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Shards of Awakening

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dmclain2 said:
The only question to ask was what should she instruct these few on:

[] Base cultivation

[] Arts

[] Qi

[] Meridians
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And thus with this vote we see the true terrible eldritch potency of the Art that Quan Jia cultivates: even being far superior to her in power and Daoist insight does not render your choices immune from the odds being tweaked in her favor. Because this vote is clearly due to the watsonian impact of Quan Jia's Art rather than any doylist charity from the GM. Clearly. :p
 
dmclain2 said:
Arts and Techniques: each art or technique that has reached level three

Skill: each skill capped at 3 dots (max 2)

Attribute: each attribute capped at 5 dots base.

Qi: base 3 dots.

Affinity: base 10 dots.
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So to go over the feasibility of these options:
Affinity is fine. We've got 11 meridians open atm, and no real plans to open more.

Qi we currently get 12 per normal action, so if we can get a decent pill for Qi then we should be able to get it in 4 actions.

Techniques-wise we'll be getting SGS to lvl 3, and I doubt we'll be getting another one (or if we do it won't be to 3 before we breakthrough). Art-wise we'll be getting DEJ to lvl 2, but lvl 3 needs another 75 successes, which I just don't see as being worth it. It'd take way too many actions when there's enough on our plate as is.

For attributes it does look like going for Dex at 5 dots is the way to go, which we need 70xp for. Unfortunately we're going to need about 6 actions on average with our current pills/meridians to get there. 11 meridians plus 6 dice from gems means we only get a base of 17 dice excluding the Gyre. 4 actions with the Hero and Robin pill gets us ~55 successes, and then 2 more normal actions gets us to ~71 successes, so we're either going to want another pill to be sure or hope the combat class ends up training Dex.
dmclain2 said:
Skills represent a transcendence of mortal limit in a particular task or activity, thus they require a breakthrough in order to advance to 1 dot. This breakthrough roll is as follows 1d100 > 100 - [(Cultivation Level + Mentor Skill Level + Relevant Base Attribute]. Most skills are fairly obvious which attribute applies, but if there's any questions with regards to plan-making or otherwise, ping me and I'll let you know.

Skills advance as a function of either training or of use and require XP = (Current Level + 1) * 10.

In contrast to xp gained while cultivation, xp gained from skills is the sum of all d10 rolled.

Training: when being trained by a mentor, Quan Jia receives xd10 with x being equal to the mentor's skill level.

Use: when Quan Jia passes tests or successfully uses her skills she receives xd10 with x being equal to 2 * (DC)

In general training will generate more predictable xp while use has a higher maximum gain.

Training from friends is free while training from acquaintances and other individuals (e.g. more senior disciples) will carry at least a nominal cost (most likely in the form of an as yet unavailable resource: contribution points).
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Skill training we'll definitely be getting Unarmed to 3, and Mei Mei can act as our trainer (which we should hopefully only need 3 actions for, 4 at most).
As for getting another skill to 3 dots, I'd say if we do we do Gambling. It'd be an incredible pain to actually gain a new skill, and of our current skills Gambling seems the best to train via using as we won't have access to tutors until we get contribution points. Especially since successful Gambling checks also give us money.

Overall I can see us getting a bonus of +50 or 60 depending on how close we want to cut our breakthrough.
 
@dmclain2 If we somehow manage to get a bonus higher than the DC, do we just break through right as soon as we level up the trait that gets us to it?
 
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dmclain2 said:
Unlike the geometric pattern of spiritual cultivation, physical cultivation has been likened to a series of concentric shells that compress ever more tightly around a cultivator. Physical cultivation starts with the enhancement of aspects of the body familiar to mortals (increasing strength and senses, etc.). Similarly to spiritual cultivation, the first four physical cultivation levels (collectively the Lesser Bodies) are achievable through time and resources (Copper, Bronze, Iron, Silver).
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Is physical cultivation still a thing? We haven't really seen much of it since this first post.
 
