- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
[X] Approach the towers base and offer respect as travelers, then walk the ridgeline and witness what can be seen( Xuan Shi's gains in his Travel Concept, 60% Chance of additional Reward)
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.
[X] Approach the hut and seek the right of guests, listen to what can be heard. (Xuan Shi Gains in his Narrative Concept, 60% chance of additional reward)
I just had a thought.
I looked at the world map, and saw how far to the east the Wall extends. All past what remains of the Golden Fields.
And like we saw from that WoG the Cloud Tribes adopting outsiders is possible (like what probably happened with those Hui who fled the bunker, though poor Ling Qi had a hard time grasping such a possibility because by that time she hadn't yet internalised that foreigners were human
).
What if, during the Twilight King's rampage, some tribes inhabiting the regions of the Wall south of the Golden Fields joined the fight? After all the zombie apocalypse is everyone's concern. I imagine some Lu survivors in the south pulling an enemy of my enemy thing, possibly with a Paragon Commander Shepard speech thrown in to facilitate cooperation. There would be no records of the alliance since the Ancestor's wrath destroyed everything...but what if there was blood?
Non-combatants and the wounded, sheltering with the non-combatants and wounded of the allied tribes. What if they remained with the Clouds afterwards? Adopted by Father Sky's people. Cut off from the empire by the Grave of the Sun, not knowing if any of their kin survived elsewhere. They would go far away, far from the cataclysm they had traumatised by. Carrying the bloodline of the great phoenix with them.
Thousands of years of no contact with outsiders, of only hearing about the imperials in stories, of the origin of the fire in their veins passing into myth. But then, contact. Possibly through the White Sky, through the tribes allied with them. Contact with imperials who saw their burning arts, saw the fire and sun aspected beasts they rode...and asked questions (Cue Cai Renxiang realising another Ling Qi Adventure had just happened).
And then, revelation. Myths and stories compared. Blood analysed. Realisation dawning, the news of far-off kin in a strange, barren land.
How would the nobility of the Golden fields react if they heard that there existed a group of Cloud tribes to the far south who were their distant kin, fellow descendants of the Purifying Sun? How would the rest of the empire react?
And on a more personal scale, how would Xiulan react if some hurly-burly Khan on an eagle with burning wings showed up at Phoenix Home surrounded by a twitchy imperial escort and proceeded to give her dad a bear hug and call him cousin?
I looked at the world map, and saw how far to the east the Wall extends. All past what remains of the Golden Fields.
And like we saw from that WoG the Cloud Tribes adopting outsiders is possible (like what probably happened with those Hui who fled the bunker, though poor Ling Qi had a hard time grasping such a possibility because by that time she hadn't yet internalised that foreigners were human
).What if, during the Twilight King's rampage, some tribes inhabiting the regions of the Wall south of the Golden Fields joined the fight? After all the zombie apocalypse is everyone's concern. I imagine some Lu survivors in the south pulling an enemy of my enemy thing, possibly with a Paragon Commander Shepard speech thrown in to facilitate cooperation. There would be no records of the alliance since the Ancestor's wrath destroyed everything...but what if there was blood?
Non-combatants and the wounded, sheltering with the non-combatants and wounded of the allied tribes. What if they remained with the Clouds afterwards? Adopted by Father Sky's people. Cut off from the empire by the Grave of the Sun, not knowing if any of their kin survived elsewhere. They would go far away, far from the cataclysm they had traumatised by. Carrying the bloodline of the great phoenix with them.
Thousands of years of no contact with outsiders, of only hearing about the imperials in stories, of the origin of the fire in their veins passing into myth. But then, contact. Possibly through the White Sky, through the tribes allied with them. Contact with imperials who saw their burning arts, saw the fire and sun aspected beasts they rode...and asked questions (Cue Cai Renxiang realising another Ling Qi Adventure had just happened).
And then, revelation. Myths and stories compared. Blood analysed. Realisation dawning, the news of far-off kin in a strange, barren land.
