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Rock the Cradle: A cultivation story

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VagueZ said:
Somehow, this is still enough to make Jay's eyes widen as he realizes what you've got for him; he's too used to Remnants being too rare and too valuable to throw around like you are. That's fine, but it just means that he didn't realize that less than half a dozen Remnants wasn't a big purchase for a large group of grateful families in Great Crevasse, so he didn't expect to get the same sort of consideration you gave your sister. "That's... very nice of you," he says, as he considers it the Remnant.
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Remnants are a lot rarer in the Silent Hinterlands so that effects perception of them.

VagueZ said:
"I haven't used much wind madra lately," Jay says, still staring at it.

"No reason you can't." He tears his eyes off his ticket to Gold to look at you. You shrug with all four arms. "I don't use just life madra. My brother uses poison and life. Wind and life will be better for some plants. I don't know which ones, but this is your opportunity to find out, to find your own niche within what we all do here."

"That's... thank you."

Bosc manages to pull her husband's attention away by poking him in the side. "Okay, that's enough thanking everyone. It's late. C'mon, let's leave my parents' house and go to our house. I'll carry the Remnants."

"Okay." Jaylon stands up from the table, then hesitates. Bosc isn't moving. He waits for an awkwardly long ten or fifteen seconds before adding, "Did you mean...?"
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Jaylon really appreciates Keras telling him that he can find his own niche in the family and giving him the option to use Wind again.

VagueZ said:
The happy couple sleep in the next day, but everyone else turns out to say good-bye. Dad has to pick you up and give you a tight hug. Mom gives you an uncomplicated hug once you're set down again. Naia is a little awkward about it, trying to avoid touching your Goldsigns as she says all the normal things. You aren't opposed to hugging Thantiriiz, but he manages to communicate with a small gesture that it's fine not to. Argen stands there with his arms crossed and doesn't look like he wants a hug. When he says things in the 'good-bye, thanks for coming and bringing something nice, be well' vein, it sounds like pulling teeth. You skip that hug, too. Olerac's farewell is most of the same words, but it sounds a lot more genuine, and he has no shyness about hugging you.
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Good to see Keras being close with his friends and family. Argen seems to be really salty about the loss which is sad.

VagueZ said:
You glance over, to find that your Goldsign hand is petting Olerac's Goldsign wolf ears. He's apparently frozen in place, not sure what to do about that. His tail is wagging, though: the Remnant he took in has no complicated feelings about friendly contact.

"Sorry!" You force the hand to stop. "My Goldsigns... do that sometimes."

"It's fine."

Now you're the one pausing for a few awkward seconds. "Uh... good-bye, everyone! Thanks for everything! It was good to be back, but Beti and I need to get back to Lord Cheng as quickly as we can. Bye!"

You take to the air with almost indecent haste.
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LOL. Keras pet the doggo.

VagueZ said:
You're desperately casting about for some distraction as the Thousand-Mile Cloud climbs for height, and the first thing that comes to mind is Etaja. You glance here and there, but... it's hard to locate the rocks he'd crashed in, where the entrance to his current little lair is. Weirdly so. You don't fly often, but it shouldn't be this hard. <How do you hide so well?>

Etaja gives you a mental shrug. {It's subconscious, at this point. My innate powers try to make things around me be a little quieter and less dramatic. It's nothing major. Just, the closer you are to me, the easier it is to locate me, moreso than normal. Your language doesn't have the words for it, but I can do an analogy, yeah? When you're just idly looking around, you're more likely to see a camouflaged fish if you look at it than if you don't, no matter how good the camouflage is. So the best camouflage a fish can have is for their section of coral to be less interesting and flashy than a reef it's not on. But you can't go too far the other way: if it's totally quiet and still, things start looking closely, in case the reason nothing's moving there is because a shark or barracuda is looking for a meal. The best way to hide is to be just a little below-average interesting or weird.}

You turn that over in your head for a few minutes, before you realize something. <You don't usually do explanations that involved for your stuff. You're trying to distract me.>

{I am, yeah!}

<Thank you.> It is helping.
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Etaja is a good friend to Keras and is able to read their mood and how to help out really well. Also it's good to know how Etaja's hiding works.

