This is the correct way to do so.
The Iron Oath (An Oath/Contract Based Cultivation Quest).
- Thread starter uri
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- Original
- Location
- Italy
fair, but this was personal in a way most things you can delegate are not.
New question then: Did you Like/approve of what I showed then?
ok, you know, with what white blade said about there not being right or wrong answers, I'm starting to think of this more as a way to determine what kind of person Aurelia is.
So, if Aurelia was in a serious conflict, her leader was close to death, her army having the advantage and the enemy leader being more or less equally wounded as you.
What's your priority? What are you NOT willing to give up on?
Are you prioritizing the life of your leader, to which you're presumably loyal? Do you push for victory to not make everything pointless?
Interesting that we're NOT hearing what the CAUSE of the war was, so that's apparently not part of the consideration. It doesn't matter who's right or wrong, which in a way it's very cultivator-like.
actually, this is probably the most important part:
Emperor is our father. He was very clear that "we'll have his head NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES".
So, are we prioritizing the Emperor's/ Our father's goals/implied orders, or his life?
This is likely one of the questions that won't actually be answered (well it would, but in a way that doesn't say anything) mostly because the judged should not know how well the judging is going before they complete all the trails they want.
This is very much what Aurora suspects.
- Location
- Temporally? Now.
[X] Negotiate. (defeat, medium chance resulting peace deal is in the empire favor, medium chance its in the northerner favor, high chance the emperor survives).
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] Of all the oaths of leadership you know, and are willing to share, which one do you think would be best for me?
This one works
This one works
14. Prelude to judgment.
New
[X] Negotiate. (defeat, medium chance resulting peace deal is in the empire favor, medium chance its in the northerner favor, high chance the emperor survives).
[X] Of all the oaths of leadership you know, and are willing to share, which one do you think would be best for me?
[X] Of all the oaths of leadership you know, and are willing to share, which one do you think would be best for me?
"What is best?" The White Blade drawled, "best for what purpose? Do you wish to lead your followers in battle, perhaps guide them with honeyed words or even guide them from the shadow manipulating them all like puppets ".
"To ask what is best by itself shows a lack of understanding, to the nature of oaths and reality both but this is fine, you are still young and have time to grow and acquire wisdom".
"Instead of the best oath, I will impart the one I have found most useful, the price is great but the cunning and wise mind could get far more than he paid".
"Sacrifice your talent and in turn peer into the talents of others and empower those who choose to follow you".
"Sacrifice?" Aurora asked, it was not known to her that one could sacrifice something as an oath, the lesson with Elder Septima only covered oaths of restriction, condition and task. In fact the elder outright said those are the only three types of oaths possible.
"Hah" the White blade laughed "you imperials, it always plots within plots with you, all oaths are sacrifice child, the distinction you were taught is both wholly made of man and not fully comprehensive".
Aurora wish she could say that the spirit was wrong, that her school did not omit information form her but she knew he was right, Octevia has detected several lies during that lecture and it is not like the empire hasn't omitted the details of oaths from the uninitiated, Aurora swore her first oath ignorant of its workings.
She could only trust that her family would not have allowed her to enter the school if it would have been to her detriment.
"Trust freely given, means one sees not the knife in the dark" Aurora glared at The White Blade, his ability to read her mind was truly getting annoying.
"Well i answered your question" the White Blade said "off you go" he waved his hand and collor's started painting themselves on the white expanse Aurora occupied.
Eye of talent Oath (Oath rank 12/24/36).
The bearer of this oath diminish his overall talent by a small/medium/large amount and in return may perceive the (oath rank/10) best talent's of all they gaze intently upon and may call upon the power of this oath (oath rank/6) times a year to enhance a perceived talent of someone who is your subordinate by (oath rank/2) percent.
*talent in this case is reference learning speed for skills and techniques, the cost would lower the speed you learn at and the benefit would allow you to increase how fast someone else would learn at.
**There are diminishing benefits to empowering the same talent over and over.
The bearer of this oath diminish his overall talent by a small/medium/large amount and in return may perceive the (oath rank/10) best talent's of all they gaze intently upon and may call upon the power of this oath (oath rank/6) times a year to enhance a perceived talent of someone who is your subordinate by (oath rank/2) percent.
*talent in this case is reference learning speed for skills and techniques, the cost would lower the speed you learn at and the benefit would allow you to increase how fast someone else would learn at.
**There are diminishing benefits to empowering the same talent over and over.
"Few are those who would choose the shame of defeat to save what they have" The White Blade began when Aurora found herself once more in that white expanse. "Perhaps if more were willing to make such a choice things would be different" there was something in his voice but for the life of her Aurora could not say what as she gazed on his childish form, once again changed from his previous form.
"Perhaps" she simply said, somewhat shocked at the large change, The white blade in front of her could not have been a child older than seven, yet she knew that beneath its innocent expression was an inhuman being, even if it was once human.
