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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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Ayashi said:
She is, in fact, here with the army of barbarians. I not sure why you think the fact that she's part of one of the three sub-factions meeting here means otherwise...
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Do you mean the Winterlady? The following is her introduction:
yrsillar said:
The last group was the smallest, with only two people. One was an unassuming barbarian, mounted upon a winged horse with pale blue fur, and feathered wings as white as a cloud. He wore heavy furs in place of armor, and his mask was a thing of glittering ice, and he was a sixth stage third realm.

Beside him was a strange, pale woman, she was tall, taller than any of the men present, excepting the shishigui speaker. Her hair was a pale yellow shade, like faded gold, and worn in a thick braid gathered around her throat. Her features were odd and foreign, the shape of her grey eyes strange. She wore a dress of pale blue and white. It was made of fur like the other barbarians, but seemed oddly well cut and… elegant, for lack of a better word, almost like imperial tailor work.

Ling Qi felt uncomfortable looking at her. The woman felt familiar despite her clear foreignness. She felt like a cold winters night, fierce and independent, like a more aggressive Zeqing. She was peak third realm. As she watched, the woman leaned in to whisper to the man.
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Therefore the Winterlady clearly has no army backing her up and is here for something personal.
Because of the mention of Zequing and the Winterlady deliberately setting up a conversation, I can say with confidence that she is more interested in the person Ling Qi than the glowing rock.
 
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We really can't promise any diplomacy if she merely stands by or leaves, because we also need our superiors to see her as a valid person to conduct diplomacy with. Merely fucking off and getting sorted into "a barbarian who doesn't want to fight us RIGHT NOW" is probably not going to do that. Helping out, well, still not necessarily guaranteed but significantly more likely than standing by.
 
TehChron said:
We dont have authority to negotiate but Renxiang does

Cai Shenhua has plenty of authority to force the Sect to allow her to, in fact. Especially given what Ling Qi witnessed before the assault began
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CRX has so far been very careful to not overrule anyone with the 'my mom is your boss' card. She raises objections, but never countermands the orders of her superiors in the Sect. I'm not entirely sure why or if this is part of Shenhua testing her, but I'm not comfortable asking her to take a step like that.
 
GlassMask said:
Wasn't she just overruled by the people in charge of the sect?
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In a combat situation to which she had already subordinated herself to the chain of command when requesting a cancellation of the attack

Outside of combat is a whole different thing

memoryofglory said:
CRX has so far been very careful to not overrule anyone with the 'my mom is your boss' card. She raises objections, but never countermands the orders of her superiors in the Sect. I'm not entirely sure why or if this is part of Shenhua testing her, but I'm not comfortable asking her to take a step like that.
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And after this operation is over, what orders would those be?
 
GlassMask said:
Wasn't she just overruled by the people in charge of the sect?
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She was overruled in the moment. Because we're in a battlefield and military discipline is essential. Once we get back into civilization this becomes politics. CRX calls home, talks to her mom about her ideas on reducing the barbarian problem (and Shenhua gives 0 fucks about the imperial orthodoxy, if she wants to negotiate she'll negotiate) and is able to use her prestige and authority. At which point the Sect can either comply politely or comply impolitely.

Remember Cai is donating a bunch of money to the sects. She expects people's attention when she expresses an opinion.
 
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Well for the moment

[] I will gladly speak later with you, so long as you and yours depart before that which we cannot control chains both of us with bonds of unwanted enmity

TehChron's write-in looks the most viable to me since it's basically a friendlier version of first choice, which honestly looks high-handed and threatening.

Let's see how long that remains true (assuming better write-ins come in)

Also 34 minutes to moratorium
 
JohnnieBoy123 said:
I don't think even Shenhua can publically overrule official imperial foreign policy. The ice lady is a barbarian and so must be killed. If diplomacy is to happen, it must be in secret where no one knows.
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The empire absolutely treats with other nations. We've seen the Xuan treat with Kem. We've seen the interlude of the Zheng dude talking about his travels in not!India. We know they assimilate various barbarian tribes. They're racist and arrogant, yes, but there isn't a every barbarian must be kill talking is forbidden policy.

