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

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[] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter

Liming has red eyes, like the stars, and is full of hatred and bloodlust. Light, as seen in the Cai Buff Art, is every single color of creation at once. It is not only everything, it is also a unique existence unto itself.

I'm glad that we decided to take the above-ground-fight. Now we have context for a lot of barb things that we didn't before.

I am going to be very interested in seeing the empire-wide reaction to such events. Elder Jiao is certainly a well respected figure in Heavenly Peaks, and considering the friendship between the Empress and Shenhua, I expect the threat to be taken seriously by the capital.

It would be an . . excellent . . time to form a coalition army. This has a lot of historical precedent in Chinese history, where there is an event that causes the mustering of many banners and, once mustered, they do not all stay loyal to the ailing throne.

I wonder how much aid Shenhua will send for, or if she will use this as the unifying conflict to bring Emerald Seas together into a cohesive whole. A cohesive militant whole.

I would imagine that, much like the Sect during the tournament, we will be seeing delegations from many provinces but no full musterings for now.
 
[] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter

Ah heres me thinking Cai Renxiang found a cool compatible spirit...
 
CrimsonOddball said:
Light losses, at the cost of little in the way of gains
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Really? I think the Sect came ahead massively, strategically speaking.

1) Sect escaped the "ambushed ambusher" scenario it fell into with minimal casualties.
2) Sect prevented the star egg from getting into barbarians' hands. Didn't one of them say "we need this one for 12th palace"? Whatever that palace is it's not getting finished in the way it was supposed to.
3) Sect uncovered an entire new line of opponents on this front - star people.

It doesn't look good IC, and Elders are all grim and stuff because they expected to walk all over barbarian gathering. But it's honestly not too bad.
 
FakePriest said:
So what we get out of this is information? Well this and maybe plot hooks from White Cloud.
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The Twelve Stars Confederation had to blow the fact they've got an Ogodei level beatstick salvaging a clusterfuck instead of revealing them when they had two or three more ready to go in a concentrated attack.

Which means Shenhua has all the excuse she needs to participate in this campaign personally
 
CalvinCopyright said:
Ergh. This is going to be a tricky choice. My first opinion is to wait to discuss it with the Duchess, though. We can say we didn't dare mention it to the Elders, because they are going to be occupied with repelling an assault, and since it is quite possible that the White Sky 'political faction' within the barbarian society will not attack, given the stance of their envoy, it did not seem relevant to what the Elders were concerned with. Or some argument like that, anyway.
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I'm inclined to tell the Sect Elders first. Even though we don't trust them to be wise, I'm not sold on the idea of hiding anything from them. Partly because I want for us to consider them allies (however misguided), partly because I want to give them the opportunity to disappoint/surprise us rather than assuming the outcome beforehand, and partly because I don't actually think we can hide anything from them and they might be testing our loyalty.

If we do stay silent until talking to the Duchess we should not lie about why. It's because we didn't trust the Elders' temper/willingness to regard White Sky as a non-enemy. Maybe she'll be pleased at our savviness? I shudder to think how she'll react if we aren't honest.
 
Alectai said:
The Twelve Stars Confederation had to blow the fact they've got an Ogodei level beatstick salvaging a clusterfuck instead of revealing them when they had two or three more ready to go in a concentrated attack.

Which means Shenhua has all the excuse she needs to participate in this campaign personally
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🤠 Fun times ahead folks.
 
CrimsonOddball said:
Light losses, at the cost of little in the way of gains
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Dont underestimate time and knowledge for the talismanic infrastructure of Emerald seas, especially given the presence of Jiao and Shenhua

Jiao ganking a second higher level asset for the Shishigui to force them to lick their wounds

And the Violet+ that ganked Zhou being potentially crippled means that this open warfare is going to be reduced to a simmer since the Sect still has several elders left along with Yuan He

The existence of the star children also justifies the Sect getting reinforced and having the imperial funding spigot turned way the hell up

Basically

The war shifted from the Cloud Tribes preferred tempo at the strategic level to one where the Empire's at its strongest

Plus theres also the frontline base to serve as a potential means of engress for Jiao again in the future

Tactically this was a draw, but the Shishigui and the Cloud Tribes are coming out way worse for this on a strategic level, especially if the 12 Stars leave the locals to flounder while they ramp up themselves

For the frontline combatants this particular fight turned out in nearly the worst way possible barring complete annihilation
 
Briefvoice said:
So if I understand this correctly, we now have confirmation that Shenhua's cultivation cheat was powered by the heart of a forsaken child.
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No simply more implications that it involves stars in some manner. How exactly is uncertain, and while many eating a unborn star child is an option.. an equally valid one is Shenhua eating unfiltered star qi,but avoid going insane like most due to her mentality at the time aligning with the destructive nature of the qi in question. Basically she stepped into the next realm forming her body around the notion of "Destruction, and Reconstruction", which is pretty close to what we see happens to nature when exposed to starstone as it twists life except filtered through whatever foundation Shenhua had built up to that point.

