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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] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)
 
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[ ] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)

Right now, until someone gives a good argument for the other options, this is what my gut tells me to go for.
 
yrsillar said:
] Frank discussion of the logistical difficulties of even engaging with the White Sky in the more traditional manner, the benefits of ceasefire and breaking up the Cloud Tribes into smaller blocks and other military concerns. (Do not gain or lose support for your project, No chance of offending or swaying Cao Chun. Cao Chun Bond set to -2. Increase difficulty of raising Bond further)

[ ] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)

[ ] Be open in your intention for friendly relations and exchange in the long term. Discuss the White Sky where you can emphasizing the similarities over the differences. Use implication of Great Spirit interest and Ling Qi's patronage of the moon as legitimacy for the project. (40% chance to reduce opposition to your progress and swaying Cao Chun. Sets his Bond to -1 on Success or -4 on failure.)
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Huh, time to talk to someone who is both quite powerful and predisposed to be against our entire project.

As a reminder about what these bonds mean...

yrsillar said:
The exact nature of the organizations feeling toward you may vary but in general follows this scale.

-6: Hated- The organization will bend a great deal of resources toward destroying you in any capacity in which they are able
-5: Despised- The organization will work against you at every turn and invest significant resources in doing so
-4: Greatly Disliked- The organization will oppose you whenever doing so is both possible and matches with their other goals
-3: Disliked- Members will be poorly disposed toward you and the organization may invest in making your life difficult
-2: Mildly Disliked- Members will be mildly biased against you with some individuals being more so. Mild institutional notice
-1: Negative Notice- One or more individuals within the organization have taken a disliking to you and will likely bend their resources toward damaging you.
0: Unnoticed: The organization has no significant awareness of your existence
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So I'm thinking definitely not the third option. The risk of getting Bond -4 is waaaay too big, and that would be very bad.

First option is safest, but I think I'm willing enough to gamble to be okay with second option. Carries a risk of Bond -3, but we have favorable odds to stay at -2 and this has the bonus of decreasing his opposition to us. I think that's worth the risk.
 
Well, we were always going to come up against the Imperial prejudice with this project. I say we shoot for the middle option - 40% is too low to be considered IMO, especially with that deadly -4 reputation on failure, and the no risk option effectively gives up on the idea of persuading the Imperials.
 
We can use omake points to shoot for the best possible outcome, right? There are some people on here who have like 30ish omake points or something. We could make it work.
 
Option 3 should be only be done if the dice is weighted in our favor through omake points, the effects of failure on that roll would be catastrophic. Otherwise option 2 seems the best.
 
IIRC omake points can give a maximum of +20%, which is not nearly enough for option three to be viable. Option two with Omake bonuses looks pretty nice though.
 
(3) would be weird imo. It's an approach we sometimes take when dealing with Weilu conservatives, but it's hardly our personal focus or something we'd expect to play well here.

Comes down to (1) vs (2) really. Ideologically I'm drawn towards (2) tbh. I think it speaks significantly towards Renxiang's ideals, and is generally more interesting on both sides. (1) is basic and pragmatic, but ultimately doesn't engage people beyond that - as we see with its results. It's functional if we're just trying to minimise issues and avoid dealing with the Senior Secretary much, but...
 
EternalObserver said:
O boy, this vote, here we have an Imperial Peakaboo
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I must notice for all his Imperial-ness Imperial options max out at -2 and it's non-imperial one that shows -1 for all it's probability to fail.

Because it's pretty much "it's easier to beat disunited barbarians" (which is in line with Imperial ideology) "we need to recover first" (which is in line with Imperial ideology) and "barbarians are people... and maybe some are not barbarians" (which is pretty much anti-Imperial) and it's third one that can make him change opinion.

So surprisingly mellow and non-prejudiced (for prejudiced hardliner).
 
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[x] Be open in your intention for friendly relations and exchange in the long term. Discuss the White Sky where you can emphasizing the similarities over the differences. Use implication of Great Spirit interest and Ling Qi's patronage of the moon as legitimacy for the project. (40% chance to reduce opposition to your progress and swaying Cao Chun. Sets his Bond to -1 on Success or -4 on failure.)

I think we should take the risk
 
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[X] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)

decent chances of success, the penalty is not much worse than starting option, low-risk low-reward, better than nothing.
 
I wonder if it's only chance to sway him around. Because if yes then maybe it's worth to take risk and chose 3. If we can try to diplomance him later than probably later is better.
 