And yeah, if Renxiang goes and, idk, decides to say "hey these barbarian envoys who we aren't actually at war with should be considered guests of the Cai" or something then that is completely different from her thinking a planned military operation they're in the middle of should be cancelled.

To say nothing of the fact that the Sect has no reason to be opposed to it, and would likely dearly appreciate the Cai taking responsibility for such a thing rather than having it fall on their shoulders.
 
GlassMask said:
So I have a new criticism of this, why are we promising to give away our story for mere neutrality. When we bargain we are supposed to get something in exchange. Having them run away rather than fight is nice, but not nearly as nice as helping us.

Furthermore its better to establish a relationship with mutual aid. We can better sell more future Collaboration with White Sky if our first encounter is them helping the empire, rather than cowardly running away.
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You speak as if frost lady can't just take what she want here, she already showed her strength. If she wanted she would have killed LQ right here. Also collaboration? If we allow her to help here than we will owe her later. Doesn't sound wise to me.
 
EternalObserver said:
Well for the moment

[] I will gladly speak later with you, so long as you and yours depart before that which we cannot control chains both of us with bonds of unwanted enmity

TehChron's write-in looks the most viable to me since it's basically a friendlier version of first choice, which honestly looks high-handed and threatening.

Let's see how long that remains true (assuming better write-ins come in)

Also 34 minutes to moratorium
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My issue with it is:
yrsillar said:
Write Ins should be a single sentence, with no more than one clause.
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"I will gladly speak later with you, so long as you and yours depart before that which we cannot control chains both of us with bonds of unwanted enmity" has three clauses. It's more polite than the default, yes, but that's because it is going beyond the limits yrsillar set.
 
TehChron said:
In a combat situation to which she had already subordinated herself to the chain of command when requesting a cancellation of the attack

Outside of combat is a whole different thing


And after this operation is over, what orders would those be?
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If you haven't noticed this is a combat situation, and the mission isn't over until the commanding officer decides we've killed/captured/driven off all enemies and brought the loot safely back to the Sect. We do not have the authority to ask anyone to treat her as an ally/neutral party. And everyone is making a pretty big assumption that Shenhua will bother to step in here.
 
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memoryofglory said:
If you haven't noticed this is a combat situation, and the mission isn't over until the commanding officer decides we've killed/captured/driven off all enemies and brought the loot safely back to the Sect. We do not have the authority to ask anyone to treat her as an ally/neutral party. And everyone is making a pretty big assumption that Shenhua will bother to step in here.
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Which is why we talk to her later?

And to be frank, Shenhua would step in because she hates chaos while try to build up her province, And war is Chaos

So if Renxiang can prevent the conflict from escalating by using some diplomacy she'll grant permission for it, as it'll be the most expedient course of action to getting this Incursion over with as quickly as possible.
 
FakePriest said:
You speak as if frost lady can't just take what she want here, she already showed her strength. If she wanted she would have killed LQ right here. Also collaboration? If we allow her to help here than we will owe her later. Doesn't sound wise to me.
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The empire is much stronger than the frost lady and White Sky. Yes in the moment, Frost lady is very powerful and we are vulnerable, but the reverse is true on a civilization scale.
 
GlassMask said:
The empire is much stronger than the frost lady and White Sky. Yes in the moment, Frost lady is very powerful and we are vulnerable, but the reverse is true on a civilization scale.
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"Diplomacy not happening is fine because we can totally take the sublime ancestor-backed civilization attacking us directly on top of everything else" huh

Well that's a take I guess
 
We don't know who she is. She doesn't know who we are. We aren't empowered to be a diplomat and she almost certainly knows that.

Frankly we have no ability to even stop her from being attacked, as shown by us telling command that they shouldn't attack because she wasn't hostile and them overruling us.

Erebeal said:
The empire absolutely treats with other nations. We've seen the Xuan treat with Kem. We've seen the interlude of the Zheng dude talking about his travels in not!India. We know they assimilate various barbarian tribes. They're racist and arrogant, yes, but there isn't a every barbarian must be kill talking is forbidden policy.

And yeah, if Renxiang goes and, idk, decides to say "hey these barbarian envoys who we aren't actually at war with should be considered guests of the Cai" or something then that is completely different from her thinking a planned military operation they're in the middle of should be cancelled.

