. It's not rocket science.

 

[Skippy]

Realistically, the real danger to increasing our Cultivation is increasing the amount of resources that the Enemy is willing to spend to squash you. Realm 1 isn't a serious danger because it doesn't actually seem to do anything that you can't do with Orthstirr and training, it just lets you accelerate the learning curve somewhat. Hence, the Enemy's responses and attention is mostly automated at this stage, as long as you don't try to do Disclosure, which apparently is one of the few things that will always get its immediate attention and reaction.

So we don't want to spend forever in Saga Establishment, especially once we've more-or-less mapped out the path to advance in it, which locks it in for future characters. Hence, while we don't necessarily need to focus on having the absolute most perfect foundation possible, we should at least try to cover all of the major traits before we push forward. The Walls especially feel very important, because if there's going to be a Tribulation of some kind, that seems like the biggest thing between us and obliteration.

But yeah, it's four major things, right?

1) A Perimeter
2) Fields
3) Buildings

The question is if the 'Trigger' is separate from all of these or not. We've not seen anything suggesting that the Seed is something that we directly plant in Realm 1, which suggests that the actual trigger is filling the Well to its limit (Which I would bet is going to be 81 Odr). We already know, after all, that getting 9 Odr was the requirement to enter Saga Establishment in the first place. It'd be fitting if the trigger for Realm 2 is having 81 Odr (9 times 9)

Because if that's the case, Number 4 will probably be "A Full Well"

Does anyone want to spend a Reward Die to see if we can get a hint as to whether this is the general outline?

EDIT: The more I think about it, the more this feels sound actually.

What does a Farm require before it's considered to be a Farm?

It needs a perimeter to divide the inside from the outside and protect the former from the latter, it requires fields producing goods to sustain life, and it requires a place for the people working it to stay and keep the tools they use. Finally, you need a source of water to sustain everything involved.

These four traits are the most fundamental things a person needs to survive, Food, Water, Shelter, and Safety. This also seems to be why you can theoretically advance without these, but you're likely to cripple your advancement if you're missing anything. At the end of the day, you can survive with just food and water, but you're neither going to be comfortable or secure just living out in the open, and you might just wake up one evening halfway down some predator's gullet because there was nothing stopping it from just walking in and eating you.

If that's the case then... I suspect Realm 2 is introducing Life into it. Because they need food, water, shelter, and safety to survive after all, which are all what we're setting up in Saga Establishment. This might be the point where we can introduce the Demon Seeds as well, because they straddle the line between plant and animal.

Then Realm 3 I suspect is taking your living world full of life and making it a proper Realm, through the planting of a World Tree.

Click to shrink...

We asked around before when this came up, and I think we were relatively sure this was it, I can't remember if people spent Reward Dice scoping it out fully, but they may have done.

The "Full Well" bit I'm a little more iffy on since it seems like... dredging/digging down into our own soul-well is one of those things where if we fuck it up, it might actually have consequences? But we could use Reward Dice and/or do other research to investigate this a bit more.

I'm eager too - I really want to hit the next realm on Halla at the very least - but I feel like we have enough time to take this part slow. We've got time right now.

Click to shrink...

Well, sure, but even assuming we're choosing "Nordic Cultivation Slice of Life Quest" for the next while, we have a choice about how we use the time, you know?

We can spend two years sorta faffing around practicing fifteen different skills until we're sorta-okay at each, or we can use that time to advance our Cultivation and become much stronger, and probably gain access to more Odr. It does not seem to me that there's a hugely compelling case for the former; especially when you factor in the compounding opportunity cost of having a lower Odr income over multiple turns.

 

[Alectai]

The Well fills up on it's own, notably, it's been regularly called out that it's "Pooling at the bottom", but we spend it generally as fast as we get it, so we don't know how much it can take.

 

[Skippy]

The Well fills up on it's own, notably, it's been regularly called out that it's "Pooling at the bottom", but we spend it generally as fast as we get it, so we don't know how much it can take.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, personally I think we should see if we can let it fill up to the max, and whether that does anything interesting, before we go dredging or digging at it.

