NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

Constenanto · Jun 17, 2023

Skyfire Seeks Swordwing

Skyfire mourns sworn–friend Swordwing,
Stalwart warrior brought to thwart failure father.

Brightowl braves the lack-light world of the beginning for Bladebird,
Backed by a seer that hears her plight.

Skyfire seeks ailing Swordwing,
Shown the way by Furious Battler, grown guardian.

Brightowl leaves with reprieved Bladebird,
Bringing worn sworn–friend to Midgard's embrace.

@Imperial Fister

Uh, first time doing one of these. I'm like, 90% sure that I haven't completely adhered to Skaldic verse rules, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's a mistake somewhere, but hopefully it's good enough.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Constenanto said:
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.

It's possible, yeah. But I think the point that hitting Blackhand level in the first generation is very much not an expected result here stands. We're expected to take a few generations to get there.

Simon_Jester · Jun 17, 2023

Skippy said:
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.

Apart from what Alectai said...

I seem to recall that Blackhand's also told us that part of the problem is that he has a lot of offspring who've named a lot of kids after him, and that he's somehow gotten split up and lost a lot of details.

Constenanto · Jun 17, 2023

Yes, due to a bunch of his children naming their offspring after him, Hallr's soul was split apart. The Hallr we have in our soul isn't the entirety of 'Hallr', and as such he's lost a lot of his core memories unfortunately.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Apart from what Alectai said...

I seem to recall that Blackhand's also told us that part of the problem is that he has a lot of offspring who've named a lot of kids after him, and that he's somehow gotten split up and lost a lot of details.

Yeah, Imperial Fister has pretty explicitly said this. He's also very explicitly said that it won't happen with Halla. We get to pass along all our in-thread information to all future PCs.

Skippy · Jun 17, 2023

Aha! That's really good to know then.

Toboe · Jun 17, 2023

Skippy said:
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.

We haven't even started on all the mysteries of our current realm?
There is also opportunity cost in rushing, both for readers (we do not get to read all the interesting stuff we rushed around) and Halla (we have explicit confirmation by qm that there are 4 factors to advancing to the next realm, the quality of which when hitting the trigger for realm advancement playing a big role in strength in next realm (bad prep now can cripple us in the next realm)).

Skippy said:
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 have EXPLICIT confirmation that getting the preparations for ascension from this realm wrong will weaken us in the next realm.

Skippy said:
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.

The point of Hallr has already been made by others, but do you know why we haven't tried setting up a runestone yet?
Because when we had the idea we had to big emergencies going on. And then the next emergencies. And so on until end of Horra arc.

it isn't patience that keeps us from cultivating, it is having too many adventures and emergencies creating a backlog that is keeping us from cultivating.
If we rush to the next adventure that will just keep us from cultivating again.
If we rush to the next cultivation realm to get more power for adventures, that will just skip lots of interesting cultivation to get to more adventures.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Right! The runestone idea! We should probably try that soon-ish. Anyone have a good idea for what we have it say?

Constenanto · Jun 17, 2023

Toboe said:
the quality of which when hitting the trigger for realm advancement playing a big role in strength in next realm (bad prep now can cripple us in the next realm)).

Actually, it was said that we can advance our realm early, which is what would cripple us. Nothing was said about the quality of our soul crippling us. That's not to say that I don't think quality has an effect on your realm, but I don't think it'd be as bad as advancing early.

Toboe said:
We have EXPLICIT confirmation that getting the preparations for ascension from this realm will weaken us in the next realm.

When was this said?

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Right! The runestone idea! We should probably try that soon-ish. Anyone have a good idea for what we have it say?

I dunno what we'd have it say, but maybe we could have it create some sort of barrier preventing hostiles from entering our farm? If you've ever seen God of War Ragnarok, then something like the tree that Atreus and Kratos had on their land, which prevented people who wished them harm from entering it.

Toboe · Jun 17, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Right! The runestone idea! We should probably try that soon-ish. Anyone have a good idea for what we have it say?

Make a poem about our Muna of time stopping under the falling tree?
Means it is both to our time stop hugareida AND to our love of Abjorn.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Constenanto said:
Actually, it was said that we can advance our realm early, which is what would cripple us. Nothing was said about the quality of our soul crippling us. That's not to say that I don't think quality has an effect on your realm, but I don't think it'd be as bad as advancing early.

What was technically said is that if we did the action that forced an ascension without completing the other three options, it would cause us problems. That implies that weak or bad versions of the other three would likely also make for problems later.

Constenanto · Jun 17, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
What was technically said is that if we did the action that forced an ascension without completing the other three options, it would cause us problems. That implies that weak or bad versions of the other three would likely also make for problems later.

Uh... how? We were told that we can trigger our realm advancement without completing the other requirements. How does that mean that completing the other requirements 'poorly' - which, honestly, I don't really think you can complete it a requirement 'poorly' enough to be crippled, as if it's complete I feel you've met the bare threshold for ascension to begin with - would lead to being crippled?

Toboe · Jun 17, 2023

Constenanto said:
When was this said?

typo ate the "wrong" part of "getting the preparation wrong" (I.e. missing parts and force early ascension).