How would the nobility of the Golden fields react if they heard that there existed a group of Cloud tribes to the far south who were their distant kin, fellow descendants of the Purifying Sun? How would the rest of the empire react?
And on a more personal scale, how would Xiulan react if some hurly-burly Khan on an eagle with burning wings showed up at Phoenix Home surrounded by a twitchy imperial escort and proceeded to give her dad a bear hug and call him cousin?
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Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] Approach the towers base and offer respect as travelers, then walk the ridgeline and witness what can be seen( Xuan Shi's gains in his Travel Concept, 60% Chance of additional Reward)
Changed my mind.
Changed my mind.
[X] Approach the towers base and offer respect as travelers, then walk the ridgeline and witness what can be seen( Xuan Shi's gains in his Travel Concept, 60% Chance of additional Reward)
"I wasn't going to vote, but I've been convinced."
Proceeds to forget to vote
I am not a clever human being.
"I wasn't going to vote, but I've been convinced."
Proceeds to forget to vote
I am not a clever human being.
Mist in the Rootways
The mist lies thick among the shattered gates at the foot of the holiest of heavens pillars. Bodies lie strewn like broken leaves, men and women enemies and allies. People. Even the thin faces of the Hui seem not so hateful now, lying askew like broken dolls.
Such is the truth of the world. The truth that the heresy of the Hui so callously twisted. Separation, strife, these were the trials of the impure world. Every man a brother, every woman a sister, every being a sibling, the scattered fragments of truth, struggling along to repair that which should have been whole.
Meng Deming held tight to his truth.
Because the simple material truth is that he was dying, and even now, the primal nightmare which gnawed the hearts of men and took them from the truth stalked the roots. Though perhaps, just perhaps he could preserve himself, and be purified of the poison in his veins.
It was nearly enough to stir hate in his heart, shaking the foundations of Meng Deming's way. That the Patriarch of the Hui, that King of Lies, would be so debased as to unleash the foulest dregs of the impure world here, upon this holy land was almost too much to bear. Heresy beyond reckoning.
Leering faces curled in the serene mist of his temple song, eight legged mounts, haughty figures, there the man of poison dreams, the Hui Feng, Master of Ceremonies. He who helmed the lie that the Hui called the Dreaming Way. Silent as a whisper figures too realm to be called phantoms scamped along the curving walls and ceilings. Scampered over humble homes as black tar.
The shadow of the dead man who had killed him chanted a temple sutra, his doctrine hammering Meng Deming's mind.
All were one, all men were one body, and as the heart and the limbs needed the mind to guide, so too did lesser men need the greater.
Rage was the vice of Meng Deming. Rage at a world which so rejected the words of the Pure one, rage at the heretics which ruled Xiangmen. The shard of poison left in his heart by the man pulsed, and Meng Deming felt his dantian shudder as the cracks spread.
And as he drew himself up in the depths of his mist surrounded by cruel shadows of foes. His brow burned with a pale blue crown. These men were dead, masks of a true demon, and as the pure one had rejected the demons of mankind, so too did he reject these.
Power washed through the mist, and faces and forms peeled away revealing oozing lumps of black flash shaped into the crude dolls of men, suspended from strings of ichor and tar, extending far into the roots.
He looked upon the essence of the Other, first and oldest of nightmares, and did not look away.
Meng Deming felt the shudder of the world changing, the stroke of a blade that sundered the old world, and knew that victory was theirs. Yet the nightmare remained. It's discordance scraped his mind, scrambled and pried at his Sovereignty, inflamed the hate in and anger which burned his breast. His song grew tense, his mist gathering in a great tide, the gleam of purifying qi churning its depths to slam down upon the abomination that now flowed through the streets of Xiangmen.
Countless lives gleamed in the dark, cowering in hidden safe rooms, embracing one another before hearths, and many, so many with even less than that, hidden among refuse, huddled in the dark, crying out at the innumerable horrors that slithered up from every shadow.
It was those cries which halted his hand, cooled his rage.
