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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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[X] No she would leave that to him, there was something more here.

Lets Steal the spiders out of his skull and preserve them for analysis.
High level crafting work like this is as much a Way imprint as a formation, it'd be a fingerprint to the crafter, while chasing the attacker is likely still to a middleman cutout.
 
Okay, so, there are a couple of blindspots I have noted.

1) We don't know what Cao Chun has identified.
2) We don't know what he's dealing with.

Also, the basic split on the vote.

yrsillar said:
We are uncertain yet if this is a matter of subjects inserted among the work crews or some effect or object which will arrive through liminal passage.

In the case of the latter it is a most subtle method, which my non destructive investigatory techniques cannot detect. This suggests a method too exotic or foreign for me to recognize, or overwhelming potency. I suspect the latter as otherwise these accidents are too small…"
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So basically, it's the same as the previous vote. Focus on the distraction, or focus on the intruder.

I think looking deeper into distraction is the right call here. Initially, it looked like a one-off incident, but it's obvious that there's a laeger plot at play now.

The eggs seem like one of those multi-step poisons, where it's not actually effective until all components are in.

yrsillar said:
"No. We are not surprised. The signs are hidden well, but in the final week of preparations the frequency was too much. Enough so that I suspect that the culprits wanted to see attention brought to this," Cao Chun said.
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There were lots of accidents in previously, laying seeds that led to what happened with the. The crews are the ones setting up the infrastructure, so if there's something going on with them, things will be messy to the whole summit.

yrsillar said:
A sense of intuition made her gut churn, and she swept her eyes over the inchoate collections of bubbles the minds of the workers appeared as in her senses here. Her gaze traced the film of those bubbles. Flashes of family, of happiness and mourning, of joy and sadness swept by under her attention, the images of mundane lives flashes through her head. Despite her speed, a spore touched down… and nothing happened. The thought projection went on, unruffled. Nothing sprouted or burst, the mote dissolved, just as those she had touched had, only…

She saw another spore gently dissolve on contact with a shimmering bubble. This time she narrowed her eyes, looking more deeply.

He looked up, toward the distant light at the top of the pit and reached out for the hand of the shadowed savior descending toward them, speaking the words to soothe the furious mountain.

Even a month, or a week ago, she would have missed it, the shine of the bubble going just a little dull, a little gray.
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Looking at this, it implies that this has been happening to every worker here. It's just that she noticed this for one worker, LQ decided to look deeper, noticed something else happening, and stopped it completely.

We're in a unique position to look at it, regarding our skill in Thief of Names and [Communication], especially since all the subtle traces Ling Qi barely noticed are disappearing right now. Plus, with Ling Qi's experience with ALL three parties (ES, Ith, WS), she can probably identify the suspects too.

However, as it's been noted in the past, Cao Chun has experience with Hui sleeper cells. While it only looks like their methods on the surface, there may be transferrable skills here to sus out hidden information.. But the evidence is going before our very perceptive eyes, so it might not work out.

We need to do both on the scene but can't, so pursuit can be delegated to someone with the skills for it. So, I think we can trust Jin Tae to pursue and delegate it. Jin Tae, again, probably has experience in this while we're the only one with the current experience for forensics.

Plus, he's shown that for things the MoI are explicitly focused on, he's skilled and professional and focused on the mission at hand.

Then we'll look at the thing that's going on with the workers, since we're in a unique situation. He can communicate with us and Cao Chun during the chase too, in case he needs backup too. Plus, if the payload can't contact its sender, then the source shouldn't recognise his qi too. They can probably identify ours.

[X] No she would leave that to him, there was something more here.
 
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I want to secure the evidence before it destroys itself. Evidence is much more reliable than just assuming things based on the character of people and organizations.

[X] No she would leave that to him, there was something more here.
 
[X] No she would leave that to him, there was something more here.

Having evidence at hand is important. I have faith that LQ has the abilities and skill to get the disappearing spores and then we maybe able to trace it back to the creator.
 
