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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Alphaleph said:
So wouldn't that mean that he's not "just" a random raid leader?
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Well if he wasn't just a random raid leader then he would have elders looking after him rather than be sent in (arguably, deep) enemy territory as a Green 3, and acting as the back up for the raid group.

I mean, try to reverse the situation with CRX and see if it makes sense to risk her life for ...what ? a little combat experience? the random mortal rank crap they'll raid from the village(s)? Glory?
 
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Ayashi said:
I mean, try to reverse the situation with CRX and see if it makes sense to risk her life for ...what ? a little combat experience? the random mortal rank crap they'll raid from the village(s)? Glory?
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*looks at Cai*
Given from what I've seen Glorious Solar Tyranny, yes, she totally would do that.

Especially with the Barbs also attacking everywhere else and tying the really dangerous people from reinforcing the outlying areas. Like, these deployments are routine, yeah? So both sides already have some guesses on what they usually have and their reactions to things. Is it really that much of a stretch that they had went "ok, these areas had a few guards that probably would stick to their own areas and try to hold on until reinforcement arrives. We oldies will tie up those reinforcement, you go mess them up." ?

[X] Search and Rescue
 
Alphaleph said:
Given from what I've seen Glorious Solar Tyranny, yes, she totally would do that.
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I disagree.
The only example of CRX being sent in combat is the BINO case, which was in her own duchy rather than behind enemy lines.
Heck, in Liling's case the testing was sending her to the Sect, while pimping her all the bling she'd want. Which, again, is in Imperial land, and under no-murder laws.
 
To clarify, it's not that I think a bad thing happened we could have avoided through other choices.vits that narrative spoons are being spent on lessons we could have simply... decided to know.

Edit: and on the player side, did the lesson even stick? Look at all the people outraged that Reds would do anything but evaporate as we so much as look in their direction, despite their reaction to our charge being literally the most obvious counter tactic.

@Black Noise before I forget, good catch on SCS range Vs mists. I think the enemy was doing an AoE pushback tech at that poi t though? The might also be more of a tear shape when we're moving at max speed, rather than a sphere, but that shouldn't be the case because of our Music nonsense.
 
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Ayashi said:
Well if he wasn't just a random raid leader then he would have elders looking after him rather than be sent in (arguably, deep) enemy territory as a Green 3, and acting as the back up for the raid group.

I mean, try to reverse the situation with CRX and see if it makes sense to risk her life for ...what ? a little combat experience? the random mortal rank crap they'll raid from the village(s)? Glory?
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Nomad tribes work differently. Their leaders are less carefully raised heirs, and more of "go out, challenge the hard things, prove you're hard and gain accolades.".

Its why the nomads have so many Greens but no Whites. They don't have centralized resource redistribution, being powerful in society doesn't mean that you can have cultivation resources funneled to you using the wealth of the collective, because cultivation resources have to be harvested and you'd have a hell of a time prying them free from the harvesters.

Their version of support is...basically this? Being allowed to rustle up an abnormally skilled bunch of raiders to prove themselves, rather than working with whichever uninitiated hotblooded youths hadn't qualified for a spirit bond yet.
 
Ayashi said:
I disagree.
The only example of CRX being sent in combat is the BINO case, which was in her own duchy rather than behind enemy lines.
Heck, in Liling's case the testing was sending her to the Sect, while pimping her all the bling she'd want. Which, again, is in Imperial land, and under no-murder laws.
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Agree to disagree then.

Because I totally could see CRX being brought to a skirmish and given assignment where she has to go up against some trained but not the best soldiers but no reinforcement from their side.
 
veekie said:
Its why the nomads have so many Greens but no Whites
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Each line break following this one results in the sentence following containing more speculation than the previous in a cumulative and multiplicative fashion.

The reason they have so few/no Whites probably has as much or more to do with their cultivation system, and the fact that the most prominent southern barb in history was a Prism leads me to believe that they can basically only advance as fast as their bondmate.

