Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
[x] Drop the thought, even with this incursion, they had been safe. Increase the security of the house, but let her family stay here. (-2 Green Stones, family remains in unsafe area)
Imo, no matter the attack (either of them) the Sect is still much safer than some random Barony up north. Here we have sect enforced rules and guards, AND Ling Qi's own reputation to protect them. We also have a sense of unity against the foreign invasion(s). For example, i'm pretty sure even enemies like Yan Renshu (Ling Qi: ren-who?) or Sun Liling have better things that plot the annoying commoner's family's downfall.
Up north our family would be in unknown territory with no direct support.
The BINO will curse you and spit at your face as you slowly die, whereas a real Bai will remain perfectly civil and proper as she slowly eviscerates you to strangle you with your still warm intestines. Assuming you manage to keep conscious through the poison, of course...
So I think we could make an argument for having Su Ling work on (part of) our house's defenses. Hence come in regular contact with Qingge, who i think would benefit a lot from talking with an other "commoner turned immortal cultivator". One that doesn't bend backwards to fit the normal imperial nobility behavior.
And i'm pretty sure Biyu will love her fluffy tails...
Everyone else only knows she's a commoner, that's it.
I'll skip the whole give TRF to Xiulan thing, as first, i don't believe the art is ours to give. And second, telling Xiulan what and how she should cultivate is the height of arrogance and is nothing short of insulting.
Imo, no matter the attack (either of them) the Sect is still much safer than some random Barony up north. Here we have sect enforced rules and guards, AND Ling Qi's own reputation to protect them. We also have a sense of unity against the foreign invasion(s). For example, i'm pretty sure even enemies like Yan Renshu (Ling Qi: ren-who?) or Sun Liling have better things that plot the annoying commoner's family's downfall.
Up north our family would be in unknown territory with no direct support.
Of course not, that's how you recongnize a Bai from a Bai In Name Only.
The BINO will curse you and spit at your face as you slowly die, whereas a real Bai will remain perfectly civil and proper as she slowly eviscerates you to strangle you with your still warm intestines. Assuming you manage to keep conscious through the poison, of course...
Her arts lack the flaw that made the underground rats remain undetected by the Sect at large, and that seems like a vital thing for us to have.
So I think we could make an argument for having Su Ling work on (part of) our house's defenses. Hence come in regular contact with Qingge, who i think would benefit a lot from talking with an other "commoner turned immortal cultivator". One that doesn't bend backwards to fit the normal imperial nobility behavior.
And i'm pretty sure Biyu will love her fluffy tails...
You know what would be really useful to fix that? Access to last year's White Room... Also drugs. Because that's always a valid answer.
In fact, i believe Ling Qi only ever told Meizhen and CRX about her past as a thief/street rat/whore's daughter.
Everyone else only knows she's a commoner, that's it.
I'll skip the whole give TRF to Xiulan thing, as first, i don't believe the art is ours to give. And second, telling Xiulan what and how she should cultivate is the height of arrogance and is nothing short of insulting.
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EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
This is why my stance has always been "give Xiulan more friends to interact"
Which is why I always advocated for the Xiulan + Suyin plan. Could've potentially worked out.
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Which is why I always advocated for the Xiulan + Suyin plan. Could've potentially worked out.
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By that logic, Su Ling's Pill Furnace isn't actually hers either.
It's just on loan as thanks for services rendered to the Sect
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
So? Ignoring the fact TRF is an art a Elder developed and then allowed Ling Qi to cultivate as a reward, unless Su Ling is trying to sell her Pill Furnace i don't see how that's relevant.By that logic, Su Ling's Pill Furnace isn't actually hers either.
It's just on loan as thanks for services rendered to the Sect
I mean, that's flat out wrong?
TRF is an Art that in one form or another can be traced back to the Weilu.
The iteration we got was from the Xu clan specifically.
Let's not get ahead of ourselve here.
