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

[Thor's Twin]

I will make the note of this tidbit

Now that she knew what to look for, Ling Qi could feel the shadow of even more presences from further down. They were under the sand and down the tunnels, a creeping horde that she could not count.

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emphasis added.

Now, these tunnels are

She still felt a bit relieved when their trail led back into a tunnel and away from the abyssal chasm. Eventually, they came to a wide, circular chamber some forty meters across, with a floor of soft white sand. The bug thing's qi marked the place as deeply as the gouges and scratches left by its limbs did. Another two tunnels lead deeper into the earth, seemingly natural this time.

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emphasis added

Which means there are a total of three tunnels. The one we came in, and two more natural tunnels leading out. Given that these things seem content to tunnel through sand, it seems safe to say that holding any chokepoint with soft sand would probably be a fruitless endeavor. Given that they can simply tunnel under us and behind us. So a choke point would have to be where the Impure Antlion dug through the rock.

Given that we can handle entire armies at once, a choke doesn't actually benefit us all that much. We don't need to funnel them into a small tight space to deal with them efficiently. And the more of these creatures that come and die, the more qi we get refunded from AE. If we were concerned with getting overwhelmed with numbers, then a choke point would be good, but Ling Qi only seems concerned with the greens that are coming.

The greens are the primary problem here. And depending on their size, I'm not sure if we can force them to come at us one at a time through a choke point. Which defeats the purpose of a choke point. However, we do have to consider Li Suyin here. She needs to either continue gathering until we need her, or she needs to get in a defensive formation and fort up.

So, while I was initially in support of the choke point idea, it has lost some of its charm and appeal for me. I just don't think it will do what we want it to do in this situation.

 

[Pipeman]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[Lydia]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[fictionfan]

At last, a big army fight, also known as a fight Ling Qi's actually specced for, rather than all those duels.

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Better than that an army fight where we have a bunch of allies and time to set up.

 

[Arkeus]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

Basically, the only difference between retreating and Hold Your Ground is that the latter, if all goes wrong, has us use our escape talisman... but if it goes right, Li Suyin has more research stuff.

Choke point is a decent middle ground, but I honestly think that Hold Your Ground has decent odds of working. FVM is great for AoE control, and @yrsillar confirmed that FSS works for enemies underground under full cover, so they can't just hide forever too. With Winter's end Cadanza/AE passives all the reds are also Qi matchsticks for us.

The only risk in taking Hold your ground compared to Chokepoint is that Chokepoint basically assure some loot and doesn't make us use the escape talisman in almost all cases, but the risks are low enough that I think we can roll the dices here.

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

Persuaded to change my mind.

 

[angelofwhim]

[x] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

None shall pass!

 

[Stylph]

YOU. SHALL. NOT. PASS!!!!

[x] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[Erebeal]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[fictionfan]

Wild spirt beasts are generally weak for their level of cultivation compared to humans because they don't have a whole civilization worth of people helping them make optimal arts. That might change at the 4th realm when way becomes more important than arts. But for right now I am not that worried about spirt beasts that are close to our level of cultivation.

 

[Falconis]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

We really couldn't ask for a better fight here, assuming that fourth(?) realm thing doesn't show up to kick our shit in. Our build is made to handle essentially this exact situation, hordes of weaker enemies and a small number of peers. While the nature of the enemy weakens some of the effects from our FVM (blindness, probably), it also looks like they don't have much of an answer to it.

My larger concern is with safeguarding Li Suyin, but luckily that is ALSO what our build is made for, small-medium squad tactics. My only remaining worry is escape if things go REAL south, but Suyin said she had an escape talisman and I doubt anything down here can stop LQ from escaping, they don't seem specced for that.
Stealth and assassination, not trapping and grapping.

No need to risk damage to the chokepoint due to burrowing enemies, no need to retreat. We have an excellent footing here to fight on.

 

[Thor's Twin]

Their flesh was glistening and pale like a maggots, and their movements betrayed a certain repellant softness at odds with their shape. They resemble humans, if humans had been forced to crawl on all fours like bugs until their limbs bent unnaturally out, lending them a skittering rodent like gait. Their heads were worse, eyeless and bald, pale, blue veined flesh stretched thin over empty eye sockets. Bristling whiskers protruded from their otherwise hairless skin just below their elongated nose and chattering teeth. Their visages were like some hideous combination of human and rat.

Now that she knew what to look for, Ling Qi could feel the shadow of even more presences from further down. They were under the sand and down the tunnels, a creeping horde that she could not count. Yet even then, Ling Qi wouldn't have worried. The creatures were weak, within the bounds of the first and second realm. Ling Qi played, and her mist rolled out, engulfing the pale and skittering beasts as they turned their snouts and sniffed the air. Crimson eyes and black claws bloomed in the mist, and they were torn apart, their soft flesh like paper before the claws and fangs of her phantasms.

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Ling Qi's Beastiery:
While these creatures are disgusting, they also fit under the specifications of a "Qi Battery" as defined in the Ling Qi's Dictionary. Ultimately, the only issue is the stronger variations of the unnamed creatures. Which do pose a legitimate threat.

