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

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Like I said, there's plenty of reasons to do this.

Deadly Snark said:
The Bombs are scattered over an entire city's sewer system. Initiative doesnt matter jack shit. LQ physically cannot cover such a distance by herself, because cities are big, Sewers are big, and the sewers of cities are huge.
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And that's making assumptions that they are comparable to bombs - or regarding their setup - I mean, the description makes a lot of them sound more like terrorist cells awaiting the call to action, not things that will automatically trigger in X amount of time.

Again, Yan Renshu was plainly not expecting Ling Qi to have shown up and ruined everything like that, and given the scare she gave him, he's probably going to focus on going to ground. It's possible he might have some contingencies, but nothing justifies immediately charging down there.
 
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Oliver_Twister said:
It can still be blamed on Ling Qi.

LQ is already working with professionals though. She's a professional herself since she's trained to scout. And going by the professional route, a terrorist attack from a cult seems more like the MoI than MoL. And a full sweep will be done either way. We're just finding info and ending the big stuff quickly before they can grow to more dangerous levels and harm more civilians before they go in.

We're stopping operations from progressing further while the MoL and the city awaken and prepare. We're not running in guns blazing.
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Oh yes it can still be blamed on LQ.

Better not run in guns blazing like a Lone wolf and fuck up then.

She's going down into the sewers solo to stop bombs instead of going back to help formulate a better plan with an entire organization of professionals. We don't know if we are stopping the big stuff, we don't know if we are saving Civilian lives. Frankly from where I'm standing and from the viewpoint of dealing with terrorist shit, running in first looks like LQ seeking glory at best and LQ wanting to finish YR herself as part of their feud at worse.

Neither of which are commendable for a professional.

Tobtorp said:
Can you certainly tell me that the ministry will act fast enough to send teams before these things go off? No? Then removing even just part of them is better then waiting until the ministry can get their ass into gear. They didn't even notice these things being planted all over the city...

And everyone saying that cities are big, yes they are. And cultivators are bullshit. Ling is fucking fast and has access to the dream. No normal bomb crew has that.
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The Ministry could act fast enough.

LQ definitely cannot sweep the whole sewer.

In dangerous situations like this with bombs, you could for the could and not the definitely cannot.

Tobtorp said:
Cool, how long does the ministry need to get themselves together? 1 hour? 2? 3? Because they definitely didn't suspect a terrorist plot going on and have not prepared for it.
Initiative is the key word here, either we keep the initiative or we lose it.
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Initiative doesnt matter because this isnt a duel against a single entity. This trying to sweep a whole city's sewers. The determinant factor in such a scenario is manpower and organisation.

How much of the sewer could LQ cover? Answer, not enough.
 
RageQuitEnigma said:
Again, Yan Renshu was plainly not expecting Ling Qi to have shown up and ruined everything like that, and given the scare she gave him, he's probably going to focus on going to ground. It's possible he might have some contingencies, but nothing justifies immediately charging down there.
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He's also petty enough that he started a whole terrorist plot to take us out over what was effectively a schoolyard grudge. I am not betting on him not being petty enough to try to fuck us over anyway.
Deadly Snark said:
The Ministry could act fast enough.
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That's a bold claim for a ministry that 20 minutes ago didn't even know this was a possibility.
 
There are a set of ticking time bombs in this city. We know the general types of 'bombs' they are:

yrsillar said:
"Seeds. Seeds in the sewers, rat men, corpse eaters, needed guidance. Not any formations I've seen Had… friend in the Ministry of Works, got maps. In the cisterns, had to be.... watered regularly." he wheezed. "Lady Ling, I-"
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The shoggoth-things that like to hit Cyan and can probably hit Cyan+ if it's timed properly, ith'ia hit squads, etc. We know roughly where they are. We have removed the primary detonator, and bluffed the controller of this operation into fleeing the area (probably). We do not know of any secondary triggers, contingency orders or other 'fail-safes'. We do not know of any actual time limit, other than the 'watered regularly' line.

There are two choices. Go down immediately, or go down in cooperation with the Ministry of Law and the city's ruling family.

In the former case, we can potentially defuse or destroy one or more of the ticking time bombs before they go off. This might result in a secondary trigger going off or contingency orders triggering, causing one or more of the other ticking time bombs to go off before the Ministry and local family is in position to deal with them, or perhaps we miss a trigger and one of timers goes off anyway, resulting in mass civilian casualties. Or perhaps not.