Since Beasts that have White as part of their natural life cycle are probably limited to, well, Dragons and maybe Xuan Wu/Phoenixes/Ducal Bloodlines with a Sublime Ancestor on top in the modern epoch and most others would rely on their cultivator giving them bonuses means that they essentially never hit White in their system. I'd imagine that even ones that do tend to do so after the 1000 year soul cutoff.

The importance of the bondmate leads me to conclude that upward mobility in their culture relies on getting as good of a mount as possible.

The only reasonable conclusion is that following the probing attacks on our Village, they will launch a Zhengui abduction attempt and then we'll have a "Maiden in Distress" arc where a Nomad tries to break Zhengui and we race against the clock to catch them.

The fact that he can't fly will be fixed with one line of dialogue, like "Oh thank the ancestors we know the "Sometimes Forests Fly" formation.
 
Ayashi said:
[X] Search and Rescue

The update could definitively have been better written, Ling Qi is a massive deadly fog hundreds meters wide (i want to say kilometers wide but i don't remember the fog's range right now) that moves at higher than average speed for middle green*. Having lowly reds or even most yellows manage to avoid her and then somehow turn back to attack Shen Hu and the village strains anyone's SoD.
But the overall goal of the vote was still achieved: make the actual dangerous part of the barbarian group retreat away from the village, and it's evacuating civilians.

I see the last act as a resounding success: Ling Qi moved the battlefield from <on the village> to <kilometers away from it>, logically drained a major part of the green's and yellow's Qi reserves (those over the top group speed buffs could NOT have been cheap! Not whatever those wind techs they used to save dozens of reds with...) AND managed to injure the Green 4+ barbarian overseer (and his mount).
I found the barbarian's pathetic attempt of a taunt at pride to be hilarious: when a single individual routs your 100+ army you are in no position to taunt her about anything! :lol:
Yes, the reds, surprisingly, survived, but they are a non-issue. The update itself shows that Shen Hue merely considers them as annoying flies.

I think it's pretty obvious the barbarian army is in no condition to make a comeback (though, I'd like to see them try...), nor to attack an other village. Not without some significant rest. And considering they lost the element of surprise i think the raid

My only disappointment is that Ling Qi didn't throw a "Run away, little bitches. Run away to your desolate worthless reaches" last parting present. Hopefully, it'll happen in the next chap...


*Actually I want to go back on this part. By any reasonable metric, the fight should have been even more one-sided than the little Ling Qi vs Sun Liling ambush last year.
That particular fight was a very good yellow spec'ed in speed fleeing from a very good Green 1 cultivator that had benched most(?) her speed-enhancing arts in favor of combat and tracking.
The current fight is numerous average red and yellows because barbarians can not benefit from the same instruction quality as the Imperial Sect, though since they were mounted i guess we can say they were speed spec'ed, fleeing a very good above average speed Green 3 cultivator.
Same thing if we take last year's tournament as standard.

Seriously, if the barbarians can more than make up for two cultivation levels this easily the Empire should have been destroyed a long time ago...

Overall it seems to me that Yrs simply didn't bother to make the stat comparison between the barbarians, at the very least for the low tiers, and Ling Qi's stats. And ran the whole thing narratively up to allowing them to simply hang around her mist with no effect. Hence the lack of victims on the barb side.


I find that hard to believe. If the dude is on par with Ling Qi then he's mostly on part with the ducals... If the barbarians have the kind of talent and resources needed for a random raid leader to be on par with the Empire's highest of nobility heirs then the empire should have been burned to the ground centuries ago.

For it to be true he'd need to be a LOT more talented than Ling Qi. I just can't imagine the barbarians having anywhere near the resources Ling Qi has, like cultivation with full Green Stones. Or the crazy 8fold pills and the new newer one from the inner sect market.
So, even assuming he has equivalent luck with spirit patrons and teachers, he'd still have to make do with the lack of resources with pure talent.


