Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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We went from a mishmash of multiple low elements, to a mishmash of multiple esoteric concepts. Its more coherent than it looks from the outside, since what it comes down to is that we have three Moon patronages at the center, and thats throwing people off when they're expecting ONE.
Hmm, we're making something like progress, but it's still a bit. Much. Like, here's the (biased) list of our major arts:
Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry(PLR)
Starless Night's Reflection(SNR)
Final Frost's Serenade(FFS)
Silent Songseeker's Regard(SSR)
Beast King's Savage Dirge(BKSD)
Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief(LFWT or just Wind Thief)
There's some other bits, but they're either forgettable, redundant, unobtrusive, or balancing in uncertainty. For the most part, this is what we can examine and plan around freely.
PLR is likely to have its funky Dream style broken up and laced through other arts we develop, like continuations to Wind Thief, BKSD, and even SSR(more on that in a second). Wind Thief is cool and good, and our exposure to Huisheng is decently likely to pull it into greater cohesion with our other cultivation projects, or they to it. Given the narrative of the art, there's decent grounds for the art to pick up support mobility elements in the future, which would help it settle into our broader aims and open it up to philosophical examination more often. SSR is our primary perception art, with the remote-controlled motes of qi Ling Qi peers out of, and it's our next personal successor project in Thief of Names, under the tutelage of Shu Yue(with probable influence from Huisheng). It's shaping up to be an art that both fits and defines our Way, which is cool. While also delving into abstract mental plane stuff, maybe, which is doubly cool.
The bigger problem we have is integrating FFS, SNR, and BKSD in fights. FFS and BKSD both have a narrative they're trying to tell, with very distinct visuals and moving parts. The underlying story beats aren't that different tonally, so there's room to move parts around somewhat, but it's still a bit of a jumble. SNR's got a bit of the opposite problem, where the art doesn't have a clear narrative, identity, or philosophical purpose in its role in fights. However, the nature of its aesthetics means it's still competing for a similar layer of action writing that FFS and BKSD operate on. These three arts are the biggest cohesion bottleneck we've got, at least in terms of on-screen action.
WHR(Winter hearth Resounding) and the Garden of Mists project is worth a mention because of the uncertainty surrounding its use-role and addition of Formations, but it's difficult to really examine it. It's not clear to me that its parameters should be stuck to at this point, but the underlying narrative is vital. There's a good argument it should get significantly snazzied up somehow, or even spill over to more directly influencing more/different arts than just WHR, but that's in yrs' ballpark to handle.
Phantasmagoria of Lunar Revelry(PLR)
Starless Night's Reflection(SNR)
Final Frost's Serenade(FFS)
Silent Songseeker's Regard(SSR)
Beast King's Savage Dirge(BKSD)
Laughing Flight of the Wind Thief(LFWT or just Wind Thief)
There's some other bits, but they're either forgettable, redundant, unobtrusive, or balancing in uncertainty. For the most part, this is what we can examine and plan around freely.
PLR is likely to have its funky Dream style broken up and laced through other arts we develop, like continuations to Wind Thief, BKSD, and even SSR(more on that in a second). Wind Thief is cool and good, and our exposure to Huisheng is decently likely to pull it into greater cohesion with our other cultivation projects, or they to it. Given the narrative of the art, there's decent grounds for the art to pick up support mobility elements in the future, which would help it settle into our broader aims and open it up to philosophical examination more often. SSR is our primary perception art, with the remote-controlled motes of qi Ling Qi peers out of, and it's our next personal successor project in Thief of Names, under the tutelage of Shu Yue(with probable influence from Huisheng). It's shaping up to be an art that both fits and defines our Way, which is cool. While also delving into abstract mental plane stuff, maybe, which is doubly cool.