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Constenanto said:
Uh... how? We were told that we can trigger our realm advancement without completing the other requirements. How does that mean that completing the other requirements 'poorly' - which, honestly, I don't really think you can complete it a requirement 'poorly' enough to be crippled, as if it's complete I feel you've met the bare threshold for ascension to begin with - would lead to being crippled?

If you can still ascend without completing requirements, then you can also clearly ascend with them, like, half complete, and we don't know what 'complete' actually means. For example, is a house and no other buildings 'complete' in terms of making buildings? No actual idea. Therefore, we need to complete the requirements really well to avoid that.

And it would likely not cripple us, but not doing it leaves power on the table, which is always a bad idea when there are enemies about.

Simon_Jester · Jun 17, 2023

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Yeah, Imperial Fister has pretty explicitly said this. He's also very explicitly said that it won't happen with Halla. We get to pass along all our in-thread information to all future PCs.

To clarify, I was talking about why Blackhand didn't succeed in telling Halla everything he ever learned, not predicting that Halla would similarly fail with her own children or grandchildren.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
To clarify, I was talking about why Blackhand didn't succeed in telling Halla everything he ever learned, not predicting that Halla would similarly fail with her own children or grandchildren.

Understood. That is what my first sentence is referring to, I just added the second as I thought noting the second part was also worthwhile.

Simon_Jester · Jun 17, 2023

Understood. This quest is very popular and advances fast, so explicitly spelling out important things to avoid misunderstandings is worthwhile.

Though it did come across as kinda confrontational.

Don't worry about it now, though.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Simon_Jester said:
Understood. This quest is very popular and advances fast, so explicitly spelling out important things to avoid misunderstandings is worthwhile.

Definitely. Better to err on the side of clarity than on the side of confusion.

Simon_Jester said:
Though it did come across as kinda confrontational.

Don't worry about it now, though.

Nah, no worries, just clarifying that my own first sentence was actually in response to that.

Skippy · Jun 17, 2023

Toboe said:
We haven't even started on all the mysteries of our current realm?

Yes, which is why I'm saying we should start on them. So we agree?

Toboe said:
We have EXPLICIT confirmation that getting the preparations for ascension from this realm wrong will weaken us in the next realm.

The thing we are talking about right now is the perimeter fence, which we have explicit GM confirmation will not hamper us in any way if we build it right now, and can rebuild whenever we like, rather than needing some level of investment in our Security Skill-Trick before it would be safe. I can find you the post if you'd like.

More broadly, the thing we were told will cause problems is if we try to advance to the next realm without having done one of the prerequisites. We had an extensive conversation about it and worked out our best guesses for what they were. I think that the only way we learn more about this is by experimentation within our soul; we can't reasonably expect ranking up possibly-related Skills in little increments to confirm what is or isn't a prerequisite.

Simon_Jester · Jun 17, 2023

I will take getting to the next realm at all as a huge victory for Halla, because it means she can pass on the knowledge of how to do so (with possible ideas for modification) to her children.

Even if she breaks through and has laid excellent foundations that make her stronger in the second realm, she may not actually know for sure which parts of her preparations were necessary and which were wasted effort.

Skippy · Jun 17, 2023

Returning to this earlier post which I missed as I was on my phone; I'm not going to reply to each sub-quote because it makes the conversation really hard to follow, and remains against the rules.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
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 have at least two other research topics which we came up with when this was discussed previously. These are improving and properly laying out the fields, and building farm buildings. My memory is that we had some degree of GM confirmation on each, but we'd need to go back and check. (Additionally there's been some speculation about our well.) More broadly, if we want to find further topics for cultivation research, or confirm what works and what does not, then this is something we need to expend actual time and effort doing. If we say that we have no idea what approaches it will work, and therefore we're not going to try anything, then all we have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For what it's worth, I agree that we have lots of prep work to do before the Second Realm, but I think we have very different ideas of what that looks like.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Benchmarks for Average Norsewomen

Age 16
By adulthood at Age 16 it is expected that a Norsewoman will have 3 Hamr and 4-5 Hugr. The normal amount of orthstirr a Norsewoman will have at 16 is somewhere between 10 and 20 while having 10-15 dice in their combat pool.

They'll have around Rank 1 in one or two combat skills (other than Composure, which falls under non-combat skills for them in practice) and Glima 1, as well as Rank 3 or so in quite a few non-combat skills. They'll likely have a 4-5 in Housecraft at this point.

They'll likely know about 5 or 6 tricks, though almost entirely focused on non-combat endeavors, and a wide variety of Skill-Tricks useful in craftwork and running a household.

Age 20
The normal stat-spread of a Norsewoman of 20 is 3-4 Hamr and 5-6 Hugr (with Hugr 7 not being too unusual). They'll likely have around 20-30 orthstirr available to them and will have a combat dice pool of 15-20.

They'll likely have only 1-2 in two or three combat skills, favoring those not involving weapons, and Glima 1 or so. Their non-combat skills will probably mostly be around 3-4 or so, often 5 or 6 if they're more common. Housecraft is probably at 7 at this stage.

