- Location
- US
[X] Assisting Cai Renxiang with party set up
[X] People watching at the archive
[X] People watching at the archive
Last edited:
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] People watching at the archive
This is legit a great activity, let's do it.
This is legit a great activity, let's do it.
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Visiting Meizhen's new lodgings
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Mmmh, I guess this is a good argument.
[X] People watching at the archive
I do want to see more nerds.
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
I think SL is more important. Better have a few very good friends than many acquaintances.
The more we focus on the people we already know the more developed they each become. Also, it's kind of important for the inter-sect tournament.
- Location
- Not Telling
[X] People watching at the archive
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Good fortune and hard work may yet arrest this plague.
Ahh finally it's that time again where I pull on my tin hat and talk about
GNAWING ONES!!!
So before anything else I have a statement to make. In my gnawing ones post before this one I stated that I did not think that the foes we are facing are gnawing ones based on the physical traits presented. However with the greens revealing themselves in the last two updates I think we can safely say that the foes we fought were indeed gnawing ones. Is it 100%? No because they have not yet been named. However I think it is close enough to call it for now.
They now match the physical description almost exactly now.
I have bolded the two most important things here. First they are described as loping which neatly matches how Elder Jiao described them. And they have a canine visage. Many canines are considered to have long faces which also neatly matches how Elder Jiao described them. For now it is a very safe bet to think these are the gnawing ones.
Now some questions about what the gnawing ones are. I don't think they are simple beasts. One of the key things that separates beasts from humans is the construction of tools. Some animals use tools, like the chimps, but those are simple things such as sticks to scrape an ant hill, or a rock to break a nut. However if you combine those you get a spear. I have read that the spear is one of the greatest tools that humans devolved in it's early days because of how much increased killing range. I have not heard of animals combining two different tools together to create a much better effect such as a spear. That seems to be a unique human thing to do.
Now in this fantasy death world we don't know the full range of what spirit beasts can do. For example the oni that Wen used in the tournament had a tiger skin loin cloth/skirt. Did the oni make that? Or was it given to him in order to cover him up and preserve modesty? We know that dragons did some really cool things and presumably had tools to do them, but how many more spirit beasts create complex tools? Is it common or is it unheard of? If it is unheard of then gnawing ones likely have a relation to either humans or dragons and neither of those are good things. If it is known to happen then we may just be dealing with a scary group of spirit beasts. Or we may be dealing with something far greater...or perhaps worse.
It would have been useful to at least learn if the gnawing ones had cores inside of them as that seems like a sure fire way to tell a human from a spirit beast. At least according to the limited world knowledge we have right now.
The twisting tunnels seem a little less ...impossible.
So from these two updates what have we learned about gnawing ones. Well first they seem to have little care about their own dead.
Second, there is a great deal of gnawing ones. We can guess at this both from the manner of their tactics, zerg swarm for the win, and their uncaring attitude even for the death of a third realm.
Right after the death of it's "comrade" there is no sign of pain, or loss, no shock only cold thought. Now we don't know the full story between those two creatures. Maybe they really hated each other and mister spear caught mister black ooze eating the lunch that mister spear clearly labeled in the work fridge. We just don't know. However the norm for humans is for there to be shock when someone dies close to you no matter what your personal feelings are of that person. I believe that this line right here is proof of the negligible worth that even a green has in the gnawing ones' society.
Now though lets move onto the abilities of each of the green level threats and my thoughts about what that means for the threats we may face further down in these twisted labyrinths. From now one the knife wielding gnawing one will be known as knife bro. The spear wielding one, spear bro; and mister ooze will be ooze bro for convenience sake.
Behold the infinite malignity of the stars!
First off lets talk about knife bro. He is the first threat we see and thus have the most about him in regards to abilities. He seems to be a support based character that focuses on spiritual buffs with some debuffs thrown in. The first thing that knife bro does is give a perception boost to all of the mobs around us. To me this is really interesting and I will get back to it later. The second thing I believe he does is trigger a massive group buff to the mobs.
Now it is a little unclear where this filthy pulse of qi came from but a pretty solid guess is knife bro. Honestly this is not super interesting to me. It seems like a really basic idea to group buff mobs when they are being stream rolled like they were. A little more interesting to me is the fact that the mobs gained a "metallic sheen." This reminds me of the antlion which also had metal interwoven with its carapace. This could mean that metal is a very common element down here in these depths. However, it also could be an example of convergence evolution and having similar problems to solve. A sample size of two makes it really hard to try and guess these types of trends.
The third thing that knife bro did was divert a single target debuff to another target. This is very interesting to me to me as well and I will talk more about it in a little bit.
