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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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[X] To the entrance hall, to see what stories Meng Dan is managing to extract.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by EternalObserver on Jan 30, 2021 at 8:58 AM, finished with 163 posts and 108 votes.
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[X] To the Sun Shrine, to see how Gan Guangli is getting along with the… priests

I think we need some (Manly! Muscular! And 100% Pure Ham!) optimism right now.
 
Qi was never a very pious person, it's odd to her to have herself or her family be worshiped in any capacity or to worship Great Spirit's in turn for any reason. She doesn't really know what to think about the truly faithful.
 
RebelYell said:
Qi was never a very pious person, it's odd to her to have herself or her family be worshiped in any capacity or to worship Great Spirit's in turn for any reason. She doesn't really know what to think about the truly faithful.
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Part of the reason she got picked by the grinning moon was her prayers to it? Like, she worships the moon. It just doesn't seem that formal since Ling Qis god comes down for a chat with her whenever she gets lonely.
 
RebelYell said:
Qi was never a very pious person, it's odd to her to have herself or her family be worshiped in any capacity or to worship Great Spirit's in turn for any reason. She doesn't really know what to think about the truly faithful.
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Uh, she worshipped the Grinning Moon on the street, and made offerings even when she had scant near anything to offer. She has attended to numerous shrines and holy places as part of her Sect Jobs, with particular emphasis that whenever she attends to a Moon related spirit she does more than the job itself entails.

It doesn't take a big role because its just part of the routine, same way most characters wouldn't make a note of making an offering of incense to the ancestral altar every month.
 
Hmm.. that's not my impression of her, those offering's were good luck charms in her eye's yes, but she just.. doesn't seem to really seem to really understand people of faith.
She had to survive on the street's before being wisked to the sect and then it was all cultivate, cultivate, make friend's, cultivate.
I might not be fully encapsulating my thought's into word's perfectly but it's just...
Why would this choice in particular have ... specifically?
[] To the Sun Shrine, to see how Gan Guangli is getting along with the… priests.
I can see ... being also with the choice to talk to ilsur as hesitancy to speak to a cloud barb with all the propaganda on them but it's not.
 
RebelYell said:
Hmm.. that's not my impression of her, those offering's were good luck charms in her eye's yes, but she just.. doesn't seem to really seem to really understand people of faith.
She had to survive on the street's before being wisked to the sect and then it was all cultivate, cultivate, make friend's, cultivate.
I might not be fully encapsulating my thought's into word's perfectly but it's just...
Why would this choice in particular have ... specifically?
[] To the Sun Shrine, to see how Gan Guangli is getting along with the… priests.
I can see ... being also with the choice to talk to ilsur as hesitancy to speak to a cloud barb with all the propaganda on them but it's not.
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Ling Qi is pious, of sorts.
But that is not the same as church going or one who spends lot of time talking to priests.
When your gods drop by to have chats with you, invite you to dance parties and organize a birthday party for you, well, religion takes a somewhat different shape.
 
RebelYell said:
Hmm.. that's not my impression of her, those offering's were good luck charms in her eye's yes, but she just.. doesn't seem to really seem to really understand people of faith.
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...take my word for it as someone in the culture itself. That IS how a pious lay worshipper would interact with their faith. Taoism variant religion works like that for the common people, and the priests are there to be intermediary between people and the gods.

The gods do not lay down commandments, they provide blessings if pleased, and if you offend them, they also provide curses. And sometimes they don't get you and help in a manner you'd rather not be helped.
 
RebelYell said:
Hmm.. that's not my impression of her, those offering's were good luck charms in her eye's yes, but she just.. doesn't seem to really seem to really understand people of faith.
She had to survive on the street's before being wisked to the sect and then it was all cultivate, cultivate, make friend's, cultivate.
I might not be fully encapsulating my thought's into word's perfectly but it's just...
Why would this choice in particular have ... specifically?
[] To the Sun Shrine, to see how Gan Guangli is getting along with the… priests.
I can see ... being also with the choice to talk to ilsur as hesitancy to speak to a cloud barb with all the propaganda on them but it's not.
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When she did that Sect mission to appease the forest, she took some time to worship at the shrine to the Moon. Other than that there's been multiple references to her giving offerings or momentary prayers up to the Moon.
 
Part of the trouble is that we haven't really seen any religious holidays/festivals or politically influential temples, which means that the sorts of social religion that would be more than an aside doesn't really exist. That's very much the result of Shenhua destroying those organizations due to their association with the Hui and, presumably, a desire to centralize power behind herself but all that happened before LQ was born. Also, while we have been told that nobles have religious duties, the more ceremonial of those (as opposed to beating up hostile spirits) have had no real presence in the story.

That said Ling Qi is very much a moon priestess and Zhengui is a harvest god (shrine and everything). Given her status as CRX's retainer and the Moon's decision to have her as a priestess, she's arguably analogous to a Christian bishop.
 
Aren't the sun and moon's influence harder to exert the further down south you go? Sixiang and Gan's sun spirit must be rare for them.
 
RebelYell said:
Aren't the sun and moon's influence harder to exert the further down south you go? Sixiang and Gan's sun spirit must be rare for them.
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The very fact that they have Sun priests as an institution implies that sun spirits should be common enough for them. The moon should be rarer though, considering it's just not mentioned, as otherwise with it's efforts against the Stars in the Empire lands you'd expect them to be mentioned in the same vein as the Sun in the White Sky's stories.
 
I voted for the Sun Shrine, but I do hope we get to touch base with the others and get updated on what they've learned too, especially CRX and Meng Dan, although Xia Lin may well come back with some useful info too gleaned from her sparring partners.
 
[X] To the entrance hall, to see what stories Meng Dan is managing to extract.
[X] To the Sun Shrine, to see how Gan Guangli is getting along with the… priests.
 
Karnax626 said:
The very fact that they have Sun priests as an institution implies that sun spirits should be common enough for them. The moon should be rarer though, considering it's just not mentioned, as otherwise with it's efforts against the Stars in the Empire lands you'd expect them to be mentioned in the same vein as the Sun in the White Sky's stories.
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There's the possibility that Crone Winter is a moon facet. We know that the hill folk worshiped the Sun and Moon in the context of the seasons, so there would have been a "Winter Moon".
 
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