Violence, even the most righteous of fury could not avail here.
The Other howled, it gibbered, into skittered across his mind, the sneering faces of Hui, the Bloodthirsty and evil masked visages of the nomads, the petty expressions of family who chose order over truth, every single thing he had ever resented, every hated, ever raged against clawed at him as he descended like a leaf onto the dusty, ill cared for streets.
And he did not defend himself, throughout the swarming city in the roots of Xiangmen, his song carried and his mist did disperse. His song changed, no longer a grim warding against evil spirits, but a soft temple dirge, a funeral and a blessing on the living.
Where the mists of fantasia flowed, the nightmares were kept at bay.
But Meng Deming was not the Pure One. Still anchored to the base world of flesh, the blows that rained upon his body and spirit as the Other fell upon him, were ruinous.
But this war for the future was ending. He had played his part. In the end it was a far better death to refute the Hui.
All were one.There were no great men, nor lesser men. Power did not bestow virtue. In the end, these tens of thousands of flickering fires were worth more than one angry old man.
The poison in his breast no longer throbbed. The million hateful faces of the other surrounded him, and his anger, the bleeding hate in his core did not tug and writhe, even as his bones broke and his flesh split.
…Pride then, not just wrath. That was what he had been missing all these decades.
The future was not in his hands.
Perhaps there was something to those old and forgotten heresies he had found as a young man.
He heard the booming cheers of victory, heard the voice of that Jia, whose rhetoric had always held a familiar ring.
How amusing indeed, thought the dying man as the nightmares receded, no longer able to live in reality with the power fueling the rifts fading. That it was before his eyes all along. How blind his kin were, wrapped in their own self importance.
He collapsed against a hovel, his resplendent robes soiled, his flesh torn and bruised and broken. People were emerging now, peering from windows and doors, fearful, terrified. But there was hope, it was a small and simple hope, the hope to simply live another day.
And as he felt his life's breath slipping away, he heard the prayers.
The old ways had never gone away. They had only forgotten where to look.
Such is the truth of the world. The truth that the heresy of the Hui so callously twisted. Separation, strife, these were the trials of the impure world. Every man a brother, every woman a sister, every being a sibling, the scattered fragments of truth, struggling along to repair that which should have been whole.
Meng Deming held tight to his truth.
Because the simple material truth is that he was dying, and even now, the primal nightmare which gnawed the hearts of men and took them from the truth stalked the roots. Though perhaps, just perhaps he could preserve himself, and be purified of the poison in his veins.
It was nearly enough to stir hate in his heart, shaking the foundations of Meng Deming's way. That the Patriarch of the Hui, that King of Lies, would be so debased as to unleash the foulest dregs of the impure world here, upon this holy land was almost too much to bear. Heresy beyond reckoning.
Leering faces curled in the serene mist of his temple song, eight legged mounts, haughty figures, there the man of poison dreams, the Hui Feng, Master of Ceremonies. He who helmed the lie that the Hui called the Dreaming Way. Silent as a whisper figures too realm to be called phantoms scamped along the curving walls and ceilings. Scampered over humble homes as black tar.
The shadow of the dead man who had killed him chanted a temple sutra, his doctrine hammering Meng Deming's mind.
All were one, all men were one body, and as the heart and the limbs needed the mind to guide, so too did lesser men need the greater.
Rage was the vice of Meng Deming. Rage at a world which so rejected the words of the Pure one, rage at the heretics which ruled Xiangmen. The shard of poison left in his heart by the man pulsed, and Meng Deming felt his dantian shudder as the cracks spread.
And as he drew himself up in the depths of his mist surrounded by cruel shadows of foes. His brow burned with a pale blue crown. These men were dead, masks of a true demon, and as the pure one had rejected the demons of mankind, so too did he reject these.
Power washed through the mist, and faces and forms peeled away revealing oozing lumps of black flash shaped into the crude dolls of men, suspended from strings of ichor and tar, extending far into the roots.