Identifiable by the disturbing absence of presence they exude. These creatures travel in large packs, sometimes beyond number. They are grotesque looking things which seem to take a disturbing fascination in tunneling through soft sands that can be found in the defiled caverns. They have only been encountered in the lower levels of said defiled caverns, so if adventuring there, take care and be on the look out.

 

[Andelevion]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

As other people have stated a chokepoint....wouldn't likely work, and also I'm not interested in reading about retreatinggggggg~

 

[hyperspacemage]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[AbeoLogos]

Ling Qi's Beastiery:
While these creatures are disgusting, they also fit under the specifications of a "Qi Battery" as defined in the Ling Qi's Dictionary. Ultimately, the only issue is the stronger variations of the unnamed creatures. Which do pose a legitimate threat.

Identifiable by the disturbing absence of presence they exude. These creatures travel in large packs, sometimes beyond number. They are grotesque looking things which seem to take a disturbing fascination in tunneling through soft sands that can be found in the defiled caverns. They have only been encountered in the lower levels of said defiled caverns, so if adventuring there, take care and be on the look out.

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I don't think we can take for granted their utility as qi batteries, actually. As per Li Suyin, creatures down here and life on the surface have some manner of mutual toxicity. That paired with their evidently strange not-qi suggests to me that we won't be able to refill off of them, or if we can it will be at drastically reduced efficiency. Worst case scenario is it actually harms Ling Qi, but I trust her to abort a technique before that happens.

TRF's TRD and our flower should still work, since they'll recycle our own cast off qi, Li Suyin's, and ambient compatible energies from the environment, though likely at some degree of reduced effect. It's plausible that given its origins/inspiration AE's qi consumption will function, but FSS is very unlikely in my mind. Something to keep in mind when we're measuring the feasibility of taking a stand.

 

[Zaealix]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

Don't forget how Ling Qi was in the end-of year tournament. She FEEDS on lesser weaklings, and Mud-Spirit guy had to start actively culling them to stop her.
I'm willing to bet we can hold. And let's not forget whatever Suyin can bring to the table.
No. Hold your ground. Stand firm, as the Thousand Rings would. They cannot find their way through Ling Qi's Vale, and even should they do so they will be torn apart in a festival of madness, a blizzard of death!
ALL WHO ENTER THIS PLACE, DESPAIR!

 

[fictionfan]

Li Suyin has a really complementary build to us. She provides a bunch of stuff for us to buff up.

 

[AbeoLogos]

Oh right, and my vote:

YOLO

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[Thor's Twin]

I don't think we can take for granted their utility as qi batteries, actually. As per Li Suyin, creatures down here and life on the surface have some manner of mutual toxicity. That paired with their evidently strange not-qi suggests to me that we won't be able to refill off of them, or if we can it will be at drastically reduced efficiency. Worst case scenario is it actually harms Ling Qi, but I trust her to abort a technique before that happens.

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Well... it was meant to be a joke.

But I'm pretty sure that whatever lives down here still uses qi. And if it uses qi, we can drain it.

This is from the Impure Antlion that we fought last update:

She grimaced as she felt her technique fail to dissipate the heavy chains of qi dragging at her friends limbs, but they were both fortified against attack now.

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Then Ling Qi's flying sword sang again, trailing sparks as it skated across the creatures carapace, and Ling Qi felt its hunger take hold. Through her connection to the weapon she felt it begin to hungrily siphon away the beast's qi,

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Emphasis mine.

So it does seem that the creatures down here use qi. While the human-rat creatures we are now fighting might be different in kind from another threat we already fought, it seems more likely that they also use qi to some extent.

 

[PrimalShadow]

Changed my mind; don't want to do choke point any more. Doesn't get us enough over Standing our Ground.
[X] Begin retreating. keep your mist up and layer on the full effects, you should escape easily enough

 

[AbeoLogos]

Well... it was meant to be a joke.

But I'm pretty sure that whatever lives down here still uses qi. And if it uses qi, we can drain it.

This is from the Impure Antlion that we fought last update:


Emphasis mine.

So it does seem that the creatures down here use qi. While the human-rat creatures we are now fighting might be different in kind from another threat we already fought, it seems more likely that they also use qi to some extent.

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Yes and in neither of those cases did Ling Qi attempt to metabolize the qi. I never said they're not using qi, I said Ling Qi likely can't take it into her system safely for her own use.

 

[Caligstro]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

Take a shot at the brass ring. Everybody prepped their escape talisman at the beginning of the dive.

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This for sure. Let's try for the biggest gains we can, and hopefully succeed and regain some confidence.

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[Vanguard_D]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

If our build does not work in optimal conditions, then we got a problem.

 

[Gavin Prince]

[X] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.

 

[wrecksalot]

[x] Hold your ground. You are Zeqings student and nearly a master of the Forgotten Vale Melody. Let these creatures lose themselves in your song and despair. Hold the cavern against all intruders preserving whatever is within.