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

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Oliver_Twister said:
Now you're just twisting my words. You said the majority of my high level stones come from the Peaks, but the Bai have a Prism stone so that's not true. They're older than the Empire. I doubt they wouldn't have high level spirit mines.
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On what is your doubt based? You seen to be trying to twist "the majority of" and "the only reliable source of" into something like "the only source of", and then you use the Bai's don't to imply that there are more than one-off stones available elsewhere.

I'd note, for reference, that the early ascended whites did so before the imperial method of cultivation became common, as well as our current mentor from Cai having "never cultivated with a spirit stone", so the strong implication is that the prism and white stones aren't necessary, just useful.

Oliver_Twister said:
and we have lots of spirit courts to share and learn from.
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I worry about this being a thing that will explicitly turn the more imperial cultural parts of the province against us, given the hints we've seen, especially with Wang Chao's party choice.
 
Vanguard_D said:
Bai used another cultivation method back before the empire. The imperial spirit stone based cultivation just competed out other forms of cultivation. Even then we saw some and heard of other types. Like the Albaster sands pearl things or Meizhen taking in "artifical stones" from water like LQ does from filtered stellar qi with EPC and SSC.
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Oh yeah I know they had different methods then. I mean that they're old already and so I don't doubt that they've managed to consolidate high lvl spirit mines and spirit stones in their province.
 
We know that the Bai have a prism spirit stone. One of the side stories mentions it.

We don't know a lot about spirit stones, but what we do suggests that they are not natural. Currently I think they are some sort of dragon geomancy project. It does seem that the further one gets from the Celestial peaks there are less spirit stone mines and they are of lower quality.

That doesn't mean spirit stones aren't mined or that you can't find high quality stones outside of the peaks, but it does mean that you can't base a civilizations cultivation methods on what mines you do find because those mines are limited.
 
Re: Cultivation methods when the Peaks don't give you high-end stones.
I predict 2 things:
  1. Peaks is bound by treaty to provide a certain number of stones to big families who swore loyalty, and if they don't they risk rebellion.
  2. Big families have various methods to Cultivate without stones. The old methods were outcompeted on a civilizational scale and for training random low-talent troops and whatnot, but we've already seen they were never totally erased and that they're still used by bigshots like the White Serpents to supplement stone-based Cultivation.

Glau said:
On the other hand, almost their entire population is cultivators, and that huge base of reds and yellows does not lead to prisms and whites: the pyramid is much lower and flatter, *despite* the relatively much larger proportion of people who are able to climb.

And sure, maybe this is due strictly and only to the differences in cultivation style, but it is very suggestive that an almost all-cultivator population produces so many fewer high-power talents than much larger one consisting mostly of mortals.
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I think this is a misinterpretation. IMO the big reason the Empire has so many strong cultivators isn't just because they're hugely populated : it's also because their entire social infrastructure is set up to concentrate wealth and advantages into a small number of families. The strength of the Empire isn't random geniuses who reach White, it's a small subset of families who consistently churn out Whites. The random Geniuses hit Cyan or whatever, and provide regular high-talent marriages into the intermediate nobility. Definitely very useful, but not really the point when we're wondering why the Empire's pyramid goes so much higher.
IIRC even the Ministry of Integrity reports we saw didn't show us any random commoners reaching Prism or White.
 
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The implication of the reverse-cultivation that the rat people do, and the things we've heard about the decline in their power sources, definitely seems to be that spirit stones soak up the power they would otherwise be getting from those little soul larva the wounded body of the unknown mother kicks out.
 
Glau said:
The implication of the reverse-cultivation that the rat people do, and the things we've heard about the decline in their power sources, definitely seems to be that spirit stones soak up the power they would otherwise be getting from those little soul larva the wounded body of the unknown mother kicks out.
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Unsure about that. It's the argent vents the Lith don't like. Not the spirit stone mines.
 
Oliver_Twister said:
Oh yeah I know they had different methods then. I mean that they're old already and so I don't doubt that they've managed to consolidate high lvl spirit mines and spirit stones in their province.
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They cant. Spirit stone mine making was Dragon God Empire tier terraforming projects. Mind if handled properly the mines never run out but they cant make new once (well if they can it is probably very hush hush and probably peaks only stuff). Like there has been mentions of lesser mines running out in ES and they cant restart them.
 
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LQ partially uses a non-spirit stone method of cultivation. She's actually pretty close to not using any spirit stones in her cultivation. Instead she uses Stellar Qi and Lunar acclaim.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
You can hold the empire without cultivators that could feasibly threaten the throne itself. Furthermore, there are polities that predate the unification whom also had their own high level cultivators.
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This is why the Throne almost always has one or more Whites and builds support from other Whites, the coalition protects the empire from any potential problem children among the remaining ducal families. Also those polities existed pre-imperial style cultivation proliferation meaning they used much more dangerous, but less resource intensive, methods of cultivation similar to Shu Yue's. The proliferation of the imperial style of cultivation made the entire process much safer and is the de facto method used by the majority of the empire now which is part of the reason the Imperial family can maintain control other than the status quo being comfortable for most of the inhabitants.
 
Also, keep in mind, that most cultivators that matter are going to have a way of drawing in their desired environmental Qi anyway. What Spirit Stones supply on top of that is a hefty supplement that lets them supercharge their advance for while it lasts.

Like, Ling Qi alone from the sites available in our settlement region and her cultivation art can account for three fifths of her total cultivation just from that alone, and the rest is entirely just maintaining her breakneck pace rather than a neccessity to cultivate at all.
 
Glau said:
I thought the only indication we had of how spirit stone mines work was the growing clusters of yellow spirit stones (and guardian) around the first argent vent we found?
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For Ling Qi sure, but spirit mines are not linked to argent vents. The vents are only found here, nowhere else in the empire. If spirit stone mines needed argent vents then argent vents would be in the celestial peaks, not here.