And Xiulan was actually the first one LQ told about her street rat days. Back during the first thunderdome we asked Lanlan about sending letters and there mentioned that LQ had ran away from how for the last few years.
Dont think Lanlan is so sheltered that she would not understand that LQ as a 10 year old would have to steal.
Actually I believe this is vastly mistaken. This is specific to Gu Yanmei, because she mains Metal/Fire/Heaven/Sun, which works best if you're a fundamentally rational passionate person.
I think this is also mixing up cause and effect. Xiulan has had problems with Water and Metal since before her tribulation and big break, this is likely because she's NOT a cooly rational person and prefers confrontation to evasion. This has amplified further but it was already there. She doesn't take the long view, she focuses on the mid term action plan(you can see this right here, Xiulan effectively gone Power up quickly -> Break Engagement -> ??? -> Profit, and realizing she's fulfilled her objective and has no further plans)
The problem with TRF as a quickfix is that it misses her having a massive issue with one of the core Wood and Earth principles, strength in unity.
Her entire year 1 arc is how her group is causing her pain, avoiding confrontation and holding her back. Its likely she has further developed insights relating to that.
Personality comes before elements, elements only helps reinforce and amplify existing traits. I strongly suspect she'd have better luck with Darkness, Mountain or Thunder than Wood.
And likewise, the Gu are an old Violet clan, trading their lineage all the way back to the Purifying Sun without interruption. They should have arts for every flavor of Traditional Five/Imperial Eight up to Cyan in their archives.
If an art could fix things they'd have fixed it.
I think this is giving her and the Gu family far too little credit.
The Gu clan Thing is Phoenix. Their arts are a setup for a parable of "I burn myself down to ash with you, and then rise from the ashes."
She's not actually lacking defense, this is a thread misperception, considering she won her tourney by trading blows, not playing standoff artillery.
She's not FOCUSED on defense, but thats not something an art would fix, when her fighting style is built around artillery -> trading blows when they close with retaliatory damage.
Hell, we know the Gu have healing/purifying arts, its literally their ancestral inheritance.
Xiulan doesn't need an art, she needs someone who's actually willing to listen to her rather than join the long long list of people imposing their ideas on her and ignoring what she actually wants.
Thats why she's friends with Ling Qi, who just accepts that her friend is a hotheaded, arrogant, risk taking butt sometimes.
If she does pick up a TRF insight I'm pretty sure its closer to "My scars prove my strength" than what people are wishing for.
Not quite. Teaching them to other Sect disciples is fine.
That said, I believe TRF is with EPC, FVM, SCS and FSS in the "this art has been gifted to you, its your responsibility to see that it is passed on wisely, not frivolously"
- Location
- United States of America
Su Ling: Wait... you were in medical recovery until yesterday?
Ling Qi: Yep!
Su Ling: How did that happen?
Ling Qi: An assassin tried to kill me.
Su Ling: Man, sucks that you weren't able to dodge him.
Ling Qi: Oh no, I could have dodged him, I just choose not to.
Su Ling: ... why?
Ling Qi: I knew I could take the hit and it would make him overcommit so that Xiulan and I could roast him. And it worked!
Su Ling: ... I'm glad?
Ling Qi: Yep, and now that I know that it was the things that crawl in those caverns that threatened my family, I'm going to go and murder them. All.
Su Ling: ... You... go do that.
That's not necessarily true.
This is distinctly different from how Meizhen's Domain simply grants immunity to its effects to those who are sufficiently close to her.
Xiulan does draw strength from her bonds. It's simply a matter of her lacking them at this time, but when they're there, she definitely gets some kind of boost.
Wood is quite likely to fit in well.
And thus, TRF's own lessons will open up an opportunity for her draw an Insight related to stolidity and patience, like a great tree putting down roots, as Ling Qi got the opportunity to.