"Regardless" The White Blade started, ignoring her thoughts "two trails you have undertaken, two choices that would define you" something in the white expanse shuddered as The White Blade spoke "in accordance with ancient tradition i must now ask you, Aurora Portus, do you stand ready to be judged or are there still more qualities you wish to show to this collective?"
Aurora felt a shiver run down her back, as she sensed the eyes of hundreds upon her, waiting for her decision
What did she decide in the end?
[] She is ready and will submit for the judgment of the ancestors.
[] She isn't ready and will undergo one more trial to show her worth.
-[] The Trial of sight.
-[] The Trial of Fang.
[] She isn't ready and will undergo both remaining trials to show her worth.
A.N Well, this is short but there isn't really a lot going on. It's a more transitory chapter. I hope it was at least enjoyable, I'm of course available for questions should you have any.
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- Location
- Italy
well, what is a sacrifice if not another kind of restriction?
...and fair enough, conditions and tasks can also be seen under the lens of sacrifice. Of times, and alternatives.
mh... not a bad idea, actually.
Aurora is talented, sure... but she'll have plenty of followers, and there will be someone better than her in nearly anything among them.
This might allow us to in theory to use the legacy-powers of our followers, for example.
mh... so the most expensive one would be
"perceive 3 best talents" "enhance the talent of a follower 6 times a year, by 18%".
mh... I can see it. if the enhancement is permanent, then it TRULY adds up given enough time. It's also something we could offer to, say, that one guy fixated on personal improvement. Make a deal that we'll enhance X skills of his and he'll swear fealty to us or something. Possibly through an Oath itself, even"
by improving the talent of, say, her personal alchemist, or a trainer, or her family members, or even making deals with teachers to improve THEIR talents in exchange for personal lessons, she could get FAR more than she payed.
She'd never be the best at anything out of any of her followers (or people she improves in exchange for favors), BUT this makes for a wonderful generalist/leader build.
Make the enhancement a reward for followers that achieve great results, a payment for service rendered... It's really good.
and as we can do it (to start with) 6 times a year, forever, even multiple times on the same person (but on different skills)... that's an incentive to not leave.
And then we can build up on this oath, in theory. For example we could later on make a second oath that "we'll only enhance the talents of people who loyally follow us, who'll only keep the enhacement as long as they keep their loyalty to us".
That's a meaningful sacrifice, as it means we can no longer trade enhancements outside of our group, but it also helps us keep people loyal as they'd lose their enhancement if they betrayed us.
I want to do both. It's experience, which will allow us to "unlock" more oath slots, it's more chances to prove ourselves, OOC it's more chances to better define Aurora0s character...
Thus far our choices tell us that
PRE-TRIAL:
1)Aurora has a lazy nature
2)Even while being lazy she IS willing to put in the effort if she judges it important. her heavy oath of "train a lot" implies she either really wants to make her family proud, desires power more than she wishes to enjoy her lazyness, or that she's somewhat trying to fight her own nature.
3)She seems to be loyal to those who are loyal to her. See how she's treating her retainers pretty well, and she's being fairly generous on the would-be-recruits.
4)Even more proof she's fighting her lazy nature is the decision we took to continue the "spirit-breaking" experience with that one Elder. She's choosing to suffer in exchange for power.
TRIAL
1)the trial of the Crown/Leadership proved that she would not let her retainers act for her when she is either the best suited one, or for an alternative read when it's a deeply personal reason. She is definitely not a coward.
2)The trial of Blood showed that she'll prioritize what she has over what she could get. She's not an extreme risk taker, and will go for moderate risks when possible. She is willing to negotiate instead of risking it all in taking stuff by force.
all in all this is a good set of traits for a leader.
[x] She isn't ready and will undergo both remaining trials to show her worth.
It is.
Keep in mind, you can only use it on subordinates. Now, there are many ways to loophole that but its still a requirement.
- Location
- some computer lab
We've seen how busted a good teacher is, maybe hiring a tutor and brining them with the enhancement will make up for lack of talent.
- Location
- Italy
oh, even so it's fairly easy to work around it.
Have a contract/agreement made with a teacher. As long as they're teaching us, they're our subordinate/employee. It doesn't have to be a permanent relationship, after all you're still the boss of, say, a mercenary you're employing. Paying them in talent boost is definitely a valid form of payment.
The only real problem with making this oath public is that more people would likely try to copy it from us. It's important to keep the COST secret more than the power itself.
This MIGHT in theory become a problem once we reach the truly high tiers of cultivation, but even so... We'd be basically pushing up our subordinates, and then having them drag us up.
It's definitely a strong oath, I have no complaints about it, and I'm PROBABLY willing to take the heaviest version of it... though maybe we'd want to first enter the actual outer school, as this oath takes some time to repay itself, and we'd be better off having satisfied the minimum requirements to not be thrown out first.
Unless we do it early and THEN use the oath power as an incentive to try and get lessons out of older students or teachers to make up for the loss of talent, I suppose.
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
[X] She isn't ready and will undergo both remaining trials to show her worth.