It might be that it will naturally deepen on its own, or it might take a lot of active effort from us, or both of those could be fundamentally misunderstanding what is going on here.

I mean, obviously I also want to cultivate, but we've also been warned repeatedly and comprehensively by the QM that doing that is the most likely way for us to die instantly with no way out of it. Which makes me want to do so very carefully rather than rushing ahead as fast as possible. I do not want to die because we were casual with the risks inherent in cultivation in this setting.

This is a cultivation story, sure, but it's one where the cultivation system is explicitly booby-trapped and designed to kill us.

Click to shrink...

Sure, I think we want to tread carefully and try to poke around for booby-traps as well, but this is explicitly not true of the thing we are actually talking about right now, which the GM has confirmed will not create any pitfalls by doing now. Also, if we want to be able to defuse future booby-traps, we need to actually be investigating and putting active effort towards working them out - not just delaying, which gains us nothing.

We also have WoGM that cultivation is booby-trapped in such a way that it's pretty much impossible to defuse all the traps in one lifetime unless you're a genius; you have to spend generations at it. Which means our ultimate goal has to be to reach the level of Cultivation that Hallr had, and then either surpass him, or at least learn more about what the pitfalls at his stage were. Hence wanting to pick up the pace a little.

 

[Alectai]

Honestly, I think the capacity will just magically expand itself when we hit 81, but there might be value in building at least a housing around it and a bucket to lower down. At the very least, that shouldn't hurt like tampering with the Well directly might.

Anyway, Hallr didn't die from a Cultivation fuckup, he died because the Enemy teleported nine fucking Steelfathers on top of him while he was busy with a critical project and thus was a bit low on Orthstirr or Odr, or whatever it was he was running with at that time.

And there's also a difference between "Traps" and "Landmines." The former are something we've already experienced (The whole Pocket thing leading to us dumping two thirds of our Orthstirr for something that--while useful, was not that useful). The latter are just Instant Death stuff, and apparently become more prevalent the higher up you go.

The Lower Realms likely have the answers available in the current world, like how apparently Saga Establishment is just "Farming but in your soul", but the higher level stuff is probably more esoteric, and a lot of the 'Hints' are probably landmines the Enemy put there for you to step on.

I suspect that the answers are probably findable throughout Realm 1 to 3 or so, but after that point, you're delving into fields that don't have a direct analogue in the Norse Grindset, so you're going blind from there.

 

[Skippy]

Honestly, I think the capacity will just magically expand itself when we hit 81, but there might be value in building at least a housing around it and a bucket to lower down. At the very least, that shouldn't hurt like tampering with the Well directly might.

Click to shrink...

A bucket is a really clever idea actually, yeah.

Anyway, Hallr didn't die from a Cultivation fuckup, he died because the Enemy teleported nine fucking Steelfathers on top of him while he was busy with a critical project and thus was a bit low on Orthstirr or Odr, or whatever it was he was running with at that time.

Click to shrink...

That's true, but what I meant in the more general sense is we ideally want each generation to know a bit more than the last did about how to reach successive stages and what the traps are. Finding a better, permeant method of information storage and transmission is also important, maybe our experimenting with runes might help?

 

[Alectai]

A bucket is a really clever idea actually, yeah.



That's true, but what I meant in the more general sense is we ideally want each generation to know a bit more than the last did about how to reach successive stages and what the traps are. Finding a better, permeant method of information storage and transmission is also important, maybe our experimenting with runes might help?

Click to shrink...

Absolutely correct, yeah, while we can transfer information down through Charred Soul, that doesn't directly change the culture.

One idea I'm playing around with is writing a 'Guide for Proper Living', mostly revolving around Useful Tricks and universal stuff like Campfire and Cleanwater, stuff that is useful no matter who you are, and doesn't actually break out into any Secret Knowledge that might disrupt things overly much, but we put secret hints and guides that can lead the clever towards Odr Cultivation and give them an idea of how to do it.