VagueZ said:
Beti's not yet had a single evening back in her familiar atrium before the Underlord is there, wasting almost no time on any sort of welcome. "Ah, Keras. Did you know that Grand Golden Bees sometimes manage to store enough madra in their honeycombs that the honeycombs themselves can leave Remnants? I only just found out!"

He drops a pair of giant, sealed buckets on the soil in front of you. "It's got some potentially interesting properties on retaining other powers, especially cloud and earth. Cloud and earth! That's a strange pairing to discover together, isn't it? Anyway, don't entirely render down the honeycomb Remnants, because definitely the madra matrix will come undone if you do that, but the smaller a chunk you can get while not disrupting that, the better. I'll need it small enough to form a pill around it, while still being edible." In other words, it still has to fit in someone's mouth. Cheng keeps talking even as you do your best to note his requirements, though. "Why isn't Beti moving?"
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There's tons of cool stuff on Cradle, also Cheng's passion for this stuff is great to see as always.

VagueZ said:
While Beti rests, you spend a little time hunting for books in Cheng's place that deal with the Remnants of bees or other insects, as well as some theory on dissecting Remnants.

By the time Beti is ready to help you, you've figured out a plan. Beti holds chunks of honeycomb in place with an array of vines, gently pulling so that they won't move and are at the perfect height for you. You sit there and feel the Remnant honeycombs with your spiritual sense and fingers. Most of the Remnant is separated into, essentially, the individual cells that make it up. The Grand Golden Bees would focus on one at a time, filling it with various types of pollen and the like. In their minds, there was no sub-division possible below this level, so that is the smallest the Remnant can be divided.

So, gently, carefully, with slow precision, you work the point of your halfsilver knife into the Remnant 'wax' separating each of them. The halfsilver disrupts madra, and so here it serves as an excellent cutting implement. The biggest potential problem is actually just how ready it is to disrupt the dead matter of the Remnant: the flat of the knife would go straight through this Remnant just as easily as the blade does, so you're very slowly and meticulously using just the tip of the blade to carve through it.

It's tedious, mind-numbing work, which is of course why Cheng gave it to you instead of doing it himself. Sometimes he absolutely needs Beti to process materials. Sometimes you're just more convenient. You have a little script-circle you chalked onto a chunk of bare concrete in the atrium, something meant to prevent the honeycomb-pieces from unraveling the rest of the way, and as you methodically finish carving each little cell off, you gently pile it in your circle. They're only about the size of your thumbnail, so well within the size a pill can be. Maybe one in a hundred you don't manage to save: either you misread the madra or else your hand slips a little bit, and the halfsilver does its work.

You don't really think much about how most refiners with three times your experience would do this slower and with more mistakes. You just work. Later, Cheng comes and collects what he needs.
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Between Beti's help, Keras's coordination, spiritual sense and the teaching they've received, Keras has turned into a really good Refiner. Keras being better then refiners with three times their experience is great to see and a mark of their talent and hard work.

VagueZ said:
Eventually, it's time for your next scheduled meeting with Prachi. Sometimes he has you meet him out and about, but other times, like today, you meet with him in the Luxe place, in one of the scripted dojo rooms that serve as safe spaces to fling madra around.

For just about the first time, you find Prachi fiddling with a control panel here: the room has an embedded, advanced Forger technique that can generate simple faux soldiers for someone to fight against, but apparently it's both expensive to use and the soldiers aren't the most skilled. "Keras," he says, by way of greeting. "Welcome back. How is your family doing?"
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Resources like this is really useful for training.

VagueZ said:
"Good," you say, giving him a smile. "It was nice to see everyone again, and actually having your dream tablets with me helped me help one of my friends."

