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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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[X] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
Asking Meizhen what was going on was fun, so lets keep doing that.

[X] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
[X] Focus on your needlework and watch your friend and liege, you've never actually seen much of their interactions, and you aren't sure you want to blunder into another difficult conversation.
 
[X] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
[X] Focus on your needlework and watch your friend and liege, you've never actually seen much of their interactions, and you aren't sure you want to blunder into another difficult conversation.

That's how I would react if invited. Though I wonder if CRX will share such personal bits of information with LQ on her own once our SL goes up or if she thinks that this knowledge is useless for a retainer.
 
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[x] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
[X] Focus on your needlework and watch your friend and liege, you've never actually seen much of their interactions, and you aren't sure you want to blunder into another difficult conversation.
 
[X] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
[X] Focus on your needlework and watch your friend and liege, you've never actually seen much of their interactions, and you aren't sure you want to blunder into another difficult conversation.
 
[X] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
Something interesting to note is that Meizhen's fighting style seems to have evolved fairly dramatically since we met her in FoD. In the earlier to middle parts of FoD, she was very reactive, seeming to focus primarily on counters and defense and waiting for her opponent to make the first move. We saw how this frustrated her in the Thunderdome Redux when fighting Kang Zihao. She didn't have really any way to get past his defenses if he didn't attack her, which meant that it took her a lot longer to deal with him than she would have liked.

Later in FoD, specifically the tournament, we saw Meizhen forcing others to react to her. She approached Kang Zihao, and brutally attacked him, not waiting for him to make an attack to counter it but rather battering down his defenses.

This indicates to me a slight change in the paradigm that Meizhen is fighting under. Where before she simply reacted to other people's attacks with brutal defenses and counter-attacks, she is now more comfortable in being aggressive in a fight to end it quicker than simply doing counters would allow. We see a further refinement of this change to a more aggressive Meizhen in this update.

yrsillar said:
Ling Qi grimaced in concentration as she wove through the storm the twisting, writhing ribbons of steel that sang through the air. Hungry strands of metal stained a deep toxic purple tore through the flickering shadow images left in her wake. With utmost care, she danced through the boiling pools that pitted the ground, bubbling not with heat, but toxicity as they devoured the earth and stone beneath her feet.

Only her masterful skill allowed her melody to be heard over the pounding roar of the venomous rain. Despite the rain, her mist hung stubbornly in the air, thick and dark, swirling in eddies kicked up by the roaring rain, the black phantasms within howled and circled her enemy, ready to descend at her mark. Her opponent rose high before her, staring down imperiously from the shadows of her liquid mantle, suspended three meters in the air on coils of black water. For an instant, Ling Qi faced her, flute raised, she glowed like a emerald beacon, the full suite of techniques from Thousand Rings Fortress enough to allow her to stand tall even under the toxic rain. Then Meizhen's right hand twitched, and ribbons of metal screamed as they caught and deflected Ling Qi's singing blade and flung it away.
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We see that Meizhen has cultivated an art that creates a toxic rainstorm around her. This is not so much a reactive tool, but an aggressive tool. It demands that an opponent find an answer or slowly drown in the rising toxic waters. It forces the opponent to deal with her, which, in turn, allows her counters to be much more effective. With this slight shift in how Meizhen approaches combat, she forces opponents to deal with her as quickly as possible, which allows her counters to act much more consistently.

I also find it as a possible insight into how Meizhen is developing her view and place in the world. Whereas before she seemed willing to be a bulwark that weathered any and all challenges to be unbowed, but didn't really do anything to change the world around her, she now has a bit more aggression which could be used to enact change in the world favorable to her, or nip problems in the bud before they become a problem to her.
 
[X] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
Thor's Twin said:
We see that Meizhen has cultivated an art that creates a toxic rainstorm around her. This is not so much a reactive tool, but an aggressive tool. It demands that an opponent find an answer or slowly drown in the rising toxic waters. It forces the opponent to deal with her, which, in turn, allows her counters to be much more effective. With this slight shift in how Meizhen approaches combat, she forces opponents to deal with her as quickly as possible, which allows her counters to act much more consistently.