Because if you can avoid going insane from trying to use it there is more than enough star qi to turbo boost to white stupidly fast if you simply go beyond the safety net of the planet, but the qi is intrinsically destructive alongside inhuman in nature. Also once she hit white she basically became her own star, and well that neatly explains how the Cai are so stupidly rich as she through simply existing serves as a generator of cultivation resources that can be be weaved into creations, or whatever else suits her whims.
 
So, talking to edgy fire lady or "they killed my family" is basically the worse elders we could be talking with, Jiao being put on timeout really doesn't help there.

However, I'd argue that going over the head of the sect chain of command is going to be remembered. There is currently a polite fiction about CRX's role in this and how she has to obey orders, and while her giving reports to Shenhua is expected, her retainer hiding things from the sect and going directly to Shenhua is not, in fact, CRX doing double reports. Not only will this be remembered and would put Ling Qi strictly into the role of temporary sect disciple they can't trust in the long term, but it would also conflict with CRX's own philosophy about nepotism.

Now, the issue obviously is that it's hard to trust those Elders to not go REEEEEEEEEE Barbarians with what we have seen, but that's kind of how hierarchy works in an army, and the odds that Shenhua would have a more mellow response to barbarians than the sect is in fact fairly low if not non-existent. If Shenhua would consider the Ice Witch to not be barbarians, so would the sect, honestly.

Basically, I really don't think we should be assuming we know better than the sect and hide information from them in order to hope someone else would agree on our point of view. That shit has consequences.
 
[] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter

I tend towards this, since without Ling Qi+CRX getting the starstone and pulling the attention of the star titan and hatched child we would have had a rude awakening later with so many more dead than we do now.
The sect leadership is not seeing the tree for the woods and not to be trusted right now I think, because their sight is blinded by their impulse to enact vengeance for fallen friends Elder Bei, Zhou and many more dead for centuries now.
 
Arkeus said:
However, I'd argue that going over the head of the sect chain of command is going to be remembered. There is currently a polite fiction about CRX's role in this and how she has to obey orders, and while her giving reports to Shenhua is expected, her retainer hiding things from the sect and going directly to Shenhua is not, in fact, CRX doing double reports. Not only will this be remembered and would put Ling Qi strictly into the role of temporary sect disciple they can't trust in the long term, but it would also conflict with CRX's own philosophy about nepotism.
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Nah. In any conflict between Sect and Liege, the Sect expects - and everyone expects - the first loyalty of a retainer is to the liege. The entire society structure would fail otherwise, and the Sect explicitly recognizes that the clan has the first and absolute loyalty of its members above the Sect, as seen in their Sect Promotional.

In this case, it is absolutely the duty of Ling Qi, as a sworn retainer of the Cai, to grant her absolute loyalty to the Cai first and give them first right to act on any info she may have, especially when her info relates specifically to the Cai's powers / mandate, i.e. the Cai's ability to set policy and strategy for the province in any conflict with external enemies.

(Edit: I think failing to give Cai Shenhua first right to act on this info is a failure and betrayal of Ling Qi's oaths to the Cai.)
 
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[] Catch the Elder's attention, and speak of the strange encounter.
we should tell them. We dont want to get accused of hiding anything. Also we are a disciple. Even if we are suspected that Xin is still alive and that Zeqing was not eliminated means we will probably not get killed immediately.
If we do get killed Shenhua, Xin and Jiao will get angry for us and make whoever did it pay.
 
Esryok said:
I'm inclined to tell the Sect Elders first. Even though we don't trust them to be wise, I'm not sold on the idea of hiding anything from them. Partly because I want for us to consider them allies (however misguided), partly because I want to give them the opportunity to disappoint/surprise us rather than assuming the outcome beforehand, and partly because I don't actually think we can hide anything from them and they might be testing our loyalty.

If we do stay silent until talking to the Duchess we should not lie about why. It's because we didn't trust the Elders' temper/willingness to regard White Sky as a non-enemy. Maybe she'll be pleased at our savviness? I shudder to think how she'll react if we aren't honest.
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TBH being seen as a barbarian sympathizer can also undo some of our recent accomplishments and damage Cai Renxiang's reputation by proxy. The Elders seem a bit too emotionally invested to take us seriously.
 
See, I'd argue that the idea that there is a simple formalised chain of command here is kind of inaccurate outside of active military operations. And even in those military operations things are still way looser than we'd expect.

