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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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What a wonderful update! So much fun! Let's end it by stealing the wind (who is also our friend!)

Vote is open!

[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.

Seems to me its been some time since we've had a good Hidden Moon moment. :)
 
[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
For a write-in that will probably be ignored

[X][Write-In] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon guard you. You have uncovered your foe's name and know their nature. Stand your ground and let their mysteries wash over you.

At the risk of stabbing ourselves in the heart for power, I see this as reenacting the Hidden Moon's origin story. We trust in the Hidden Moon to protect us against an overwhelming threat as we seek to understand them more fully. This also recalls him demanding that we assert an actual argument.

The downside is that the Hidden Moon doesn't come out unscathed at the end of their story. They won but are severely injured in the process. We probably will suffer some manner of significant injury
 
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[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.

This works best for many reasons.
  • This vote determines which Moon Ling Qi attempts to fuse with Dreaming. We already decided to start fusing Hidden with Dreaming during the PLR insight vote.
It is not enough to wield the power of the Dreaming Moon here, to Dance the Dreamlit path, but you are not only the disciple of one moon. To wield their power separately is not enough.
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This will just finalise it, IMO. Hidden is Ling Qi's past and Dreaming is her future. Mixing them and continuing on the path of using the past to build a better future is good and continues where we left off.

yrsillar said:
It is the artist's duty to question. The trickster's role to make fools of the mighty. Hold the mirror to history and tradition, and reveal their absurdities.(Creation, Expression, Truth)
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The Hidden Moon was the desire for knowledge, and through it, power. It was knowing all of the things that could be threatening and how to counter each and every one. It was looking back on her past and not letting her bile overwhelm her when she examined those memories to see how they had shaped her and how that related to material reality.
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  • Nightmare Sixiang is fundamentally hidden is their approach. They use secrets, causality, and knowledge of people and relationships to cause widespread chaos.
"C'mon now, gramps is here, he'd give us some help I bet. Can you imagine it, can you imagine this whole crazy scheme falling to bits with us out of the way, with us pushing it that way? The chaos that'd bring. Everyone building up this big moment and then…. It all falls to dust. The fists and blades come out. The little broken doll she's stringing along falling to bits, and that crazy monster self destructing. Wouldn't that be a scene, a whole new generation of nightmares and dashed hopes."
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  • It'll allow Ling Qi to explore a core part of the Hidden Moon, obtrusion and secrets, WITH Sixiang together, after that nearly destroyed their relationship. For Ling Qi, it means she'll get to engage with something new, which will both help her with her Way and the summit. Communication is good, but how do secrets and obscuration tie into it? And it allows Sixiang to explore their chaotic side in a constructive way.

  • Ling Qi will be emulating the Hidden Moon's founding story. The Hidden Moon, bu using revealing the Star's names and understanding their nature, stole their power.
At last, one hundred years after the day she had first sat down, something changed. The dust of a century rained down as the woman's head turned down to look upon the blank pages of her book. Above, the stars jeered and mocked her, certain that their victory had at last come, and yet as the sharp eyed woman's withered arm creaked and put qill to paper at last, she spoke. Puffs of dust and dirt falling from her lips with each word.

"Be silent, O charlatans, thou mocking vermin. I have had enough of thy venom, and so have we all."

The words echoed through the night, and beyond the sky and for just a moment, some among the stars trembled. Yet most were merely enraged. "Thou dare," they hissed, and the few hairs still clinging to the sharp eyed woman's scalp withered and crumbled to dust. "When thy bones barely cling to their neighbors and thy organs fail, held together only by moonlight and will. Thou think to speak such to the pure ones, thy betters?"

"I am the daughter of your conquerors," the sharp eyes woman said, her voice as a dry fall wind. Her quill began to scratch the page, leaving trails of moonlight in the shape of letters ever before seen by mortal eyes. "And I name you cowards all."

"We laid thy parents low," hissed the stars. "Speak not of conquerors, little doll of mud."

"I have gazed upon thy light for one hundred years, and learned thy tongue in the same, O feeble vermin, and know the lie of thy words. The blood of warriors boils in fen and ocean deep; it churns deep in Mother's veins, and clings to Father's heights. Thou art laggards and cowards all, as sneaking vermin and scavenger birds. Thou feared Mother, and thou feared Father, and thou fear their children most of all. Know this, of malicious ones. Thou art counted, and thou art named."

The woman's quill completed the first character, and the world shook as the great northern star, brightest of the stellar host howled. The stars light dimmed and softened, and a drifting thread of silver filtered down from the sky to coil around the sharp eyed woman. "To the moon do I offer thy names and thy light," the woman said, a hundred years and a lifetime of spite in her words. "Peer through the curtains as thou wilt, but never again shall thy malice reach any but the highest of peaks. To the moon I offer thy light, and thy hunger. Though the dark might remain full of terrors, never again will the night sky bring fear of its own."


