- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Thanks, that means a lot to me.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
This was great!
Yu Lang referred to herself as a viscount, did you mean she is a scion of a Vicount clan or did she somehow inherit the viscount title already?
- Location
- Washington
Notably we're also ultimately an outsider to their traditions. It's one thing for another insider to have a disagreement about the path forward, you're still fairly likely to recognize that they've got a seat at the table. It is very different for someone who isn't strictly speaking a weilu ANYTHING to give their thoughts on how to weilu right, especially from a conservative/reactionary perspective.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
It is just a short hand reference to the ranks of their families in her head.
We're just as much a part of the Emerald Seas as our detractors and have as much right to claim to be an inheritor of Tsu and the Weilu as them.
Its not like we're someone from the Golden Fields.
Ling Qi grew up as a street rat and commoner, and thus did not grow up learning all the traditions of the Emerald Seas, how could she dare do claim any connection to Weilu and wise Tsu at all? <--- probably the thought process of the people that see LQ as an outsider, its not *entirely* wrong, Ling Qi was for the longest time very ignorant of the culture of ES. Not accurate an more, though
- Location
- Washington
Outsider TO THEIR TRADITIONS I said. She is in effect part of the Weilu people but is a convert to the Weilu religion, if that makes sense.
The Butcher
Red was the color of massacre, of butchery. It was a sea of broken bodies, piled high in the streets of a ruined city. It was coagulating blood in the staring eyes of corpses, and the flowers that bloomed from flesh.
Squelch. Crack
Flesh and meat tore, ribs and sternum gave. Blood stained his hands crimson. His hand plunged into the cavity, unmindful of the stinking air released. The meat beneath him twitched in its death throes, gold and jewels slick with blood and offal. A King, a priest, a warrior. It did not matter. It was merely meat.
It amazed him, looking back, how much he still did not understand when he began his rebellion. He had grasped the first truth of War, that the only true allies were family. That all who could not be kin were enemies eventually. This he understood, and this he had brought to the scaleless Lords of the Lakes, those like him, under the guise of touring the province to gain further support for the western expedition.
The worms were lazy, in truth. That was the true sting of it. Cruel lords who dreamed their dominion a law as firm as that of any ascended spirit, and perhaps, for the Bai it was. There was not even consideration for what he would do. It was madness, after all. He spent stones like water, because what did money mean to a dead man? When the cadres of the clans left for the Western Expedition, they brought with them the Transportation Circles of a hundred hundred masters, their sister circles left in the core compounds of the scaleless clans..
It was so much simpler when they only needed to be used once.
Veins and arteries snapped like cord as his fist closed around the still beating heart and wrenched it free with a wet rip. In it burned a blazing star of power, the seed and soul of a dead man's enlightenment.
The march to Rammadh had been brutal beyond words. He lost count of the dead within days. He had known, since he was a boy, that War was sacrifice. That a warleader was a reaper of men, choosing who would live and die. For acknowledging this truth, he was called Butcher.
How absurd, for the children of Yao the Fisher, he who became death, the children of Grandmother Serpent, whom even that supreme killer had knelt to in love, to say such words. In the first weeks of the campaign, he came to wonder if this was a part of great Yao's truth.
Men were meat, and nothing more. Nothing that lived could not also die. War was slaughter and massacre, and all which sought to obscure that were preening charlatans.
They marched to Rammadh on a carpet of the dead. There had been no time for burials, for rites, not for friends and certainly not for foes. The scavenging began with weapons, replacing the broken, the cannibalization of what should have been grave goods, of consumption of the dead's qi, to fuel the march of the living.
In the end, the most profound truths are the most simple ones. The truths that seem insultingly obvious, until one stares long enough into their depths.
He brought the lump of bloody flesh to his mouth and bit down, inhaling the scent of copper and the strands of a dead man's power.
To live was victory.
So long as the foe was dead, and you lived, your people, your family could pile all the little bricks and pretty lies of civilization atop the mountain of the dead. Family was Everything. Life was War, and War was Sacrifice. Everything for Family.
The people, his people, the ones who followed him, were all his kin. They would live, even if the world was forced to break first. He would sacrifice anything, and everything, to see that outcome.
They had broken the line of demon warriors which defended Rammadh, and found within a city of people, little different from the mortals and low cultivators of Zhengjian. They had slaughtered them one and all, men and women, elders and children, until the gutters clogged with blood and the flocking crows turned the sky to black.
