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Rock the Cradle: A cultivation story

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[X] Your mom and dad visit with an interesting discovery
[X] Foraging in the King's lands, you find a grand haul
[X] An incident occurs during one of the community outreaches
[X] Following the clues you have, you head underground
 
uri said:
But locking it out is a good thing, Keras is not a diviner, they are never going to be a diviner as their future sight would be both time consuming and odd, locking out the option means that all of the time spent developing a talent that They don't really have get spent on things that actually matter.
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Is FOMO basically, especially since it has been pointed out that it will dissapear. Please guys, vote for Damir since it was pointed out it pretty much is gonna be more inmediatly important too!
 
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uri said:
I'm honestly not sure why people are voting for the oracle, Keras is never going to be good at it, it's not anything expected from them and its just going to stretch what free time they do have to train their techniques and skills.
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/shrug I just think it's cool. I've always thought Keras' fate reading is cool, and I'm pretty sure I voted for the diviner option. I also voted for the diviner remnant over some of the others.
 
Ferb_Ancos said:
Please guys, vote for Damir since it was pointed out it pretty much is gonna be more inmediatly important too!
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It being important is an excellent reason not to vote for Damir stuff. The last thing I want is a dozen chapters dedicated to him and his school nonsense. I don't want anything in this city to be important, and the only way to make that happen is to vote for things outside it. We've been trapped in this city for so long, I just want out.

[X] Travel to the Forest Sage with Underlord Cheng
[X] Following the clues you have, you head underground
[X] Foraging in the King's lands, you find a grand haul
[X] Your mom and dad visit with an interesting discovery
 
kelpsie said:
We've been trapped in this city for so long, I just want out.
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Are you ok? I get the time in the city hasn't been too enjoyable, but that is taking it a bit too far, isn't it?
Besides, leaving the city for good is most likely dependant of outside forces, regarless of the choices we take.
 
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If we were stuck here that'd be one thing, but we had and will continue to have the opportunity to explore elsewhere, so I'm pretty happy with it.

Kinda wish we could explore with more of these options, but that's just VagueZ giving too many good options. Definitely looking forward to the Wasteland trip though.
Parzival95 said:
I've actually really enjoyed the city and want more Damir so I've dropped my Oracle vote to help him get ahead.
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Underground and Oracle are actually the ones competing for fourth place right now, with Damir in third.
 
I mean me personally I like the theme of life and death oracle. It's not FOMO it's something I want to see be part of Kera's path we are a life death artist with an Oracles remnant it seems like a pretty logical thing to want to continue to progress to me.
 
To be fair, even though I didn't vote for it, being an oracle doesn't necessarily mean dream madra. The greatest oracle in the world according to the books (Malice) is on a pure shadow path, with her watching and listening to the whispers of shadows for her oracle stuff.

Oracle stuff locally seems mostly tied to Dream users, but you clearly can be an oracle with 0 Dream influence. Dream is just a very evocative way to present oracle stuff.


If we do pursue life/death oracle stuff, I want to start getting premonitions of when people will die, how long their life is currently, etc. 'How close you are to death'. I don't wanna do it through dream reader style visions and dreams, without dream being introduced.



My main argument against pursuing the oracle stuff is just that it's yet another thing to pursue in a basket of things to pursue that is only growin with time. We are going to end up being a jack of all trades with a mastery of none. Being a warrior/healer/refiner/oracle just feels like wearing too many hats at once.

Edit: And yes, I do understand these talents can feed into each other. Healing let's us fight more risky and survive bad plays, refining let's us theoretically make combat boosts and just helps us have elixirs to grow faster, oracle stuff probably could be integrated too, potions to make us see more visions, visions leading us to high value items by chance, etc. But then we end up at this deadlock of too many ways to grow and we cannot grow them all at the same time; and I don't wanna spend every single 'choose a few' option on mixing those.
 
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uri said:
I'm honestly not sure why people are voting for the oracle, Keras is never going to be good at it, it's not anything expected from them and its just going to stretch what free time they do have to train their techniques and skills.

Wait, I know why people are voting for it, its shiny syndrome. People don't want to lock out the ability altogether and so vote for it even if its not needed for the fear of missing out.