Prachi cocks an eyebrow at you. "Surprising," he says, but he doesn't ask for details. With his walking stick to support him, he comes up to you, and you hand back the dream tablets. "They helped you, as well, I trust?"

"I think so."
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Prachi wants to make sure that Keras understands what they're getting into by becoming a professional level fighter.

VagueZ said:
He grunts. "Good. Even if you settle on a fighting style that is quite different from my own, we can devise a good training routine for it. You will need to drill again to ingrain any adjustments, as practice makes permanent. When you practice your forms enough hundreds of times, they will become second nature. Until we get there, accuracy is the most important thing."

You nod. This isn't something new from him, so you echo familiar words back. "Right, because practice makes permanent." If you do it wrong each time, then that is what becomes permanent.
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Proper habits are really important.

VagueZ said:
A fake Enforcer technique flares in one of them, and it moves to engage you while the other brings up its hands, pouring madra into what looks like a Striker technique.

Sometimes the correct tactic is clear, and not so much a style. That's also part of why this is a half-speed fight, so you don't react without thought, and only move as you actually intend to. You swing around, putting the melee enemy between you and the Striker one.

It tries to feint a horizontal slash before pulling back and going for a thrust, but you read its intent. It's barely started the thrust before you've grabbed its wrist with one hand. A Goldsign fist punches the enemy's face, and its head rocks back. That's enough to put it off-balance.

Your other physical hand swings your axe into its chest, and you follow up with a flat-palm blow to its center of mass, hurling the partially-mangled Forged enemy into the other one.

This only briefly disrupts the Striker enemy, as it takes a moment to try to dodge and then to get free of the one you'd hit it with.

But the reason that you could do that so well against these two is because they're notably inferior to you. Two more Forged enemies rise up behind you. This is where you'll begin to show what you've been working out in your head, as further techniques kindle in your hands.

You don't know yet just how quickly you'll have to make use of what you're beginning to learn.
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Keras noting that they're able to do so well because they're superior to the dummies is notable, they understand just how important skill is.

VagueZ said:
What sort of style will Keras focus on learning? These all build on what Keras already knows and are all slightly different narrative options, as we are reaching a point where Keras has to pick what to prioritize, granting certain bonuses while having certain areas that are not as easily handled. This will also influence how Keras welds their techniques into their approach to combat. No style can do everything, but all of these options allow Keras to fight better against certain types of foes while having a type of foe they are little better against than before undertaking this more involved training.
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Combat works off narrative so this feels like a very important choice, while the stat gains matter I think focusing on what the styles are doing is something that should get more focus since it matters more in the long run.

LotusPocus said:
[X] A technical style

I think this fits Keras more. They're a healer and a refiner too and maybe this style could be complemented by this abilities in combat. Also this augments Coordination and it should be one of the highest stats of Keras with Stamina imo. A speciality in Ruler and Forger techniques plus four arms who synergize with our Iron body complete this stats ans style well.
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Precison is something that Keras has carefully cultivated so turning that into a fighting style and adding the 4 arms would be very useful.

soranoyume said:
Keras gets to live out our dreams and pet Olerac's ears, even if they didn't mean to.

What a nice (and endearing awkward) end to a visit home!


A glimpse into how Keras is faring as a refiner? It seems they're doing pretty well.

I think technical style works for Keras, especially since most of their techniques are ranged or AOE and in character creation stages, people chose to give Keras talent in coordination, so it'd be nice to see it boosted into again.

[X] A technical style
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Keras really is doing well as a refiner they have a knack for the art and I can see them surpassing Cheng eventually if they invest enough into the skillset.

The technical style does mesh pretty well with Keras's techniques in general.

Karnax626 said:
[X] A technical style

This one seems fun, and it goes well with the coordination/crowd control parts of Keras' Path. It may not be as good against those faster but Keras' already has a few options for slowing them down.
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Keras the mook killer is a very useful thing to invest into.

