Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Now that I've infoposted the current states of the arts (ha ha I am so clever), I think my preferred things to improve would be Blazing Blood for Zhengui and Lonely Winter Maiden for Hanyi. If we want to maintain our "highly mobile stealth+speedster"-ness, focusing Zhengui on his long range abilities (so he can continue to participate even if the fight moves away from him) and Hanyi on her "taunt" abilities (to lure enemies out of position for someone on our team to pick off) seems best to me.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
Personally I'm hoping for a hibernation sort of vibe where they keep their bond up but she's only on screen during LQ doing Dream shenanigans.
Maybe Water would have been a better element for her than Wind?
- Location
- United States of America
I hope not as well. Here, I think, is their conflict:
With all the experiences of death and hardship Sixiang is has experienced, she is not sure if there is much in the world that is worth it.
So, to help, we should show them things in the world that make the suffering worth it. Works of beauty, awe-inspiring scenery, and the connections people have with one another. That despite the suffering, death, and difficulties the world brings, the experiences we can have in the world are worth it.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
I generally like this, I'm just a touch leary of not focusing on Zhengui's dual element art.
Six said at the very beginning that she didn't plan to stick around forever. This is a little sooner than I expected, but it's not like we were never going to lose any social links.
Edit: We should look into picking up a cleanse art. We've been leaning on six for that for some time now.
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- Location
- United States of America
This is much, much sooner than I expected. And if Sixiang leaves, I want that to be on a high note of having done all that they wanted to do, not on the low note of not wanting to experience any more of this world.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
It wasn't this choice that set it off, it was Ling Qi's plot arc in general.
As things stand, we identified a major fault-line in our nascent Way before it could blow up in our face. Knowing the problem is there means we can start working at mending it.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
The conflict was already there, we just discovered it early. Refusing to stop and sticking with family do have that bit of incompatibility, which would only grow as we raced ahead of those close to us.
- Location
- Finland
Yeah, i argued against that insight because i felt Ling Qi was already too workaholic as it was.
Did not really think about leaving others behind, but in hidnsight it is kinda obvious.
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
oh no, they are turning into a nightmare!
Oh ho ho ho be careful what you discard on the side of the road as you make your Way indeed!
Well, it looks like this was the wrong choice.
I hope we don't have to remove "There is no peace in emptiness, no content in stillness. Stagnation is death; act, change, move, think, and grow until the very end. " from Ling Qi's domain. That's really the best part of it, along with the Argent Mirror insight.
Also hope we can find a way to keep Six. Don't think I could take losing both Xiulan and Six, during the same turn
I hope we don't have to remove "There is no peace in emptiness, no content in stillness. Stagnation is death; act, change, move, think, and grow until the very end. " from Ling Qi's domain. That's really the best part of it, along with the Argent Mirror insight.
Also hope we can find a way to keep Six. Don't think I could take losing both Xiulan and Six, during the same turn
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Again, this wasn't a mistake we made here and now.
Look at what it says again instead of kneejerking on the effects.
"Conflict discovered early"
The problem was already present, Ling Qi just didn't notice it until she committed to something that put pressure on that part of her Domain.
Funny thing is? This is the choice she made way back in Second Realm finally being challenged. The "Roots and Wings" debate where Ling Qi wants to be free from fear and cold, but also wants to have people to accompany her along the way. The conflict here is that "As much as you might like it, you can't achieve freedom from fear and have company at the same time with your level of strength. How do you resolve that?"
Funny thing is? I think I've got an idea.
A teacher.
One answer to the question of 'How do you move forward while carrying the people you care for with you' is to make 'Helping other people move forward' into one of your ambitions in life. To make people better able to fly with you by teaching them what you know--and storytellers and teachers are pretty much the same thing when you get down to it.
And we've got all the tools to be the former present right now
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- Location
- Finland
Youd prefer to leave our family behind the moment they become inconvenient?
We were on the path of becomming Shenhua, parental neglect most definitely included.
Our choice here was absolutely the right one, it allows us to fix a flaw in our way, either by removing a bad insight, or tempering it with a new one to be a less absolutist one.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I feel like, as a thread, we already made that call back when we locked 1 AP per month to family. We looked at the risk of not making it in time and decided that it was an acceptable level of risk to stay connected with our family. This is another fallout consequence of that choice.
I think framing it as the "wrong" choice is a category error. Both choices would have carried negative consequences; it's possible the other choice would have also had the domain conflict, because one person's desires alone cannot make a family, but at the very least it would have fucked up our relationship with Zhengui and likely impeded his development.
Not the wrong choice, note the "Early Discovery reduces impact. " thing. It was already there. Since way back in LQ's yellow insight really. The Wings and the Roots. LQ desires power to never have to be afraid and to have her family with her. That is a hard thing to accomplish because she will leave most if not all behind.
She needs to find a Way to reconcile these two parts of her in a way that makes her happy with her Way.
- Location
- UK
So my immediate gut reaction is that we absolutely of course don't want to focus on and enhance the 'Lonely Winter Maiden' aspect of Hanyi, but with a bit more thought on it, it occurs that this is a part of Hanyi that is going to grow if we want her to progress, so on the other hand ignoring it absolutely not what we want to do.
I was thinking if maybe it would be possible for us to instead try and shape it into something more compatible with us and our own domain, which if we want to do we absolutely want to start ASAP.
Kinda funny, Zhengui was about to get a domain snarl but we dodged it, we ourselves discovered a domain snarl, possibly in a good way as it was done early, and now we should probably be looking at ways to protect Hanyi from them.
Of course, if we prevented Zhengui and diagnosed our own, looks like Sixiang is on the operating table...