In the latter case, we wait to sweep every single location all at once, with maximum available force - which includes Cyans and in an ideal scenario an Indigo. This wait might result in contingency orders or timers triggering before everything is ready, resulting in mass civilian casualties. Or perhaps not.

So no matter what we do, there is a risk of massive civilian casualties. Which fundamentally alters the question from 'what can we do to mitigate casualties' (because both options work to mitigate civilian casualties in different ways), to political goals and perception.

TL;DR: Both options try to mitigate casualties. Please don't be antagonistic over that.
 
Deadly Snark said:
So are you claiming that LQ will definitely be able to sweep the whole sewer?

Because unless the answer is a yes, the Ministry is still the better option.
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I'm saying she will have covered much of the ground until the ministry has any kind of organized response ready to go. We are fast, we are stealthy, we have quite a few arts to find the unknown.
 
Oliver_Twister said:
She has SSR, which she's used as her eyes to scout ahead and map many things...like the Hui corpse immortal's base full of traps. And said art also has clairvoyance to track things
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Again, she has only two pair of eyes, legs and arms in one platform. How exactly is she gonna sweep over the entirety of the sewers. That was one base, a single hiding spot.

This is a lived-in sewer. The scale is uncomparable. It's like a dude with a metal detector going into a minefield alone without proper support.
 
Deadly Snark said:
Again, she has only two pair of eyes, legs and arms in one platform. How exactly is she gonna sweep over the entirety of the sewers. That was one base, a single hiding spot.

This is a lived-in sewer. The scale is uncomparable. It's like a dude with a metal detector going into a minefield alone without proper support.
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I think your overstating how big sewers are in old cities, and i think your underestimating how bs cultivators are. Ling qi is fast. Exceptionally so
 
Tobtorp said:
I'm saying she will have covered much of the ground until the ministry has any kind of organized response ready to go. We are fast, we are stealthy, we have quite a few arts to find the unknown.
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We are also one woman trying to solo defuse an entire city's sewer.

We will not even cover a fraction of a fraction of the sewer by ourselves.
 
The funny thing is that if Ling Qi pulls this off, the question of "should she have killed Yan Renshu" actually comes down pretty conclusively on "no." Not because he deserved mercy, but because this way she gets to steal his shit again, even if this time the spoils are going to be mostly reputation and experience.

It's like farming, you know? You've got to let the field lay fallow for a bit before you come back and get your delicious, delicious spoils.
 
yrsillar said:
She had stopped the immediate problem, but who knew what failsafes that worm had added, or if the whatever ith'ia agents were below had secondary orders.

...

[ ] Descend down into the sewers yourself and seek to put an end to any continuing operations while the city awakens.
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Going down is not for bomb disposal. It's about removing any failsafes and and stopping any secondary orders.
 
Tobtorp said:
I think your overstating how big sewers are in old cities, and i think your underestimating how bs cultivators are. Ling qi is fast. Exceptionally so
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I think you forget this is the sewer of a Fantasy Cultivator City. With bullshit spirits most likely and fucked up geometry most likely. We dont know what this one is like because LQ does not know the region.

Also the bad shit was planted by Cultivators.

Tobtorp said:
Again, we are one cultivator. Not just a lone woman, a force of nature in the making...
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In which case, it would be far more effective to go get the Ministry filled with Cultivators, who have stronger cultivators than us on call. So that we can have multiple forces of nature in the making sweeping the sewers.

We are not some Superhero dealing with mudane terrorists. We are a Cultivator dealing with enemy cultivators.
 
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Why I think retreat a better option is:
(1) We can bring YS back to ministry HQ faster, so they can exact locations the Ith set up formations at.
(2) Thanks to our dreamwalking we can travel with a small group in the dream, assuming their any Ith down their a group can fend them off while others disrupt the formations.
 
Imugi said:
Going down is not for bomb disposal. It's about removing any failsafes and and stopping any secondary orders.
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'Bomb disposal' is a figurative statement, referring to the effective actions of removing those failsafes and stopping secondary orders - aka, removing the 'bombs' that those failsafes and secondary orders would likely trigger.

Because we don't know what the failsafes and orders are.
 
Deadly Snark said:
I think you forget this is the sewer of a Fantasy Cultivator City. With bullshit spirits most likely and fucked up geometry most likely. Because LQ does not know the region.