The Enemy's attention after all, is limited, and while he can overhear and see things, he doesn't actually care about most things as long as they don't step on one of his Forbidden Topics. Low level Orthstirr stuff isn't really something he especially cares about beside his general antipathy towards people sharing knowledge at all, and as long as there's no obvious red flags in the text, he isn't likely to act to interfere until it's too late, at which point the cost of squashing it will probably exceed any realistic gain he can get out of it.

That seems to be how you "Defeat" The Enemy, given what we've also been told about Fylgja Unveiling and Fleshcrafting being things gained from victories.

 

[Skippy]

Absolutely correct, yeah, while we can transfer information down through Charred Soul, that doesn't directly change the culture.

One idea I'm playing around with is writing a 'Guide for Proper Living', mostly revolving around Useful Tricks and universal stuff like Campfire and Cleanwater, stuff that is useful no matter who you are, and doesn't actually break out into any Secret Knowledge that might disrupt things overly much, but we put secret hints and guides that can lead the clever towards Odr Cultivation and give them an idea of how to do it.

The Enemy's attention after all, is limited, and while he can overhear and see things, he doesn't actually care about most things as long as they don't step on one of his Forbidden Topics. Low level Orthstirr stuff isn't really something he especially cares about beside his general antipathy towards people sharing knowledge at all, and as long as there's no obvious red flags in the text, he isn't likely to act to interfere until it's too late.

Click to shrink...

It feels like even the information transmission through our soul is not as good as it good be; Hallr seems to have significant blind spots. My vague nucleus of an idea, which might be completely wrong, is what if we experimented with like, a runestone within our soul? That might mean that our successors who inherit the same soul can also access and add to the runestone.

A sort of general farming/tips for life guide would be good. We could also include poetry which has coded hints about cultivation, nothing which explicitly gives stuff away, but is immensely useful if you've worked out the initial secret and have realised it has hints? The same way a lot of alchemical and other esoteric texts were can be heavily coded and work through allusion and metaphor, I guess.

 

[Alectai]

It feels like even the information transmission through our soul is not as good as it good be; Hallr seems to have significant blind spots. My vague nucleus of an idea, which might be completely wrong, is what if we experimented with like, a runestone within our soul? That might mean that our successors who inherit the same soul can also access and add to the runestone.

A sort of general farming/tips for life guide would be good. We could also include poetry which has coded hints about cultivation, nothing which explicitly gives stuff away, but is immensely useful if you've worked out the initial secret and have realised it has hints? The same way a lot of alchemical and other esoteric texts were can be heavily coded and work through allusion and metaphor, I guess.

Click to shrink...

We were explicitly told in an OOC statement that this effect is exclusive to Hallr, as it's part of the Sacrifice he made to create Charred Soul in the first place, former PCs will come with their full memories.

 

[DeadmanwalkingXI]

We asked around before when this came up, and I think we were relatively sure this was it, I can't remember if people spent Reward Dice scoping it out fully, but they may have done.

The "Full Well" bit I'm a little more iffy on since it seems like... dredging/digging down into our own soul-well is one of those things where if we fuck it up, it might actually have consequences? But we could use Reward Dice and/or do other research to investigate this a bit more.

Click to shrink...

Nobody spent Reward Dice last time, which is why I'm doing it this time. We have a theory, let's see if it's right-ish.

Well, sure, but even assuming we're choosing "Nordic Cultivation Slice of Life Quest" for the next while, we have a choice about how we use the time, you know?

We can spend two years sorta faffing around practicing fifteen different skills until we're sorta-okay at each, or we can use that time to advance our Cultivation and become much stronger, and probably gain access to more Odr. It does not seem to me that there's a hugely compelling case for the former; especially when you factor in the compounding opportunity cost of having a lower Odr income over multiple turns.

