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.
You know what? Zhengui not being here sucks. Zhengui would be an interesting perspective/setpiece in the philosophical interrogation of the division between man and beasts vis a vis aspiration. And in interrogating a bunch of people's vision for the future they aim to grasp through violent struggle against a violent natural world. And... being a big critter around critter hunters? It'd just be interesting. It'd be anything at all.
Instead, well, looking back there's been a frustrating dynamic and this falls into it. Something like half of our total time since the sect tournament has been poured into setting up the fief, in one way or another, and practically every time we've interacted with Zhengui for even longer than that we've been essentially told 'wait till the fief to interact with him for realz'. But those two dynamics have managed to... not... actually intersect? Which is pretty comical. It's a situation that manages to defy even its own premises. Like a cosmic practical joke.
For the past 10 or 11 in-universe months, whenever Zhengui's narratives have been given real focus they have consistently been delayed or deflected until some promised, preset opportunity months in the future from which the true beginning has to start. And then it gets delayed again! And then he gets jettisoned from the story, again, with any scraps or kernels of interaction we've managed to squirrel away in the cracks of the narrative sucked away with him, destined to be lost completely in the fogs of time, not following him back when he returns to repeat the cycle of stasis and stagnation once again. And again. And again.
As seen with just a little while ago where we saw Zhengui just long enough for him to yeet himself out of the story for another 2+ months, with only a brief interlude of inclusion at the tail end of this turn for an exception. Something with basically no point- there's no room for anything there for him, he'll be an 'also present' to whatever "more important" story takes precedence. If he actually manages mention at all, expect it as a cursory prop, maybe as a literal piece of furniture.
My patience with this pattern is wearing damn thin at this point. He's always the first thing to be stripped out of the story, for a convenience that never actually manifests itself, and then we're stuck watching opportunities that could have been, opportunities like this interrogation of the jungle, slip through our fingers for nothing. For less than nothing! We keep getting mugged on one end and fined for it on the other. Zhengui's storyline is at once too big and too small and always, always, expendable. We can have the entire range of our efforts shoehorned for months into the one effort he's allowed to have a presence(the fief), and still be denied any opportunity to really engage with his plothooks, progression, or themes.
Archive vote for Zhengui? Failure. Underground mission for Zhengui? Failure. Wang group for Zhengui? Failure. Garden for Zhengui? Failure. Zhengui arc for Zhengui? Failure. Fief for Zhengui? Failure.
For the sake of turtle pope I am begging please, please, please, next time let us simply actually do Zhengui's storyline without distractions, diversions, and backtracking at the literal first -or as it has sometimes been, zeroth- opportunity. Better yet, make the entire thing compulsory. I'm so tired of being jerked around.
Instead, well, looking back there's been a frustrating dynamic and this falls into it. Something like half of our total time since the sect tournament has been poured into setting up the fief, in one way or another, and practically every time we've interacted with Zhengui for even longer than that we've been essentially told 'wait till the fief to interact with him for realz'. But those two dynamics have managed to... not... actually intersect? Which is pretty comical. It's a situation that manages to defy even its own premises. Like a cosmic practical joke.
For the past 10 or 11 in-universe months, whenever Zhengui's narratives have been given real focus they have consistently been delayed or deflected until some promised, preset opportunity months in the future from which the true beginning has to start. And then it gets delayed again! And then he gets jettisoned from the story, again, with any scraps or kernels of interaction we've managed to squirrel away in the cracks of the narrative sucked away with him, destined to be lost completely in the fogs of time, not following him back when he returns to repeat the cycle of stasis and stagnation once again. And again. And again.
As seen with just a little while ago where we saw Zhengui just long enough for him to yeet himself out of the story for another 2+ months, with only a brief interlude of inclusion at the tail end of this turn for an exception. Something with basically no point- there's no room for anything there for him, he'll be an 'also present' to whatever "more important" story takes precedence. If he actually manages mention at all, expect it as a cursory prop, maybe as a literal piece of furniture.
My patience with this pattern is wearing damn thin at this point. He's always the first thing to be stripped out of the story, for a convenience that never actually manifests itself, and then we're stuck watching opportunities that could have been, opportunities like this interrogation of the jungle, slip through our fingers for nothing. For less than nothing! We keep getting mugged on one end and fined for it on the other. Zhengui's storyline is at once too big and too small and always, always, expendable. We can have the entire range of our efforts shoehorned for months into the one effort he's allowed to have a presence(the fief), and still be denied any opportunity to really engage with his plothooks, progression, or themes.
Archive vote for Zhengui? Failure. Underground mission for Zhengui? Failure. Wang group for Zhengui? Failure. Garden for Zhengui? Failure. Zhengui arc for Zhengui? Failure. Fief for Zhengui? Failure.
For the sake of turtle pope I am begging please, please, please, next time let us simply actually do Zhengui's storyline without distractions, diversions, and backtracking at the literal first -or as it has sometimes been, zeroth- opportunity. Better yet, make the entire thing compulsory. I'm so tired of being jerked around.