CoreBrute said:
[X] A technical style

I like this narratively (our MC is a bit of a thinker) and also because we're coming up with forger vine techniques that specifically slow down our opponents, helping us deal with swifter foes who might have us at disadvantage.
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That's a good pint the forger vines are able to slow down faster opponents which counteracts the style's weakness.

[X] A technical style

I feel like this style both enhances Keras's strength of being able to fight strong even when outnumbered and the ability to do well against really strong attacks is useful since Keras can heal lesser blows but not something that kills them in one shot. The weakness against faster foes is manageable since they're way faster then average for their lowgold status, and the clining vines is useful as a way to slow those few that are faster then Keras.

Also increasing Coordination from C+ to B- will be really cool both because it'll be giving Keras their first B stat which feels like a very big deal especially given that Keras is a lowgold and that's likely a stat level that lowgolds rarely have.

The flavor text is about being inspired by Bosc, and using their spiritual sense and enforcer technique as underpinning of the style is rather intersting. Also the eking out small edges and then building openings and denying balance, feels like a style that's really well suited for debuffs to the enemy.
 
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[X] An adamant style
[X] A technical style

Both of these mesh well with the general approach Keras has, since they already rely on their toughness, perception, and tricks to drag fights out until they can find or create an opening while avoiding the most dangerous strikes.

Especially considering the Life/Death path they're on, and the healing and refining techniques they've learned.
 
[X] A technical style
The technical style plays well to Keras's current build This is a vote to continue along the same path, but better.

[X] A vicious style
We are told that " This will also influence how Keras welds their techniques into their approach to combat". I think a vicious style will encourage Keras to make more and better use of his death madra.

Dragons deserve hugs too 🤗 Poor dragon teacher, too scaly for hugs, not cute enough for ear pats.

On a completely unrelated note, I really enjoy the practice makes permanent refrain.
 
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SeaTheTree said:
I forgot but is this our inner concious petting olerac's wolf ears rather than our rational mind, or are our arms petting the ears because it sees a future where we pet olerac's wolf ears.
Either way very cute
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Either, both, or it could simply be a dead old woman petting a dead doggo.
ArcanaVitae said:
There's tons of cool stuff on Cradle, also Cheng's passion for this stuff is great to see as always.
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I'm actually really interested in what the heck taking in the remnant of a beehive of all things would do to someone, and if they would have synergy with someone that had taken in a bee remnant.
 
SeaTheTree said:
I forgot but is this our inner concious petting olerac's wolf ears rather than our rational mind, or are our arms petting the ears because it sees a future where we pet olerac's wolf ears.

Either way very cute
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Kinda potentially both. The Remnant's mind can exert a little control over Goldsigns while at Lowgold, for some people but not for others. No canon depiction has shown a Highgold or higher to have any ongoing issues with the Remnant's lingering will, which is how I'm intending to run it. How much is "Zeyu was a dog person" and how much is "Keras' own subconscious is doing this"? I know, but I'm not telling.

SinisterPorpoise said:
I'm actually really interested in what the heck taking in the remnant of a beehive of all things would do to someone, and if they would have synergy with someone that had taken in a bee remnant.
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I... had not considered that question.
 
SinisterPorpoise said:
I'm actually really interested in what the heck taking in the remnant of a beehive of all things would do to someone, and if they would have synergy with someone that had taken in a bee remnant.
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VagueZ said:
I... had not considered that question.
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It wasn't a Beehive. Cheng had a Honeycomb Remmant.

I think options for Goldsings made due to a Honeycomb Remmant would be:
  • Some part of your body is actually covered in honey. (I think there is a Cradle character that has something like ink in her arms, so it could be like that but with a recolor.)
  • Your body now has holes like a beehive in some part of it, either big or small.
  • Little bees made out of pure Madra fly around you, mainly around your head.
  • There is a very low chance that you gain a Goldsing based on an actual bee.
Those are my ideas.
 
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