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Firstly, I'd like to note that this is a false dichotomy. Most Odr Cultivation stuff takes very few dice if any. Fence-building is probably the first thing that takes any directly to do rather than just to figure out. We can do both those things.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, using Training Dice to get better at stuff is how we actually get more powerful for the most part. Odr cultivation is great, and has given us some very nice power boosts, but we're feeling our way in the dark on it, and can't predict which expenditures on new things will actually do that...Training Dice on basic stuff are a sure route to power. Steinarr, just for example, has no Odr at all. We're not gonna hit his level any time soon, but progressing in that direction is relevant and important. Odr is an ovrlay that enhances what's already there...if our base stats suck, Odr will not be enough to help us. Making sure the base stats keep advancing is important.

I'd also like to note that 'being sorta okay at 15 different skills' is very much not what most plans are intended to do, or are doing. This turn's plan, for example, is pretty focused on Tricks, combat, and farming, with only a couple of dice not put towards one of those things (all of those things just involve a bunch of different elements). That plan also shot us from a 60 die combat pool to 68, which I think might be the biggest change we've ever had, certainly the biggest in a while, and we will almost certainly hit 70 next turn. That's definitely not mediocrity we're achieving there.

Sure, I think we want to tread carefully and try to poke around for booby-traps as well, but this is explicitly not true of the thing we are actually talking about right now. Also, if we want to be able to defuse future booby-traps, we need to actually be investigating and putting active effort towards working it out - not just delaying, which gains us nothing.

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I'm not advocating delaying cultivation research in general. I'm saying that there's no point in rushing a specific thing (the Wall) when we have to investigate so much other stuff before we actually make use of it. I'm happy to put 4 dice a turn into actual cultivation research, or more, if we have actual good topics for them. I'm less happy to put them into rushing the Wall when we don't even know when we're gonna use it. We need to complete it, sure, but doing so in a rush doesn't seem useful or productive to me when we have so much other separate prep-work to do before we aim for the Second Realm seriously.

We also have WoGM that cultivation is booby-trapped in such a way that it's pretty much impossible to defuse all the traps in one lifetime unless you're a genius; you have to spend generations at it. Which means our ultimate goal has to be to reach the level of Cultivation that Hallr had, and then either surpass him, or at least learn more about what the pitfalls at his stage were. Hence wanting to pick up the pace a little.

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Imperial Fister has hinted fairly strongly that Halla is likely to die before reaching Blackhand's level of cultivation. I believe we're expected to take multiple generations to make it even to where he was. Remember, Blackhand almost won at his level...hitting his cultivation level is plausibly a win condition in and of itself.

And, importantly once again, I'd really like to have the opportunity for Halla to actually raise her kids. Both for sentimental reasons, and because that will result in them being a lot more statistically impressive as adults, and allow us to swap over to an adult with good stats for our second character rather than needing to go through childhood again.

Once all her kids are grown, I'm a lot more inclined to start taking serious cultivation risks with Halla until one finally does her in. Indeed, I've pretty explicitly stated that's probably how she's gonna die...her kids grow up and we start going hard on Risky Cultivation Research (which I'm fine with). But that's a ways away.

One idea I'm playing around with is writing a 'Guide for Proper Living', mostly revolving around Useful Tricks and universal stuff like Campfire and Cleanwater, stuff that is useful no matter who you are, and doesn't actually break out into any Secret Knowledge that might disrupt things overly much, but we put secret hints and guides that can lead the clever towards Odr Cultivation and give them an idea of how to do it.

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I'm definitely down for this. Writing it down isn't gonna get it widely distributed in standard Norse society, but we can pass it down in the family, and maybe make a saga-like poetry version for wider distribution or something like that.

 

[Constenanto]

Remember, Blackhand almost won at his level...hitting his cultivation level is plausibly a win condition in and of itself.

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I dunno about that, Blackhand still needed to actually complete the Weapon, beat the Curse of Steel, and then beat the Enemy. I think he might've been able to complete the former two, but I doubt he was actually strong enough to beat the Enemy if they really are Ymir.