Here we see the fourth and final thing that knife bro did which was a debuff of some sort that was ... pathetic? We don't even know what it would do Sixiang crushed it so easily. So it is a little hard to talk about but there is still some interesting things to think about still. Time is really strange in a narrative combat scene. Things should be happening all at once but because of the way that story telling has to function it gives each action a false sense of having a sequence. So the question then becomes of quickly does knife bro throwing out the debuff, it getting destroyed by Sixiang, and his growing alarm happen? If it happens quickly enough then the effect of Sixiang crushing the debuff attempt could be the cause of the growing alarm. Now this may not be the case and knife bro's growing alarm could be because of how poorly everything is going. However it the alarm is from how easily Sixiang crushed the debuff then it means that he excepted it to work. He also likely expected it to work because it would be a waste to throw out something that you don't think would work. This shows me that whatever creatures he is used to facing down here have weak spiritual defense. Now this is pure conjuncture and maybe the debuff was a panic move from a situation going down hill really fast. Once again many of my ideas are from a super limited sample sized so they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Now lets talk about the first and third abilities of knife bro and what they mean. First off because of how quickly knife bro realized what was happening and how quickly he acted to solve the problem and how effective his solution was we can pretty safely assume that the creatures he encounters with some regularity that mess with perception. Remember, solutions are created to problems. Therefore I believe that perception arts will be key for going down deeper into this horrific(and wonderful) place because I expect to see quite a few creatures that dish out perception changing effects. Second is the effect of shifting debuffs to a weaker teammate.
Now the wording here tells me that between when we started the Elegy and when we finished knife bro managed to make it switch targets. This means that it has to be an instant or response. Nothing else is fast enough. It also means that he was smart or experienced enough in spiritual attacks to see what was coming and act on it. This to me implies that this type of spiritual attack is also very common in the deeper parts of this place. Resist and resolve are likely going to be super important for everyone that dives deep into this forsaken place.
Darkness closes in, haunting the hearts of men.
Wow that was a lot off of just one of the bros! Thankful the rest of the bro's have much less screen time and a lot less information to parse through and therefore are going to be shorter. Hopefully
Now onto spear bro! Now what does he do. He likes to bounce like a pinball in a pinball machine and try to stab us with a poisoned spear. We can see here that he has some range but is likely very limited in its scope.
Spear bro's gig seems to be speed. Attacking from unexpected angles as he bounces all over the walls and such. A tactic like that would not work super well in wide open spaces where the time between bounces becomes magnified. To me this means that there will be more tight tunnels and small caverns, which is like a big, big surprise. Now that the obvious is over lets talk about why someone would choose to attack like that. It could mean very fast creatures that require fast adjustments to hunt down. It could also mean large creatures with guarded weak spots that you need to bounce around to get at. There is not really lot to go on. The acidic spray did not get enough screen time to really let me know what it does beside eat through armor which I expect is a fairly common and necessary effect everywhere in the world. We just need to keep in mind that speed and the ability to change directions beyond mortal limits is important to spear bro and so it should be important to us as we learn more about how combat works down here in the dark.
And now... the darkness holds dominion – black as death.
Now lets talk about ooze guy. Not much to really talk about with him. He seemed a lot like a crafter person like Li Suyin could be. He carried a bunch of different effects in different pouches and had an almost doomsday device with him. The ooze was scary and seemed to grow larger and stronger super quickly based on the number of corpses it ate. The thing that scares me is the fact that we could detect the fact that the ooze had a spiritual realm.
This tells me that it is not a normal effect like a bomb would be. I have a gut feeling that the ooze has more in common with spirit beasts than bombs. The concern then becomes that there are wild oozes wandering the tunnels down here that would require a ton more qi than normal to kill. Once again a lot of speculation. There is just not that much to go. We know it consumes living and nonliving matter. We don't know what it does with that matter though. Does it pump out more of itself? Does it just expand until it can't and then die? Is it living or more like a puppet? To many unknowns about purpose for me to really break it down. It is likely used though in very similar cases where gnawing ones warbands having to flee from a superior enemy. Just dump the ooze out and let the two monsters fight to the death as everyone else tries to run away.
Such a terrible assault cannot be left unanswered!
It is getting pretty late for me where I live so I will end here. I may do a short follow up on what the implications of the gnawing one going crazy after elegy trapped it could mean. However for now this is the end of this instalment of GNAWING ONES.
A momentary abatement...
Ahh finally it's that time again where I pull on my tin hat and talk about
GNAWING ONES!!!
