And talking about runes!Is it me or is this guy just straight up Odin? Or at least a priest of some sort of him? A mysterious one-eyed old man dressed in crow feathers? Come on
"It is as you see around you. The three aspects of the sun are the three aspects of men. Joyous, inspirational Koliada, Lord of the dawn, Raging, mercurial Perkunas, the Stormbringer, and the wise, mysterious Crowfather, who walks beyond the Gates.
Gan Guangli grunted in affirmation. "Their Crowfather seems an oddity. None begin devoting themselves to his path. He is a spirit of fall, wisdom, old age and widowers. It seems common for men of their land to outlive their wives, and among their priests, this means making oaths to the Crowfather. They, it seems are trusted to do violence, as they leave their communities to wander, carry news and stories between settlements during the deep winter. They are empowered to hunt demons and outlaws How can one change their way so drastically late in life though?"
I think Astronomer Wu made himself a friend this day, unknowingly or not."Those who claim there are things not to be understood have ever been wrong," he said haughtily. "If it exists, then we must comprehend it, and catalog that existence. "
The first stop on the week long tour was the largest venue. Bao Qian had begun by soliciting the barons of the south central valley region, and he had secured agreement from several before his efforts had attracted the attention of Vscount Chao. In this region, so close to the Wall, all but a handful, of families were relatively young. This Viscounty was no different, and its current owners had only held the title for some two hundred years.
"The Springmist Temple," Bao Qian replied. "The second largest temple in the south central valley, it looks after the yearly flooding and the fertility of the valley."
They couldn't expect to be directly supported by the Count clan of the area, the Diao, at least not at first.
Bao Qian rubbed a finger across the text of one of the offending letters. "I had no reason to find it suspect before, but the ink used in the altered letters is different. "The soot in it comes from a specific grove of valley pines."
Like a candy, Hanyi spent a few long moments chewing and rolling it around in her mouth before swallowing. She grinned and the rest of the faeries cowered. "Oh this one's easy. It's from the Green Stone Gleaming, its tangy."
Ling Qi frowned in confusion.
"Mount Tong," Chao Yanlin said. "That would be…"
"In the same viscounty as the pine groves. It is the great quantities of copper in the soil which lends the pine soot its properties after all," Bao Qian said triumphantly. "Our letters would have passed through the Ministry of Communication office in Ganjian, would they not?
Diao Hualing smiled faintly, taking her words with good humor. Sixiang thought her reaction was genuine. "I am an investigator for the ministry of Law in the Central Valley. Your case has come to my attention."
To be honest, I'm not sure why all the focus on The Foundations in the same turn we're really digging into the Long Arm of the Law quest, considering every named point of interest so far has been in the Central Valley.
Plus, to the extent it is remembered, "we picked that last time" is a heavy selection bias against the Central Valley, even though we didn't receive any of the info we picked it for.
We really need to stop getting promised payouts "later" because so much can go wrong/it's so easy to completely flip our direction even in the absence of new information out of sheer inattention.
Oldest stories about Odin is about him being wandering little shit to people. He and Loki got along very well when they met. So much so that he declared him his blood brother (essentially).These are the info's we got for the Crowfather as of now.
The look definitely fits as a kind of Odin entity, but his way seems to be less of a leader and more a Wiseman/Storyteller/wandering problem solver.
Last time we had this same choice in Hou Zhong's Gift, we went with the Central Valley after a buttload of debate, but the payoff/payout for that choice was slated for the end of the arc-chain. (And apparently we flubbed the roll, so it's nothing)
I don't really care about the roll. My complaint is that we did not get general info on the Central Valley after the last vote in this project-chain. On a narrative level, the vote didn't develop anything. The mechanical representation of our rep in the region doesn't mean much at all if we have no information on the region and there are no narrative cues or ties available to make that rep +1 relevant. Not introducing or developing narrative on the region is a compounding factor which prevents the introduction or development of narrative on the region.We are voting which region we want to focus our exchange of letters with. By doing so we get the general info of the area and befriend people already positively aligned with us. That results in a better standing in that region and maybe some named contact which provides different services or benefits.
I think there is misunderstanding here. What we failed was the roll to get the bonus rep in the adjacent regions to (Central Valley Thundering Hills or South River Jing). We already got the +1 to Central Valley. Not only that, we got the Ministry School contact, a great asset.
I think the problem is that you see the Gifts actions as "miniadventures", bringing the problem of it needing synergy with others adventures or risking to be diluted. That's not really what the Gift actions are.
In that line, we don't need Gift to synergize with Law. We aren't going to the Central Valley to some gala or to a business meeting. We are going to detain a dude we already have all the information of.
I also don't understand how you conclude that not choosing Central Valley twice in a row means we are giving up that region forever? In any case, Foundations getting to rank 3 will make more likely to choose Central Valley in Gift 3.
Also remember that Hanyi's next turn, as we discussed with Menga Dan's grandmother at the tournament, will be in the southern Meng lands. In other words, in the Foundations. So there is plenty of synergy there.
I didn't say it wasn't. I said it wasn't a result of our focus on the Central Valley region. The Hou Zhong's Gift action has broader, generic effects than the main thrusts of our focus. That's irrelevant to my argument, which is that it's bad that we did not get any tangible returns on our prior choice of primary focus.P.S.
Of course the School contact counts as a Gift action benefit. We explicitly started changes letters with the director thanks to the info given to us by Meizhen's dad.