He looked upon the essence of the Other, first and oldest of nightmares, and did not look away.
Meng Deming felt the shudder of the world changing, the stroke of a blade that sundered the old world, and knew that victory was theirs. Yet the nightmare remained. It's discordance scraped his mind, scrambled and pried at his Sovereignty, inflamed the hate in and anger which burned his breast. His song grew tense, his mist gathering in a great tide, the gleam of purifying qi churning its depths to slam down upon the abomination that now flowed through the streets of Xiangmen.
Countless lives gleamed in the dark, cowering in hidden safe rooms, embracing one another before hearths, and many, so many with even less than that, hidden among refuse, huddled in the dark, crying out at the innumerable horrors that slithered up from every shadow.
It was those cries which halted his hand, cooled his rage.
Violence, even the most righteous of fury could not avail here.
The Other howled, it gibbered, into skittered across his mind, the sneering faces of Hui, the Bloodthirsty and evil masked visages of the nomads, the petty expressions of family who chose order over truth, every single thing he had ever resented, every hated, ever raged against clawed at him as he descended like a leaf onto the dusty, ill cared for streets.
And he did not defend himself, throughout the swarming city in the roots of Xiangmen, his song carried and his mist did disperse. His song changed, no longer a grim warding against evil spirits, but a soft temple dirge, a funeral and a blessing on the living.
Where the mists of fantasia flowed, the nightmares were kept at bay.
But Meng Deming was not the Pure One. Still anchored to the base world of flesh, the blows that rained upon his body and spirit as the Other fell upon him, were ruinous.
But this war for the future was ending. He had played his part. In the end it was a far better death to refute the Hui.
All were one.There were no great men, nor lesser men. Power did not bestow virtue. In the end, these tens of thousands of flickering fires were worth more than one angry old man.
The poison in his breast no longer throbbed. The million hateful faces of the other surrounded him, and his anger, the bleeding hate in his core did not tug and writhe, even as his bones broke and his flesh split.
…Pride then, not just wrath. That was what he had been missing all these decades.
The future was not in his hands.
Perhaps there was something to those old and forgotten heresies he had found as a young man.
He heard the booming cheers of victory, heard the voice of that Jia, whose rhetoric had always held a familiar ring.
How amusing indeed, thought the dying man as the nightmares receded, no longer able to live in reality with the power fueling the rifts fading. That it was before his eyes all along. How blind his kin were, wrapped in their own self importance.
He collapsed against a hovel, his resplendent robes soiled, his flesh torn and bruised and broken. People were emerging now, peering from windows and doors, fearful, terrified. But there was hope, it was a small and simple hope, the hope to simply live another day.
And as he felt his life's breath slipping away, he heard the prayers.
The old ways had never gone away. They had only forgotten where to look.
Oh hi uncle skelington!
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
One of my thoughts is that with the way Ling Qi is going the Nightmare of the Other is going to be one of those big things she grapples with in the end. Unlikely that she would destroy, but perhaps she could create the dream of community or communication as a direct counter to the Nightmare of the Other.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I do think confronting the Other would challenge Ling Qi and her Way, but it'll also be a good base to develop Eyes of Grudges. From what we've seen, the Other encourages hate, division, and Isolation, something she's trying to change. And well, Eyes of Grudges does force one to confront their own grudges too, just like the Other does.
But I also think that adding aspects of the Other to her Domain would be neat. If you can't face the Nightmare of the Other, the most primal source of Isolation, then are you really cultivating?
But I also think that adding aspects of the Other to her Domain would be neat. If you can't face the Nightmare of the Other, the most primal source of Isolation, then are you really cultivating?
The Reflecting Moons are the direct answer to the Other. By shaping yourself into the Other's reflection it ceases to be distant from you and can now begin to be truly empathized with.
Similarly the Crescent Moons are the answer to the Forever King: they reveal how to resist a superior foe whose victory was accomplished long ago.
The Mother Moon is presumably the answer to the Forsaken, for she welcomes all.