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Finding the Dao Turn 5 Part 3
  • Threadmarks
    • [] Plan Growing a Foundation
    -[] Cultivate Base
    --[] 2 Spirit Gems
    -[] Cultivate Art or Technique
    --[] Sleep's Glittering Sands
    --[] 2 Spirit Gems (see Base cultivation)
    -[] Attend cultivation class (available once from turns 5 - 6)
    --[X] Are there any known ways to increase Talent that might be somewhat attainable for us?
    --[X] what is involved with knowing techniques before breaking through.
    --[X] Why does our art need to be at level 3 before we break through?
    --[X] What aspects of our cultivation are relevant when hoping to breakthrough with the best --foundation possible? E.g. arts, attributes, Qi, meridians etc?
    --[X] How much does it matter what we put into our Peripheral Souls, and does the order matter?
    --[] Arts
    -[] Has Dai Qiao's forest grown? It certainly looks darker and more… menacing. Perhaps now was a good time to stop by. Before things explode in violence... or weirdness… or whatever…

    "Arts are cultivated in doing, or in places aspected to it, rather than in reflection." Yi Qiu looks around at her twelve remaining students. "Fortunately the sect has certain ways around the minor complication that the more discerning amongst you are no doubt pondering."

    Qi threads out from the well within her and the Veil shatters around them. A sound like glass shattering is accompanied by the tinkling rain of shards of broken air as they crash to the ground. "Do try not to vomit."

    Their journey ends. Yi Qiu smirks through a mouth stretched yards long as vomit merges with a poor fool's hair and clothing… Twelve children and an Elder twist as space moves around them. Their journey begins. If you don't have a strong stomach, you should at least have a strong conception of Self… Space twists as they move through it. One child vomits.

    The Veil shatters again and consequence once again follows cause. Snow, glowing in the afternoon sun, sears at the eye as it stretches out until it merges with a sky so pale blue as to be white. Beneath their feet, a mountain peak, surrounded by ten of its lesser peers, and one yet greater still, all stretch high enough to reach the Heavens. A dozen peaks, each not the greatest of Mysteries contained within the Sect, but all among the greater and were now laid out in front of them. It was a wonder of the natural World, separated from mundanity in three parts by a now gone people. By metaphor: to arrive at the end of an eternal moment and the end of an infinite road. By ward: to pass through a single ascent to the very Roof of the World. By worth: to be worthy of the blessings within, and most easily surpassed, for worthiness was inherent in her existence... how could it be otherwise... Thus they stood in a place that was rather more of an idea than a location, a place steeped in Dao.

    Thin air mists around her students as they gasp and hack and heave in various states of distress while the least fortunate among them is also learning the rather important lesson of always heeding her words… perhaps that was a bit much for Diamond Souls. Better than walking though and far more amusing…

    As she watches her students regain what measure of composure as they can manage, the Mystery of this place slowly forms. Plump, stacked balls of snow gradually rise up out of the thick layer of snow, one for each of her students. Within each figure, glittering in a way that was dazzling even to her jaded senses, was a single fragment of Dao. To her sprit-sense, swords and strings, gossamer threads, elements of fire and ice and shadow and yet more, clay bricks and a shard of rainbow… how interesting… all radiated with something ineffable.

    As one boy regretfully shears off shoulder length hair and the rest stare transfixed at the mountain peak around them, Yi Qiu speaks, "It is more, perhaps, than you deserve merely for your performance in class today, but today I find myself uncaring of the concept of reciprocity."

    Twelve pairs of eyes tear with a near audible reluctance from the wonders around them and turn toward her. Internally, she smirks. Externally, her face is cast from complete indifference as she continues, "this field, the Ascent of a Thousand Dao, is among the greater treasures of the outer sect, though not the greatest. It is, as the name would indicate, a place where for reasons beyond our understanding Dao gathers. You will find that cultivation of Arts, while near the snow figure relating to your Arts will be drastically more effective."