I agree it would have been hilarious to have the barbarians, and their horses, to start dancing while attempting to flee.
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As someone who is also salty from the update, albeit for different reasons, I'd still say you're being a bit harsh to Yrs here. Overall he provides compelling and enjoyable quest/story and just because he did some stuff in this update you find not very believable does not mean you have throw a hissy fit. Its not easy writing in such a creative way while still meeting the demands of voters. My beef was with everyone else, especially those who thought this would be a piece of cake. The barbs have probs been designing their arts for countering imperials like LQ for hundreds of years. They have years of real, life-threatening battles with imperial soldiers--including cultivators like LQ. Our MC otoh, is young and this is her first time in this type of battle. She has a low War score where the barbarian bard probs had a pretty high War score from years of exp. This is their chosen battle field and probably one of many times they have fought against cultivators using skirmish tactics. While we know LQ is extremely fast esp. for a cultivator at her level, they're getting speed buffs from each other, their Yellow and Green leaders including the badass bard dude. That's hundreds of cultivator's buffs which are all stacking up. It was all of them vs. LQ. Her allies were already worn down and/or protecting civilians. There was no one to buff or fight beside LQ unless u count Six and Hanyi. And speaking of spirits, we don't even know how fast their flying horses go. Also, LQ's themes and whole shtick has to do with scary fogs and ice cold darkness. These barbs live it rough out beyond civilization. That stuff is not gonna scare em the way it scares Red realms at the sect. Were they scared in general? Yeah at first. But then training, experience and strong leadership from the bard dude kicked in. Surprise, surprise--they've been dealing with intimidating cultivators of various sorts their whole lives.

In summation, I felt it was very reckless to just dive right into the middle of the enemy formation. It didn't turn out as bad as I feared but it was barely a resounding success either. Which is what I expected, which is why I voted for the other option. Could the other option have gone badly too? Yeah but at least we would have been prioritizing the people we were supposed to protect.
..Well at least LQ won't be underestimating her enemies as much in the future.
Regardless of our opinions, we should be addressing Yrs with respect. If we have constructive criticism then convey it nicely. Not that hard.
 
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I think we did good for our first skirmish with the Barbarians. It is Ling Qi's first time against such a foe and we pushed their main force away and drew their Aggro, alone. Sure, the reds were left to pillage but they mainly hit the infrastructure.

That can be replaced, easily. People can't, and we did help save a significant number, including our fellow cultivators so far.
 
uiopion said:
Here's the interesting thing.

FVM at max is a radius of "very far" ~400m, which is assumed to be spun up by default in serious mode. When we are at yellow, our AC buffs had a range of "close" ~100m. Similar for FZ. At red, in the old thread, our precursor to FZ, ZB, had a max range of 40m.

And keep in mind that area covered in 3D space is to the third power, so if they're close enough to buff each other with 100m radius stuff, then they are close enough to be covered by us.

So we are seeing some unusually wide range stacking buffs going on amoung all these yellow and red dudes scattering.

Chalk it up to mechanics/narrative discrepancy
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...or perhaps they're using art styles that aren't the same as ours, and don't have their limitations in the same places. It's not even necessarily buffs. The description was that gusts of air were pulling them out of the way. That makes a lot of sense, given that they were on gliders. It's possible it wasn't a "buff" per se, but a specialized "I can use gusts of wind across a wide range to do things like manipulate glider position." It's possible that they have buff arts where physical distance is much less of an issue and blood lineage is more of one. It's possible that they have special rituals that make them better at receiving buffs from a distance. Their cultivation style is fundamentally different from ours, they've had generations to refine it, and this sort of battle is exactly what it's designed to do. The fact that they were able to outperform our expectations in this sort of a situation should not come as a surprise.
 
Sirrocco said:
...or perhaps they're using art styles that aren't the same as ours, and don't have their limitations in the same places. It's not even necessarily buffs. The description was that gusts of air were pulling them out of the way. That makes a lot of sense, given that they were on gliders. It's possible it wasn't a "buff" per se, but a specialized "I can use gusts of wind across a wide range to do things like manipulate glider position." It's possible that they have buff arts where physical distance is much less of an issue and blood lineage is more of one. It's possible that they have special rituals that make them better at receiving buffs from a distance. Their cultivation style is fundamentally different from ours, they've had generations to refine it, and this sort of battle is exactly what it's designed to do. The fact that they were able to outperform our expectations in this sort of a situation should not come as a surprise.
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Also I'd note that whenever it came to a direct clash the Imperials kind of bodied them around barring concentration of force team attacks or contests of mobility.

