I feel like Xiulan should have gotten a free Tribulation out of seeing her street rat friend zoom past her while being completely oblivious of how fast her progress was.
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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 mean heart demon?
How about both?
- Location
- CA
I mean, she apparently agreed with you, because she eventually arranged one for herself. A girl's got to be proactive when Heaven's falling down on the job.
Heaven: "Alright, alright, one package of lightning coming right up."
- Location
- Rivendell
Ling Qi: "Hey Renxiang do you want to read my new novel? I just finished writing it."
CRX: "If you insist. What is the title?
Ling Qi: "The noble villainess wanted to bully me but I crushed her spirit by making her feel inadequate and now she has become one of my best friends?!"
CRX: "..."
"That seems... oddly familiar."
CRX: "If you insist. What is the title?
Ling Qi: "The noble villainess wanted to bully me but I crushed her spirit by making her feel inadequate and now she has become one of my best friends?!"
CRX: "..."
"That seems... oddly familiar."
It is not too late Yrsillar, you can re-brand when you publish a second edition of Forge of Destiny.
Turn 19: Arc 7-1 Seasons
"Big Sis, it's fiiiiine," Hanyi complained.
Ling Qi frowned, plucking at one of the ornaments in the ice spirit's hair, adjusting it minutely. Better. "It is now."
"It was fine before," Hanyi grumbled. Swatting at her hands.
She supposed if Hanyi was pushing back against her that much, then she probably was hovering a little too much.
She stepped back from the vanity as Hanyi hopped down from the stool, her gown swirling around her bare feet. It matched Ling Qi's in style and cut, with pale blue white fur trimmings around the neck and hems, thin, shimmering fabric instead of silk for the body of it, midnight blue and set with twinkling points of light like stars or snowflakes that seemed to be descending and fall with the movement of the gown.
"You will need to be on your best behavior, okay?" Ling Qi said. "No fidgeting around, no complaining about being bored. You need to speak the proper way too. This isn't the place to be casual."
"I understand Big Sister," Hanyi said, pouting. "I'll be good, I promise. I won't mess up your big project!"
Ling Qi winced. "I know you wouldn't do that on purpose. But I need you to understand no matter how rude or annoying you think someone is being, keep it to yourself okay? This is as much a stage as your concerts, so treat it that way okay? You have to stay in character for the whole performance."
"I've got it!" Hanyi said, stamping her foot. "Your worse than Bao Qian before a big show today Big Sis!"
She resisted the urge to muss her junior sister's hair. She'd just spent all that time getting it perfect after all. "Well this is MY big show after all."
Hanyi pouted further, but her expression smoothed out as she looked up at Ling Qi. The willfulness in the young spirits gaze faded. Ling Qi let out a breath, feeling relief. She really did understand.
"...I'll be the best junior sis, okay? To pay you back for everything."
"Thank you, Hanyi. I know you will… You are a good girl, when you want to be," Ling Qi said wryly, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Let's head to the meeting hall now, okay?"
"Yeah! Big Sis is gonna knock 'em… um… do whatever is good for complicated grown up talky things!"
She supposed she would.
The Imperial side was more colorful, but no less different than usual. There were quite a lot of priests here, in their colorful robes and headdresses. The jangle of ringed staffs and the rustle of paper talismans as they squinted just as suspiciously back at their counterparts across the table.
She met the eyes of Inzha, who was here in place of her husband today, standing out among the snowcapped crowd by her tall headwear. The other woman gave her a commiserating smile. Ling Qi returned it, dipping her head. They were in for a difficult time, no doubt. But really could it be as bad as having the general breathing down her neck last week?
She pursed her lips as she looked on, at the jumble of conflicting imagery that was all of these wants and drives and desires.
…There were different kinds of challenge, she supposed.
Her mistake here was looking at each individual interest here as a separate disconnecting thing. Focus the eyes a little differently, squint and tilt your head, and there was a picture to be seen. Because if she had learned one thing in all of this, it was that wants and desires and actions were not isolated things. Every word she had spoken and choice she had made had rippled out to affect others.
The things the nobles of the emerald seas wanted did not arise completely from present, momentary advantage. That was a part, but a long, long history of disunity, internal chaos, and being preyed upon in their separated weakness informed what they saw as gain.