[X] Yes, the man could be examined at leisure, by cultivators and physicians greater than she.

Now is the time to persue and nip this problem in the bud before the person behind it finds a way to hide and set up something worse.
 
Winged One said:
Evidence is much more reliable than just assuming things based on the character of people and organizations.
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The MoI and others are more than capable of "interrogating" info from them so long as we can point them towards an actual tail to chase.

The actual perpetrator is a much more solid lead than their modus operandi, which wont even go off without their deliberate intervention to try and set it off

We dont even have any evidence that Ling Qi can preserve the evidence outside of hoping that letting Sixiang try to preserve it wont result in any bad shit happening

Each time Ling Qi has tried to interact with the Qi constructs at play they have, universally, self destructed

However, it comes down to whether or not Ling Qi would keep herself from being a busy body regardless of the knowledge that no matter what she chooses to do the victims wont be left out of the lurch

And if you think identifying the attack vector is more important than identifying the culprit or not
 
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Techniques are too varied and too many for understanding this one to help us beyond finding and fighting the culprit, so I vote to cut to the chase.


[X] Yes, the man could be examined at leisure, by cultivators and physicians greater than she.
 
veekie said:
[X] No she would leave that to him, there was something more here.

Lets Steal the spiders out of his skull and preserve them for analysis.
High level crafting work like this is as much a Way imprint as a formation, it'd be a fingerprint to the crafter, while chasing the attacker is likely still to a middleman cutout.
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if it's a Hui-made weapon all it tells us is that someone set off a Hui weapon, not the person that set it off. Especially since you've already made the argument that a disposable pawn could be the one setting it off anyway, rather than anyone worth catching
 
TehChron said:
The MoI and others are more than capable of "interrogating" info from them so long as we can point them towards an actual tail to chase.

The actual perpetrator is a much more solid lead than their modus operandi, which wont even go off without their deliberate intervention to try and set it off

We dont even have any evidence that Ling Qi can preserve the evidence outside of hoping that letting Sixiang try to preserve it wont result in any bad shit happening

Each time Ling Qi has tried to interact with the Qi constructs at play they have, universally, self destructed

However, it comes down to whether or not Ling Qi would keep herself from being a busy body regardless of the knowledge that no matter what she chooses to do the victims wont be left out of the lurch

And if you think identifying the attack vector is more important than identifying the culprit or not
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Keep in mind that chasing does NOT nip this in the bud. We're going after low level grunts while Shu Yie and Cao Chun chase the big guys. We're not catching the actual perpetuator.

Catching one low level grunt stops leaves the others there. Understanding the modus operandi of the big guns is huge because they're obviously a high realm, and so they'll have a specific way or method to do things that's identifiable to them only.

Plus, we still have a chance to catch them with Tae pursuing instead. We'll be making good use of our manpower here too.

And The evidence burst when LQ touched it without looking deeper. She's noticed a few things and learned more about thr payload. I will be deeply surprised if she doesn't come up with a more effective approach now.

I think she CAN capture the evidence. She was able to do something similar with Renshu's worm.

Olgol2 said:
[X] Yes, the man could be examined at leisure, by cultivators and physicians greater than she.

Now is the time to persue and nip this problem in the bud before the person behind it finds a way to hide and set up something worse.
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The thing is, there are clues that the evidence is part of a much larger, much worse plot tying all the accidents together. So uncovering the plot that's been building for more than a month is much more important than catching one messager.

JowKeen said:
if it's a Hui-made weapon all it tells us is that someone set off a Hui weapon, not the person that set it off. Especially since you've already made the argument that a disposable pawn could be the one setting it off anyway, rather than anyone worth catching
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It's a weapon that's made to look Hui-like. It's not actually a Hui weapon, so we can learn more from digging deep. We have experience with all three suspects'. qi
 
lioli said:
Looks like the target is positive memories of Ling Qi? The memory-bubble was from Ling Qi saving the construction workers from being eaten by the mountain core.