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- Location
- FR
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd argue that of the "arcs" of BKSD that we know of, the one that would fit him the best is the Bear God, not this one. I don't disagree with the rest of your points, it's just that Zhengui and the fief's story are probably going to be intricately tied together because it's his nature to want to claim a place and make it his, and it was impossible to do so at the Sect because the land empathically wasn't his, and now that we're out of the sect, Qi doesn't have the time (and us the narrative space) to be caring about him as he discovers "his" place. I agree that she should be feeling worst about this than what we've seen and that it's frustrating, but it's coherent.
imagine how much worst it would have been for him if we hadn't got a fief basically as early as mechanically possible.
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The trouble with this perspective is that it's built on an excuse, and a pretty flimsy one at that. Yrsillar stretched it over a crisis point as a patch job rationalization to give him time and space to figure out a solution. Which hasn't happened yet.
Fundamentally, the problem with this talking point is that it's treating anything involved as mutually exclusive. That we could not possibly have explored his themes and nature in the absence of the fief. But this is literally not true. We know it's not true, because we had an entire arc premised on it not being true. That took place after Zhengui had made comments about the sect being too full of big dudes crowding him out. So we know for certain that imposition was not a functional barrier to mutual efforts.
No, what foiled the arc was a) being interrupted by the trip south for an entire month that demanded focus elsewhere and b) a complete vote flub. Then yrsillar reacted to the flub by kicking the can down the road to the next thing he could think of when completely off-kilter. Which, hey, this shit is hard. But there's no actual narrative logic backing how things have unfolded. It's an actual, genuine plot hole. We don't need to make excuses for that, and trying to institutionalize its raw edges into the fabric of the narrative underpinnings of the world is a pretty bad instinct, actually.
And even if we did it wouldn't explain why the genuinely oppressive bent towards the fief that defined our post-tournament time failed to incorporate any progress with Zhengui. It straight up doesn't follow. Zhengui hasn't actually got shit, and nothing was functionally wrong before or after with him either! This is all made up, ridiculous, counterproductive ass-covering. And it's annoying because I am 100% confident none of it is on purpose on the part of anyone propagating it, up to and including Yrsillar. Explaining a problem is worse than useless when the explanation makes it impossible to solve. It's even more worse when the explanation is obviously counterfactual.
I'm sorry, but your entire framework here is explicitly incoherent from top to bottom. I'm tired of hearing it; it makes no sense in any context that actually exists.
Edit: I'm also sorry for getting a little heated here. These issues have been bothering me for a long time, but every time it looks like we can start diving into them constructively, we get rug pulled. That organically feeds the "well, there's no helping it" position that I vociferously disagree with, while limiting the opportunity to push back against it at all. I think it could be helped. I think there's no good reason it hasn't been helped already. I think it's vital that it be helped in the future.
That's it, that's my stance.
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This kind ofirrora my stance on how we consistently ignore the Wang opportunities in favour of chasing after the Diao.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
I'd note that the thread operates on a VASTLY different time scale than cultivators, and that might be driving the disconnect as well. Two months is nothing to someone who lived centuries. So it makes sense for the 18 yo Ling to feel like a turn is a long time, but zenghui's instincts and plots seem like they should play on the scale of decades.
Turtle pope will be here. We don't need to rush him; there's space to breathe without everything getting focus all the time.
Turtle pope will be here. We don't need to rush him; there's space to breathe without everything getting focus all the time.
I'm pretty sure we only spent one action on the Diao, which is not nearly enough if our end goal is "unite the Emerald Seas" rather than "make sure we're the victor in the inevitable Emerald Seas Civil War".
Turn 18: Arc 5-4
"And what is the purpose of this?"
"C'mon, help me out here. Princess gave the okay. The Baroness wants to talk to a few of us, because…"
Ji Rong glanced toward her, raising his eyebrows as if to say 'take it away.'
"Among our guests is a faction which lives south of the red jungle. They have knowledge of a creature they call 'The Flower Demon.' which they claim to have defeated and driven north," Ling Qi said patiently. She held her hands clasped respectfully in front of her. "I have some concern that your presence could alarm them."
"I see."
The one they were speaking to was the officer in charge of the house guards. A woman in supple black scale armor cut from some reptilian beasts hide. It was fixed with steel pauldrons and a chestplate, but the rest of the harder points, the vambraces, the greaves were carved green bone that exuded an ominous and acidic scent. Sheathed at her hips were a pair of curved hand axes, the steel a bloody crimson.
"I had hoped I could hear your own words on the Red Jungle, and what the people of the West are accomplishing there. So that I might make them understand that you are not all disciples of that barbaric goddess," Ling Qi said.
The woman hummed, looking Ji Rong over. To her surprise he ducked his head and offered respect.
"My Grandmother, who marched under King Shao in the beginning. Had six brothers and sisters. She had many Uncles, many Aunts, and even more cousins. The Jungle took all of her siblings, by the time she had reached by age and realm. This was normal enough. It was expected by our Masters that we would give our lives for the Lords of the Lakes. It was not our lot to grow old," the woman said.
"Grandmother was not satisfied with this. We live to kill her, the jungle. To kill her and claim her rather than cowering behind walls and being taken one by one. The West dies on its feet instead of its knees, and take more than we give. Grandmother passed in her meditation room. I have five brothers and one sister. Only two of them have died. We may still die, but it is better to be predator than prey. Better to go out and hunt than hide in our burrows like worms."