    The eyes focused on her turn confused, and her foolish students remain motionless. An amused, mocking grin threatens to break her façade of disinterest, and to cover it she gestures at the snowy figures and commands, "go, embrace the Dao within and see if you can find Enlightenment."

    With that, her students scatter, each drawn to their Dao as though iron filings to a lodestone.

    Ascent of a Thousand Dao: cultivating an Art or Technique here imparts a +1 bonus to Talent.

    11d10 (Affinity) + 6d10 (Gems) = 22d10

    04 10 07 05 04 01 04 03 08 07 06 02 01 01 06 07 07 01 10 04 06 10 = 11 XP

    DEJ
    Second Path
    XP: 10/50 -> 21/50

    Does anything interesting happen?
    1d100 = 95 + 2 = yes it does.

    Gained:
    Major Affinity: Dream
    On the windswept peak of a mountain tall almost beyond compare, Quan Jia ingested a fragment of [Dream]. (+1 Talent when cultivating all arts or techniques with the keyword Dream.)

    Quan Jia looks at her snowman, head tilting in curiosity as she sees the rainbow bright shard of something glittering within. How cool…

    Without any better ideas, she decides to follow Elder Yi's suggestion... she'd said to embrace it right?... and with a shrug she opens her arms wide and steps forward to hug the snowman. Arms wrap around and sink deep, far deeper than they should, into the snow and like a deer caught in quicksand, she sinks. Engulfed by snow, she flails wildly as it wraps around arms and legs, thrashes violently as it surrounds her chest and creeps, inches higher. Despite the increasing intensity of her actions, second by second it continues to rise until at the last, snow covers her eyes and robs her of sight.

    Consumed entirely by the snowman, robbed of sensation and motion, she drifts, floats, falls down a pitch blackness radiated by a single kaleidoscopic fragment of light. An absolute stillness, colder by far than the frigid chill wrapping around her body, threads slowly, but inexorably, through her meridians. In its wake floods stagnation, stifling verve and impetus and the very flows of qi as they pulse throughout her body. Beneath that onslaught, the constant thrum of qi fades, the constant protection of qi vanishes, the line between Awakening and mortality that she'd once thought absolute blurs and dies. In its place a frigid, freezing, cold embraces her.

    Entropy draws intensity from thought, and panic, fogged as though reflected from a distant mirror rises within her. She tries to move. Her muscles refuse. Her body suborned by the same stagnation that had halted her flows of qi. Distant panic drifts lazily closer as between moments, the frantic pulsing of blood vanishes from her ears and the pounding within her chest slams to a halt. Stripped of motion and breath, of heartbeat and qi, Quan Jia can do nothing but wait, trapped and helpless until her panic as thought turns to crystal.

    Into that moment of infinite stillness, something moves. A shard of kaleidoscopic color, endlessly mutable, floats toward a somnolent figure. Shimmering iridescence passes through lips spread in shock, and dissolves onto a tongue caught mid-scream. Dao explodes into something formless and endless, into concepts that defy both understanding and mere enumeration.

    Had defied.

    Meridians writhe and twist as [Dream] melts into her, remolding pathways carved through painstaking effort and near unbearable agony into fractal patterns of endless complexity and equally fragile beauty. [Color] gleams from channels that now pass through metaphor and fable as much as flesh and blood. Lips twist into a smile as motes of rainbow flow through a soul more complex and more whole than it had been an instant prior. A film, a dampening of color and vibrancy that had never even been noticed falls from the girl's eyes and she sees anew a world that burns both brighter and more surreal than she had ever imagined.