The bigger problem we have is integrating FFS, SNR, and BKSD in fights. FFS and BKSD both have a narrative they're trying to tell, with very distinct visuals and moving parts. The underlying story beats aren't that different tonally, so there's room to move parts around somewhat, but it's still a bit of a jumble. SNR's got a bit of the opposite problem, where the art doesn't have a clear narrative, identity, or philosophical purpose in its role in fights. However, the nature of its aesthetics means it's still competing for a similar layer of action writing that FFS and BKSD operate on. These three arts are the biggest cohesion bottleneck we've got, at least in terms of on-screen action.
WHR(Winter hearth Resounding) and the Garden of Mists project is worth a mention because of the uncertainty surrounding its use-role and addition of Formations, but it's difficult to really examine it. It's not clear to me that its parameters should be stuck to at this point, but the underlying narrative is vital. There's a good argument it should get significantly snazzied up somehow, or even spill over to more directly influencing more/different arts than just WHR, but that's in yrs' ballpark to handle.
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Ideally, doing Garden of Mists should significantly alter any other project of the art. Also, I could see the inclusion of Formations in a Cold art that is about Protection and executed primarily by a formation masker specialized in boundaries and thresholds being extremely interesting to both our future Meng Geomancer friend and people from the White Sky...
(I'm not saying we could end up inventing a formation usable to trace the southern boundary of the Empire, but I'm totally thinking it)
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I agree that Garden of Mists should basically rewrite everything about the art, including the other projects. Though at that point I'm a little bit skeptical of WHR as the basis at all. I mean, putting aside that the entire process breaks the established art modification mechanics, if you're going to arbitrarily switch things up to that degree, is there a reason to not simply arbitrarily provide something holistically fitting (and maybe with less baggage) from the get-go? Or you can mix-match things and have the effort cleaned up/evolved by later good fortune or whatever. What's important, I think, is to take a step back and look at whether -as a prop- the art is really sufficient for the intended purpose. Design, elements, theme, etc.
The purpose, after all, is to engage with Zhengui's themes. A Cold/Dream Formations art that meditates on Communities and Cycles keywords has obvious application, at least conceptually, engaging with fief geomancy in accordance with Zhengui's own Destructive Renewal/Growth themes and nature as a budding spirit lord. My immediate concern there, though, is pacing. Fief development is not a fast process, either in terms of individual projects or the frequency of iteration! Zhengui's narrative has already been badly disservice by delays, the most recent of which actually completely because WHR/GoM got tied to fief development in this way, all the way back at the new year, in-game, some 5 months ago. Which itself was the culmination of an arc delayed and interrupted by the first contact mission south.
This sets something of a precedent to be wary of. The earliest we have time to dive into fief things in earnest is 2 turns from now. It's currently turn 18, the summit is next turn, so turn 20. We've also got all sorts of exploration, domestic politics, summit problem mopup, and a war arc looming after the summit, and I'm forgetting several things.
On top of that, yrs has said that the Meng geomancer, who really ties together the Formations/Zhengui effort, will become available once the fief's main settlement reaches that Hamlet stage. The project to hit that stage takes 5 months to complete, and we haven't started it yet. We are planning to start it this turn, but that still puts the completion of the Hamlet out to turn 22, and us able to do anything with it at that stage in all likelihood at turn 23. It's fairly likely we won't have "turns" anymore at that point, but time is still linear. And for context, 5 months is the same time as from the tournament at the start of the year till now. Ages. We're also almost certain to be embroiled in the war arc by then?
So here's, broadly, my concern. Fief development alone won't, in practice, cut it for mutual thematic exploration between Ling Qi and Zhengui. Whatever bridging art she picks up needs to do more, be more, than that. Other kinds of efforts and adventures are basically always going to take precedence and focus over fief building. They'll also be happening between and in the middle of fief milestones, completely breaking up the flow of fief dev. A Hidden Moon adventure might be able to sustain focus from start to finish in a mid-to-grand-sized adventure, but a fief project won't ever be able to... because of the adventures that linear time demand get fit in between the projects' genesis and conclusion.