The woman spoke crisply and matter of factly. Ling Qi paused a moment more, to see if she would elaborate further, and then lowered her head briefly.
"Is that a sufficient answer?"
"I would ask if you have any knowledge of the Goddess herself?"
"A vile spirit born of the strife in the Sage's final campaign. Where the barbarians Priest Queen feigned submission to slay him. She lives in all the jungle, but especially in the flower fields and creeper vines. King Shao has torn apart the barbarians methods, and created new arts which we use to take from her as she once took from us."
"Thank you," Ling Qi said. "We won't spend any more of your time."
Leaving the planning room behind and reentering the embassy's halls, Ji Rong glanced her way.
"Probably can't expect friendly. You're friends with the snakes."
"I knew that going in," Ling Qi said. In the end, the Emerald Seas was aligned with the Bai clan, and Meizhen was her friend. Merely being able to be understood, to be sincere could not overcome all obstacles. It could not actually alter this situation, where the fact and reality meant they were irreconcilably opposed.
That too was a lesson in the march of the Beast Kings wasn't it? Even Tsu the Diviner, gifted in speech as he was, had never attempted to make peace with the Beast Kings. Words were powerful, but for some things there really was only sword and fang and claw. Pretending otherwise was just as childish as imagining you could solve every problem with your fists.
When you looked into someone's deepest truth, you would sometimes see only a bared blade, or the heel of a boot. Understanding that too was key to understanding communication, its strengths and its limits.
"You said there were a few others who might give useful answers?" Ling Qi asked.
"Yeah, C'mon."
The next one they spoke too was a much older seeming man, with bristling grey whiskers and heavy plated armor carved from bone and crystalized blood. He seemed less stiff than the woman, and regarded Ji Rong with the look one might give an irritating nephew who one was nonetheless fond of.
…It was strange to imagine that Ji Rong did have a crude kind of charisma, with certain sorts. She supposed those men and boys who strutted in the streets and claimed to own them would have to have their own ways of holding together.
When posed the question, the old man had chewed on his pipe for a time and answered shortly.
The West was carving the jungle into a home. The only home they could ever have. Not one of them could ever go back, even if they wished too.
Ling QI could acknowledge that, as much as she might not like too. Bai Meizhen was her friend, but the Bai clan's reputation was well founded. Even Meizhen would not bat an eye at the idea that the Bai clan would kill everyone who had followed Sun Shao if they could, no matter if they were not even born at the time of the split.
Another, one closer to their age by her reckoning, a young man in armor that seemed to be made of sharpened razors of volcanic glass, affixed to some kind of plant fiber backing. He looked like he felt sorry for Ji Rong, As if her company were some great trial.
For him, the Sun were building the martial might of the Empire. They were proof that the Empire was no spent force content only to gnaw at its own tail, that the barbarians on the border could and would fall, that might and martial virtue were not tied up and captive to the most ancient traditions alone.
They were people, a little haughty and belligerent, but in the end, not very different.
She considered rats again. The vermin who skittered at the feet of the mighty. Third Realm seemed so far from that, cultivation made it easy to be prideful, but in the end, did they still not live only at the pleasure of those more mighty still?
No, that was a pointlessly cynical thought, childish and shallow. The structure of things was never so simple. The mightiest cultivators were ideas made manifest. They relied on the vast resources that only an Empire could gather. There were very few useful ideas one could have all on their own.
But that initial thought, that impulse to believe that all and everyone existed only for their own self, and so it was fine if you did too. That was where the rats lived, wasn't it?
The common thread that wound through the Western soldiers boiled down to something near to that. There was a bone deep certainty they had no true allies. That they were surrounded on all sides by enemies at worst and scavengers at best. That they would live and die with one another alone.
There was a thread of more with the younger of them. The idea that others could be made to see their virtue, that they were alone, but did not have to be.
"You actually been listening?"
"I have," Ling Qi said. "Baron Ji, may I ask you a question?"
"Go for it."
"How have you convinced these people to accept you so completely, they do not trust outsiders much I think."
Ji Rong grunted, crossing his arms. They were heading to the edge of the compound. They had spoken to several others, and gotten little more. Myths and tales of the Red Goddess. She who hungered for the blood of dragons. Who demanded that her worshippers feed her blood, unending blood, and take the flesh and souls of demons into their own bodies, and become demons themselves. There were a few other snippets that might be useful, but she would think on them later.
He took a minute to answer, leaving them to walk in silence. "I signed up. Did what they asked. I'm staying in the jungle. I picked up that they don't get a lot willing to commit."
"And that is enough?"
He shrugged. "I'm one of them now. Call me a thug, but I spilled my blood, passed my initiation, put on their colors. It's never really that much more complicated than that when you get down to it."
She grimaced, knowing of the sort of thing he was talking about. "Are you though? One of them. Or are you merely there for the princess?"
He scowled at her, his brow furrowing deeply. He opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it again. They reached the edge of the manor grounds.
She turned to face him, and he continued to scowl.
"...I am, yeah. Met more decent folks in a couple of months than I did in a year and half in this shitty Sect," Ji Rong finally said. "Nothin 'bout that's changed."