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- Location
- United States of America
I mean... I always attributed that boost from our presence and our domain, not Xiulan's. Xiulan is a rank 4 bond with us, and so our domain should boost her when we are in the same scene.
More that it seems to stem from LQ's domain power, not hers?
Or perhaps she has a You Must Be Worthy thing like Meizhen does.
Let's take another look at what Ling Qi's Domain, eh?
You can make the argument that a lack of direct Domain boosting effects is irrelevant, and that the incidental buffs are represented through Narrative...But I question that assumption for one super particular reason:
While all of these acknowledge the value of others...None of them are about boosting them up with Ling Qi herself.
These are all about Ling Qi herself, her own growth, and her own role. Not about stoking flames, raising up others, or making them more than they would otherwise be alone.
@veekie even if these exact insights are off the table for Xiulan, its very easy to see these general themes slotting comfortably into Xiulans Domain as its been represented.
And the hallmark of High Quality Arts is, as ever, the flexibility of the Insights they provide when Mastered.
- Location
- Location: Location!
I quite agree with you that the Gu most likely have good techniques for brick wall builds, but that doesn't seem to be Lanlan's build and I think it would be silly for her to try to shoehorn passive techniques like armor into her Way. The second part of my post was regarding the idea that we could be able to remotely solve Lanlan's family issues. We can't, so there's not much point in modeling and assigning blame there; she will either succeed by her own merits (with whatever emotional support we can give over long-distance snail-mail correspondence), or she won't. Unless we abandon CRX's service, it's quite out of our hands...
Naw, we KNOW she can tank. Its how she won her tourney. She traded hits with a Green as a partial Green and simply outraced them to the bottom.
Shes not focused on tanking as a strategy, but she can take a lot of hits. You need arts for that
- Location
- New York
Really? So we can't solve the problem entirely so don't even try? For some reason every single person who argues against giving TRF makes the same three mistakes about our side.1) we don't believe TRF is the end all fixit. 2) we don't believe that we can fix her family, nor do we want to try. 3) or that giving TRF will automatically have no effect or be useless. All of these have been debunked already but they keep coming back. We, again I'll repeat, have never said TRF will fix the problem/her family. Most importantly, giving TRF is not some super arrogant move. It's symbolic, personal, and a hope to get her to lessen her fatalism. I won't even get into how stupid it is to assume the insights would be useless. Also, unless prodded can anyone really expect Xiulan to actively cultivate a non fire/heaven defense art? One that has as many "good" connotations as this one?
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Like, I'll say it again:
TRF in particular isn't just a great defensive Art that works well for Ling Qi in particular. We've always known that its own setup synergizes well with Xiulans own setup.
So while it certainly is suboptimal for Xiulans current cultivation, I think the argument of "Optimizing Cultivation" is precisely the problem that landed Xiulan into her current mess to begin with. TRF is a good start to ameliorating that, and based on what we've seen of TRF's own Insights bouncing off Ling Qi's own style of ambition, it should be able to be slotted into Xiulan's own ambition-soaked Domain as well.
If those Insights can give her a chance to ameliorate the issues that her Way are undergoing now by providing an understanding of why its okay to slow down and put down roots...Then that'd be perfect, to be honest.
Because that opens up all sorts of other potential Insights to help Xiulan out. Its by no means a perfect solution, but it can absolutely be a start.
And more than anything else, that's what Xiulan needs right now.
It just means that you're able to continue functioning despite being dead. Xiulan's fundamental problem isn't that she shrugs off damage.
It's that she keeps on taking horrendous amounts of damage each time she gets in a serious fight.
If the Gu arts she's learned could help with that, then we wouldn't be seeing Xiulan's scarred arm combusting into ruined flesh that needs a higher realm healer each time she throws down in a death match.
Xiulan isn't not taking damage. She's just ignoring it.
That's fine when you're not expecting to walk away from a fight, the problem is that Xiulan treats each fight that way. Its not sustainable.