And then there's the issue that most of the fief plotlines that we have are... mostly not really about settlement development itself, and exist way above the punching weight class of Ling Qi and Zhengui! The vast bulk of our fief attention for the foreseeable future is earmarked for beaver town and the gooped up hole in the ground. Neither particularly being in Zhengui's thematic wheelhouse. They're cool and touch on some plot stuff, they're just... not very suitable for doing Zhengui stuff, they're going to take up a LOT of time and focus, and the hotsprings are only going to bring us so far. It's not ideal.
Again, I think Garden of Mists, or a replacement/reimagining, needs to operate at a much broader scale of character integration and interaction than just fief development. The realities of pacing challenges and limited opportunity require an upscaling to actually implicate on the subject matter it's supposed to. Tagging @yrsillar because there's some new ideas here compared to the last time I ranted on the subject. And apologies to Barty, this post ran away from me. 😅
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There are deer species that have both antlers and fangs, so the possibility remains!
Lady_Story
Humble Teller of Stories, Villainess of Legend
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This is exactly why Xiulan left
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I'm going to second this. Going all "Members of the Wedding" would be a pretty fun denoument/followup/ to this negotiation. It might even be a decent timeskip point if one wants to have a few more months pass semi-unobserved and then have Ling Qi show up at the biggest party ever.
Either way, fun times!
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- Staring into the void
ASA is still a good fit for our build. Even though we've massively out leveled it.
Archery just made our build clunky and bad until we finally got past it. Such a waste of cultivation and training actions; but no, math cabal wanted their "alpha strike" damage.
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Honestly, it's incredibly fine? Our character started out a 14-year-old Mortal, and she's now sixteen. Archery turned out not good for the long-term "Path to 8th Realm" build*, per se, but who fucking cares?
We were fourteen. Even now we'll live three hundred years.
A few months of seeking out something that helps us in the short run but not in the long run isn't actually a big deal.
*Unless we follow up our stealthiness by using Archery in some sort of Sniper Config.
We were fourteen. Even now we'll live three hundred years.
A few months of seeking out something that helps us in the short run but not in the long run isn't actually a big deal.
*Unless we follow up our stealthiness by using Archery in some sort of Sniper Config.
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I'd be less salty about it if archery was actually useful when we learnt it. But it just made combat and the narrative clunky trying to insert it in. Right as we were beginning to use the flute for combat.
Sure in the grand scheme it doesn't matter, but at the time it did the very opposite of what those who wanted it promised.
It not only lacked any synergy, it had anti synergy with the flute.
ASA had synergy with everything we had at the time. And it still would with what we have now.
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- Chicago
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I would like to point out that cute horns have, in fact, been a thing that Ling Qi has had in story, so there is precedent.
Specifically, when she wandered through dream to the weilu party just before Huisheng, she say at the table and had a drink. Standing up, she had cute little horns.
re: Zhengui, I think there's two pieces that are really important to understanding how to go forward. First, the revelation with Allinge where Qi accepted that he is her son, even if they didn't use those words, and the way Allinge noted that you don't have to be compatible with a child the way you are with a partner, to have a solid relationship. Zhengui is going to grow beyond us, eventually, and be the foundation of our clan rather than sticking with us. Ie, grow up, do your own thing. So I think we need to be looking at this from a perspective of how he can build out of what we do rather than fit into it, if you can see the differences implied by those metaphors?
The other point is that I've been thinking: Ling Qi is dark and ice and music and wind and mist. Notably, these are all things that occur anywhere and so, on their own, lack context. If we want to lean into PLR the context becomes a gala, if we lean into BKSD then the context becomes a forest.
But Zhengui is all about creating a specific environment: a jungle like forest with volcanic activity. So I think we can fit the two cultivation styles together as location/conditions, which in combination gives a very precise aesthetic that the gardening can develop further.
Specifically, when she wandered through dream to the weilu party just before Huisheng, she say at the table and had a drink. Standing up, she had cute little horns.
re: Zhengui, I think there's two pieces that are really important to understanding how to go forward. First, the revelation with Allinge where Qi accepted that he is her son, even if they didn't use those words, and the way Allinge noted that you don't have to be compatible with a child the way you are with a partner, to have a solid relationship. Zhengui is going to grow beyond us, eventually, and be the foundation of our clan rather than sticking with us. Ie, grow up, do your own thing. So I think we need to be looking at this from a perspective of how he can build out of what we do rather than fit into it, if you can see the differences implied by those metaphors?