They'll likely know about 6 to 8 tricks, with maybe even one or two useful in combat, and an even wider variety of Skill-Tricks than a 16 year old. It's not uncommon for a Norsewoman at this age to have learned a hugareida of some kind, particularly Clearwater, which can be taught, and many know some basic household seidr spells.

Age 30 and Onwards
If a Norsewoman has made it to Age 30, then she's going to be very impressive, if vastly less combat oriented than a Norseman of the same age.

We're talking at least Hamr 5, Hugr 8, over one hundred Orthstirr, a combat pool of around 20-25, dozens of Tricks and Skill-Tricks, extremely high skills in relevant fields, several Hugareida, a wide array of seidr spells useful for a household (though usually no grounding in theory), and so on.

Their combat prowess and training may be little greater than that of younger women (though it will likely have increased somewhat, most women this age will have at least a couple of combat Tricks for emergencies), but their knowledge and skill at crafts and magic will have advanced remarkably.

The longer a Norsewoman lives the more they learn and know.
.
.
.
Basically, my attempt, based on stuff Imperial Fister has said, to make an equivalent post for the 'Norseman Benchmarks' post for Norsewomen. I would obviously be happy to be corrected by the QM himself, but I think having something like this to reference is probably a good idea for getting an idea of how Halla compares in the 'womanly arts'.

DeadmanwalkingXI · Jun 17, 2023

Skippy said:
Returning to this earlier post which I missed as I was on my phone; I'm not going to reply to each sub-quote because it makes the conversation really hard to follow, and remains against the rules.

I actually specifically didn't split any post of yours more than three times, for the record. I just wound up responding to two of them at once. Fast thread.

Skippy said:
We have at least two other research topics which we came up with when this was discussed previously. These are improving and properly laying out the fields, and building farm buildings. My memory is that we degree of GM confirmation on each, but we'd need to go back and check. (Additionally there's been some speculation about our well.) More broadly, if we want to find further topics for cultivation research, or confirm what works and what does not, then this is something we need to expend actual time and effort doing.

If we say that we have no idea what approaches it will work, and therefore we're not going to try anything, then what we have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You're acting like I'm arguing against doing this. I am really and sincerely not. In terms of immediate research, I was arguing specifically and exclusively against the idea of spending 4 dice per turn on the Wall alone. That's it. That's what I thought was a bit overly focused. I also noted that rushing ahead was bad, but that was in regard to trying to complete one thing as quickly as possible while there are still other things to do. Things exactly like the examples you suggest, in fact.

We do cultivation research pretty regularly and I'm happy to do it, and would be happy to explore any of those topics (though I think we should learn to actually build good buildings before we start doing so...it's on the Training Die plan starting within the next couple of turns). Indeed, there's been a lot of discussion about doing exactly this and I'm all for it at this point, given what we now know.

I feel very much like you're making huge assumptions here regarding my opinions of cultivation research that are not at all borne out by, uh, anything I've ever actually done. I want to proceed carefully, that's not the same thing as not proceeding at all and you're equating the two in a way that's feeling very much like an attack or a strawman. I don't think that's your intent but I'd appreciate you walking it back a little.

And, for the record, in terms of GM confirmation, what we have at the moment is a very dicey statement 'Of the three things you list, one is right, one is partially correct, and one is completely unnecessary right now' about a previous list of three things. We think we've figured which is which, but it's highly speculative.

Toboe · Jun 17, 2023

Skippy said:
We have at least two other research topics which we came up with when this was discussed previously. These are improving and properly laying out the fields, and building farm buildings. My memory is that we had some degree of GM confirmation on each, but we'd need to go back and check. (Additionally there's been some speculation about our well.) More broadly, if we want to find further topics for cultivation research, or confirm what works and what does not, then this is something we need to expend actual time and effort doing. If we say that we have no idea what approaches it will work, and therefore we're not going to try anything, then all we have is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

For what it's worth, I agree that we have lots of prep work to do before the Second Realm, but I think we have very different ideas of what that looks like.

We are working on it.
We just figured out that if we do x before y we will probably get better results. So we do x now and y when we are done with x.
(y building fence/wall, x learning proper wall building)
And if we find the best way that means we can pass on the best way to our kids.
Like we can smuggle "proper farming and wall building" into their curriculum. Then they know it before they are 12 (start age Halla, earliest possible age to start with our kids (if they are younger than that when we choose them we skip ahead timewise, iirc))

Shard · Jun 17, 2023

Vestfold Plotmess Notes:

Plotlines:

The Vestfold Amulet
Skirsvikingr and You

People:

(Friends?)
Runar & Cousins + Aki (Vote pending)
Harald Wolfwind + Hardir Haraldson/Veny Horrasdottir

(Foes?)
Reidar Swordfury & Friends
Lars Forkbeard + Jordan Sharkmouth & Felag

###

Man this is going to be a mess just from our very limited knowledge.

###

Seeing as Saemd and Virthing can reflect very close friends, I wonder if Aki's Saemd/Virthing has a burning Owl Feather?

NorseQuest (A Norse Xianxia)

Labrador Wrestling Champion

Labrador Wrestling Champion

Labrador Wrestling Champion

One and Many