To the Emerald Seas, the building advantage they had over the people of the Clouds since ogodei's fall and Cai Shenhua's rise was the end of a long, long winter indeed. The march of soldiers and priests and settlers were the ides of spring, the waters released to flood, uncaring of the destruction of those downstream.
She didn't have the full picture of the White Sky, their image was jumbled to her. If anything, she had her suspicions that their factions were just as deeply divided as any two provinces of the Empire, and with what she had learned from Grydja… She did not think there WAS a central authority precisely. It would be as if instead of an Emperor there was only a council of dukes and kings, like the old Weilu, before the founding era..
…They were proud and confident in their way though. With the revelation of the Sky Palace and its nature, they had lost some of their reticence. They saw themselves ascendant as well. It would be so, so easy for that to come to a clash. For the Want of nations to become war.
…The Cloud were suffering it. Whatever the reasons were, the untouchable Cloud Men who had acted with impunity on the southern hills and forests had seen that fortune reverse. Many scattered, she had learned that much. The people of the Cloud had been in slow decline since the Xi, some went east, and became of the bogs and badlands. Some went west surviving the harrowing passage to become 'Princes' of hill and mountain, a few among a thousand, in the mysterious land the White Sky called Khusan.
And many who were left now looked south. Others looked under the earth, and those that remained still gathered for war. One nation's spring was another's winter.
But that was enough musing for now. She laid a hand on Hanyi's shoulder as the low rumble of speech around the table faded as Jaromila and Cai Renxiang rose, standing across from each other.
"We have come far. We have established the foundation for law between us," Cai Renxiang began.
"We have come together and determined without swords where the borders of our realms will lie," Jaromila said.
"Now we must address less material matters. Things of spirit and ritual."
"Things of knowledge and artisianship," Jaromila agreed.
Ling Qi was pleased with the effect and glad that she had helped them arrange it.
"Thus, we will begin our discussion here, at the Embassy itself, once again using this locale to test matters," Cai Renxiang said.
"The spirits of the place are unsettled, it is far less now, and not all on account of… sudden changes," Jaromila said. "But the spirits of this place will remain in confusion, until we align our practices here.
"Which we must now decide how to proceed with," Ling Qi said, rising from her seat. "I ask that the experts in the affairs of the gods, small and large, share their wisdom here, and with respect to their counterparts."
There was murmuring among the gathered priests, and when one finally spoke up, it was an elderly imperial man in dark green robes, leaning heavily on his ring headed staff. His silver hair was woven through an a circlet of gold, molded into the shape of woven wheat stalks and heads. "This is a wild land, its spirits do not know us. They are confused, firhgtened and angry. The many disparate pieces of casual ritual trouble them. Only where construction has been laid down are they… quelled."
"Slain and broken, more like," One of the White Sky priests spoke, an old, old man himself with skin like dried tree bark and only a few wispy strands clinging to his bald pate. He wore a half mask of leaves and woven branches. "It is not always the wrong way. To carve the world in our shape is the way of living things, to adapt our environment as we adapt to it, but there is no need to dance around it."
"Harmony is not the absence of violence, but rather a sustainable state between all factors," the imperial Priest agreed. "Which is why we cannot simply both perform our rituals. As the embassy is far closer to the lands which we have claimed, it is only sensible for our rituals to have primacy."
"Unacceptable," a woman with dark geometric lines painted on her wrinkled face said, rising to her feet as well. "How can this be a place of neutrality if your gods are supreme?"
"Ritual division, marking the boundary between us then, to tell all of the spirits here where one begins and one ends."
"There will be spiritual pollution along such a border, where spirits are divided."
"And what of shrines? In the hall itself that is. It holds for now, but…"
Ling Qi listened as discussion opened in earnest, priests from both sides debating on the matter of boundaries and rituals. Eventually though, one voice spoke over the others carrying the weight of qi.
"There will be no foreign shrines nor gods in imperial spaces," Cao Chun said, the inspector scowling. "Though it will be difficult, surely the answer is simple. There is a border here as anywhere else. Let each side see to its own matters, and assign some exorcists to deal with any pollution where rituals clash."