- Location
- Italy
presumably they keep the boost.
- Location
- some computer lab
[X] She isn't ready and will undergo both remaining trials to show her worth
- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
[x] She isn't ready and will undergo both remaining trials to show her worth.
That oath is strong long term, but it strongly relies on having a good range of followers and bad intelligence gathering abilities. Which is not Aurora at the moment.
Good to know and may be useful later, but not one I'd jump on soon.
That oath is strong long term, but it strongly relies on having a good range of followers and bad intelligence gathering abilities. Which is not Aurora at the moment.
Good to know and may be useful later, but not one I'd jump on soon.
- Location
- Italy
I'd wait until after we enter the outer school proper, so at the end of the fourth month I think.
By then we'll have secured our position enough that we could afford the loss of talent.
Alternatively if we did it now we could use it as a STRONG incentive for recruiting, but... I'm not sure we can afford to lose a lot of potential (mechanically raising our exp requirements by a LOT) for this, and if we take the oath I think we should take it at the highest intensity.
- Location
- some computer lab
36 extra oath rank would help us out tremendously against Soul Crush which should help with our will a lot.
Is the Oath Rank used in oath descriptions that oaths rank or our total oath rank?
Is the Oath Rank used in oath descriptions that oaths rank or our total oath rank?
It would also give you 36 extra Horkos which is really useful but if your choosing based on the rank of the oath nothings stopping you from swearing a different oath of that rank you just need to pay a cost equivalent to loosing half your talent and forever learning things at half speed forever.
The power gained from oaths is influenced only by the specific oath rank, the total sum of your oath ranks dos not influence it.
- Location
- Italy
mh... what kind of sacrifices could we give up, that we'd be fine giving up?
this VERY POWERFUL oath would basically double our exp requirements, but being able to grant effectively +18% exp gain to up to the three best skills of each of our followers (and we can stack it on the same talent with diminishing returns) means that, given a year or two, this would MORE Than repay us. Especially because we can then abuse things like "pills from our boosted alchemist" or "combat lessons from our boosted bodyguard" and so on.
We could potentially swear another oath on top of this one too. Maybe something like "we can only boost people who have followed us for at least X months, and they'll only be boosted for as long as they stay loyal to us"? Or an alternative could be that we could only boost a specific number of people instead...
what kind of sacrifice would be as valuable as our personal talent, though?
mh... actually, we're already doing the "willpower crushing" training. An Oath to continue to do that until we reach a certain level maybe?
or how about an oath to give up any and all talent in specific fields (example: alchemy, or even something like "all crafting skills"), presumably in exchange for a boost to other skills?
mh... something to keep in mind is that we can't currently "hide" our oaths/oath powers, as we had a teacher knowing about our mental buff even if we had never used it yet. So we might want to wait to take oaths we want to keep secret in content.
this VERY POWERFUL oath would basically double our exp requirements, but being able to grant effectively +18% exp gain to up to the three best skills of each of our followers (and we can stack it on the same talent with diminishing returns) means that, given a year or two, this would MORE Than repay us. Especially because we can then abuse things like "pills from our boosted alchemist" or "combat lessons from our boosted bodyguard" and so on.
We could potentially swear another oath on top of this one too. Maybe something like "we can only boost people who have followed us for at least X months, and they'll only be boosted for as long as they stay loyal to us"? Or an alternative could be that we could only boost a specific number of people instead...
what kind of sacrifice would be as valuable as our personal talent, though?
mh... actually, we're already doing the "willpower crushing" training. An Oath to continue to do that until we reach a certain level maybe?
or how about an oath to give up any and all talent in specific fields (example: alchemy, or even something like "all crafting skills"), presumably in exchange for a boost to other skills?
mh... something to keep in mind is that we can't currently "hide" our oaths/oath powers, as we had a teacher knowing about our mental buff even if we had never used it yet. So we might want to wait to take oaths we want to keep secret in content.
Youl get more from making a task oath to stick to that training to the end, rather than just a general time restriction not that the both of them would offer much.
In general restricting your time toward valuable pursuits doesn't tend to give much, the school (and empire) really go all out in trying to get as much as they can possibly can out of that first oath (you've been told that a good chunk of the power of that oath comes from the fact that before it the initiates knew very little about oaths).
Keep in mind that giving up talent in fields where you're a) don't practice and B) aren't planning to practice isn't going to give you much, even if you give up on it all, and from what Little Aurora knows about oaths giving up all talent in a specific field can be a really dangerous oath.
After all, do you know if you give up all your talent in alchemy you don't also give up all of your talent at math (as calculating precise doses is part of alchemy) or in perception? (as noticing the minute changes within the cauldron is a big part of being a successful alchemist).
They can only read what you gained not what you paid (or the exact nature of the oath).
- Location
- some computer lab
I'm in favor of getting the heaviest oath immediately to start power levelling our retainers and ace the next Mind Crush, therefore presumably getting a ton of will xp.