All the more reason for him to figure out this mystery she had handed him, was left unsaid.
"Thank you, Baron Ji. I believe I can construct an image of the west for our guests now. I will be in touch once negotiations over the claims begin properly."
"Yeah got it," Ji Rong dismissed. "Now get out of here, you look like you're gonna pop a vein if you don't cultivate whatever's going through your head."
She frowned after him. She knew she wasn't being that obvious. Even without Sixiaing's help, she was better than that.
…She supposed they must have that much in common though.
She left the Sun manor behind and allowed her mind to wander she was, after the flurry of travel and meetings, finally through the worst of it. Duties remained, but she had a moment now to catch her breath, mentally speaking.
And so her thoughts turned to Power. Its forms and methods. Its meaning, and lack. That she thought, really was the core of the Beast King's Savage Dirge, both the play and art derived from it. It was an exploration and satire on the powerful. Eagle God was mighty, but his overwhelming, blinding pride saw him laid low by humans much his lesser. He was the king who saw naught but dirt and livestock, prey, when he looked down from his high high throne.
The Wolf God was different. He was the entitlement of power, the indignant outrage of a king whose subjects had their own thoughts, and sought their own way. He was Power as right, as inheritance. Of the throne unquestioned. His death was the death of confusion, the death of incomprehension, that his pack could ever do anything but obey.
Each of the Beast Gods represented something like that, she thought, though they had once surely been real, the great columns which held up the throne hall of Xiangmen spoke of that. But the dead were ever the props for story and metaphor, weren't they?
Ling Qi walked the paths going north, turning off the main stone road to follow a dirt trail that wound into the woods. She thought of the rats.
There were no shortage of the creatures here, beneath her feet in hidden burrows, amongst undergrowth and roots. Rats were a type of beast as common and widespread as men, they lived where humans did, they lived where they did not. Vermin, used as an insult, they stole and they ate and they multiplied.
There was a reason they were sometimes used to insult mortals, by the haughty sort. But, where then the Vermin God? He stood out among the others, as a being not of terrible awe and fear, but a thing to be disgusted by, a creeping plague. What did he say about Power, when compared to the others?
Ling Qi found herself standing by a high pine tree, resting her hand on the rough bark. There was quite a set of burrows under her feet. Did the pattern break here, were the vermin a meditation on greed, on want and desire and hunger?
She did not think so. That was a part of it, but only insofar as Want was inextricably tied to Power. To become powerful, for the fire of cultivation to burn high, fuel was needed. Ambition, desperation, love, hate, or a hundred other things. Power for its own sake could not support the highest peak of cultivation.
So what lesson then, the Vermin God? Her thoughts turned back to cynicism, and the Western Territory. She observed the tiny lives under her feet, felt the scurrying rats, living their lives.
…They were no more a vicious devouring horde than a human village was, not really. The same things which drove a rat to such lengths would drive humans to do the same.
+2 Power, +2 Want XP
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of personal emptiness, of isolation in multitude. A thousand devouring mouths that acknowledged only themselves. (+1 Isolation XP)
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
"C'mon, help me out here. Princess gave the okay. The Baroness wants to talk to a few of us, because…"
Ji Rong glanced toward her, raising his eyebrows as if to say 'take it away.'
"Among our guests is a faction which lives south of the red jungle. They have knowledge of a creature they call 'The Flower Demon.' which they claim to have defeated and driven north," Ling Qi said patiently. She held her hands clasped respectfully in front of her. "I have some concern that your presence could alarm them."
"I see."
The one they were speaking to was the officer in charge of the house guards. A woman in supple black scale armor cut from some reptilian beasts hide. It was fixed with steel pauldrons and a chestplate, but the rest of the harder points, the vambraces, the greaves were carved green bone that exuded an ominous and acidic scent. Sheathed at her hips were a pair of curved hand axes, the steel a bloody crimson.
"I had hoped I could hear your own words on the Red Jungle, and what the people of the West are accomplishing there. So that I might make them understand that you are not all disciples of that barbaric goddess," Ling Qi said.
The woman hummed, looking Ji Rong over. To her surprise he ducked his head and offered respect.
"My Grandmother, who marched under King Shao in the beginning. Had six brothers and sisters. She had many Uncles, many Aunts, and even more cousins. The Jungle took all of her siblings, by the time she had reached by age and realm. This was normal enough. It was expected by our Masters that we would give our lives for the Lords of the Lakes. It was not our lot to grow old," the woman said.
"Grandmother was not satisfied with this. We live to kill her, the jungle. To kill her and claim her rather than cowering behind walls and being taken one by one. The West dies on its feet instead of its knees, and take more than we give. Grandmother passed in her meditation room. I have five brothers and one sister. Only two of them have died. We may still die, but it is better to be predator than prey. Better to go out and hunt than hide in our burrows like worms."
The woman spoke crisply and matter of factly. Ling Qi paused a moment more, to see if she would elaborate further, and then lowered her head briefly.
"Is that a sufficient answer?"
"I would ask if you have any knowledge of the Goddess herself?"