    Wonder quickly gives way to consciousness, gives way to vertigo, and suddenly, bereft of the stasis provided by ice, Quan Jia lurches, stumbles, falls to snow covered ground. Stray thoughts, gossamer wings glittering in the sunlight, manifest on the exhaled breath forced from her lungs by the collision. For a long moment, she simply lays there, breathing slowly and reveling in Enlightenment. Inhale. Light, swirling with countless colors, each somehow distinct and yet melded together into one, traces patterns that shift and change with each pulse of her heart. Exhale. A cloud of radiant butterflies formed from Worry and Hope and Dream flitter around her head, living and dying within the span of a thought.

    "The Dao can never be sought, only found," Quan Jia inchworms herself so that she can look directly up at Elder Yi. "and it seems one has been found today."

    "Mrgle," she tries to speak, but can't quite form thought into word.

    "Indeed, it may take some time before your mind falls back to mundanity." the Elder nods, "the others have been returned... some more readily than others. A girl who wants too desperately to be a sword was almost inconsiderate in her desire to remain."

    "Arghn," Shao Cuifen was cool like that.

    "Indeed," Elder Yi responds as though understanding her thoughts, "it is always a welcome departure when something other than greed and selfishness can rise from the muck."

    "How," long?

    "Not much longer now, it seems." A frown flickers across the Elder's face and a feather-light something dances across her soul. "Hmm... one wonders if it is Fate or Fortune that has made a home for itself within you."

    "What do you mean?" a beat passes before Quan Jia realizes that she's spoken out loud and tacks on a quick, "Elder Yi."

    "In public, the forms must be maintained, for reasons both interesting and infinitely less so. In private, some levels of informality may be forgiven though." Elder Yi dismisses her belated formality with an idle wave of the hand. She then grins, an expression that is entirely genuine and entirely unexpected and says, "what manner of instructor would I be to drain such Mystery from a disciple's life?"

    "So mean," she pouts.

    "On the contrary," Elder Yi's voice fades to a solemnness that seems to bely her earlier amusement, "it would be the meanest of acts to rob a disciple of the growth that awaits in the resolution of their Path."

    "Since you can speak and reason with such gifts as are available to you, I believe it is now time we return." Cracks of vivid darkness form in the air around them, "I do not believe the Ascent will prove useful for you a second time, but as I offered the other disciples: a trivial reward awaits those who manage to chart a path here unaided."

    I think we'll have another interlude this turn (this will probably happen once per month), rather than an exploration option so for options:

    [] A war of words and civility.

    [] A workshop, an automata, and a failure.

    [] A shark amidst the sands.

    Each represents something of potential interest occurring within the sect or the area around it (though perhaps not what one would expect at first glance).
     
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    • CedeTheBees said:
    Is physical cultivation still a thing? We haven't really seen much of it since this first post.
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    dingdonghadron said:
    "Physical Cultivation" in this quest is just increasing base attributes, it was mentioned ... somewhere b.c QM didn't want to make more system/mechanics for it beyond attribute increasing.
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    This is correct. There wasn't anything narratively interesting happening in physical cultivation that couldn't be rolled into spiritual cultivation. Thanks for pointing out where that was so I can go edit it out.
     
    New Affinity :D

    Looks like it's even stonger than Slumber. Can't wait to see what we do with this.

    [X] A war of words and civility.

    This looks fun :)
     
    dmclain2 said:
    "Since you can speak and reason with such gifts as are available to you, I believe it is now time we return." Cracks of vivid darkness form in the air around them, "I do not believe the Ascent will prove useful for you a second time, but as I offered the other disciples: a trivial reward awaits those who manage to chart a path here unaided."
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    Ooh. I'll take this to mean that if we can find this place again we get access to the site, but we'll probably need to level up a bit before that's feasible.
    dmclain2 said:
    Slumber, yes. Gyre, no. Cultivation class is more modeled after a single event rather than the culmination of a week's endeavors. It's why everything applies to weekly cultivation rather than being limited.
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    dmclain2 said:
    Any future choices to attend Yi Qiu's class will have all available cultivation bonuses applied to that attempt.
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    This is from the tutorial we had at her last session. Has that now changed?
     
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