The enemy died. His family lived.
And on top of a similar temple, he had heard it for the first time. His armor in tatters, his flesh bruised and broken, his very bones on the verge of collapse from his war with the King-Priest of Rammadh.
Lub-Dub
The beat of an unimaginably vast heart. It pounded in his veins, pounded in his mind.
Lub-Dub
The truth of life opened in his eyes, the endless crimson vista, the eternal war of all against all, every living thing in endless competition, devouring and being devoured. There he had stared into eyes that were oceans of blood, every drop ever spilled in this gods forsaken world.
He cracked open the priest king's skull with his bare hands, tore out his sovereign chakra, and devoured it. His ascension had turned the sky crimson for twelve days and eleven nights.
He took a second bite of weakly beating flesh, chewed and spit, leaving a smear of offal across the broken stones.
Lub-Dub
He could hear her heartbeat again. The Goddess, the Great Spirit of Bloody Evolution. The Goddess of life, born from war and a dragon's unwanted seed. Was she not the trueborn daughter of the Sage Qin, the mightiest of his heirs, when by his own word, only power could measure worthiness and give choice? Heir to the truth of his Empire.
He drew in a hissing breath, pushed her heartbeat from his mind. The great truth he had seen was more than the goddess of the red jungle, just as a single phase was not the moon entire. He would not submit, he would carve his own truth into the Sovereignty of Conflict.
Take my hand, O Carrion King, you have but to reach out.
"Dragon's blood, offered freely," he croaked through bloody and cracked lips. A raindrop fell upon his hand, and flesh burned. Red, and then black, flesh rotting in moments. "That was the deal, and they are here."
The serpents had come. The black rain fell, and stone sagged and melted. Overhead there was an ocean of poison, consuming the sky, its pressure was immense, greater than the deepest depths of the sea. The black rain fell, and Sun Shao stood. His armor rusted and pitted, his flesh blackened. A chunk of his hair sloughed off, landing wetly on melting stones. He looked up, and his eyes boiled in their sockets.
A red spear clattered to the ground, no longer held by nerveless fingers, the pitiful puppet of flesh and blood that had once been him, the body of his birth, turned to rot and mush.
The corpse city shuddered, and the earth groaned and heaved.
One thousand blades erupted from the earth, wood and stone and bone and steel and rarer things, and they met one million raindrops and scattered them. Armored in corpses, tar, and a shattered city, Sun Shao rose to his feet, his ten burning crowns incinerated the ocean of venom, and scraped the sky. Their lurid light revealed the warband of titanic serpents and white clad warriors who stood above the clouds.
Even now those eyes looked down upon him.
From ten maws running with rivers of blood, Sun Shao screamed his challenge to the heavens.
And at his feet, bloomed countless sunflowers, watered in blood.
Squelch. Crack
Flesh and meat tore, ribs and sternum gave. Blood stained his hands crimson. His hand plunged into the cavity, unmindful of the stinking air released. The meat beneath him twitched in its death throes, gold and jewels slick with blood and offal. A King, a priest, a warrior. It did not matter. It was merely meat.
It amazed him, looking back, how much he still did not understand when he began his rebellion. He had grasped the first truth of War, that the only true allies were family. That all who could not be kin were enemies eventually. This he understood, and this he had brought to the scaleless Lords of the Lakes, those like him, under the guise of touring the province to gain further support for the western expedition.
The worms were lazy, in truth. That was the true sting of it. Cruel lords who dreamed their dominion a law as firm as that of any ascended spirit, and perhaps, for the Bai it was. There was not even consideration for what he would do. It was madness, after all. He spent stones like water, because what did money mean to a dead man? When the cadres of the clans left for the Western Expedition, they brought with them the Transportation Circles of a hundred hundred masters, their sister circles left in the core compounds of the scaleless clans..
It was so much simpler when they only needed to be used once.
Veins and arteries snapped like cord as his fist closed around the still beating heart and wrenched it free with a wet rip. In it burned a blazing star of power, the seed and soul of a dead man's enlightenment.
The march to Rammadh had been brutal beyond words. He lost count of the dead within days. He had known, since he was a boy, that War was sacrifice. That a warleader was a reaper of men, choosing who would live and die. For acknowledging this truth, he was called Butcher.