AND, an important element: the Imperials came here on a "routine seasonal defense"
The Cloud Nomads are evidently not doing the routine thing of young bravos getting blooded or darwin'ed.
 
veekie said:
AND, an important element: the Imperials came here on a "routine seasonal defense"
The Cloud Nomads are evidently not doing the routine thing of young bravos getting blooded or darwin'ed.
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Yeah, the band at this site alone is over 20 times larger than what we were told the "typical" raid is.

Then consider the other village in our three village cluster is also under attack.

Then consider the nomads we spotted that moonbro infiltrated that could've been scouting ahead of an attack.

Then consider the timing of the disruption at the mountain that has our strongest fighters tied down.

If it was a "typical" raid, or two or three or five times larger than a typical raid I'd say they felt the qi disruption from the mountain and decided to take advantage of it.

I do not believe that a few hundred nomads were hunting or herding in striking distance of Argent Sect territory and happened to feel the quakes and make some opportunistic strikes.

They're not here to count coup, prove themselves, get loot, or farm Insights.

This is an actual attack with a different objective.
 
AbeoLogos said:
To clarify, it's not that I think a bad thing happened we could have avoided through other choices.vits that narrative spoons are being spent on lessons we could have simply... decided to know.

Edit: and on the player side, did the lesson even stick? Look at all the people outraged that Reds would do anything but evaporate as we so much as look in their direction, despite their reaction to our charge being literally the most obvious counter tactic.

@Black Noise before I forget, good catch on SCS range Vs mists. I think the enemy was doing an AoE pushback tech at that poi t though? The might also be more of a tear shape when we're moving at max speed, rather than a sphere, but that shouldn't be the case because of our Music nonsense.
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The last army we assaulted pretty much folded despite trying to keep it together and concentrate fire, the barbarians were just better at it than those bandits and had the advantage of the aerial battlefield and resultant group speed.

As for mist/SCS range, while the bard's storm did deform our mist (2 area techs vying for dominance), he only revealed himself after we teleported into the midst of the yellows and greens. Tear shape might be it but our mist expansion speed should be really fast so it shouldn't deform to like half range when we're moving at top speed.


On another note, @Ayashi:
  • The fight choreography is pretty complicated; the group of yellows and greens were only keeping ahead by stacking group speed buffs and providing covering fire volleys, while the reds were explicitly getting pulled around by external wind techs and even that to get them out of the way around our mist. Just read this post again: Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny) Original
  • As said, the bard seems like a chieftain's son type so him being of similar age and cultivation to a count scion progression would only make sense.
    • Ducal tier? What a joke, 1v1 we probably murder him, let alone any of the ducals.
    • As for cultivation levels compared to an imperial sect; getting to early green doesn't actually take that much resources so talented individuals being at our age range is fine.
    • What the barbarians can't match is the numbers. The sect specifically is a nexus where talented cultivators from across the province gather, so to that one talented bard the sect has a few dozen noble scions and talented commoners, and this numbers disparity holds across all cultivation levels.
 
At what age do the barbarians start cultivatin?
Because, fine, our age, our level, considering that the barbarians lack the ability to funnel insane resources to individuals that the empire has, even if they are our level now, it seems unlikely the bard could keep up.
So if they are meant as a rival character for later, having them keep beeing at our level seems borderline unbelievable unless they are a once in a generation genius talent, and even then it feels unlikely.
The whole point of the sect is that it can hyperfocus cultivators into advancing, barbarians don't have the kind of support structures the sect in specific, or empire in general, has that makes something like that possible.

Also, the taunts from the bard come of as pretty hollow.
It's like a child taunting someone while speeding away with a bicycle after being chased away.
 
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