I just think the image of tiny little Keras, miracle tree child, who is generally sweet and friendly to everyone, walking into a fight and forging themselves into a Deathknight, clad in bone arms and armor would be really, really funny.
Edit:
Adhoc justification for why this would be good:
Clearly since it's made of bone, we CAN heal it. Our bone armor gets broken through and we just heal it back up! Synergy with our healing focus!
Edit 2: second justification
We have already found out about Bone strengthening potions as a refiner. Clearly if we make stronger bones our bone armor can be stronger too! Synergy with our Refining skills!
Keras's image of being this really sweet but creepy kid is hilarious and something I'm in favor of leaning into.
The Underlady was never really going to be soft with us, considering how she treats her own family. I do agree it was more selfless than selfish, the main one to get something direct out of it was Mireya herself, with indirect benefits for us and Venkata.
She's a cold hearted pragmatist that looks after her own interests kindness and generosity was never going to happen. Keras is on good terms with her daughters Mireya and Venkata and they're a lot easier to work with.
Farzana's the one shortchanging us by pressuring us into doing things in exchange for stuff we've already paid for. Venkata's been trying to treat us fairly, to the point that her Mother chastised her for not doing more to bind us tightly to the Luxe.
Sorry messed the names up, Venkata is into the noblis oblige stuff and has been fair with Kersa, Farzana is the one being a greedy.
I'm skeptical that would work for Dandelion Rain considering the theme of the technique is planting seeds that sprout at a delay. Adding Death feels like it'd conflict with that.
That's fair, we could go more into Life and make status effects through that.
We saw Enohel had Death armour that lashed out at people who got close, so we could try to do something similar with ours. We don't have Destruction though, so maybe mimic our Clinging Vines and have it degrade techniques that come for us so they have to rely more on physical strength instead?
I hadn't thought about making defenses but a Death armor would be both defensive and offensive as well as really aweseome.
That's fair, Keras actually notes that LotNS is kind of being a liar but you can't exactly say that to her face.
Farzana will look after her interests first and foremost, she's not the worst patron to have but there's a reason I'm not cool with placing Keras under her.
So there's a couple possibilities here, and I hope Vague doesn't just go "actually you should never pick a Luxe option again because LotNS will keep shortchanging you". So assuming it's not that, I'm guessing we'll get benefits from either Mireya trying to repay us (in the same way Gardenia offered a favor), or once Venkata returns to the city (pretty likely to happen soon given her mom and the clan's main Underlord was injured) may repay us in her mom's stead.
I think that if we want Farzana to fully back Keras then Keras would need to fully sign on to the Luxe through either Mireya or Venkata. Personally I'd prefer that Keras is just connected to them through those two and mostly growing into their own power, even being on friendly terms with a Underlord would be a win for the Luxe so they'd take that. (Keras has potential to be Underlord relatively quickly)
Yeah the vines' main weakness is definitely toughness. Strengthening them is one option. Another might be imbuing them with Death? Not sure it's possible, but theoretically it may make touching the vines dangerous (so a direct attack, not just binding).
They're just very easy to tear, maybe making them tougher and having the death stuff make tearing them hurt is a good idea.
We've technically already done that; while binding someone the vines make it harder to create techniques/shape madra. But it was called out when picked as only working against people weaker than us, and I don't think that aspect has ever come up as making a difference. Our biggest issue being mostly that we only fight equals and our betters; I don't think we've ever really had to contend with people weaker than us.
I imagine that training the technique to a much higher level would get it to work on those on Keras's level. Though fundamentally the Clinging Vines is meant as a hampering move to make movement harder and to restrain people so they have a nonlethal option.
Keras has been mostly fighting people either on their level or a bit stronger then them. Keras is very geared to deal with weaker people long term due to Clinging Vines and Desiccated Valley but they're not really super geared towards fighting individuals. I imagine forgings a life-death armor and/or weapon would possibly change that. Though we could also gear Dandelion Rain to be more focused on hitting individuals.
Yeah, this is how I feel; as it is, we have no reason to ever help the Luxe again. We solved a fairly major problem for them, remember Mireya apparently made more progress in six weeks than she had in three years before us, and all we got was a 'you did what you were asked to do, good' and sent on our way. No bonus to our resources, no even minor treasures, not even a 'keep it up and maybe we'll keep supporting you even longer' comment. Just waved on our way without anything but Mireya's gratitude.
I can get Gardenia not paying us; she's poor. A big aspect of her character is that she is poor. She's about to be even more poor, since we have led to her patron being arrested. But having the local nobles also be unable to pay for our expertise, especially when it was a novel new elixir no one else has ever made, created to solve a one of a kind problem no one had faced? Makes me resent the Luxe family. Which might be intentional?
Keras has more then proven themselves useful to the Luxe to the point I can see the Luxe sponsoring them to Truegold and if they're not getting rewarded for the work they've done at this point then investing more to keep the Luxe happy isn't worth the time investment. Keras can have the Luxe as business partners and tangential allies to use as a political sheild but they're not going to be friends with the Luxe Clan as a whole, sure maybe some people in it but the Luxe Clan looks after their own interets and can be trusted to do that.
