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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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It feels to me like there's the actual thing we use to hurt people, and then the concepts we built around it to soften, justify, and target that hurt.

But I worry about becoming shallow in conviction- if the core of what hurts is softened or mitigated in our main offensive art, it's going to be easier to brush off or ignore the actual cold, since that just mirrors ling qi's perspective.

I want the hurt to stick.

And that means acknowledging that deep winter is it's own thing, not just a step on the path to renewal or a means for purification. It's not a thing that we should be able to time-skip, if that makes sense. And understanding the cold tells us WHY family is so important, and ties us back to the reason that we don't just fly off into the sky.

We'll have other, better options for movement, protection, stealth and theft. We do not have a better way to hurt other people than the cold we are and fear.

So. Power and persistence, that we can actually end things we need to end without setting them up for a comeback.
 
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I like the thematic of Hanyi being the precursor of what Winter is about, LQ being an ice fairy who brings the deathly cold that grinds down everything, and Zenghui representing renewal, Life returning anyway.

It's a nice balance, and I want more shocked people thinking twice before daring to anger LQ. I mean, we can make connections and gather soft power all we want, but at the end of the day, only Power is Power. Gotta have something to back up all this noise we're generating.

This is an offensive art. Let's make it offensive, yeah?

In any case, Option 3 feels like the worst possible thing that could happen. An erasure of her identity, and not in a "she evolved" way. Might as well switch the main character IMO.
 
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I'm heavily leaning towards option 2.

[ ]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)

For starters, I don't like when Ling Qi's musings mirror her spirits' too much. Specially when a choice is made in great measure because "it will bring her closer to Zhengui" or something like that.
There is no need to reject the most Zeqing-like option just for being the most Zeqing-like either.

It's good that Ling Qi sees cold and endings as more as she did as a child in the streets. But she already is exploring the concept of renewal through more fitting means. And the mention of "Purification" just sounds weird to me.

I think that it's important that, just as Isolation with her Mist, Ling Qi doesn't forget how winter truly feels for those without a hearth. Why it's important for her to care and bond for her friends and family. Why she is helping Renxiang in trying to build a world where as few people as possible suffer what she had to.
The Community-Isolation duality that Ling Qi is cultivating is really interesting. We shouldn't discard the End of the isolated in the cold just because our goal is to build a hearth. Quite the opposite, actually.

Power and Persistance are Concepts that feet very well that side of Ling Qi's goals, so including them in her succession art is a great way to advance her understandimg of her further.
 
From a purely practical standpoint our FSS successor should focus on increasing our damage output. It is meant to be a finisher (and it's our only one), but it's falling behind. If we don't focus on power for our successor art there's a solid chance that we simply won't be able to end battles except through attrition, which isn't strategically sound outside of an arena/tournament. (How many fights would we have lost if we couldn't just end them? The Bai/Green Asp fight comes to mind, as does the fight with the shaman.)

Option #2 makes the most sense, given that.

yrsillar said:
[ ]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
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If we want a renewal and purification art, we should ask RenRen for one, not hobble our battle potential for it.
 
[x]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
 
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[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)

All of these are cool, but I actually really like how this defines the death it inflicts in opposition to the home and family that Ling Qi seeks in her other arts. An attack art as such a personal cautionary tale strikes me as super neat. The mechanics are also solid and on point, but it's the cautionary tale aspect that really sells it for me.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)

All of these are cool, but I actually really like how this defines the death it inflicts in opposition to the home and family that Ling Qi seeks in her other arts. An attack art as such a personal cautionary tale strikes me as super neat. The mechanics are also solid and on point, but it's the cautionary tale aspect that really sells it for me.
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5 more minutes

Edit: 4 more
 
Purification and Renewal for FSS+? Blegh.

EDIT: I want FSS+ to be biggus d***** damage.

[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
 
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Its not that I don't want LQ to have a Renewal art, I do (well, I want her to have a Cycles one, that focuses on endings and beginnings), its just that I don't think FSS+ should be it.

Spring flooding? Waters and rebirth?...really? Since when has Water been an explicit thing in her arts? I could've sworn its always just happened to be there...We don't want our Successor art to look completely unrecognizable from the old FSS art, even if LQ did reject Zeqing's take on it.
It should still be a Winter art and the 3rd option sounds a lot more like Spring to me.
Its supposed to be Ling Qi's take on Winter. Also the 3rd option doesn't sound like the most powerfully offensive art to me.

[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
 
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Okay so some general musings:

1 feels a bit front loaded, and requires a very active approach on the battlefield. Up until now we've mostly set the pace by letting enemies come to us instead of the other way around. Still, it plays to our strenghts and abuses the intrinsic broken nature of LFWT, so it will likely be a strong option regardless.

2 is very simple in a way: raw power. Which sounds boring, but remembering the other tools in our toolkit (PLR, LFWT, BKSD, Domain shadow realm) we already have tons of utility and battlefield control. 2 would then bring a certain sense of inevitability to our gameplan: then cannot catch us, they cannot escape, and eventually they will End.

3 washes away stacking buffs. This is pretty huge in general given that a lot of cultivation warfare strategy revolves around stacking buffs to take out stronger targets using combined efforts. It is very much a case of No Fun Allowed TM, bringing our foes to their knees without them ever having the chance to fully unleash their true potential. It's really strong in a vacuum, but do we really need it? Our Mist already makes the buffstack strategy extremely hard to pull off when facing us, and with PLR causing general mayhem getting coordinated in the first place seems like a tall task for anybody.
 