Speculating, the desired effect is to increase discontent by poisoning the non-nobility, the worker caste, against the principal proponent of the summit, thereby encouraging sabotage and denying Ling Qi some of the political benefits of the summit. Points to the Ith-ia as the culprit: this is their communal thinking.
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I would say that points to someone Imperial with a grudge. Or ex-imperial, meaning worm-boy. He'd have the insight to point out that to the Ith-ia that Imperial society is too unequal for workers' opinions to matter to politics, but he's also enough of a worm to let someone else fuck up intentionally for his own advancement and grudge.
TehChron said:
And if you think identifying the attack vector is more important than identifying the culprit or not
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This is the sort of setting where identifying the attack vector helps in identifying the culprit. How do we know Jin Tae isn't chasing a distraction like Cao Chun is?
 
LQ is especially good at going to mundane things and unearthing larger plots. We were sent to deal with the distraction, the "accident" and her intuition is telling us that we've uncovered something larger. It'll be better to explore that more and stop it.

Plus, the main argument for pursuit os to identify the perpetrators. That assumes er are working in isolation here. The accident was meant to distract Cao from something in the meeting halls, which he is currently engaged with. I am extremely confident that he'd find something related to the identity of the culprits. Of not, Shu Yue is also there.

Evidence on the other hand? Nope. Cao has already hinted that he doesn't have a wide range of non destructive techniques for testing, so we can do something he can't do currently.

And generally, focusing on forensics is a much more efficient use of manpower. Cao Chun is dealing with an incident in another location. Zheng Fu is currently doing damage control. So Jin Tae will focus on pursuit while we focus on forensics.

We're the only one here who can do forensics. We're not the only person who can pursue and identify. I'm very confident that the apprentice of the Senior MoI Secretary of the South Emerald Seas can do that
 
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thinking about it more, I think arguments for either vote are nonsense. Vote for the scene you want, we cannot have enough information to accurately pick one or the other.
 
Chasing the grunt is no more likely to lead to a final outcome than a sample of what they are planting, because the guy spreading the spores doesn't need to know anything, just the target and the package.

But the preserved evidence DOES enable us to work on better detection and counteragents than we have right now, because we now know what specific craft is used. Formationcraft is an imposition of a Way on the formation and they can't change that easily without replacing the crafter.

We need to find out who else got seeded and clear the influence.
 
I would point out that simply knowing that there's a reason to Look is right then and there a major coup. If we go "I absolutely saw this guy get hit with something", people are going to sit up and take Notice.

And I straight up refuse to believe that whatever these bugs are, happen to be good enough to hide from the sight of an investigator who specifically knows that something is trying to hide from them there.. Assuming that 'The evidence will evaporate unless Ling Qi secures it this instant' is a stretch, because it is doing something and Ling Qi got firsthand look at specifically what it's meddling with.

It's not Ling Qi's job to Do Everything. She's not a doctor and she's not a healer, her skills at investigation are growing but she still tends to mostly be an operative who moves after other people have sorted the information out.

What Ling Qi does is act, she moves in at the critical moment and navigates the Chaos to find the root of the threat, before dragging it out into the light. That means pursuit, not stopping. Our colleagues are not amateurs, just telling them that there's something to be found if they look hard enough will give them everything they need to investigate. What we need to do is pull on this lead before it evaporates.

And I sincerely doubt you can outsource something this delicate to a rando-cut out, the level of delicacy involved is far beyond what you can trust to a random hired goon or expendable mook. We catch this tiger's tail and we will find an Agent. It'd be ridiculous to think that something like this can be handled by a rando expendable nobody, it's too precise in its targeting and too cleverly designed to be a fire and forget weapon you can give to someone who has no idea what it is.

The Plan was to let them make a move, and then effectively outrun their OODA loop by having Ling Qi break off from the debate and ZOOM fast. We were also tipped off that these things self-detonate if interacted with by someone except an intended target, so we won't even necessarily be able to recover the sample.
 
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