How absurd, for the children of Yao the Fisher, he who became death, the children of Grandmother Serpent, whom even that supreme killer had knelt to in love, to say such words. In the first weeks of the campaign, he came to wonder if this was a part of great Yao's truth.
Men were meat, and nothing more. Nothing that lived could not also die. War was slaughter and massacre, and all which sought to obscure that were preening charlatans.
They marched to Rammadh on a carpet of the dead. There had been no time for burials, for rites, not for friends and certainly not for foes. The scavenging began with weapons, replacing the broken, the cannibalization of what should have been grave goods, of consumption of the dead's qi, to fuel the march of the living.
In the end, the most profound truths are the most simple ones. The truths that seem insultingly obvious, until one stares long enough into their depths.
He brought the lump of bloody flesh to his mouth and bit down, inhaling the scent of copper and the strands of a dead man's power.
To live was victory.
So long as the foe was dead, and you lived, your people, your family could pile all the little bricks and pretty lies of civilization atop the mountain of the dead. Family was Everything. Life was War, and War was Sacrifice. Everything for Family.
The people, his people, the ones who followed him, were all his kin. They would live, even if the world was forced to break first. He would sacrifice anything, and everything, to see that outcome.
They had broken the line of demon warriors which defended Rammadh, and found within a city of people, little different from the mortals and low cultivators of Zhengjian. They had slaughtered them one and all, men and women, elders and children, until the gutters clogged with blood and the flocking crows turned the sky to black.
The enemy died. His family lived.
And on top of a similar temple, he had heard it for the first time. His armor in tatters, his flesh bruised and broken, his very bones on the verge of collapse from his war with the King-Priest of Rammadh.
Lub-Dub
The beat of an unimaginably vast heart. It pounded in his veins, pounded in his mind.
Lub-Dub
The truth of life opened in his eyes, the endless crimson vista, the eternal war of all against all, every living thing in endless competition, devouring and being devoured. There he had stared into eyes that were oceans of blood, every drop ever spilled in this gods forsaken world.
He cracked open the priest king's skull with his bare hands, tore out his sovereign chakra, and devoured it. His ascension had turned the sky crimson for twelve days and eleven nights.
He took a second bite of weakly beating flesh, chewed and spit, leaving a smear of offal across the broken stones.
Lub-Dub
He could hear her heartbeat again. The Goddess, the Great Spirit of Bloody Evolution. The Goddess of life, born from war and a dragon's unwanted seed. Was she not the trueborn daughter of the Sage Qin, the mightiest of his heirs, when by his own word, only power could measure worthiness and give choice? Heir to the truth of his Empire.
He drew in a hissing breath, pushed her heartbeat from his mind. The great truth he had seen was more than the goddess of the red jungle, just as a single phase was not the moon entire. He would not submit, he would carve his own truth into the Sovereignty of Conflict.
Take my hand, O Carrion King, you have but to reach out.
"Dragon's blood, offered freely," he croaked through bloody and cracked lips. A raindrop fell upon his hand, and flesh burned. Red, and then black, flesh rotting in moments. "That was the deal, and they are here."
The serpents had come. The black rain fell, and stone sagged and melted. Overhead there was an ocean of poison, consuming the sky, its pressure was immense, greater than the deepest depths of the sea. The black rain fell, and Sun Shao stood. His armor rusted and pitted, his flesh blackened. A chunk of his hair sloughed off, landing wetly on melting stones. He looked up, and his eyes boiled in their sockets.
A red spear clattered to the ground, no longer held by nerveless fingers, the pitiful puppet of flesh and blood that had once been him, the body of his birth, turned to rot and mush.
The corpse city shuddered, and the earth groaned and heaved.
One thousand blades erupted from the earth, wood and stone and bone and steel and rarer things, and they met one million raindrops and scattered them. Armored in corpses, tar, and a shattered city, Sun Shao rose to his feet, his ten burning crowns incinerated the ocean of venom, and scraped the sky. Their lurid light revealed the warband of titanic serpents and white clad warriors who stood above the clouds.
Even now those eyes looked down upon him.
From ten maws running with rivers of blood, Sun Shao screamed his challenge to the heavens.
And at his feet, bloomed countless sunflowers, watered in blood.
Kaboomatic
Where the Wild Things Are
- Pronouns
- He/Him
...How am I just noticing the Ravana parallels?