"A vile spirit born of the strife in the Sage's final campaign. Where the barbarians Priest Queen feigned submission to slay him. She lives in all the jungle, but especially in the flower fields and creeper vines. King Shao has torn apart the barbarians methods, and created new arts which we use to take from her as she once took from us."
"Thank you," Ling Qi said. "We won't spend any more of your time."
Leaving the planning room behind and reentering the embassy's halls, Ji Rong glanced her way.
"Probably can't expect friendly. You're friends with the snakes."
"I knew that going in," Ling Qi said. In the end, the Emerald Seas was aligned with the Bai clan, and Meizhen was her friend. Merely being able to be understood, to be sincere could not overcome all obstacles. It could not actually alter this situation, where the fact and reality meant they were irreconcilably opposed.
That too was a lesson in the march of the Beast Kings wasn't it? Even Tsu the Diviner, gifted in speech as he was, had never attempted to make peace with the Beast Kings. Words were powerful, but for some things there really was only sword and fang and claw. Pretending otherwise was just as childish as imagining you could solve every problem with your fists.
When you looked into someone's deepest truth, you would sometimes see only a bared blade, or the heel of a boot. Understanding that too was key to understanding communication, its strengths and its limits.
"You said there were a few others who might give useful answers?" Ling Qi asked.
"Yeah, C'mon."
The next one they spoke too was a much older seeming man, with bristling grey whiskers and heavy plated armor carved from bone and crystalized blood. He seemed less stiff than the woman, and regarded Ji Rong with the look one might give an irritating nephew who one was nonetheless fond of.
…It was strange to imagine that Ji Rong did have a crude kind of charisma, with certain sorts. She supposed those men and boys who strutted in the streets and claimed to own them would have to have their own ways of holding together.
When posed the question, the old man had chewed on his pipe for a time and answered shortly.
The West was carving the jungle into a home. The only home they could ever have. Not one of them could ever go back, even if they wished too.
Ling QI could acknowledge that, as much as she might not like too. Bai Meizhen was her friend, but the Bai clan's reputation was well founded. Even Meizhen would not bat an eye at the idea that the Bai clan would kill everyone who had followed Sun Shao if they could, no matter if they were not even born at the time of the split.
Another, one closer to their age by her reckoning, a young man in armor that seemed to be made of sharpened razors of volcanic glass, affixed to some kind of plant fiber backing. He looked like he felt sorry for Ji Rong, As if her company were some great trial.
For him, the Sun were building the martial might of the Empire. They were proof that the Empire was no spent force content only to gnaw at its own tail, that the barbarians on the border could and would fall, that might and martial virtue were not tied up and captive to the most ancient traditions alone.
They were people, a little haughty and belligerent, but in the end, not very different.
She considered rats again. The vermin who skittered at the feet of the mighty. Third Realm seemed so far from that, cultivation made it easy to be prideful, but in the end, did they still not live only at the pleasure of those more mighty still?
No, that was a pointlessly cynical thought, childish and shallow. The structure of things was never so simple. The mightiest cultivators were ideas made manifest. They relied on the vast resources that only an Empire could gather. There were very few useful ideas one could have all on their own.
But that initial thought, that impulse to believe that all and everyone existed only for their own self, and so it was fine if you did too. That was where the rats lived, wasn't it?
The common thread that wound through the Western soldiers boiled down to something near to that. There was a bone deep certainty they had no true allies. That they were surrounded on all sides by enemies at worst and scavengers at best. That they would live and die with one another alone.
There was a thread of more with the younger of them. The idea that others could be made to see their virtue, that they were alone, but did not have to be.
"You actually been listening?"
"I have," Ling Qi said. "Baron Ji, may I ask you a question?"
"Go for it."
"How have you convinced these people to accept you so completely, they do not trust outsiders much I think."
Ji Rong grunted, crossing his arms. They were heading to the edge of the compound. They had spoken to several others, and gotten little more. Myths and tales of the Red Goddess. She who hungered for the blood of dragons. Who demanded that her worshippers feed her blood, unending blood, and take the flesh and souls of demons into their own bodies, and become demons themselves. There were a few other snippets that might be useful, but she would think on them later.
He took a minute to answer, leaving them to walk in silence. "I signed up. Did what they asked. I'm staying in the jungle. I picked up that they don't get a lot willing to commit."
"And that is enough?"
He shrugged. "I'm one of them now. Call me a thug, but I spilled my blood, passed my initiation, put on their colors. It's never really that much more complicated than that when you get down to it."
She grimaced, knowing of the sort of thing he was talking about. "Are you though? One of them. Or are you merely there for the princess?"
He scowled at her, his brow furrowing deeply. He opened his mouth to respond, and then closed it again. They reached the edge of the manor grounds.
She turned to face him, and he continued to scowl.
"...I am, yeah. Met more decent folks in a couple of months than I did in a year and half in this shitty Sect," Ji Rong finally said. "Nothin 'bout that's changed."
All the more reason for him to figure out this mystery she had handed him, was left unsaid.
"Thank you, Baron Ji. I believe I can construct an image of the west for our guests now. I will be in touch once negotiations over the claims begin properly."
"Yeah got it," Ji Rong dismissed. "Now get out of here, you look like you're gonna pop a vein if you don't cultivate whatever's going through your head."