I wonder if it would be possible to bind Sixiang up into a physical totem of some kind and basically make her a civilian, if the conflict in the world is hurting her.
Ideally we can just solve this, but unless Sixiang makes some major changes to her core this sort of thing is going to keep coming up so long as she is bound to us.
On the other hand, if we gave her a material vessel we could keep her with our household, and I think Sixiang would be at least be happy watching Biyu grow up and such. Hell, stick Sixiang in a teddy bear. The only problem with this is I think she would still feel worried and guilt about us if this happened, as we would still be in danger and are her friend.
Maybe a worst case solution if we can't otherwise solve her current troubles.
We really need to start making a more coherent domain plan if we're getting conflicts this early, unless smoothing over this stuff is just expected and normal, because it's getting very easy to see why and how people lose their Way.
Hm. So this is likely why Songseeker's Ceremony has a increase to growth rate based upon social link for bond spirits baked into it. Regardless it appears my point about domain conflict was slightly off in that it already existed, and we merely noticed it early enough for it to not be nasty, which wouldn't been the case after cultivating the SS'C as that is heavily involved in Way development.
In short bullet discovered development of dodge technique in progress.
This makes sense for a dream spirit who has little experience to hardship to need a bigger Dream to stick around, and SSC is meant to help with Way development.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
They, not she.
This runs into the fundamental problem of the quest structure -- long-term commitments to a course of action are really hard.
- Location
- Finland
Things, yes, those things do not need to be our friends and family, that's a false dichotomy.
We offer time, sweat, even our freedom, our life if need be, but never our friends and family.
- Location
- Spain
Ling Qi is wondering if things would have been the same if she had chosen to reject the promise. I am wondering bout this as well.
First of, our words have healed a snarl in Zhengui's qi. Perhaps, if we had refused his promise, the snarl would have gotten worse, or even broken something. We have prevented that scenario, and now all of our spirits are motivated to work harder. Except Six, but Six deserves to catch a break for now.
Second: We caught onto this Domain Conflict early, and so, the effects were reduced. I don't think the choice was "get conflict in exchange for helping out Zhengui's development vs don't get conflict, but don't help Zhengui". It was, I believe "Conflict exists within Domain. Discover now, suffer consequences now and mitigate it? Or discover it later on, land let it build up and get even worse by the time we discover it?"
Our Way/Domain prioritizes (aside from other things that don't factor much into the current dilemma):
*Our family, over all else.
*Growth over all else.
The current conflict is: "If tending to family hampers my growth, do I leave family behind so that I can keep growing, or do I slow down my growth in favor of letting my family catch up?"
We have chosen to put family first, so now our idea of "growth" is aching. The other choice would have left "family" aching, and my guess is that same thing would have happened if we had voted to send LQ's mother and sister away so that we could focus on training without having to care for them personally.
We have probably made a choice to defuse a bomb that was coming to backfire on us sooner or later. It wasn't realistic that we could have stayed unaware of the conflict forever. ESPECIALLY considering honesty is key in our way. If we had tried to tell ourselves "No, nothing is wrong, everything is fine, I'm just overthinking things", once we had to face this conflict, we would also have the whole "I didn't want to face the truth", which would be yet an additional conflict to bear with, and we'd have to fix even more things.
...Or perhaps I am misremembering the insight we gained from Argent Mirror entirely, can't tell for sure. I do believe that, on the "sincerity/honesty" term, a potential conflict we also need to watch out for is:
"Is it best to lie if that keeps our family safe? What do we prioritize, Family, or Sincerity?"
Lastly, on this topic: Isn't this our first Conflict in our domain? I wonder what is the proper way to solve it. Perhaps gaining an insight that sort of normalizes the conflict by tying up both contradicting priorities somehow?
First of, our words have healed a snarl in Zhengui's qi. Perhaps, if we had refused his promise, the snarl would have gotten worse, or even broken something. We have prevented that scenario, and now all of our spirits are motivated to work harder. Except Six, but Six deserves to catch a break for now.
Second: We caught onto this Domain Conflict early, and so, the effects were reduced. I don't think the choice was "get conflict in exchange for helping out Zhengui's development vs don't get conflict, but don't help Zhengui". It was, I believe "Conflict exists within Domain. Discover now, suffer consequences now and mitigate it? Or discover it later on, land let it build up and get even worse by the time we discover it?"
Our Way/Domain prioritizes (aside from other things that don't factor much into the current dilemma):
*Our family, over all else.
*Growth over all else.
The current conflict is: "If tending to family hampers my growth, do I leave family behind so that I can keep growing, or do I slow down my growth in favor of letting my family catch up?"
We have chosen to put family first, so now our idea of "growth" is aching. The other choice would have left "family" aching, and my guess is that same thing would have happened if we had voted to send LQ's mother and sister away so that we could focus on training without having to care for them personally.
We have probably made a choice to defuse a bomb that was coming to backfire on us sooner or later. It wasn't realistic that we could have stayed unaware of the conflict forever. ESPECIALLY considering honesty is key in our way. If we had tried to tell ourselves "No, nothing is wrong, everything is fine, I'm just overthinking things", once we had to face this conflict, we would also have the whole "I didn't want to face the truth", which would be yet an additional conflict to bear with, and we'd have to fix even more things.
...Or perhaps I am misremembering the insight we gained from Argent Mirror entirely, can't tell for sure. I do believe that, on the "sincerity/honesty" term, a potential conflict we also need to watch out for is:
"Is it best to lie if that keeps our family safe? What do we prioritize, Family, or Sincerity?"
Lastly, on this topic: Isn't this our first Conflict in our domain? I wonder what is the proper way to solve it. Perhaps gaining an insight that sort of normalizes the conflict by tying up both contradicting priorities somehow?