I also find it as a possible insight into how Meizhen is developing her view and place in the world. Whereas before she seemed willing to be a bulwark that weathered any and all challenges to be unbowed, but didn't really do anything to change the world around her, she now has a bit more aggression which could be used to enact change in the world favorable to her, or nip problems in the bud before they become a problem to her.
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I personally i'm very pleased by her new fighting strategy, as it means Ling Qi will have at least one person to share aggro with on our team for the intersect tournament.
 
[x] Take the lead in conversation, ask Cai Renxiang what she was reading. You are trying to be more outgoing. What could go wrong with asking about her literary interests?
 
So, what's the cabal's current plan for the next month's cultivation?

The obvious thing to do is to finish Argent Genesis and start Songseeker, which nets us 21 points of effective Qi. To my understanding, we are reaching Bronze Foundation next month, so I'm sure everyone wants to also cultivate Wind Thief.

What do people want to do in addition to that?

Ayashi said:
I personally i'm very pleased by her new fighting strategy, as it means Ling Qi will have at least one person to share aggro with on our team for the intersect tournament.
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Can she even exclude her allies? If not, then that art is not particularly useful in a team vs. team battle.
 
[X] Focus on your needlework and watch your friend and liege, you've never actually seen much of their interactions, and you aren't sure you want to blunder into another difficult conversation.
 
Random Shinobi said:
So, what's the cabal's current plan for the next month's cultivation?

The obvious thing to do is to finish Argent Genesis and start Songseeker, which nets us 21 points of effective Qi. To my understanding, we are reaching Bronze Foundation next month, so I'm sure everyone wants to also cultivate Wind Thief.

What do people want to do in addition to that?
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Current plan is:
8 AP on base cultivation
1 AP on Xiao Fen (mandatory)
1 AP on Family time (mandatory)
2 AP on Argent Genesis
3 AP on Song Seeker's Ceremony (omake points used to buy an AP here)
2 AP on opening Meridians (4 head, for social arts)

Then the three remaining AP are broken down between two categories. First, we have 2 AP for "social" arts. We have three social arts that people seem particularly interested in, being Playful Muse's Rapport and Moonless Saboteur's Smile on the human interaction side, and Melodies of the Spirit Seekers on the spirit side. We'll be having some sort of subvote, though the specifics there haven't been decided on what we'll be proposing, since simple majority seems unsuited here.

The final AP should be a water or lake art to take advantage of Mirror Basin. Since we're training social arts, Mirror Basin's boost to both social skills and social attributes would be very strong here. Of our available water/lake arts (UGM, SNR, CDE+), CDE's successor arts are the only ones that can have a level be completed in 1 AP, and be equipped at this point (already having the meridians thanks to CDE), so we're favoring that (since spending training on an art we wont get to actually use yet is kinda meh), with a simple majority wins subvote on which successor path to follow.

Edit: To clarify specifically on Wind Thief, it's not available to train until Turn 8, since we're only hitting Bronze Foundation Turn 7. Our thoughts on turns 8 & 9 are to have one of those be a darkness turn, and one of those be a mostly non-darkness turn to take advantage of our darkness pill, so Wind Thief would primarily be trained on the darkness turn.
 
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No Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief ?
i'd think we'd want to start on, arguably, our most powerful art asap...
 
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Ayashi said:
No Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief ?
i'd think we'd want to start on, arguably, our most powerful art asap...
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As I edited in just now, Wind Thief isn't available to train next turn. Line has to be drawn somewhere for cultivation requirements and it's "what is your cultivation at the start of the turn?" So it's not available until Turn 8 at the earliest.
 
[X] Focus on your needlework and watch your friend and liege, you've never actually seen much of their interactions, and you aren't sure you want to blunder into another difficult conversation.
 
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