She frowned after him. She knew she wasn't being that obvious. Even without Sixiaing's help, she was better than that.
…She supposed they must have that much in common though.
She left the Sun manor behind and allowed her mind to wander she was, after the flurry of travel and meetings, finally through the worst of it. Duties remained, but she had a moment now to catch her breath, mentally speaking.
And so her thoughts turned to Power. Its forms and methods. Its meaning, and lack. That she thought, really was the core of the Beast King's Savage Dirge, both the play and art derived from it. It was an exploration and satire on the powerful. Eagle God was mighty, but his overwhelming, blinding pride saw him laid low by humans much his lesser. He was the king who saw naught but dirt and livestock, prey, when he looked down from his high high throne.
The Wolf God was different. He was the entitlement of power, the indignant outrage of a king whose subjects had their own thoughts, and sought their own way. He was Power as right, as inheritance. Of the throne unquestioned. His death was the death of confusion, the death of incomprehension, that his pack could ever do anything but obey.
Each of the Beast Gods represented something like that, she thought, though they had once surely been real, the great columns which held up the throne hall of Xiangmen spoke of that. But the dead were ever the props for story and metaphor, weren't they?
Ling Qi walked the paths going north, turning off the main stone road to follow a dirt trail that wound into the woods. She thought of the rats.
There were no shortage of the creatures here, beneath her feet in hidden burrows, amongst undergrowth and roots. Rats were a type of beast as common and widespread as men, they lived where humans did, they lived where they did not. Vermin, used as an insult, they stole and they ate and they multiplied.
There was a reason they were sometimes used to insult mortals, by the haughty sort. But, where then the Vermin God? He stood out among the others, as a being not of terrible awe and fear, but a thing to be disgusted by, a creeping plague. What did he say about Power, when compared to the others?
Ling Qi found herself standing by a high pine tree, resting her hand on the rough bark. There was quite a set of burrows under her feet. Did the pattern break here, were the vermin a meditation on greed, on want and desire and hunger?
She did not think so. That was a part of it, but only insofar as Want was inextricably tied to Power. To become powerful, for the fire of cultivation to burn high, fuel was needed. Ambition, desperation, love, hate, or a hundred other things. Power for its own sake could not support the highest peak of cultivation.
So what lesson then, the Vermin God? Her thoughts turned back to cynicism, and the Western Territory. She observed the tiny lives under her feet, felt the scurrying rats, living their lives.
…They were no more a vicious devouring horde than a human village was, not really. The same things which drove a rat to such lengths would drive humans to do the same.
+2 Power, +2 Want XP
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of personal emptiness, of isolation in multitude. A thousand devouring mouths that acknowledged only themselves. (+1 Isolation XP)
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
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The Wang were, and in some ways are still, in an awkward place that we'd traded up our clan contact to the grownup real deal version, but that didn't come with opportunities for engagement, or really even conversation. That said, I'm pretty sure the Wang prevailed over the Diao in all but one head to head vote that we had?
The Diao contact got added as a freebie into other actions, like travelling to Xiangmen for the auction and investigating the sabotage of Hanyi's concert. Notably, we did not actually get any on-screen interaction with our Diao contact in the dedicated investigation action that she organized specifically for us to build a working relationship through. And after our big heroic response to the twist in the arc, you know where we voted to spend that cache of political capital? The Wang lands. We didn't even get to talk to her in the aftermath. Nor have there been any letters or anything helping guide our expectations on the Diao's disposition towards the summit. We've got squat. Our Diao engagement has been shafted pretty hard, and unfairly, actually.
As for Zhengui, it's true that his full development will unfold over decades and centuries. So will ours. That's just cultivation. The idea that we can only engage with Zhengui's themes through his engagement, integration, and modification of the natural world is misguided. It's just not true. It's something we can also do, but it's not the only point, or probably suitable as the primary point, of focus on him and his philosophical underpinnings.
And the reason for that is scope. And scope creep. As it relates to narrative focus. We're already seeing it play out. We get told that having his own space will be a good opportunity, so okay we wait to start poking the fief. Once we're poking the fief, okay wait until we're really building things, we'll get that Meng geomancer in here. Okay, we'll wait. But the geomancer has to wait until we're a hamlet. Well, okay, guess we'll wait for tha- the hamlet is going to take longer than initially expected due to newly introduced mechanics. ....
The land is not suited to being a lens of narrative exploration. The scale, scope, and pacing it provides is flatly dysfunctional. If we'd known how much it would be jerking us around, we would have done Garden of Mists probably turn 15 or 16.
I'm fully convinced fief development is a wholly defunct means of exploring Zhengui's stuff. It fundamentally cannot function, either by its own terms, or in the context of all the narrative obligations we have demanding our time and focus, and the timescales they're doing it. Maintaining any kind of cohesive narrative through the fief is actually impossible. What we need, what was always needed, is a more direct, personal, and immediate medium of engagement to anchor the narrative in a framework that is actually accessible and flexible enough for consistent exploration.
@yrsillar needs to give us an art. One that is actually good and cool and probably bullshitted into existence via Kohatu's ghost. It has to be cool, strong and unambiguously fulfilling. It has to cover all the things it's supposed to, to make up for the fact we were supposed to get one 5 turns ago.