Edit:
As for what bone forging could offer outside of just normal armor/weapon, remember that it's death/life (or life/death), so we could maybe have it be life-drain weapon/armor. Not full on hunger 'I eat their power' but something like 'when someone touches it, their body's energy is sapped'.
That would be very interesting and having the Forger technique be both weapons and armor would be good.
I think it's really important to not treat the Luxe family as one unified thing here. This can and should make you resent and dislike the Lady of the Night sky who is, frankly, a piece of shit in a lot of ways. Venkata and Mireya are a completely different matter and need to be considered and viewed separately if one is to have an accurate view of the people involved and their capabilities and priorities.
This is very important, Venkata has been fair to Keras, Pratchi is basically Keras's grumpy pseudo grandpa at this point and Mireya is a new friend. Also long term I'm pretty sure Farzana is going to get killed or start handing off more and more to Venkata so we won't really have to deal with her in the long term only in the short and mid term. But in the meanwhile it's still very much a business agreement.
On that note, it wouldn't surprise me if Venkata was called back to Grand Crevasse whilst her mother's recovering from the attack. It'd be good to see her again.
I can see Venkata's taking over of her mother's duties speeding up with her mother's injury.
Something to take into account is that while the upgrade to Clinging Vines that was chosen was the weaker one of the three, it added a brand new madra type to it, which gives the possibility of improving on the death aspect in future upgrades.
Yeah investing more into the technique will make it more potent.
Fair, but as the head of the Luxe family and the one in charge of all of their funds and what they pay for things, it means I don't particularly see value in helping the family with any other potential problems. Venkata has been shown to pay well, and so if she came back into the picture, maybe we can work with the Luxe family some more.
But Mireya being scion of one of the top families means I'm less likely to want to do charity work just to help her, and she doesn't seem to have her own resources to pay us for help.
Unfortunately, I wouldn't want to treat her the same as Gardenia or our friends back home; subsidizing our poor friends who have no resources and need help is something I can easily justify. But someone like Mireya born with a silver spoon (and a shitty mom) is harder for me to self justify doing charity for.
The LotNS even basically said she had other solutions lined up, she just didn't want to pay the more expensive people. So us not helping Mireya doesn't leave her on her own or anything.
Farzana is the one at the head of the ship but that's not necessarily going to stay true forever and Venkata is far easier to work with. Mireya is Keras's friend she doesn't need resources or help from Keras only emotinal support because that's what she's lacking and needs and it's something Keras can do to help her. Keras helps out Gardenia and their friends in the Silent Hinterlands because they're friends, talented, hardworking and don't have opportunities without that help.
Pretty much, yeah! For a lot of characters, they hate ascending because, well, this is their home and they have friends and enemies and duties and familiarity with everything here. It's noted to be difficult for an Archlord to ascend even with preparation, but this Archlord did not have much authority. An Underlord with authority is called out as being eligible to ascend. I figure this balances out at "any Herald, Sage, and most determined very powerful Lords could ascend if they wanted to, but the lower you are than Herald or Sage, the rougher it will be for you".
This is actually a very useful analogy! The key thing that needs to be achieved to ascend is "enough of a connection to the Way". Soulfire and other tools high-tier sacred artists access seem to be keyed to mean that anyone who advances far enough can make the jump if they choose. That's still a tiny amount of people, objectively, but proportionately it's a lot of people because everyone else outside of Cradle actually is stuck in that cave with a box of scraps.
Basically the main thing that helps with Ascending is having a connection to the way, all Lords have that through Soulfire and Authority given by that but more Authority makes it a lot easier.
People don't like Ascending because it's leaving behind everything that they know and is a huge gamble as well.
I understand where the lament comes from, but I beg patience for a little bit. I do have plans to try to pull everything together as we go. To make an analogy to Xin Wu (hey, people should check out KittyEmpress' quest, too), Keras is way earlier in their story than Isha is—the first third, as opposed to the last third, where things are still developing both internally to the protagonist and externally in the world around them, as well as how the two relate. Keras is still an eleven-year-old who's learning and experimenting. Long-term, I really do have plans to try to fold together the things Keras has found interesting, but it's still in progress at this point in the overall narrative.
Other than that, I'll just generally say that I have a lot of respect for the rest of your thoughts. I think that showing how I'm responding to them within updates is just a better medium than a reply, though, so... sorry, hard to get too deep into it in this fashion. I'm way more with you on class-consciousness stuff than I think you've taken away from RtC so far, which is just part of where the story beats are at the moment. Not that I think you thought anything as extreme as this example, but this definitely isn't "the wise upper classes break down the ungrateful revolting lessers who should have known better".
This is very much the early days for Keras as a person and Sacred Artist. I imagine that things will be folded together as time passes and Keras advances.
