Abeo put their finger on something that's been subconsciously bothering me: it's kinda nuts that we're this close to a diplomatic summit that is unprecedented in the Emerald Seas' Imperial history, and we're only now putting together a basic dossier with the opinions, demands and wishes of all the Emerald Seas' Count clans.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
You are aware that those same concerns can be applied to the history and culture option, rigth?
You say that investigating their demands now is "sloppy". Which I wholeheartedly disagree with. For me it's the option that takes the summit seriously by no focusing exclusively in the aspects that interest Ling Qi.
In any case, you propose that the material option would be unfruitful because we don't have all the Count Clans demands, only half or so. Thus, we can't steer the conversation towards the right places.
First, with the Wang demands of clear frontiers and the Meng demands of help reducing raids in their territory, we have plenty of themes to lead the conversation into.
Second, you want to do the culture option to find out points of conflict with the Count clans.
So, I present the same question to you.
How are we going to lead the conversation towards those possible conflicts if we don't know all our different factions's demands?
Specially since we don't know the demands of the Imperial oriented Jia and the anti-Cloud Nomad Argent Sect?
At least to me, and following your own logic, it seems that the culture option is a lot more liable to miss important, relevant faultlines than the material option.
The conclusion is that the culture option is actually the task we're not prepared to accomplish properly at the moment.
We should return to it after we have had our rendezvous with GG and Cai Renxiang and have constructed a plan of action, during one of the remaining meetings prior to the summit proper.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes, because our teammates are covering that. And of the ones we were assigned to? Their concerns are purely material in nature. Which should be pretty telling, since they're the ones on the border with the White Sky.
ReignTorrential
Save Your Crown for a Rainy Day
Surprisingly, this isn't really true! When we looked at White Sky maps, we discovered the largest cluster of their settlements seem to be directly South of the Luo, whose demands are cultural in nature.
For the purposes of determining which Counts are Border Clans in the context of both the Wall and the White Sky, the answer is the Meng, the Wang, the Jia, and the Luo. And, of course, the Ducal Cai, including both Snowblossom and other border holdings sworn to the Cai.
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- Location
- Washington
[X] Seek out information on material things, structures of government and institutions at play here.(better understanding of the likely material demands and potential flashpoints of conflict between your institutions)
Eh, we're broadly prepped for cultural exchange as-is, because we're, well, of the culture of the Empire/Emerald Seas. And there's a wider gulf in the first place to be filling in with know-how.
There'll be a time for comparing more specific quirks and regional/clan/ethnic values conflicts later. And for sure we'll need to pull more specific knowledge for it. But that's out ahead of the more broad foundational work we still have before us.
There'll be a time for comparing more specific quirks and regional/clan/ethnic values conflicts later. And for sure we'll need to pull more specific knowledge for it. But that's out ahead of the more broad foundational work we still have before us.
We are kinda of the culture of the Empire/Emerald Seas. Ling Qi's circumstances and approach to culture is pretty unique. And then the Emerald Seas culture is really complex and fragmented.
But Ling Qi's, actually quite spotty when you think about it, knowledge about Emeral Seas culture is not the crux of the matter here.
The idea behind the culture option is to search for points of conflict between our side's various demands and the WS's culture.
It's like @barty said
However, if we don't even know the demands of all the factions, we can't properly check if those demands would be an affront to the WS's culture.
The Jin's or the Argent Sect's demands may clash with an important piece of the WS's culture that we didn't learn about on this meeting because we didn't even know we had to ask about it.
The meeting could result on a waste of time. Or worse, we could end up with a blind spot we don't even know about because we wrongly believed we had already learnt the WS's faultlines.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm okay with both votes, but I think you're forgetting that, though option 1 says we're choosing history and culture, we're actually going to learn about the various factions inside the White Sky. And we can't worry about the material goods we should give the WS when we DON'T KNOW who we're catering to.
The WS is not a single organisation. They're just as fragmented as we saw here. In the most recent update, we just saw that, though the whole WS generally prefer women as Emissaries, the Seared Lands believe that an emissary is formed from one man and a woman.
Just like how the Emerald Seas is made up of different factions based on their cultural and political leanings (Weilu and Imperial) and how they want different things based on their history and cultural make-up, the White Sky is the same.