The Hidden and Guiding Moons would be the answer to the Dark: illuminating the path and revealing the hidden rules.
The Dreaming Moon, of course, includes all these nightmares.
Question: I've been searching through the thread for background stuff, and now and again there's a post that yells excitedly about a tree, or alternatively about plan tree. I assume it has something to do with Xiangmen, but there is no context, so I'm thoroughly baffled.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
T R E E
A second question:
I knew the Peakaboos don't think spirits are people, but apparently they don't think cultivators are people either? Confusion deepens.
The Celestial Peaks is built around the perfection of humanity but in a context where humans were the slaves of dragons. In the Peaks you cultivate some manner of utility which you then provide to your superiors. You might be a warrior, a chef, a doctor, a musician, or whatever, but your cultivation is about that.
The traditional Emerald Seas tends to involve messier cultivators who do not clearly fit into a profession, often blurring the line between human and spirit. What's LQ's job? Scout? She's far too loud for that. Assassin? She kills far too slowly. Sword or Flute? She thinks too much.
You see some this messiness in other provinces too, of course. The Gu cultivate Fire/Heaven first and then figure out uses for it later. The Zheng are a bunch of wandering heroes running a Water Margins larp. The Bai have castes instead of jobs, creating restrictions that are at once looser and more oppressive.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
TREE.
More seriously we have an art called Beast Kings Savage Dirge (BKSD) and its the story about the battle between Tsu and the Beast Gods at Xiangmen. This battle is part of the founding myth of the Emerald Seas so its a pretty big deal. Calls for plan TREE have been about advancing that art. You'll see a lot of that from me.
This can be pretty complicated and I personally don't think JohnnieBoy123 is correct in the statement that Peakaboos don't see cultivators as people. It's more that for the peak, people, all people cultivators and mortals, have a place and a role in society. If they work to fulfill that role than that brings stability. Unfortunately when cultivators cultivate for a role they might lose some of their humanity and become more tools than people. We can see this in sword saints and in Meizhen's father. This is seen by almost everyone as quite bad, yet it works with the Peaks cultural understanding of how the world should work so they won't go out of their way to try and prevent it. That at least is my understanding of the situation.
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It isn't actually known what the precise details of his cultivation are because dude goes shields up all the time, but Formations are certainly not exclusive with being a Moon cultivator. Certainly Qi's own moon cultivation wasn't really apparent until some of her later arts.
T R E E
Have you seen the omake(s?) about Xiangmen playing a civ-builder game? I can't find a link easily right now ...
TimEd
Meteor maker
real
I don't yet have the processing capacity to understand the hints that wrre mentioned, but it certainly seems important lore-wise. Maybe I'll come back to this when I'm no longer so drained.
[X] Approach the hut and seek the right of guests, listen to what can be heard. (Xuan Shi Gains in his Narrative Concept, 60% chance of additional reward)
- Location
- the internet
There haven't actually been that many Nightmares specifically. Just a few. In general, Yrs comes up with the coolest names for spirits, places, arts...you name it.
The three nightmares I can think of are
The Other
The Forever King
The Forsaken
When it comes to ES greater spirits, there are
Bountiful Earth (Tsu)
Palace of One (Hui)
Unity of Blades (Xi)
Xiangmen, the Heavenly Pillar
Unnamed Nine-Tailed Fox (there is no evidence for them save for a fox cult idol)
Additionally there are the Moons
Guiding Moon (Full Moon)
Mother Moon (Waxing Gibbous)
Dreaming Moon (Waning Gibbous)
Reflecting Moons (Half Moons, this counts for two)
Bloody Moon (Waxing Crescent)
Grinning Moon (Waning Crescent)
Hidden Moon (New Moon)
And the Suns
Dawn
Rising
Zenith
and a few more, likely including Falling and Dusk
- Location
- Washington
Probably not a full on greater spirit for this very reason.
- Location
- the internet
Let's not forget when we first saw him in Forge, Zhengui called our Skel'Uncle "Nightmare of the Burning Glade"