And lol I got beat by the update you're welcome everyone for this post
The Diao contact got added as a freebie into other actions, like travelling to Xiangmen for the auction and investigating the sabotage of Hanyi's concert. Notably, we did not actually get any on-screen interaction with our Diao contact in the dedicated investigation action that she organized specifically for us to build a working relationship through. And after our big heroic response to the twist in the arc, you know where we voted to spend that cache of political capital? The Wang lands. We didn't even get to talk to her in the aftermath. Nor have there been any letters or anything helping guide our expectations on the Diao's disposition towards the summit. We've got squat. Our Diao engagement has been shafted pretty hard, and unfairly, actually.
As for Zhengui, it's true that his full development will unfold over decades and centuries. So will ours. That's just cultivation. The idea that we can only engage with Zhengui's themes through his engagement, integration, and modification of the natural world is misguided. It's just not true. It's something we can also do, but it's not the only point, or probably suitable as the primary point, of focus on him and his philosophical underpinnings.
And the reason for that is scope. And scope creep. As it relates to narrative focus. We're already seeing it play out. We get told that having his own space will be a good opportunity, so okay we wait to start poking the fief. Once we're poking the fief, okay wait until we're really building things, we'll get that Meng geomancer in here. Okay, we'll wait. But the geomancer has to wait until we're a hamlet. Well, okay, guess we'll wait for tha- the hamlet is going to take longer than initially expected due to newly introduced mechanics. ....
The land is not suited to being a lens of narrative exploration. The scale, scope, and pacing it provides is flatly dysfunctional. If we'd known how much it would be jerking us around, we would have done Garden of Mists probably turn 15 or 16.
I'm fully convinced fief development is a wholly defunct means of exploring Zhengui's stuff. It fundamentally cannot function, either by its own terms, or in the context of all the narrative obligations we have demanding our time and focus, and the timescales they're doing it. Maintaining any kind of cohesive narrative through the fief is actually impossible. What we need, what was always needed, is a more direct, personal, and immediate medium of engagement to anchor the narrative in a framework that is actually accessible and flexible enough for consistent exploration.
@yrsillar needs to give us an art. One that is actually good and cool and probably bullshitted into existence via Kohatu's ghost. It has to be cool, strong and unambiguously fulfilling. It has to cover all the things it's supposed to, to make up for the fact we were supposed to get one 5 turns ago.
And lol I got beat by the update you're welcome everyone for this post
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- Location
- Earth
This one makes a good foil to Yan Renshu.
He has that selfishness.
- Pronouns
- He
Oof, really feels like the Western Territories people will be the ones to react the worst if/when they realize the truth about what Sun Shao has done.
Well, the ones that don't go deep into denial.
Though I suppose that's a bad reaction, itself.
PowerLeca
Rapidly aging
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I enjoyed the thinky bits in this update.
Seems to me there's a narrow possibility of the people of the jungle finding commonality with the people of The Twisted Pines somewhere along the lines of, "we fight our environment tooth and nail for every scrap of what we have, and we are proud of that" with a hefty side helping of "eff the jungle demons they suck"
This is the dangerous bit: can we convince them that the Tangled Pines be seen as allies rather than barbarians to be conquered?
It would be cool if the "martial virtue" could be diverted to games and contests somehow.
This makes me really want to learn more about the Tangled Pines culture.
Seems to me there's a narrow possibility of the people of the jungle finding commonality with the people of The Twisted Pines somewhere along the lines of, "we fight our environment tooth and nail for every scrap of what we have, and we are proud of that" with a hefty side helping of "eff the jungle demons they suck"
This is the dangerous bit: can we convince them that the Tangled Pines be seen as allies rather than barbarians to be conquered?
It would be cool if the "martial virtue" could be diverted to games and contests somehow.
This makes me really want to learn more about the Tangled Pines culture.
[ X] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
I prefer this one.
I prefer this one.
TimEd
Meteor maker
Man, I realy like this chapter. West just keep getting shafted, but they know it and think it better than the life they had. And their newer generation is set to become a militarized street gang that might want to draw out an alliance for survival.
On the Powers, I am really torn. Isolation in multitude I believe is the "true" answer in so much as it is the realer answer on the surface. On the other hand, Endings and nihilism could also be "more true" depending on if you brush off the shallow layer of base survival and see that a desperate person has no time for more than survival and is thus an empty husk of a person driven by circumstance. After all, we've all read/heard that monologue where an Edgy character being edgy either leads to them being a broken softie on the inside, or a person who takes pride in what they had to do to survive, despite hurting (devouring) themself.
On Ling Qi, she's thought that
On the Powers, I am really torn. Isolation in multitude I believe is the "true" answer in so much as it is the realer answer on the surface. On the other hand, Endings and nihilism could also be "more true" depending on if you brush off the shallow layer of base survival and see that a desperate person has no time for more than survival and is thus an empty husk of a person driven by circumstance. After all, we've all read/heard that monologue where an Edgy character being edgy either leads to them being a broken softie on the inside, or a person who takes pride in what they had to do to survive, despite hurting (devouring) themself.