We really can't decide who wants what when we don't know who's who. *Especially* since the material goods we're learning about are what the Polar Nation as an entity wants, not what the *border* province we're meeting with wants.
That's one of the reasons why I'm voting for cultural and historical knowledge. So that we can learn about the different factions and plan our approach for each of them, just like we're doing with the different counts in the ES. And so that we can learn where those factions clash culturally so that we don't alienate half of them with our words, and where *we* (the ES) clash with all of them so that we don't alienate all of them.
Edit: Remember, one big thing we've had problems with is making political decisions because of a lack of information. For example, with the Wang v Diao vote. So learning about the different factions involved can mitigate that. Plus, looking at the different factions, we can generally guess what they want. For example, we know the Meng want to reform the South. They can't do that if raids keep setting back progress, so they want the raiding to stop. The Luo are big on Community and contracts since they sign pacts with spirits. They want assurance that pacts and agreements will be followed. The Wang want are architects and builders. They want clear-cut maps to make decisions for building.
The White Sky are definitely different from the Empire. They have a different history and framework of thinking, so any extrapolations we make may not be 100% correct. Maybe not even 75% correct, but at least we can have a general idea. And by learning more about the WS's broader history and culture, we'll be able to make more accurate guesses on what they might want materially.
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Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Isn't being completely unprepared for material discussion bad for us? IF we don't know what both sides is going to ask these talks will be complete crapshoot.
We already done some basic cultural research before this by taking those options. So why not see what they are in need of.
We already done some basic cultural research before this by taking those options. So why not see what they are in need of.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, the thing is, the summit is actually a cultural exchange, with a nonaggression pact tacked on, so learning about the culture would only help us more. And, just like in my most recent update, which I shall also post here, we can come up with what they might want materially based on their culture.
Remember, one big thing we've had problems with is making political decisions because of a lack of information. For example, with the Wang v Diao vote. So learning about the different factions involved can mitigate that. Plus, looking at the different factions, we can generally guess what they want.
For example, we know the Meng want to reform the South to bring back the Weilu. They can't do that if raids keep setting back progress, so they want the raiding to stop. The Luo are big on Community and contracts since they sign pacts with spirits. They want assurance that pacts and agreements will be followed. The Wang are architects and builders; they're practical people who want to create the perfect fusion between imperial and Weilu methods. Because of that, they want clear-cut maps to make decisions for building.
The White Sky are definitely different from the Empire. They have a different history and framework of thinking, so any extrapolations we make may not be 100% correct. Maybe not even 75% correct, but at least we can have a general idea. And by learning more about the WS's broader history and culture, we'll be able to make more accurate guesses on what they might want materially.
Also note, the things the people from the counts, or at least the counts we've talked to, want aren't strictly material, but rather vague ideas. Like, we can guess what each of them wants, based on their individual factions, but we can also guess what they want from the greater ES history. All of them want something directly related to the Cloud Nomads and their raiding culture. The Meng want raids to stop period because they've been a constant in the South. The Luo want agreements to be followed because, in the past, the ES made pacts with some tribes, but those guys fucked off and new tribes replaced them and didn't follow the previous pacts. And the Wang want clear-cut maps because one big point of contention between the ES and the Cloud Nomads is that the ES settles empty land which the nomads think is theirs.
So we can also guess their material wants based on their history too
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ReignTorrential
Save Your Crown for a Rainy Day
When it comes to choosing between these two options, we currently have a bit of information on both topics. I don't think our current knowledge of the White Sky, or the greater Polar Nation, actually skews much one way or the other. As a basic example, the Iron King story we chose to hear about was a historical tale, sure, but it revealed perhaps more about Polar Institutions and Governments than it did about Polar Culture. After all, the Iron King was a King first and foremost, and the tale was told within the context of an institution that the Polar Nation doesn't want to repeat.
During the first contact meeting in turn 11, we heard about the Threefold Winter, Sudica, Fryja, and the Crone, but part of that tale was how Sudica formed the first great althing, which on Earth is one of the oldest parliament systems in the world. We also recently learned that Sudica became the Glittering City, the capital of the Polar Nation.
We heard Jaromila's tale, wherein her old clan mother and new tribe father fled the Glittering City out of love, and were harassed by Jaromila's clan even after they went all the way to the North of the rural White Sky province. Along the way, even before reaching the White Sky, they were graciously welcomed by many towns, before the ongoing harassment dried up their support, and the headmen were forced to ask them to depart.