TRF in particular isn't just a great defensive Art that works well for Ling Qi in particular. We've always known that its own setup synergizes well with Xiulans own setup.
So while it certainly is suboptimal for Xiulans current cultivation, I think the argument of "Optimizing Cultivation" is precisely the problem that landed Xiulan into her current mess to begin with. TRF is a good start to ameliorating that, and based on what we've seen of TRF's own Insights bouncing off Ling Qi's own style of ambition, it should be able to be slotted into Xiulan's own ambition-soaked Domain as well.
If those Insights can give her a chance to ameliorate the issues that her Way are undergoing now by providing an understanding of why its okay to slow down and put down roots...Then that'd be perfect, to be honest.
Because that opens up all sorts of other potential Insights to help Xiulan out. Its by no means a perfect solution, but it can absolutely be a start.
And more than anything else, that's what Xiulan needs right now.
Veekie, just because mechanically Battle Continuation lets you ignore damage doesn't mean you're tanking.
It just means that you're able to continue functioning despite being dead. Xiulan's fundamental problem isn't that she shrugs off damage.
It's that she keeps on taking horrendous amounts of damage each time she gets in a serious fight.
If the Gu arts she's learned could help with that, then we wouldn't be seeing Xiulan's scarred arm combusting into ruined flesh that needs a higher realm healer each time she throws down in a death match.
Xiulan isn't not taking damage. She's just ignoring it.
That's fine when you're not expecting to walk away from a fight, the problem is that Xiulan treats each fight that way. Its not sustainable.
- Location
- United States of America
Your point, as I see it, has a huge hole in it because the very first effect of Ling Qi's domain is to boost up others with Ling Qi herself. So while none of the additional insights that we've gotten focus on boosting up others with Ling Qi, the very core effect of Ling Qi's domain is to do that. It is the first effect our domain ever got. So I don't see the relevance regarding how our other insights modify and interact with our domain while not pointing towards boosting others with Ling Qi when the core of our domain does the very thing you say our insights don't do.
Furthermore, I question the assumption that Gu Xiulan's domain has an inherent reaction to individuals with tight bonds being nearby. We know nothing about what bonuses Gu Xiulan's domain gives and what triggers those bonuses, but we do know that Ling Qi's domain gives bonuses to people nearby who are important to Ling Qi. Additionally, if you look at the passage again:
You'll see that it is our domain that is initiating the interaction. As our domain washed over Xiulan's domain, Xiulan's domain grows and brighten. That phrasing indicates to me that it is because of our domain that Xiulan's domain brightens. This is important because if Xiulan's domain was the one which boosted itself because of our presence, I would expect Xiulan's domain to be the one reaching out to us and then brightening and growing. If Xiulan's domain gave bonuses for bonds, then I would expect it to be much more aggressive about it and not to simply react to another's domain.
In essence, to ignore Ling Qi's domain and the domain effects which should be boosting Xiulan in this situation and say that it is Xiulan's domain which is boosting her self without any prior knowledge of what Xiulan's domain does or what triggers Xiulan's domain is skipping the cleanest and direct answer to what happened. Without more information on Xiulan's domain, claiming that it has the trigger of friends nearby seems very premature.
Stoking Domain Effects being the result of buffs to perception and armor seems...Lets just call it silly.
Incongruent if you prefer.
Its a false equivalence on the same level as saying that TRF and Argent Current are the same thing.
Now you're just reaching. There's no "initiating" going on at all. It's simply an interaction from the two meeting, the same as Ling Qi's Mist also positively reacted to the presence of Xiulan's own Domain.
*waggles hand*
Only if you're playing deliberate reductionist, lol
But either way, even with that nonsense you're still not taking away from my larger point on how, based on prior experience, TRF should play well enough with Xiulan's own Domain enough to take a relevant Insight from it.
- Location
- The Space Between
yeah? how'd that phoenix stuff work out for em?