So before anything else I have a statement to make. In my gnawing ones post before this one I stated that I did not think that the foes we are facing are gnawing ones based on the physical traits presented. However with the greens revealing themselves in the last two updates I think we can safely say that the foes we fought were indeed gnawing ones. Is it 100%? No because they have not yet been named. However I think it is close enough to call it for now.
They now match the physical description almost exactly now.
I have bolded the two most important things here. First they are described as loping which neatly matches how Elder Jiao described them. And they have a canine visage. Many canines are considered to have long faces which also neatly matches how Elder Jiao described them. For now it is a very safe bet to think these are the gnawing ones.
Now some questions about what the gnawing ones are. I don't think they are simple beasts. One of the key things that separates beasts from humans is the construction of tools. Some animals use tools, like the chimps, but those are simple things such as sticks to scrape an ant hill, or a rock to break a nut. However if you combine those you get a spear. I have read that the spear is one of the greatest tools that humans devolved in it's early days because of how much increased killing range. I have not heard of animals combining two different tools together to create a much better effect such as a spear. That seems to be a unique human thing to do.
Now in this fantasy death world we don't know the full range of what spirit beasts can do. For example the oni that Wen used in the tournament had a tiger skin loin cloth/skirt. Did the oni make that? Or was it given to him in order to cover him up and preserve modesty? We know that dragons did some really cool things and presumably had tools to do them, but how many more spirit beasts create complex tools? Is it common or is it unheard of? If it is unheard of then gnawing ones likely have a relation to either humans or dragons and neither of those are good things. If it is known to happen then we may just be dealing with a scary group of spirit beasts. Or we may be dealing with something far greater...or perhaps worse.
It would have been useful to at least learn if the gnawing ones had cores inside of them as that seems like a sure fire way to tell a human from a spirit beast. At least according to the limited world knowledge we have right now.
The twisting tunnels seem a little less ...impossible.
So from these two updates what have we learned about gnawing ones. Well first they seem to have little care about their own dead.
Groups that respect the dead do not use them as weapons. From this we can postulate several different things. First death is super common for the gnawing ones. The more death a group experiences the less meaning death has for that group. For the gnawing ones to assign so little value to their dead means that they have a lot of dead. This means that they live in a incredible dangerous environment. It would seem that the peace of the cave system we have explored so far is the outlier and not the norm.
Second, there is a great deal of gnawing ones. We can guess at this both from the manner of their tactics, zerg swarm for the win, and their uncaring attitude even for the death of a third realm.
Right after the death of it's "comrade" there is no sign of pain, or loss, no shock only cold thought. Now we don't know the full story between those two creatures. Maybe they really hated each other and mister spear caught mister black ooze eating the lunch that mister spear clearly labeled in the work fridge. We just don't know. However the norm for humans is for there to be shock when someone dies close to you no matter what your personal feelings are of that person. I believe that this line right here is proof of the negligible worth that even a green has in the gnawing ones' society.
Now though lets move onto the abilities of each of the green level threats and my thoughts about what that means for the threats we may face further down in these twisted labyrinths. From now one the knife wielding gnawing one will be known as knife bro. The spear wielding one, spear bro; and mister ooze will be ooze bro for convenience sake.
Behold the infinite malignity of the stars!
First off lets talk about knife bro. He is the first threat we see and thus have the most about him in regards to abilities. He seems to be a support based character that focuses on spiritual buffs with some debuffs thrown in. The first thing that knife bro does is give a perception boost to all of the mobs around us. To me this is really interesting and I will get back to it later. The second thing I believe he does is trigger a massive group buff to the mobs.
Now it is a little unclear where this filthy pulse of qi came from but a pretty solid guess is knife bro. Honestly this is not super interesting to me. It seems like a really basic idea to group buff mobs when they are being stream rolled like they were. A little more interesting to me is the fact that the mobs gained a "metallic sheen." This reminds me of the antlion which also had metal interwoven with its carapace. This could mean that metal is a very common element down here in these depths. However, it also could be an example of convergence evolution and having similar problems to solve. A sample size of two makes it really hard to try and guess these types of trends.
The third thing that knife bro did was divert a single target debuff to another target. This is very interesting to me to me as well and I will talk more about it in a little bit.