What I'm really getting at here is that these topics are hopelessly intertwined, and we need all the information we can get our hands on, from either choice. This is an interesting vote, but I don't think there's any particular reason to doomspeak about one choice or the other. And there's no reason to present one topic as comparatively underexplored, especially when they're both such large topics they couldn't be anything but underexplored at the present juncture.
EDIT: forgot to mention that we know the White Sky very much value good wood, and need manpower much like the Wang do, as evidenced by the weregild and the assimilation of southern Cloud nomads, respectively.
EDIT 2: Take a look at this blurb, which provides the basic institutional structure of the Polar Nation.
During the first contact meeting in turn 11, we heard about the Threefold Winter, Sudica, Fryja, and the Crone, but part of that tale was how Sudica formed the first great althing, which on Earth is one of the oldest parliament systems in the world. We also recently learned that Sudica became the Glittering City, the capital of the Polar Nation.
We heard Jaromila's tale, wherein her old clan mother and new tribe father fled the Glittering City out of love, and were harassed by Jaromila's clan even after they went all the way to the North of the rural White Sky province. Along the way, even before reaching the White Sky, they were graciously welcomed by many towns, before the ongoing harassment dried up their support, and the headmen were forced to ask them to depart.
What I'm really getting at here is that these topics are hopelessly intertwined, and we need all the information we can get our hands on, from either choice. This is an interesting vote, but I don't think there's any particular reason to doomspeak about one choice or the other. And there's no reason to present one topic as comparatively underexplored, especially when they're both such large topics they couldn't be anything but underexplored at the present juncture.
EDIT: forgot to mention that we know the White Sky very much value good wood, and need manpower much like the Wang do, as evidenced by the weregild and the assimilation of southern Cloud nomads, respectively.
EDIT 2: Take a look at this blurb, which provides the basic institutional structure of the Polar Nation.
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We've still got 2 months of prep to do, we'll be getting to these sorts of issues. But we'll probably get to them a lot more efficiently and with better/more useful resolution on the info if we lay down a more basic understanding of who's who on the other side of the table first. That way we can immediately and directly assign material interests to specific parties with confidence. Right now, we don't know if we even know all of the relevant parties already or not, and we have no real info on any of them.
I wanted to stay out of this one because I only had a mild preference, but now I decided I crave chaos instead
[X] Seek out information on material things, structures of government and institutions at play here.(better understanding of the likely material demands and potential flashpoints of conflict between your institutions)
[X] Seek out information on material things, structures of government and institutions at play here.(better understanding of the likely material demands and potential flashpoints of conflict between your institutions)
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But it's not? I know what that vote ages ago said, but "cultural exchange" was only the initial premise.
That's not the reason any of the Count clans are here. Even the Reformist Meng are far more interested in stregthening their faction and achieving their own cultural goals than to actually learn about the White Sky's culture.
I would bet the White Sky is the same.
This summit is at it's core an effort for a non-agression pact, and that is heavely dependent on the established frontiers and other materials concerns.
It's true that we can get useful info about the Polar Nation with the culture vote. In particular the dispositon of the their other factions beside WS is specially important. So, it wouldn't be a wasted action or anything. We would benefit with it, even if the material option would be far more productive.
But trying to infere their material wants out of that is an exercise of futility. Nowhere near 75% accurate, and not even a general idea. It's only thanks to hindsight that you can say that about the Wang, Meng and Luo.
What I can't stand is this mentality of "Yes, the material option is important, but we can just do it later. In fact, it's so important that it would be weird that we didn't learn it at some point, so we can ignore it and we'll get it anyway". It's the Diao vs Wang quest vote all over again.
When something is important, you do it. You don't use it's importance as a narrative hostage. We don't know how many meetings like this one are left or when we'll hold them. So leaving such crucial intel gathering to the unkown future doesn't sit right with me.
We all know what happens in quests when you leave things for "later".
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- Location
- the internet
That's not really true. We've got a basic dossier on each of their opinions, wants and demands but not specifically for the summit. However, its realistic for LQ to be a little behind on things because she doesn't come from a noble house and Renxiang's mom isn't going to just give them a spy network for collecting info. They have to make it on their own.
Hence the Houzang's Gift project. LQ has a budding spy network of her own now but its nothing as robust as one of the big established clans.