I don't believe Xiulan had defensive techs so much as S Resolve to keep fighting at full strength at 1 hp. Sun/Fire/Heaven and she supposedly has something that's actually defensive? mmm. probably? I'm just not sold on a branch house of the dead phoenix knowing what's best. Call it unfilial piety. Whatever.
Xiulan's connections are very *very* important to her. She has gained power in large part in order to have the control over who should or shouldn't be part of her forest/connections. The first step was getting the freedom to choose. The second step is remembering that she does really enjoy connections. She doesn't want to be isolated, she wants connections and friends. I'm tellin ya, Wood is best health. The others are alright
- Location
- Location: Location!
"Our side"? Also, you are misconstruing my argument. (1) I never said "your side" claims the gift of TRF is any kind of fixit; (2) people on "your side" or "some other side" (@JowKeen specifically) are discussing Gu family dynamics as that relates to Lanlan's self-destructive tendencies —which are the real deal— and I was engaging on that discussion orthogonally to the whole TRF one; and (3) I haven't been convinced that giving Lanlan one hand-me-down technique will help at all. Was it her that had to be talked into going with us after one of the Astral series techniques? It's been a while since my last read-through. If we want her to lessen her fatalism, a frank conversation —preferably during a sparring match to keep her from bolting— would be more effective. I don't believe she will practice this technique all the way into mastery, and if she did I expect she would refrain from taking an insight from it. We've had that option every single time.
Naw, she's just not gotten to the regeneration/rebirth part yet.
- Location
- New York
I'll just give this one (hopefully last time.) first and foremost, it doesn't seem we have the time to have a frank conversation/spar. She's leaving. That's what led to this whole discussion. Giving TRF is an attempt to have an effect on her fatalism. In this interlude alone, we have seen signs that her family has tried to break her of this, by telling her they love her and trying to get her to cultivate other elements. Like metal, as her sister mentioned. Xiulan could not do it, as she said it interfered with her way. What giving TRF will do, hopefully, is to broaden and open her up to the wood element. Right now she is heaven/fire. And it is burning her out, her path is quite literally a death sentence with how damn risky it is. TRF, has good insights and connects to wood, which we hope will allow her to somewhat break this train of thought. I don't really understand the resistance and arguments on the other side because...well they seem to fall generally under either not paying attention or just saying it's not going to work so there is no point in trying. The closest to an actual suggestions has been to have a frank conversation, which I agree with, but which doesn't seem likely to happen because Xiulan is leaving. Then there are the people who don't believe it will help, with no real reason to believe there will be no effect. Again, I'm hoping for a big effect, but I'm not expecting anything drastic.
What I do know, is that TRF is wood element, and spreading out/balancing Xiulans elements can only help her. I also know that if she mastered and slots the insights in, she will gain valuable insights that should not help her fatalism. Finally, she is more likely to cultivate an art from us, especially one as personally and symbolically important as TRF. Perhaps most importantly, it seems to fit her way.
Edit:
Veekie there is even less proof of that then TRF being helpful to her. Like sure it's likely, but we have seen no regen/rebirth arts. And considering how fucking fatalistic she is, I don't like the connotations of coming back to life after burning herself to ashes without something steadying that. Hence, TRF or something similar.
What I do know, is that TRF is wood element, and spreading out/balancing Xiulans elements can only help her. I also know that if she mastered and slots the insights in, she will gain valuable insights that should not help her fatalism. Finally, she is more likely to cultivate an art from us, especially one as personally and symbolically important as TRF. Perhaps most importantly, it seems to fit her way.
Edit:
Veekie there is even less proof of that then TRF being helpful to her. Like sure it's likely, but we have seen no regen/rebirth arts. And considering how fucking fatalistic she is, I don't like the connotations of coming back to life after burning herself to ashes without something steadying that. Hence, TRF or something similar.
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Id lol if the Lu's secret ingredient was Yang Wood tho
Zhengui is a pretty good case study in how that could be made to work