Here we see the fourth and final thing that knife bro did which was a debuff of some sort that was ... pathetic? We don't even know what it would do Sixiang crushed it so easily. So it is a little hard to talk about but there is still some interesting things to think about still. Time is really strange in a narrative combat scene. Things should be happening all at once but because of the way that story telling has to function it gives each action a false sense of having a sequence. So the question then becomes of quickly does knife bro throwing out the debuff, it getting destroyed by Sixiang, and his growing alarm happen? If it happens quickly enough then the effect of Sixiang crushing the debuff attempt could be the cause of the growing alarm. Now this may not be the case and knife bro's growing alarm could be because of how poorly everything is going. However it the alarm is from how easily Sixiang crushed the debuff then it means that he excepted it to work. He also likely expected it to work because it would be a waste to throw out something that you don't think would work. This shows me that whatever creatures he is used to facing down here have weak spiritual defense. Now this is pure conjuncture and maybe the debuff was a panic move from a situation going down hill really fast. Once again many of my ideas are from a super limited sample sized so they should be taken with a grain of salt.
Now lets talk about the first and third abilities of knife bro and what they mean. First off because of how quickly knife bro realized what was happening and how quickly he acted to solve the problem and how effective his solution was we can pretty safely assume that the creatures he encounters with some regularity that mess with perception. Remember, solutions are created to problems. Therefore I believe that perception arts will be key for going down deeper into this horrific(and wonderful) place because I expect to see quite a few creatures that dish out perception changing effects. Second is the effect of shifting debuffs to a weaker teammate.
Now the wording here tells me that between when we started the Elegy and when we finished knife bro managed to make it switch targets. This means that it has to be an instant or response. Nothing else is fast enough. It also means that he was smart or experienced enough in spiritual attacks to see what was coming and act on it. This to me implies that this type of spiritual attack is also very common in the deeper parts of this place. Resist and resolve are likely going to be super important for everyone that dives deep into this forsaken place.
Darkness closes in, haunting the hearts of men.
Wow that was a lot off of just one of the bros! Thankful the rest of the bro's have much less screen time and a lot less information to parse through and therefore are going to be shorter. Hopefully
Now onto spear bro! Now what does he do. He likes to bounce like a pinball in a pinball machine and try to stab us with a poisoned spear. We can see here that he has some range but is likely very limited in its scope.
Spear bro's gig seems to be speed. Attacking from unexpected angles as he bounces all over the walls and such. A tactic like that would not work super well in wide open spaces where the time between bounces becomes magnified. To me this means that there will be more tight tunnels and small caverns, which is like a big, big surprise. Now that the obvious is over lets talk about why someone would choose to attack like that. It could mean very fast creatures that require fast adjustments to hunt down. It could also mean large creatures with guarded weak spots that you need to bounce around to get at. There is not really lot to go on. The acidic spray did not get enough screen time to really let me know what it does beside eat through armor which I expect is a fairly common and necessary effect everywhere in the world. We just need to keep in mind that speed and the ability to change directions beyond mortal limits is important to spear bro and so it should be important to us as we learn more about how combat works down here in the dark.
And now... the darkness holds dominion – black as death.
Now lets talk about ooze guy. Not much to really talk about with him. He seemed a lot like a crafter person like Li Suyin could be. He carried a bunch of different effects in different pouches and had an almost doomsday device with him. The ooze was scary and seemed to grow larger and stronger super quickly based on the number of corpses it ate. The thing that scares me is the fact that we could detect the fact that the ooze had a spiritual realm.
This tells me that it is not a normal effect like a bomb would be. I have a gut feeling that the ooze has more in common with spirit beasts than bombs. The concern then becomes that there are wild oozes wandering the tunnels down here that would require a ton more qi than normal to kill. Once again a lot of speculation. There is just not that much to go. We know it consumes living and nonliving matter. We don't know what it does with that matter though. Does it pump out more of itself? Does it just expand until it can't and then die? Is it living or more like a puppet? To many unknowns about purpose for me to really break it down. It is likely used though in very similar cases where gnawing ones warbands having to flee from a superior enemy. Just dump the ooze out and let the two monsters fight to the death as everyone else tries to run away.
Such a terrible assault cannot be left unanswered!
It is getting pretty late for me where I live so I will end here. I may do a short follow up on what the implications of the gnawing one going crazy after elegy trapped it could mean. However for now this is the end of this instalment of GNAWING ONES.
A momentary abatement...
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Sixiang is actually really good at dispelling debuffs in the new system.
Ling Qi said:
Basically, when someone tries to resist a debuff it's Resolve/Composure rank + Tech rank + misc. For example, if someone tries to dispel Traveller's End, Ling Qi would have Resolve C + TE B = C15 + AM 3 + Equip 10 + Dark 15 = B13.Sixiang said:
As you can see, Ling Qi has invested somewhat into music resist equipment and has multiple arts giving resist right now, and Traveller's End is by far her hardest to dispel technique.... But Sixiang's own dispel is B10, so she has average chance to make it work.
So I wouldn't see it as "They have weak spiritual defences" and more as "Sixiang is really good at dispelling".