But locking it out is a good thing, Keras is not a diviner, they are never going to be a diviner as their future sight would be both time consuming and odd, locking out the option means that all of the time spent developing a talent that They don't really have get spent on things that actually matter.
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I'm voting for oracle because I've voted for oracle stuff at every possible avenue until now, watched it lose at nearly every possible avenue barring our goldsign and arguably our jade sense specialization, and this is the last avenue available to us. Because Keras has spent the last 70 updates establishing a reputation for knowing things they have absolutely no reason to know, but that ability is almost entirely because of Etaja's assistance, and the moment he's gone Keras will have no powers in that vein unless we take this option.

Because oracle things are specifically a thing that Etaja doesn't know about it and is interested in studying. Because it'll be incredibly interesting seeing what oracular abilities look like translated through a life/death path instead of dream or shadow. Because it'll pay homage to mom where nearly the entire rest of Keras's power set pays homage to dad. Because it'll be yet another weird skill that nobody expects Keras to have, being on a life/death path. Because, given how we fed all of our dream madra into Field's Strength, I can see us becoming able to upgrade that technique specifically into giving us straight-up combat precognition. Because they specialized as a refiner in creating weird, esoteric solutions to problems, and this is specifically called out as a weird esoteric power for Keras to have, meaning synergy.

Keras absolutely has potential to be good at it, to mold it into their skillset, and make it work for them. They might never be quite as good at it as a dedicated traditional dream or shadow path oracle, but they can absolutely make it work for them, especially considering how their goldsign is dedicated to allowing them to choose their own fate, while this would give them eyes to see what fate they're choosing.

Losing out on this very last chance to acquire any type of oracle skills would be a mistake, imo. There's so much we can do with it, both practically and narratively.
 
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Ferb_Ancos said:
Are you ok? I get the time in the city hasn't been too enjoyable, but that is taking it a bit too far, isn't it?
Besides, leaving the city for good is most likely dependant of outside forces, regarless of the choices we take.
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How so? I have a preference for the direction the story will take, and, just like everybody else, I'm using my votes to try and make that happen. Besides, it's hardly unreasonable to want to move on from a 45 chapter, ~200,000 wordcount arc.
 
dolcevita said:
I'm voting for oracle because I've voted for oracle stuff at every possible avenue until now, watched it lose at nearly every possible avenue barring our goldsign and arguably our jade sense specialization, and this is the last avenue available to us. Because Keras has spent the last 70 updates establishing a reputation for knowing things they have absolutely no reason to know, but that ability is almost entirely because of Etaja's assistance, and the moment he's gone Keras will have no powers in that vein unless we take this option.

Because oracle things are specifically a thing that Etaja doesn't know about it and is interested in studying. Because it'll be incredibly interesting seeing what oracular abilities look like translated through a life/death path instead of dream or shadow. Because it'll pay homage to mom where nearly the entire rest of Keras's power set pays homage to dad. Because it'll be yet another weird skill that nobody expects Keras to have, being on a life/death path. Because, given how we fed all of our dream madra into Field's Strength, I can see us becoming able to upgrade that technique specifically into giving us straight-up combat precognition. Because they specialized as a refiner in creating weird, esoteric solutions to problems, and this is specifically called out as a weird esoteric power for Keras to have, meaning synergy.

Keras absolutely has potential to be good at it, to mold it into their skillset, and make it work for them. They might never be quite as good at it as a dedicated traditional dream or shadow path oracle, but they can absolutely make it work for them, especially considering how their goldsign is dedicated to allowing them to choose their own fate, while this would give them eyes to see what fate they're choosing.

Losing out on this very last chance to acquire any type of oracle skills would be a mistake, imo. There's so much we can do with it, both practically and narratively.
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This, all of this.
 
I vote for Damir for a couple of reasons, first is that he was barely used in the previous arc. We did have some interactions as a result of getting him to help us develop our Striker, but we realy voted for him that time. The rest of things came as a result of that.

He is also our way to up the Striker we have, something that is more tangible of a reward.

The main options to drop are the oracle stuff and the underground, with underground being a safer thing to drop seeing that the thing should still be there for us to check on later.
 
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[X] Following the clues you have, you head underground
[X] Foraging in the King's lands, you find a grand haul
[X] Your mom and dad visit with an interesting discovery
[X] Meet with a Luxe oracle to see what you can still learn

Mostly I'm interested in stuff that takes us out and adventuring now that we've built up a decent base for it. I do want that Oracle power to keep flowing though since it's been a very unique aspect of this quest so far. And it's one of the few sources of information we have in this quest that isn't automatically shared in 4k fish vision. We can finally pull that mysterious advice from nowhere shit back on Etaja.
 