The other point is that I've been thinking: Ling Qi is dark and ice and music and wind and mist. Notably, these are all things that occur anywhere and so, on their own, lack context. If we want to lean into PLR the context becomes a gala, if we lean into BKSD then the context becomes a forest.
But Zhengui is all about creating a specific environment: a jungle like forest with volcanic activity. So I think we can fit the two cultivation styles together as location/conditions, which in combination gives a very precise aesthetic that the gardening can develop further.
i know during the battle at the caldera, the sect elder took a look at ling qi's soul from afar and know enough to judge her not a barbarian and now these rumormongers are able to take a look at the her cultivation and basically see her work history.
Higher cultivation realm perception skills are overpowered.
Ling qi need update her firewalls on her private data asap.
Higher cultivation realm perception skills are overpowered.
Ling qi need update her firewalls on her private data asap.
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The soul he was looking at was Jaromila's.
I've been wondering, what kind of stuff is on each Archive floor? Increasingly powerful arts?
And what was Ling Qi's final rank in the Sect? I can't find it anywhere. Must have been at least 700 since she got a Greater Argent Vent.
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Curious question, more because I'm trying to get societal context on the various bands of normal and exceptional, but how old is Liao Zhu, for instance?
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We don't have a canonical answer for this, I don't think. The vibe I always got was a few years older than Ling Qi but not hugely...like, maybe 18 when we first met him? But that's basically pure guesswork.
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It's hard to tell the specifics, which was why I was asking. He was at G7 when he first met Ling Qi, and hitting 4th at 22 was considered prodigious and something for someone of a higher rank than him (though he was pretty high up either way), so I was vaguely guessing, like... early/mid-twenties? But there's nothing sure there.
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Liao Zhu is the 6th ranked disciple in the entire Inner Argent Sect, I think he's at least as much of a prodigy as Ling Qi, with a few more years to work on it.
The damage fixation was especially silly because the way contested rolls worked meant that having a higher weapon damage cap was not that relevant versus peer combatants. It mathematically was not actually useful!ASA is still a good fit for our build. Even though we've massively out leveled it.
Archery just made our build clunky and bad until we finally got past it. Such a waste of cultivation and training actions; but no, math cabal wanted their "alpha strike" damage.
History can be amusing. I wasn't around for ASA, and so have no reference on how its art mechanics would compare in Forge.
But as someone who paid quite a bit of attention to combat math calculations and expected values, while it was true that the weapon damage cap was pretty irrelevant, the FSA archery art itself was very strong mechanically (maybe too much so). Until very late in forge (aka tournament), plan "just shot them already" was usually the superior second step to anything else after dropping our FVM mist, and for some period of time arguably better than even dropping the mist first (which probably was because iirc we delayed cultivation of FVM for some time?)
But as someone who paid quite a bit of attention to combat math calculations and expected values, while it was true that the weapon damage cap was pretty irrelevant, the FSA archery art itself was very strong mechanically (maybe too much so). Until very late in forge (aka tournament), plan "just shot them already" was usually the superior second step to anything else after dropping our FVM mist, and for some period of time arguably better than even dropping the mist first (which probably was because iirc we delayed cultivation of FVM for some time?)
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There is no particular reason to believe this when he is much more likely to be a veteran who got his position through years of military service in the sect. It's been mentioned that the top ten requires major contributions exceeding what is already required for the top 500. Getting into the top 500 wasn't even considered a realistic possibility during the two years that Cai Renxiang and Ling Qi where originally going to spend in the inner sect.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
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He was about 20-21 when you first meet him.
ArkeusToday at 01:31 @ Yrsillar How old is Liao Zhu? 40? 30? 20? 15?
YrsillarToday at 01:31 He's 21
YrsillarToday at 01:31 He's 21