On Ling Qi, she's thought that
Being callous and nihilistic is a survival method that saves a person from defending against the privation of the heart. Small i isolation here I believe slightly leans more with Endings than Isolation, but again still has flavors of both depending on what the focused view is on
like this view. Different ways and methods of using selfishness for power or at least continuation of the self.
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- Location
- CA
Hmm, I'm trying to think of how these connect up narratively. What strikes me is that she's examining the problem of the West by considering the failures of leadership. The Vermin God is Sun Shao, and the rats he commands are the soldiers he commands as extensions of himself. But ultimately they're being lied to.
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of personal emptiness, of isolation in multitude. A thousand devouring mouths that acknowledged only themselves. (+1 Isolation XP)
The failure being examined here is half the Bai and half the Sun. In breaking from the Bai and in traveling to a place as hostile as the Jungle, the Sun and their people became isolated, unable to trust or rely upon anyone else. They had to be strong, they had to fight, they had to accept losses.
Part of that failure is the Bai, of course: there's a saying about cornered rats. This is the failure the people of the Sun know and acknowledge, and realizing what Sun Shao is doing only makes it worse. The Jungle being given a chance to become part of the Empire, to work its poison deeper into the heart of a nation, is a failure made possible by the Bai. But the other part of the failure is on the Sun, because Sun Shao's mission was more the destruction of the Bai than the safety of his people. He begged the question, in assuming that only those willing to stand beside them on the battle lines against The True Enemy could be their allies. But that wasn't a given! With the Bai as isolationist as they are, there was room for lesser alliances and more limited friends! The people of the Sun are isolated first and foremost because those in power failed them, because Sun Shao was not willing to extend trust outward.
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
This one is about Sun Shao's acceptance of the Jungle and the decision to turn the motivation of his people into a lie. All of them still believe that the Jungle is an enemy that they're seeking to defeat, and forsaking all of those they have lost to the Jungle in the name of power is the most terrible kind of betrayal. It's nihilistic and it's self-devouring because there can be no rationalization or denial of the betrayal of others and of the past self, except insofar as you say it doesn't matter compared to the pursuit of power.
Ultimately I'm not sure that either of these really have anything to teach Ling Qi so much as they represent lessons she's already learned and failures she's already acknowledged, the first in her emphasis on Communication and interpersonal connection and the second in her focus on Communication andTruth Choice. It'll probably affect the Art some? I wonder if the second will give something like the ability to temporarily consume Primal War Calling or other Beast King effects for additional short-term power.
The second seems a bit more relevant now, in that it's a moment for her to consider the losses of advancing cultivation and the risks of concept drift. That sort of self-negation is a very real risk if you become too far unmoored from human sentiments and human concerns.
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of personal emptiness, of isolation in multitude. A thousand devouring mouths that acknowledged only themselves. (+1 Isolation XP)
The failure being examined here is half the Bai and half the Sun. In breaking from the Bai and in traveling to a place as hostile as the Jungle, the Sun and their people became isolated, unable to trust or rely upon anyone else. They had to be strong, they had to fight, they had to accept losses.
Part of that failure is the Bai, of course: there's a saying about cornered rats. This is the failure the people of the Sun know and acknowledge, and realizing what Sun Shao is doing only makes it worse. The Jungle being given a chance to become part of the Empire, to work its poison deeper into the heart of a nation, is a failure made possible by the Bai. But the other part of the failure is on the Sun, because Sun Shao's mission was more the destruction of the Bai than the safety of his people. He begged the question, in assuming that only those willing to stand beside them on the battle lines against The True Enemy could be their allies. But that wasn't a given! With the Bai as isolationist as they are, there was room for lesser alliances and more limited friends! The people of the Sun are isolated first and foremost because those in power failed them, because Sun Shao was not willing to extend trust outward.
[ ] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
This one is about Sun Shao's acceptance of the Jungle and the decision to turn the motivation of his people into a lie. All of them still believe that the Jungle is an enemy that they're seeking to defeat, and forsaking all of those they have lost to the Jungle in the name of power is the most terrible kind of betrayal. It's nihilistic and it's self-devouring because there can be no rationalization or denial of the betrayal of others and of the past self, except insofar as you say it doesn't matter compared to the pursuit of power.
Ultimately I'm not sure that either of these really have anything to teach Ling Qi so much as they represent lessons she's already learned and failures she's already acknowledged, the first in her emphasis on Communication and interpersonal connection and the second in her focus on Communication and
The second seems a bit more relevant now, in that it's a moment for her to consider the losses of advancing cultivation and the risks of concept drift. That sort of self-negation is a very real risk if you become too far unmoored from human sentiments and human concerns.
- Pronouns
- He
Do we have the text of the Rat God parts of the BKSD story? I'd like to refresh my memory of the primary source text before voting on my interpretation of it.
Moratorium over (@SassyAsses was too early)
[X] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
[X] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
- Location
- Staring into the void
[X] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
NoxOfUmbra
Shadow of the night
- Location
- Colombia, South América
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
[X] The Vermin God is the Power of nihilism, of belief in nothing. A selfishness so complete that it would devour itself and think itself genius in the doing. (+1 Endings XP)