Oh interesting, the Jungle isn't inimical to the Empire no. It is the embodiment of the Empire's very worst traits instead.
A good enemy to be overcome in making it better, but I think my previous thoughts on the looming conflict causing countless deaths and untold devastation across the Empire due to sheer collateral damage, in additional to the intentional damage, seems to have been a tad optimistic.
A good enemy to be overcome in making it better, but I think my previous thoughts on the looming conflict causing countless deaths and untold devastation across the Empire due to sheer collateral damage, in additional to the intentional damage, seems to have been a tad optimistic.
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... And that's why no matter how villainous the Bai are and how justified his vengeance and rage, that doesn't make Sun Shao a hero.
The shit he was doing was probably mega banned by the MoI. If An knew what he was doing I'm not sure he'd support Sun Shao as much as he did.
Hopefully Lilling can be better.
- Location
- CA
Liling can be better or Liling can be in charge, is the problem. The Sunflower Goddess is a part of her cultivation now and poison trees bear poison fruit, and this isn't the land of the Frost People: high cultivation is required to wield temporal power. Even if she comes to a realization later and burns the rot out of her cultivation, it's incredibly likely that that will cripple her cultivation base, and then she no longer has the physical or social power to make good on that realization.
We can hope she does even so, and Renxiang might just hit the right cultivation Way to heal that sort of injury (it would be incredibly thematic!), but strong odds are that any such redemption will be a purely moral victory relative to just killing her. Either way, she's off the game board.
Da Boyz
The Cutest Apocalypse.
And here we see the peril of making a character too metal. They make you want to root for them even when they're eating the hearts of their enemies and roaring their defiance against the heavens.
...especially when they're eating the hearts of their enemies and roaring their defiance against the heavens.
...especially when they're eating the hearts of their enemies and roaring their defiance against the heavens.
Man, every time I think that these Sun Shao's interludes can't get more intense, yet each one is more intense than the previous ones.
We already knew that Sun Shao's "reasonably justified" revolt against the Bai had terrible consequences. The near extermination of the Red Jungle and the lost of a sizeable chunk of his army. Then the now unprotected Thousand Lakes being invaded by the fleeing beasts from the Red Jungle. A lot of death and misery around.
But this goes way beyond what I thought had trascended during the conquest.
Literally cannibalizing not only the jungle barbarians but his own death people as well? That cultivation method is so forbidden by the MoI that an erradication war couldn't have been avoided if this was known.
I guess Jiao was't in charge of investigating this? I think I remember he was investigating Cai Shenhua at the Emerald Seas.
I know that An really wanted to weaken the Bai and the old noble families in general, but he really messed up there.
The damage to the Bai was already enough and the jungle barbarians were gone. He should have put an end to the revolt and taken the chance to punish and discredit the Bai for allowing the situation to devolve like this.
So the Jungle Goddes is a local avatar, or a single aspect, of this Great Spirit of Bloody Evolution? Goddamn, the conflict with the Western Territories is going to be cataclysmic.
Sovereign of Conflict. Shun Shao is as unfit to rule as Shenhua, but at least Shenhua is self aware. Shun Shao will literally drown the world in blood and have his family live in whatever is left. The most extreme form of the in and out mentality
We already knew that Sun Shao's "reasonably justified" revolt against the Bai had terrible consequences. The near extermination of the Red Jungle and the lost of a sizeable chunk of his army. Then the now unprotected Thousand Lakes being invaded by the fleeing beasts from the Red Jungle. A lot of death and misery around.
But this goes way beyond what I thought had trascended during the conquest.
Literally cannibalizing not only the jungle barbarians but his own death people as well? That cultivation method is so forbidden by the MoI that an erradication war couldn't have been avoided if this was known.
I guess Jiao was't in charge of investigating this? I think I remember he was investigating Cai Shenhua at the Emerald Seas.
I know that An really wanted to weaken the Bai and the old noble families in general, but he really messed up there.
The damage to the Bai was already enough and the jungle barbarians were gone. He should have put an end to the revolt and taken the chance to punish and discredit the Bai for allowing the situation to devolve like this.
So the Jungle Goddes is a local avatar, or a single aspect, of this Great Spirit of Bloody Evolution? Goddamn, the conflict with the Western Territories is going to be cataclysmic.
Sovereign of Conflict. Shun Shao is as unfit to rule as Shenhua, but at least Shenhua is self aware. Shun Shao will literally drown the world in blood and have his family live in whatever is left. The most extreme form of the in and out mentality
- Location
- PA
…Family is everything.