We have in story mentions of the Lith pushing towards the argent vents, but no mention of them pushing towards spirit stone mines. I think that is a key piece of information.
 
Or the Argent Infrastructure Sidestory:
Argent Vents, rather than being points where energies become overpressurized, are instead points where opposing qi types meet and find perfect equilibrium. The pure energies produced by this process transmute surrounding materials into low grade but relatively quickly renewing spirit stones. Scholars remain uncertain what causes this unique interaction, which does not occur anywhere else in the Empire.
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We don't actually know if the Ya Lith Kai are being hurt by the argent vents. Certainly the argent vents are being repaired at the same time as they are experience a shortage of cultivation resources but we've heard those vary naturally.
 
Fair. I skipped the sect promotionals, they lacked characters and so didn't really grab me much.

You are correct in that it implies that the way spirit stones grow in mines is different. It also implies that they grow like crystals in solution from qi concentrations + unknown catalysts, and that perfectly balanced qi is not the best for potency.

I'm unsure how seemingly natural balanced qi removes power from the soul larva source, as opposed to it getting locked up in stones and lessening the amount in circulation, but we'll need a closer look at a few things to nail that down.
 
JohnnieBoy123 said:
We don't actually know if the Ya Lith Kai are being hurt by the argent vents. Certainly the argent vents are being repaired at the same time as they are experience a shortage of cultivation resources but we've heard those vary naturally.
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The book rewrites does make a sideline that the Argent Vents are actively removing ambient Impurity and converting it into usable Qi.

That being said, it's also mentioned that "Even if it's correct, it shouldn't be to the degree that they're having problems, and instead that they're trying to use it to build consensus for aggressive expansion" when we chatted with Tcho-ri
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Re: Cultivation methods when the Peaks don't give you high-end stones.
I predict 2 things:
  1. Peaks is bound by treaty to provide a certain number of stones to big families who swore loyalty, and if they don't they risk rebellion.
  2. Big families have various methods to Cultivate without stones. The old methods were outcompeted on a civilizational scale and for training random low-talent troops and whatnot, but we've already seen they were never totally erased and that they're still used by bigshots like the White Serpents to supplement stone-based Cultivation.


I think this is a misinterpretation. IMO the big reason the Empire has so many strong cultivators isn't just because they're hugely populated : it's also because their entire social infrastructure is set up to concentrate wealth and advantages into a small number of families. The strength of the Empire isn't random geniuses who reach White, it's a small subset of families who consistently churn out Whites. The random Geniuses hit Cyan or whatever, and provide regular high-talent marriages into the intermediate nobility. Definitely very useful, but not really the point when we're wondering why the Empire's pyramid goes so much higher.
IIRC even the Ministry of Integrity reports we saw didn't show us any random commoners reaching Prism or White.
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The strength of the Empire is its ability to consistently churn out Greens, in vast numbers and of varied specialties. Green-tier artifice is the backbone of the vast majority of the Empire's infrastructure. Most competitive cultivation systems can reliably churn out Whites in some form or another, which are strategic assets, but strategic assets do not a civilisation make.
 
Agriculture and the 'mundane' economy/social/culture/trade/settlement layer a la 4X strategy games is like your mineral game in Starcraft. Necessary for basic expansion, always a lingering cost all the way to the top of the tech tree, the only main factor limiting your supply growth (expand population to increase absolute number of potential talents), ultimately not the most relevant limiting factor in the end-game. 'Exotics' is your Vespene gas, its availability gates the development of your midgame (upgrades, mass armies of T2 tech, enables a broad middle class of Green/Cyans), and how well you can maintain units at the top of the tech tree (techswitching into Battlecruisers, getting Prisms/Whites in reasonable timeframes, using geomancy to create a spirit stone farm to sustain your empire). Other cultivation systems have different unit/resource/tech tree curves; if our basic unit costs 100 minerals, a low tech T2 unit costs 150/50, and an endgame unit costs 300/300, other systems might make absolute swarms of 5/1 cost units in order to save up for their T2 unit that costs 314/42069.

LQ is so talented that access to sites and cultivation resources was our main limiting factor on our advancement other than time. I feel that we choose our fief site with an eye towards ensuring that we didn't loose too much cultivation bonuses and elemental coverage leaving the Sect, with agricultural fertility being a favored but secondary splash due to how we hoped Zhengui would interact with a growing community. Both sets of resources are strong in their own ways, but LQ is fast enough that for her own purposes she was Vespene-limited rather than 'basics' limited and so made sure her expansion had double-gas rather than a gold mineral patch.
 
Mind you, in universe, Ling Qi wanted the Valley but accepted Renren's arguments to get the Rivers instead.
 
...I'm very confused by people being confused about the flatter pyramid of the Clound Nomads, it's explicit in the text that the Nomad's method of cultivation involves tying yourself so closely to a Spirit Beast that both Man and Beast share cultivation, this makes it VERY easy to hit the peak of the Spirit Beast half but any cultivation beyond that is rendered exceedingly difficult. Since you can't bond with something much stronger than you to begin with, getting to White/Sky involves massively more work than the Imperial method for the Cloud Barbs.
 
Alectai said:
Mind you, in universe, Ling Qi wanted the Valley but accepted Renren's arguments to get the Rivers instead.
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Thats mostly because Agriculture is the rating for "How easy is this to live in for mortals?", rather than because she values food production, and her primacy is on the safety of her almost mortal family.

And really, Exotics, unless they're Xiangmen style, are rather unlikely to be associated with any kind of safe environment, since the kind of energetic areas that make good cultivation sites also means extreme environments and powerful spirits.
 
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