CedeTheBees said:
[ ] Be open in your intention for friendly relations and exchange in the long term. Discuss the White Sky where you can emphasizing the similarities over the differences. Use implication of Great Spirit interest and Ling Qi's patronage of the moon as legitimacy for the project. (40% chance to reduce opposition to your progress and swaying Cao Chun. Sets his Bond to -1 on Success or -4 on failure.)

I think we should take the risk
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That's a bit more than just optimism when we're risking -4 Relations with our only Celestial Peaks contact.
A -4 social link...it would take a while to dig ourselves out of that hole.
 
al103 said:
I must notice for all his Imperial-ness Imperial options max out at -2 and it's non-imperial one that shows -1 for all it's probability to fail.

Because it's pretty much "it's easier to beat disunited barbarians" (which is in line with Imperial ideology) "we need to recover first" (which is in line with Imperial ideology) and "barbarians are people... and maybe some are not barbarians" (which is pretty much anti-Imperial) and it's third one that can make him change opinion.
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Let's be clear, the parts of option 3 that could sway him are not the bits where we advocate the wonders of friendship. Given this -
yrsillar said:
Cao Chun's reputation was as a hero, who had struck down many villains and saved many people, a man of unimpeachable virtue and great devotion toward the great spirits. However his reputation is also as a merciless foe of those who would cross Imperial law.
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it seems clear that the bit we would use to convince him to listen to us would be this-
yrsillar said:
[ ] Be open in your intention for friendly relations and exchange in the long term. Discuss the White Sky where you can emphasizing the similarities over the differences. Use implication of Great Spirit interest and Ling Qi's patronage of the moon as legitimacy for the project. (40% chance to reduce opposition to your progress and swaying Cao Chun. Sets his Bond to -1 on Success or -4 on failure.)
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at which point we would use that bit of borrowed authority to get him on board with the idea that we shouldn't treat our diplomacy partners as subhumans, in spite of his Peakaboo inclinations, because the Moon seems cool with them.

So the +1 to personal rep would mostly be from our Great Spirit Patronage, which we would use as a wedge to push for the reduced project opposition.

As for which option we should take, a -3 with our imperial attache is survivable while a -4 is far less so, so I'm thinking we go with option 2. Pushing for the full power of friendship later will be difficult, yes, but if we can build our personal rep via accomplishments or build our supposed Spirit backing via Ling Qi shenanigans, we should be able to take another crack at him then.

Worst comes to worst, we can never bring him around and he just contextualizes any "friendship" that might come up as a distasteful but effective ploy to secure borders and a source of metal imports, which is the best I think we were expecting from the Peak anyway.
 
I suspect the problem with option 3 isn't that its particularly unlikely to work in a vacuum but rather Ling Qi is so divorced from imperial orthodoxy that she'll probably commit all sorts of heresy if she tries it.

Its likely full of "homoousian" vs "homoiousian" and we have no clue which one is supposed to be correct (it turns out "an iota of difference" can get people to kill each other in the real world).
 
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Yeah, like if we and Renxiang were more religious then I could see us taking that approach... but the problem is we haven't really had sufficient development there imo.

I don't know what Renxiang's position on the great spirits is, but my general impression is she probably isn't particularly religious? And especially since the one in play here seems to be the Moon.

And LQ also isn't really that religious - she has a personal relationship to the Moon, but limited connection to broader orthodoxy and theology as Johnnie notes. And unfortunately, the machinations here are broader and more subtle than we're used to. It's the kind of thing that, say, the Meng would look at and stroke their chins wisely at, but we're used to the Moon just calling us up and telling us to do shit. And the Moon hasn't done that here :p
 
Erebeal said:
And LQ also isn't really that religious - she has a personal relationship to the Moon, but limited connection to broader orthodoxy and theology as Johnnie notes. And unfortunately, the machinations here are broader and more subtle than we're used to. It's the kind of thing that, say, the Meng would look at and stroke their chins wisely at, but we're used to the Moon just calling us up and telling us to do shit. And the Moon hasn't done that here :p
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A foreign great spirit sort of did though. Bringing that up would be a dumb idea, of course
 
[X] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)

3 seems a bit hasty of a topic with someone that we just met for the first time and is already predisposed towards this project and 1 just seems a bit boring. So 2 it is!
 
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[X] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)
 
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[X] Bank on this man's reputation for virtue in discussing the ways in which the Southern Emerald Seas has long suffered from war and violence, and emphasize this as an opportunity for recovery and prosperity, rather than endless violence. (60% chance to reduce opposition to your project and progress toward swaying Cao Chun, setting his Bond at -2 on success, or -3 on failure)
 
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