[ ] Your eyes in the city itself are still woefully undeveloped, find your new 'friend' among the Court clans to have a conversation and perhaps receive a few more introductions. It can't hurt to build up an important contact more.
[ ] It's important to keep up with the biggest players. Make your way to the Luo attendee and chat a bit about history and current events, perhaps speaking to the Golden Fields as well about their own problems in the south.
[ ] You are in the rare position of being the center of this whole gathering, being the sellers of this auctions lots, perhaps it is better to only lightly mingle and instead see who comes to you. It may be more revealing than making advances yourself
Be careful with comments like this, or you might get to see the violence inherent in the system.Listen, strange old men appearing out of nowhere to dispense cryptic advice is no basis for a system of academia!
So in easy terms you want a simple info text about what LQ did or did not learned in her letters.What I would like is actionable information we can use to guide our decisions and/or plot how to leverage known assets. This doesn't have to come in the form of named NPCs, it could just be general descriptions and/or summaries of regional priorities/concerns/conflicts/etc. But we basically have none of that.
A Action we have no option of even taking at the moment.Old Road/New Road progress is locked behind a liminal exploration commitment.
Why? Why the Central Valley specificly instead of any other region is ES?I want the Central Valley region to matter to some of the political narratives going on.
An info dump would make feel sth. Alive? Really? There are better way of doing that and it does not involve some letter that tells us "1 in 4 Barons in the central Valley likes our project"his makes the province and society we're playing in feel lived in and alive!
We have seen that she did that, we have no specifics of what was said in those letters but she did start networking in the central region. We as a reader just did not see it beyond the conversation she had as a result of it with Six.Especially when Ling Qi previously made a commitment, in narrative, to develop her contacts in the Central Valley region, even beyond just Diao Hualing, and then we have not seen her do that. Not even in summary.
Please don't invent ridiculous positions to ascribe to me, it's really annoying. I didn't ask for minutiae, I haven't suggested shifting our focus to small-scale issues of neighbouring regions, and I never said the Gift actions are useless.What you want is way too granular to fit into the thread.
You want to know which barons families have grudges against each other? Which wants to really dive into the Neo-Weilu and which ones want a more moderate approach? Which ones want to increase internal production and which ones want to import more goods?
As @Kirr said, we aren't going to get over 2k letters detailing all the minute factors that constitute specific territories.
Not like Ling Qi has the capacity to plan and act on such individual basis. Most of her efforts are going to be dedicated, as is expected, in developing a fief from zero in a conflicive area and ensuring the success of an unprecedented diplomatic effort with a foreign nation.
So all dealings with our neighbouring regions are going to be done in big strokes. Which is perfectly fine. We aren't going to solve the internal problems of other regions nor catter to the wants of increasingly small and fragmented groups.
But that doesn't mean the Gift actions sre useless. At some point we will attempt an action that will be kind of "Stablish commerce agreement with the Central Valley" or "Organize a gathering of nobles to showcase the White Sky's culture". The chance of success for those actions, from a dice perspective, is going to greatly depend on our rank rep with the neighbouring regions.
The same in the case we face a catastrophic event in the fief and request for assistance. So anything that increases rep is valuable on itself.
I guess we will have to disagree about the School contact being due to us choosing Central Valley previously, even if Xiangmen is technically in the North Jing River Valley
I didn't bring it up. It was in response to somebody else who brought it up, in response to a previous post of mine. Don't pester me with nitpicking spaghetti posting if you aren't going to read the context of what you're picking apart.
Bird shapedShe got her first look at the creature then. It had the vague silhouette of an eagle or condor, but only in vague terms, like something Biyu might squash together from a handful of clay and present as a 'bird'.
No feathers, generic skin texture usedIt had no feathers, only slick, transparent flesh that had the texture of a maggot.
Has wings, but not properly implemented.It's wings were thus nothing more than misshapen membranes, shot through with twitching pulsing veins of wormy color.
Has internal structure, but not properly defined, not like anyone sees it anyway.Shapes that might be bones or organs squirmed within its body distorted by the light passing through, but its transparent flesh darkened to a deep gray black where taloned feet emerged, more like sickle blades of bone than something that could be walked on.
Head has eyes. Not sure how many, better make sure it can see in all directions.Worst was the beasts 'head' which was nothing more than a wedge like lump, lined with four pairs of beady eyes.
Has a mouth, implemented a worm's mouth since it was already in the cache.As the spirit dove, that head split apart into four sections, lined by crystalline teeth, exposing a black gullet full of glimmering rainbow color that seemed to have little too do with its physical form.
Birds sing with their mouths right? Yeah, it can sing.The sound that erupted from that well of nauseating color could not be called a roar or a screech, but only a horrible, indefinable noise so high as to be at the very edge of hearing.
Birds eat sand(sometimes), so sure, it eats sand.The rock crumbling, disintegrating into a cloud of sickening dust, and its glistening form shot up. Ling Qi saw in the blur of motion, the beast inhaling, its chest and the strange organs within inflating, and the dust was drawn in.
Could not be arsed to put in the between frames of the turning animation, just rotate.A scythe like talon lashed out as the beasts limbs abruptly reversed, flesh tearing and squirming as its back became a front, and Ling Qi barely had the time to throw herself out of the way as a line of scouring unmaking light caught her across the flank, shearing unneringly past the images that fled in every other direction.