Ofc, in many ways the person who should actually be making this decision is Renxiang.
 
Very true, but better to be a potential barbarian sympathizer who nevertheless performed her duty correctly than a definite barbarian sympathizer who tried to conceal her barbarian sympathies.
 
we have too little context for cultivator culture to know who we should report this to first. We can reasonably report this to Cai first because we are going directly from this debrief to the Shenhua debrief. We may have to find someone to debrief us after the Shenhua debrief, but it is important for the Duchess to have the information as soon as possible and the Sect will always be secondary for obvious reasons.
in a situation where this communication ability wasn't going to have us back at Sect in under 24 hours, and we were going to be concealing the information for a tactically dangerous amount of time, I would agree we should just disclose the info regardless.

That said, we will be back in the sect very shortly and will debrief them on the iron assuming Shenhua doesn't give us orders to the contrary.
 
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So this looks like a question on if we're going over the heads of the sect on matters of first contact diplomacy with the Ice Witches. This has upsides and downsides:
  • Downside is obvious, we're infringing on sect authority by taking matters into our own hands by taking it to Shenhua directly, which, even if successful, probably won't win us points sect-rep wise. That said, LQ's current rep with the sect is pretty stellar so we can afford the hit of even a failed attempt.
  • Upside is a gamble that LQ's own efforts would be more likely to lead to successfully establishing diplomatic ties. This seems plausible since the sect definitely has some deep hatred towards these so-called barbarians. Elder Youngrui made that resolution to possibly look into things but he's currently in a coma so we don't exactly have a point of contact for now.
It's definitely important that we at least secure neutrality here, I don't think war against cloud barbarians backed by Star Children is something the empire can easily handle, and an ally beyond the Wall who has a Sublime or White-tier ancestor and has been living next to them would be a tremendous help.

So currently I'm leaning toward [] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter, though I could be convinced the sect could handle first contact without turning it into a disaster.


That aside, I've concerned for a while about what could be a good thematic basis for LQ's connection with the Hidden Moon. I didn't expect it but "raise the mantle of war against the stars once more" would definitely work. Hope we get a crash course on that from Xin as part of SSC. Much as I enjoy Wind Thief it does feel like this entire storyline would have worked better with ISM. Hopefully Wind Thief's future advancement picks up some more weight. The Grinning Moon is nothing if not adaptable.

EDIT: vote now that moratorium's over:
[X] Remain silent, wait until your debrief with the Duchess to discuss the matter
 
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Katreus said:
Nah. In any conflict between Sect and Liege, the Sect expects - and everyone expects - the first loyalty of a retainer is to the liege. The entire society structure would fail otherwise, and the Sect explicitly recognizes that the clan has the first and absolute loyalty of its members above the Sect, as seen in their Sect Promotional.

In this case, it is absolutely the duty of Ling Qi, as a sworn retainer of the Cai, to grant her absolute loyalty to the Cai first and give them first right to act on any info she may have, especially when her info relates specifically to the Cai's powers / mandate, i.e. the Cai's ability to set policy and strategy for the province in any conflict with external enemies.

(Edit: I think failing to give Cai Shenhua first right to act on this info is a failure and betrayal of Ling Qi's oaths to the Cai.)
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The sect has to be able to trust the disciples to work for them and not constantly betray them to the clans. That's basically in good part of the goals of the Great Sects, and how they are supposed to work. Obviously they know a lot of young disciples aren't planning on staying there or be loyal to the sect when they are there, but those disciples? They won't be promoted or trusted.

In this case, this isn't about Ling Qi giving her first loyalty to the Cai, but about her not trusting the sect to follow her own personal interests. There is no doubt to me that if Ling Qi knew those elders here or trusted them to align with her own belief she wouldn't be hesitating and would tell the sect first.
 
picklepikkl said:
Here you go. This is a commission which gives the backstory for one of the Moon Arts we passed up during the arc where we got Songseeker's Ceremony and Flight of the Wind Thief.
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That story raises a question. All the stars have names, and while it's possible the 12 fell Earthward before the naming, I don't consider it super likely, since the barbarian storytelling has the stars falling to earth during the reign of one of the early dynasties. This leads to the question:

Which twelve stars have gone missing from the night sky?
 
alelekitaponga said:
TBH being seen as a barbarian sympathizer can also undo some of our recent accomplishments and damage Cai Renxiang's reputation by proxy. The Elders seem a bit too emotionally invested to take us seriously.
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If that's true, then the necessity of kicking it upstairs increases.

Because if they're petty enough that the very idea of a non-hostile interaction will get them pissy with their ducal overlord, then revealing it first is likely to have them just take it and go "Great! A new weapon to turn against the hated foe!"
 
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