At this point Sun Sharp's gone and lost it…
But Ling Qi has Family as a very important part of her cultivation.
…
I don think it works like that, but I'm worried the Sun might be able to play off that in a very nasty way, somehow.
Admittedly, it's less 'echo the deed that caused Sun Shal to rebel' and more 'you agree that family is important, but you don't fully understand.
FAMILY IS EVERYTHING' and then Ling Qi's mist turns to blood, as Zhengui suddenly starts blooming flowers everywhere, and Hanyi turns hungry and vicious, as Sixang screams in horror.
And Liling laughs, because for all Sun Shal lost, she got to take a trusted handmaiden away from the hated Bai.
At this point Sun Sharp's gone and lost it…
But Ling Qi has Family as a very important part of her cultivation.
…
I don think it works like that, but I'm worried the Sun might be able to play off that in a very nasty way, somehow.
Admittedly, it's less 'echo the deed that caused Sun Shal to rebel' and more 'you agree that family is important, but you don't fully understand.
FAMILY IS EVERYTHING' and then Ling Qi's mist turns to blood, as Zhengui suddenly starts blooming flowers everywhere, and Hanyi turns hungry and vicious, as Sixang screams in horror.
And Liling laughs, because for all Sun Shal lost, she got to take a trusted handmaiden away from the hated Bai.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Honestly, I think Jiao wanted to figure it out, and White An told him to not investigate because Sun Shao was Needed to keep the Bai from opposing the Necessary Reforms. Probably one more chip to Jiao's way, though I don't think it was the actual breaking poitn.
But yeah, we've seen his blinders, and we've also seen how it led directly to Liling making the mistakes she made in year one given his teaching of her. He literally cannot comprehend the idea that a problem can resolved through anything less than the destruction--and ideally consumption--of the foe, and that would have followed through in his teachings. He's literally become what he hates, and doesn't even have enough self-awareness to realize it.
Which literally describes how Liling was bashing her head against the wall and going "God damnit I had every advantage but I squandered them because I was too quick to pick fights"
Because at the end of the day, while "Family is Everything" is the root of Sun Shao's way, the flower that bloomed from the hate he gained from the fuckery he received was "--And everyone else can be nourishment for it".
But yeah, we've seen his blinders, and we've also seen how it led directly to Liling making the mistakes she made in year one given his teaching of her. He literally cannot comprehend the idea that a problem can resolved through anything less than the destruction--and ideally consumption--of the foe, and that would have followed through in his teachings. He's literally become what he hates, and doesn't even have enough self-awareness to realize it.
Which literally describes how Liling was bashing her head against the wall and going "God damnit I had every advantage but I squandered them because I was too quick to pick fights"
Because at the end of the day, while "Family is Everything" is the root of Sun Shao's way, the flower that bloomed from the hate he gained from the fuckery he received was "--And everyone else can be nourishment for it".
globalwarmth
ruining the weather.
- Location
- Polar ice caps
I just got it. Bai guard the frontier to the jungle because they are a clan of defoliant users.
Agent orange to the rescue
Agent orange to the rescue
- Location
- Spain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm so glad we didn't go with Sun Liling... Cai Shenhua may be a monster but at least she doesn't slaughter indiscriminately...
Better bloody revolution than exterminating genocide
Better bloody revolution than exterminating genocide
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
To be fair, Sun Shao is perfectly fine... As long as he sees you as family.
But yeah, "The Butcher" is a well earned epithet.
- Location
- Central Europe
I mean on a Meta-level we have multiple wog statements that this is in part the result of us not pursuing the Sun-path. Irrc the Sunflower Goddess would have been more like Shenhua, if we had become Lilling's retainer. Antagonistic, but more in a "challenging you to grow and prove me wrong" kinda way. My point being, that we wouldn't have been railroaded into become villains. Regardless of what path we ultimately chose.
- Location
- Spain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah! I am aware of that!! I was referring more to the level that I prefer to work under Shenhua than under the Sun...
More like Sun Shao would've been our Cai Shenhua in that route, and Sun Liling would've ended up better off personally similar to how Meizhen having support to avoid defeat made her less of a stereotypical Bai. Well Sun Liling would've still been adopted as that was always going to happen similar to the Cai/Bai alliance.