I like how the various classes, economic levels, social status, personal power has been shown to have an effect. Keras comes from the Silent Hinterlands it's not as bad as the Sacred Valley but it's notable a lot poorer and weaker then the average in the world. But they're able to get by and have meaningful lives. But people who are on a higher level but in the cities are still living in poverty and people hoard resources. The most common tool of advancement is Sects and even that requires talent and hardwork and is basically a pyramid scheme that people buy into knowingly. People with tons of personal power gather wealth and social status by virtue of that power even if they don't want it, best example is Cheng. Keras is someone who doesn't really care about political power but can see people's plights and political movements and understand why things are happening.
I mean, technically it did? You're completely right that it hasn't gotten any headlining successes yet and I need to change that; it absolutely has not had a significant payoff yet and there were opportunities that it could have fit in. It didn't fit well with my fight scene choreography as I was setting up those opportunities, but it should've. This is the 'technically correct' point where it mattered, but it's a brief mention in a summing-up paragraph and not a major focus:
The Clinging Vines are useful it's just that Keras hasn't been positioned to get maximum use out of them yet.
Intent was just to show the breadth of Keras' skills in this context, but I will do more with it going forward.
This did show very well that Keras is a badass and extremely skilled, Keras's friends are very talented and being taught by a Dragon Teacher which is a good education. Keras is able to take three of them because they're just on another weight class in terms of skills even though their friends advanced to Lowgold.
Oh none of my class sentiments was meant to be directed negatively towards you as a writer. The reason I said I thought there wasn't much chance of that happening was more because the noble options obviously have the nice rewards. They also tend towards some less than pleasant things, unfortunately, because class revolution is rarely friendly.
For me Risshon is likely going to show the positive sides of the conspiracy but the conspiracy still has a monster like Enohel and their people for a reason they need the people to do the bloody dirty work. But that isn't to say that there isn't reasons for them to do that and that the King doesn't deserve to be overthrown but the question is if the chaos and. bloodshed can be made to be worth it and would the conspiracy/revolution be able to actually change things long term.
Oh the Lament is not on you at all. Everything lamented is things the readers have voted for; which all went fairly expected imo. And there's plenty of ways we can grow to make high use of that tripling down.
Edit:
Overall I'd like to make it explicit that I do enjoy the story. Quite a lot. Enough to actually post in the thread, which isn't super common!
I will continue in the future to try to push towards anything that I feel may be synergistic to improving us with what we have. especially even if this means terrifying bone armor!
It's a great quest and I'm happy you've enjoyed it, it's totally okay to not like how some of the votes have went.
Even if an underlord can ascend, things would have to be pretty bad on cradle for them to want to. In a lot of parts of the world, an underlord is very close to the peak of the power structure, even if they're just casual minions for the monarch factions. Going from a wealthy, powerful individual with few rivals to a mid tier member of the adiban is uh, somewhat undesirable. Honestly, the adiban working conditions seem pretty trash.
Very much this there's a lot more room for growth on Cradle as an Underlord and you'll go from being an asset or a local power to being a grunt. Monarchs are people who are counted as mid tier Abidan recruits but the Abidan has high standards for proper recruits rather then just people working for them.
Being an Abidan seems like it sort of sucks, but living on Abidan 'worlds' seems pretty cool from what we saw; so long as you're in a safe part of the Way. Everything up there is as tasty as the best things on Cradle, every food is like eating a natural treasure, etc. That being said, I doubt many people with the Will to push themselves to Underlord or above are the type to be happy with a mundane life just because the food produced is tastier.
TBH we see the Abidan when they're massively on the back foot. It's probably a lot better before Ozriel disappeared or after the series.
Also it's unclear if working for the Abidan is compulsory. One of the book mentions "recruiting centers" which wouldn't be necessary if everybody was conscripted. (But it might be different for born Abidan vs. ascended.)
The Abidan worlds are usually really great places to live compared to the rest of the multiverse it's just that they're in a really horrible spot lately.
I imagine Ascended recruits are kinda really pressured to join up due to their personal power being notable enough that you don't want them to join the Vroshir. But it's likely a case of you'll be bound to follow the Pact and laws of the Abidan regardless of what you do but you may not have to directly work for them but you'll lack opportunities if you don't.
Being an Abidan (of low rank) is much like being an Underlord by my estimation. That is to say it's a sweet gig 99.99% of the time. You get a bunch of resources and opportunities from the organization, can build up your own strength beyond anything you'd manage on your own, and don't need to worry about some fiend or another biting your head off with no support.
The problem is the last .01% where you're an active service member in a military organization where "Reality was rewritten so you not only stopped having but never had skin" is the kind of shit getting thrown around. It's long periods of peace and prosperity interrupted by flashes of utter terror.
That seems like a great analysis of things, though I'd also add in that they have to make really hard calls, face the Vroshir who can sometimes be insanely horrible and there's also the fact that lots of the Abidan members can be real assholes and evil even if you're on the same side. I think the biggest deal for most people is the sheer amount of restrictions being part of the Abidan would impose on them. There's a reason the Vroshir think of themselves are freedom fighters.