[X] Seek out information on material things, structures of government and institutions at play here.(better understanding of the likely material demands and potential flashpoints of conflict between your institutions)
So, here's a point that some people may not have considered. Say we get great information from the history/culture choice on things that are likely to offend the various Polar Nation factions and/or cause an incident. Then we go around to the various representatives and say, "Hey, here's some things you shouldn't say or do." The more progressive factions and the factions that want the summit to succeed are likely to just shrug and say "okay" even if they think some of the asks are weird. But if the more conservative or imperial aligned factions think an ask is weird, there's a decent chance they'll do the exact thing we told them not to do just to show up the uncivilized barbarians.
Material concerns are something that even the conservative and imperial aligned factions should have no trouble understanding, so we're less likely to run into issues of "look at these weird barbarians with their weird sensibilities."
Material concerns are something that even the conservative and imperial aligned factions should have no trouble understanding, so we're less likely to run into issues of "look at these weird barbarians with their weird sensibilities."
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[] Sharing of historical texts and information. Strengthening the purported cultural ties will go a long way toward mollifying grumbling from more conservative factions in both parties.
I mean, yes, it's a cultural exchange, but it's a cultural exchange specifically to legitimize our ties and the "shared ancestry" we pitched in Shenhua's court, and ease the tensions and egos between conservative factions. And this is between border nations too. So I think it still fits with the initial idea of cultural exchange. It's part of the reason why I think learning about culture would really help because we're learning about them, and they're learning about us, so that we can phrase things such that the conservatives will go "Actually, these people are alright" sp things can carry on. Like, the Meng are only onboard because the tapestry showed a shared ancestry in the past. No, we're hoping to do that on the WS' side.
Remember, for us to have a nonaggression agreement, we have to show each side that they can work together. We have to show them where they intersect so that they can have common ground. And it's easier to do that when we know their culture and factions. Working out material concerns and signing a nonaggression pact come AFTER we have all agreed that yes, we can work together.
Also, both options are good. One isn't better than the other since culture and institutional development are deeply entwined. Learning about each faction will help us know what they want, and learning what they want will help us identify each faction. I think we'll get both, so this vote is just about what we'll focus on.
And I'll prefer to focus on clarifying something that's more muddy, like culture and factions, than material needs. If we learn about material needs, we can see which faction wants what. But we might not know why they want some things or the specifics they want because, at the end of the day, option 1, material needs, is about the polity in general, not the people that make it up.
On the other hand, learning about each faction and their culture will help us determine what each faction wants, or if we don't have that, something that can mollify them. Judging what each faction wants, based on their culture is easier than judging what factions exist because of their needs. For example, maybe by looking at their material wants, we can divide them into Imperial and Weilu. But we won't be able to separate them into Weilu moderate, Weilu conservative, Weilu reactionary, and Weilu reformer because at the end of the day, all 4, or most of the 4, want the same thing: to preserve the Weilu ways and bring them back. But they disagree on WHAT those Weilu ways are and HOW they should bring them back. We won't be able to get those specifics if we're only focusing on material needs.
It's just easier to develop and infer wants from the cultural perspective than from the institutional perspective.
On that note, I've decided that the centrist lifestyle isn't for me
[X] Seek out information on history and culture to better understand the forces at play here. (better understanding of the factions within the White Sky their disposition, and potential cultural flashpoints)
That's a risk that can't be wholly dismissed, which is why the hope is Ling Qi handles things delicately. Having foreknowledge can help steer things around potholes without necessarily giving antagonistic parties ammunition. It makes it easier to babysit everyone.
None of what Ling Qi learns, with either option, should be assumed as automatically shared verbatim with the other Imperial parties of interest. We're going to be taking it and digesting it in our personal little clique first.
ReignTorrential
Save Your Crown for a Rainy Day
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Seek out information on material things, structures of government and institutions at play here.(better understanding of the likely material demands and potential flashpoints of conflict between your institutions)
Voting to increase drama because I think both options are neat.
Voting to increase drama because I think both options are neat.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
[X] Seek out information on material things, structures of government and institutions at play here.(better understanding of the likely material demands and potential flashpoints of conflict between your institutions)
Voting not for the sake of drama but because I support this option more than the other one.
Voting not for the sake of drama but because I support this option more than the other one.