VagueZ said:
Mireya nods, and kneels down. She kicks off, a powerful leap, and beats her glowing white wings as hard as she can, cloud madra stirring to try to haul her further. It gets her to Venkata's height, but she struggles there. Keeping herself aloft, whether in place or moving around, is clearly an enormous struggle. After a few seconds, she starts to flag.
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Ged also tried to join Vetch up in the middle of the air, but lacking the key of the spell he had to flap his arms to keep aloft, and they were all laughing at his flights and flaps and bumps. He kept up his foolishness for the laughter's sake, laughing with them, for after those two long nights of dance and moonlight and music and magery he was in a fey and wild mood, ready for whatever might come.
 
[X] Provide refiner's creations to Damir and his faction

[X] Travel to the Forest Sage with Underlord Cheng

[X] Leverage your new connections while serving as Cheng's assistant

[X] Following the clues you have, you head underground

[X] Foraging in the King's lands, you find a grand haul

[X] You support Mother in a significant internal Luxe affair
I just don't think an Oracle really fits within Keras' build.
 
[X] Following the clues you have, you head underground
[X] Meet with a Luxe oracle to see what you can still learn
[X] Your mom and dad visit with an interesting discovery
 
With the recent influx of votes. I have to inform y'all that if there's a want for a Damir option to win, then votes should drop the searching the underground vote. Since it is the one battling with the refiner Damir option for fourth place.
 
dolcevita said:
but that ability is almost entirely because of Etaja's assistance, and the moment he's gone Keras will have no powers in that vein unless we take this option.
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This is definitely not true though. If we ever end up in the Palace or in... Arrow Fall, was it?...we'll have a bunch of knowledge we have no right to know entirely from our own dream oracle insights of seeing the "alternate" usses. Sure we haven't had one of those in a while, and sure we'll likely get more of them if we lean into the Oracle stuff, but we're definitely capable of learning things well outside of mortal means when the stars align correctly.
 
@VagueZ If there's still a tie for fourth by the time you wanna close the vote, how are you planning to resolve it? Just pick one? Roll a die? Have a sudden death vote?
 
[X] An incident occurs during one of the community outreaches
[X] Leverage your new connections while serving as Cheng's assistant
[X] Provide refiner's creations to Damir and his faction
[X] Foraging in the King's lands, you find a grand haul

Rather keep focus on refining. Keras' abilities are right now scattered around several different areas of focus with little overlap. Like, healing is focused entirely on their Ruler tech and literally none of their other combat techs can be leveraged into helping as they are now. Their combat style doesn't have any overlap with their refining speciality, save in niche esoteric situations. Balancing a time-consuming and another esoteric divination art with everything else Keras has going on does not sound fun. Finding a place in the community as a source of helpful healing does sound fun.
 
Reyemile said:
This is definitely not true though. If we ever end up in the Palace or in... Arrow Fall, was it?...we'll have a bunch of knowledge we have no right to know entirely from our own dream oracle insights of seeing the "alternate" usses. Sure we haven't had one of those in a while, and sure we'll likely get more of them if we lean into the Oracle stuff, but we're definitely capable of learning things well outside of mortal means when the stars align correctly.
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No, unless we learn how to oracle, we'll never have one of those again. We were getting those because of the uncontrolled dream madra we were generating throwing us all out of whack which mom had to come and help us out with, and if we'd incorporated dream into our path back then, then yeah, we could've expected occasional recurrences or learning how to make it happen purposefully.

But we chose to seal our dream madra away by channeling it all into the technique binding for Field's Strength, so we don't have a whole bunch of the stuff floating free in our system to cause occasional spontaneous visions anymore.
VagueZ said:
if you do not select this now, you will never be able to learn any future sight
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The option specifically states that not choosing it means we will never have future sight. The only way to keep that ability or learn some equivalent is to take this action and learn how to do it through our life/death path. Otherwise, that palace vision will be the only vision Keras will ever have in their life, versus getting to continue getting weird insight like that as their path continues and they encounter new challenges they wish to learn about.
 
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