To say nothing of the fact that the Sect has no reason to be opposed to it, and would likely dearly appreciate the Cai taking responsibility for such a thing rather than having it fall on their shoulders.
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But I sincerely doubt that relationships started as public negotiations on the field of battle. The empire treats with foreigners but, as I see it, those relationships generally start in secret and then get introduced as fait accompli.
 
FakePriest said:
You speak as if frost lady can't just take what she want here, she already showed her strength. If she wanted she would have killed LQ right here. Also collaboration? If we allow her to help here than we will owe her later. Doesn't sound wise to me.
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If she wants Ling Qi to owe her in exchange for helping her, seems like she just wouldn't help when presented with "[] Tell her to help if she's so interested in you, you can talk later." It's pretty open about what she gets out of helping, and then it's on her to decide what talking to Ling Qi is worth. Either it's worth helping, and she helps, or it's not worth helping, and she doesn't. There is absolutely no reason for her to expect to get the stone, or for LQ to owe her, or anything else.
 
JohnnieBoy123 said:
We don't know who she is. She doesn't know who we are. We aren't empowered to be a diplomat and she almost certainly knows that.

Frankly we have no ability to even stop her from being attacked, as shown by us telling command that they shouldn't attack because she wasn't hostile and them overruling us.
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Easy solution. Throw ourselves in the way of any attacks on her by the Sect.
 
Ice lady is gonna get captured she might be peak green but we have them surrounded with an Elder. We have her help us and moon teacher CRX and maybe Guan Zhi can help with us talking to the elder about this new development after all the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
It'll just look better for her if she's found to help us battle the barbarians rather than flee and talk to her later which won't happen with the Elders siblings encircling the caldera.
 
So, I'm going to have to dive into the chapter in a little bit more detail, but here are my initial thoughts on the vote options.

[] Tell her to leave if she doesn't want to face the empire.
[] Tell her to help if she's so interested in you, you can talk later.
[] You don't have time for this. Escape from the ice prison along with your spirit's via your revel and form up to receive your reinforcements.
[] Write In

First off, it seems, based on the character sheet, that we have MoSS equipped. Now, that's not a guarantee, the front page can be a fickle mistress after all, but if true that would be fantastic for any option involving communicating with the spirit. Any option. Even if it is not true, not talking to this spirit seems like it could end poorly, after all, we can guesstimate how well a spirit of cold and darkness will react to having their interests denied to them (hint, not very well).

In that vein, talking! Talking sounds like a great option here.

I'm not convinced by the option to ask the spirit to leave given that we have no way of knowing how to further communicate with her, she has no way of knowing how to further communicate with us, and she is interested in us. That interest may war with self-preservation, but I feel that creating that war won't actually help us in this situation. Better to create an incentive for an action (either leaving, abstaining from the fight, or helping us) than to spark a conflict of incentives. We want predictability here, not a 50/50 on what option she is going to pick.

As such, I think that the Help option or a particularly viable write-in option is the way to go for this vote. Either one creates an incentive for the spirit to act in a certain way, specifically in a way that helps us, and, as I mentioned previously, we want to be able to predict what the spirit will do, one way or another.
 
Thor's Twin said:
First off, it seems, based on the character sheet, that we have MoSS equipped. Now, that's not a guarantee, the front page can be a fickle mistress after all, but if true that would be fantastic for any option involving communicating with the spirit. Any option. Even if it is not true, not talking to this spirit seems like it could end poorly, after all, we can guesstimate how well a spirit of cold and darkness will react to having their interests denied to them (hint, not very well).
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PREEEETTY sure she's not a spirit. Spiritblooded probably but not a spirit herself.
 
Thor's Twin said:
As such, I think that the Help option or a particularly viable write-in option is the way to go for this vote. Either one creates an incentive for the spirit to act in a certain way, specifically in a way that helps us, and, as I mentioned previously, we want to be able to predict what the spirit will do, one way or another.
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We want each others' actions to be mutually predictable. The best way of doing that is show our nature and hope that she reciprocates. Telling someone to do something might make them predictable but it doesn't do the same for you.
 
I also love the way the barbarians just took a second to process Qi wanted fight them all at once, their thoughts would have been this crazy bitch with eye twitches and popped veins in their forehead
 
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