With each character that was written, a star dimmed and the world shook. With each dimmed star, the woman's flesh was restored. At last, when the last star dimmed, the woman stood, and she was cloaked in glittering starlight. No more withered bones with a skull like visage, the sharp eyed woman looked upon the stars with eyes of moonlight, as an elder hale and hearty. Clothed in the glittering finery of the subdued night sky, she nodded in satisfaction and her book snapped shut, shaking the world one final time. Above, the stars no longer winked and mocked, but hung still, silent and unperturbed.

"I am ready O eldest. These bones are wary, and this life has passed. Might I be with thee, and keep an eye upon these miscreants forevermore?"

There was no answer in the tongues of men, only a soft sigh as the sharp eyed woman dissolved into a beam of moonlight and left the world forever. And above, the pale light of the moon grew bright with reflected starlight.

For the first time, the moon turned her bright face from the earth, and the stars quailed.
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In the same way, Ling Qi will use her knowledge and understanding of Brother Darksong's nature and name to steal his power over her and Sixiang.

  • We really don't engage with Hidden enough. If we do, it's disjointed and doesn't really have any substance. For example, our most recent Hidden moment was ALSO overshadowed by Grinning and what it means to be a thief without stealing. It doesn't really have anything for itself, and we've not really dived into it and its core themes like we have with Grinning and Dreaming. We've still not connected with what is a core part of it, Secrets and obscuration and how they can protect. As a community cultivator whose main word will be Communication, we really should engage more with it
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.

The other thing is I feel like this option engages with the subject matter of the arc more, uh, more. Maybe? Secrets and knowledge and ignorance thereof, as it intersects with connection and trust and anxieties born of aspiration/dreams and so on. So here we'd be embodying the moon of Secrets and Omissions as a nod to what Sixiang did to hurt us, and what Ling Qi let herself fall into by neglecting the principles of the aspect, and then channeling that vibe that so recently hurt us into a constructive direction in stealing/rescuing Sixiang. Make grampa Darksong the subject of unknowledge while Sixiang and Ling Qi maybe work out some of their own issues and boundaries on knowledge/privacy along the way. It engages with their wounds opened up by this exchange, you know?

Option 1 seems fun, running away from a god and all, but feels like it kind of skips over a lot of what's gone down in here. And we've kind of gone "lmao run away" as our response to big spooky spooks a bunch of times now. Don't get me wrong, it's fun. I like it. But I'd like some variety. Not to mention "just run, lol" feels off with the meditations on connection and freedom in the first half of this arc, like it doesn't quite respect or connect to them right. I think a more complex approach is necessary to give the moving parts of this tribulation the attention, and pace, to feel like they've really been addressed.
 
[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
 
JohnnieBoy123 said:
For a write-in that will probably be ignored

[X][Write-In] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon guard you. You have uncovered your foe's name and know their nature. Stand your ground and let their mysteries wash over you.

At the risk of stabbing ourselves in the heart for power, I see this as reenacting the Hidden Moon's origin story. We trust in the Hidden Moon to protect us against an overwhelming threat as we seek to understand them more fully. This also recalls him demanding that we assert an actual argument.

The downside is that the Hidden Moon doesn't come out unscathed at the end of their story. They won but are severely injured in the process. We probably will suffer some manner of significant injury
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Click to shrink...

We're reenacting the ending here, where the Hidden Moon defeated the stars healed herself, before going away with the Moon. We saw it in the Communication word punch, where Ling Qi faced an onslaught of words and used an argument to fight it, before healing and going towards Sixiang. This will just be the climatic ending to the reenactment, where Ling Qi and Sixiang escape and forever help each other fight their enemy and free themselves.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
[X] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
 
Considering the options here:
-The Nightmare of the Emerald Sea is about the big picture. The failure of dreams of unity and the fear of twisted hopes. Ling Qi's Nightmare is about intimacy and abuse of trust. They are not only not the same, they are very close to opposite.

We're finding a lever to wedge into this gap.


[ ] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.
-Explicitly supported by LFoWT.
-The approach here is to seize the moment. Sure, the grand dreams and ambitions may fail, but even if it fails the personal moments remain important. Revel in the moment, remain in motion and dance through the chaos.
-Chaos and Motion rules this approach.

[ ] Darkness and secrets, let the black moon occlude you, it is not enough to merely seek, a true master of secrets must be able to hide from the keenest eye as well.
-Not backed by any arts, though it does mention RME, it specifically rejects that Seeking is enough. We do not have any Hidden Moon Stealth or Defense arts
-The approach here is to disguise what you value and hide, so that the greater storm cannot lay hands on it.
-Darkness and Mystery rules this approach.

I think the Grinning Moon approach wins out simply because its much more prepared for this, is in tune with the previous choice for Sixiang(to embrace Wind element)

[X] Wind and laughter, the steps of the great thief will guide you. Your treasure is in hand, and now you must make haste from beneath the hoof of an angry god.

Just because the world is falling apart doesn't matter to the personal moments
 
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