Okay. This bugs me more than a little, but it's good to know what Yrs was trying to get at with the requirement.
Now that's it's actually eligible, I guess I may as well get to my problem with the content. There was a similar sort of vote before, but this one's actually getting traction, so...
I'm assuming, through this, that the purpose is to actually try and pursue this plotline, not just to solve the immediate issue.
1) I'm pretty sure answering her question now is actually a very bad idea.
We don't know why she's asking. More importantly, we don't have time to ask why, and the current circumstances mean that Ling Qi only has access to pretty low-fidelity communication. We can be pretty sure that she'll communicate the essence of her teacher with music, but that may not actually be helpful to pursue this long-term: if her question is answered, and things get sufficiently messy after this, then she has more reason to decide to cut her losses and leave it be. And that's assuming that answering the mystery doesn't cause her to enter onto the enemy's side for whatever reason, which is far from certain!
Any later meeting can have better means of communication, and won't be happening mid-battle. (And remember how we're trying to mod an art for communication now? Better understanding across languages is definitely a possible result!) Sure, if we meet her separately then she may decide "okay, not what I'm looking for" and still leave, but she'll have invested more into the question: she'll have more reason to try and get something out of it, to make sure the effort wasn't wasted. And while some of the "something"s she could "get out of it" might end badly for Ling Qi, I expect all of those somethings to be interesting, and isn't that what we're really here for?
2) "performance" worries me.
2a) It moves this into a more Dreaming Moon context. Appropriate for Ling Qi! But we know nothing of them or how they relate to the Moons, or to the Moon in general. If we want her to stay interested in Ling Qi, you want to focus on common ground, not differentiate. (Yes, she's seen us use the Arts, but it's about priorities.)
2b) More than that, it's not Imperials who are mostly dying here. Yes, "outsiders to the Empire" aren't one homogeneous group--but if you asked the lady who she currently relates to more, it's probably not the Imperials. That might change, but it hasn't changed yet. Doing anything that makes Ling Qi look indifferent to the people dying is not great.
3) All other things being equal, I'd really prefer Ling Qi at least suggest the lady help. Sure, it might incur some small obligation, but as pointed out back in the Xuan Shi vote a while back, having a small obligation can be helpful to build a connection--and we're not working on fairy rules, Ling Qi can definitely say no if she tries to ask for too much! (Because I assume that Ling Qi isn't going to meet her alone in the near future, like some idiot in a horror movie.) More than that, having a high Green decide to work with the enemy is Not Great, and ends up again looking callous, because if she fights us then additional people are definitely going to die.
All in all, I don't think this write-in option is good. I would actively spend my vote against it if I could.