[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
 
[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
 
[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)

[X] She would make her successor a song of the years ending, the cold that puts the old world to sleep, that it may be born anew in the spring flooding, a thing of waters and rebirth. (+2 Expression XP, sets Successor themes toward Purification and Renewal)

Edit: With the clarification that number 3 is about setting the stage for spring by reducing things to nothing and not actually spring itself I feel much more comfortable with this option.
 
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aeonian said:
From a purely practical standpoint our FSS successor should focus on increasing our damage output. It is meant to be a finisher (and it's our only one), but it's falling behind. If we don't focus on power for our successor art there's a solid chance that we simply won't be able to end battles except through attrition, which isn't strategically sound outside of an arena/tournament. (How many fights would we have lost if we couldn't just end them? The Bai/Green Asp fight comes to mind, as does the fight with the shaman.)

Option #2 makes the most sense, given that.



If we want a renewal and purification art, we should ask RenRen for one, not hobble our battle potential for it.
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I mean, we don't really have damage any more. The story isn't using that kind of combat system now, and as we move further and further past mortality, the more mudane concepts of harm and hurt will become irrelevant. Conceptual power is what matters. And if she's viewing someone as a legitimate danger, then she's viewing them as part of the cold and darkness of Outside that she's seeking to ward and oppose. And in that light, defining herself as The End of Winter is not warm or cuddly, it's a death threat.

[X] She would make her successor a song of the years ending, the cold that puts the old world to sleep, that it may be born anew in the spring flooding, a thing of waters and rebirth. (+2 Expression XP, sets Successor themes toward Purification and Renewal)
 
[X] She would make her successor a song of the years ending, the cold that puts the old world to sleep, that it may be born anew in the spring flooding, a thing of waters and rebirth. (+2 Expression XP, sets Successor themes toward Purification and Renewal)
 
[X] She would make her successor a song of the early chill, the cold snap in spring, the cold that surprises and reaps the unprepared, a thing as much of wind as cold. (+2 Expression XP, Sets the Successor toward themes of Anti-Perception and Motion.)

[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)


Either of these works. I can fundamentally not support turning FSS+ into either a Zhengui art or a Water art like the 3rd option would do. It would ruin so many storylines and LQs aesthetics.
 
[X] She would make her successor a song of the early chill, the cold snap in spring, the cold that surprises and reaps the unprepared, a thing as much of wind as cold. (+2 Expression XP, Sets the Successor toward themes of Anti-Perception and Motion.)

OK, this one seems to be the only one that's about taking our relationship and insight with Hanyi as a basis for the successor. 2 seems to be a throwback to Zeqing which is awkward, and 3 seems to be trying to turn the Hanyi-Ling Qi bridge art into a Ling Qi-Zhengui one somehow, which I believe would really not work out well narratively.

The problem however is that Anti-Perception has a history of just not working because they don't make for the kind of action scene that are easy to write.
 
[X] She would make her successor a song of the years ending, the cold that puts the old world to sleep, that it may be born anew in the spring flooding, a thing of waters and rebirth. (+2 Expression XP, sets Successor themes toward Purification and Renewal)

[X] She would make her successor a song of the early chill, the cold snap in spring, the cold that surprises and reaps the unprepared, a thing as much of wind as cold. (+2 Expression XP, Sets the Successor toward themes of Anti-Perception and Motion.)
 
[X] She would make her successor a song of the early chill, the cold snap in spring, the cold that surprises and reaps the unprepared, a thing as much of wind as cold. (+2 Expression XP, Sets the Successor toward themes of Anti-Perception and Motion.)
[X]She would make her successor a song of deep winter, the cold that cannot be banished without hearth and kin, a thing of purest dark and cold(+2 Expression XP. Sets the Successor themes toward Persistence and Power.)
 
[X] She would make her successor a song of the years ending, the cold that puts the old world to sleep, that it may be born anew in the spring flooding, a thing of waters and rebirth. (+2 Expression XP, sets Successor themes toward Purification and Renewal)
 
Remember a couple of weeks ago when everyone was saying how we shouldn't do Soul of Ice in the same turn as FSS because it would somehow confuse or muddy things? And now everyone's like, "Oh, we should totally make FSS a spring themed art so it matches Zhengui!" This thread sometimes, istg.
 
yrsillar said:
Boundaries Untrodden: To slip between, through and around, through the tiniest keyhole or the open window. Round the mountains or through even the veil of death. So walks the thief, who must bypass boundaries in the same way that a bird must fly. But to step across or through, one must understand that which they will violate. Alters and advances the Breeze in the Vault technique. +1 XP to Want and Mystery. Unlocks a new project.
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Wind Thief still going strong, blessing us with utterly bonkers meta-hijinx

yrsillar said:
"I'm the first cold wind that blows in," Hanyi said confidently. "The end of fall, the first snow. If you prepare for me, everything is pretty and pure, and you can listen to me sing, but if you slack off, I'll eat you up."

"I dunno, that sounds way too dignified," Sixiang drawled.

"Like you'd know what Lady looks like, you weird dream bug," Hanyi sniffed.
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I love this soft-fisted ribbing, and Hanyi really coming into herself.
 
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