In which case, it would be far more effective to go get the Ministry filled with Cultivators, who have stronger cultivators than us on call. So that we can have multiple forces of nature in the making sweeping the sewers.
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... For your first point, it's a normal city with some cultivators in it. Most of it is build for normal people so why would there be weird shit going on, it's not big tree...

Secondly i would do that if I had any hope they would get their act together fast enough, i doubt that very much...
 
All that is missing is Ling Qi asking "what's his name again?" :whistle:

[x] Withdraw, seek cooperation with the Ministry and the ruling family, go down as a group.

this is not Ling Qi's specialty. Going solo with zero prep is a good way to screw up, and then get showed with the blame.
 
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Tobtorp said:
... For your first point, it's a normal city with some cultivators in it. Most of it is build for normal people so why would there be weird shit going on, it's not big tree...

Secondly i would do that if I had any hope they would get their act together fast enough, i doubt that very much...
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This planet is a deathworld. Spirits and environment warp each other in a mutualistic relationship. Big cities in the Empire are literally build with effectively terraforming wards. And nobody is gonna bother with installing too many of those in the sewers. These are not "Old cities and old sewers" they are basically Fantasy colony cities and equivalent sewers.

So its a sewer on a deathworld and the terrorists are Cultivator Mole people from an underground society.

Well there is no hope of LQ sweeping the entire sewer, while there is hope that the Cultivators of the Ministry can act fast enough. Or what is them being Cultivators, Forces of Nature in the Making in your own words, not good enough now?
 
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Tobtorp said:
... For your first point, it's a normal city with some cultivators in it. Most of it is build for normal people so why would there be weird shit going on, it's not big tree...
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Because geomancy is an actual thing and we know CRX' dad is an urban planner unfucking the shit that the Hui let happen. Even if it's built for normal people the feng shui is a thing.
 
Deadly Snark said:
Oh yes it can still be blamed on LQ.

Better not run in guns blazing like a Lone wolf and fuck up then.

She's going down into the sewers solo to stop bombs instead of going back to help formulate a better plan with an entire organization of professionals. We don't know if we are stopping the big stuff, we don't know if we are saving Civilian lives. Frankly from where I'm standing and from the viewpoint of dealing with terrorist shit, running in first looks like LQ seeking glory at best and LQ wanting to finish YR herself as part of their feud at worse.

Neither of which are commendable for a professional.
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Either way, it can be blamed on LQ since this is all a trap for her.

We're still working with the MoL even though terrorist stuff falls more under the MoI. But we do know that we're stopping big stuff. The whole choice is going in quickly to mitigate damage to civilians while they prep teams ie the city awakening or if we wait until the city is fully awake before we try to stop it, at the risk of more civilian damage.

I don't really see it as LQ seeking glory. It's rather about initiative and damage mitigation based on what we know, and intel retrieval to help the city-wide search when it eventually happens because it's going to happen either way
 
Oliver_Twister said:
Either way, it can be blamed on LQ since this is all a trap for her.

We're still working with the MoL even though terrorist stuff falls more under the MoI. But we do know that we're stopping big stuff. The whole choice is going in quickly to mitigate damage to civilians while they prep teams ie the city awakening or if we wait until the city is fully awake before we try to stop it, at the risk of more civilian damage.

I don't really see it as LQ seeking glory. It's rather about initiative and damage mitigation based on what we know, and intel retrieval to help the city-wide search when it eventually happens because it's going to happen either way
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And initiative doesnt matter against scores upon scores of bombs and who knows what else scattered across an entire city's sewers. Manpower and coordination matters.

And no we wouldn't be working with them. LQ thinks she's going down to stop the big stuff, that's not guaranteed. Because LQ hasn't got anything but a silver of information out of the prisoner just yet. The only way to get a proper picture is to get the treacherous ass to the Ministry so that their experts can fuck with his mind to give everyone the intel on where to go.

That is much more effective than going down and trusting in our single pair of eyes to cover a whole sewer system.
 
A dark cult having seeded a bunch of Cyan bombs in the sewer of a major city is exactly the sort of thing which the Ministries and the Viscount Family will take deathly seriously.

And if they don't take it seriously then they're really not going to enjoy what happens when the Tyrant Radiance finds out about it.

Get the Ministry. Go down as a group.
 
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