"That is impossible for this meeting hall at least," INzha pointed out mildly. It is already a place of both peoples, rough as it might be."
Cao Chun grimaced. "So there may be some allowance for this. There is no need to overcomplicate matters."
"...I must disagree, honorable inspector," Luo Jie said, shaking his head. "At least those devoted to spirits of roads and wilds must speak. "If we are the base resting soldiers, then the gods of hearthfires and guestrights must be attended. Avoidance here will only bring harm."
"I agree with the venerable Voice of Hounds," Dzintr spoke up from among the murmuring priests. "Though it will be difficult now. Trading ease in the present for future troubles is unwise. Let those who speak for the Crowfather, the Wastewalker, and the smaller gods of journeys, hearths and boundaries gather with their imperial counterparts and determine the way forward."
Ling Qi raised an eyebrow at the title, but Luo Jie showed no offense. She glanced to Inzha, as the other Emissary rose.
"If we are to gather a council of priests to match our council of lawmakers, why be so limited. Let each side gather the small voices of gods and spirits they deem relevant to the mountains, to this place and places like it. Let them convene here under the aegis of safety we have established. For this new place and new thing, let a full suite of new rituals and correct methods of propiation be designed, and new cults be established, if necessary. When setting foundations, one must be thorough."
"That is entirely unnecessary," Cao Chun grumbled.
"Too much, too fast," Luo Jie agreed, shaking his head. "There is no need for such disruptions."
"I don't see the need to go beyond the connections, the roads and the hearths and the meeting places," Wang Lian said, shaking her head. "We'll just have priests getting underfoot this way."
"...Are you're geomancers not a form of priest?" Jaromila asked, frowning.
"No," Wang Lian replied, looking baffled.
"Do they not commune with the land to determine…."
Ling Qi glanced to Cai Renxiang and Gan Guangli, frowning. This was the baseline before they could discuss individual matters, they needed to bring this debate to a close. To that end, they should support…
[ ] Completely separate spiritual ecosystems. Ech side will attend their own rituals and establish a spiritual boundary between our spaces. The meeting hall itself will be allowed some small shared rituals (+1 MoI Favorability. -1 PT, ES, and WS Favorability)
[ ] Priests and spirit speakers who work with the small gods of roads and hearths and wild places will be allowed to confer with each other, and arrange new rituals and methods to placate the spirits whose realms cross over the borders, as well as opening study into proper practice for travelers. (+1 PT, WS Favorability, -1 MoI Favorability)
[ ] A full slate of the appropriate priests will be assembled here, to study the spirits in the borderlands and create a full slate of shared rituals which might be shared across the Embassy grounds and perhaps in the future, be applied to other border regions. -2 MoI favorability, -1 ES Favorability. +2 Pt Favorability, +1 WS Favorability)
1 point of MoI Favorability penalty can be defrayed here, for the second and third choice. Chances are…
20%+20%+5%=45% Chance
1 point of PT Favorability can be defrayed for the first choice. Chances are…
20%+30%+5%=55% Chance
Ling Qi frowned, plucking at one of the ornaments in the ice spirit's hair, adjusting it minutely. Better. "It is now."
"It was fine before," Hanyi grumbled. Swatting at her hands.
She supposed if Hanyi was pushing back against her that much, then she probably was hovering a little too much.
She stepped back from the vanity as Hanyi hopped down from the stool, her gown swirling around her bare feet. It matched Ling Qi's in style and cut, with pale blue white fur trimmings around the neck and hems, thin, shimmering fabric instead of silk for the body of it, midnight blue and set with twinkling points of light like stars or snowflakes that seemed to be descending and fall with the movement of the gown.
"You will need to be on your best behavior, okay?" Ling Qi said. "No fidgeting around, no complaining about being bored. You need to speak the proper way too. This isn't the place to be casual."
"I understand Big Sister," Hanyi said, pouting. "I'll be good, I promise. I won't mess up your big project!"
Ling Qi winced. "I know you wouldn't do that on purpose. But I need you to understand no matter how rude or annoying you think someone is being, keep it to yourself okay? This is as much a stage as your concerts, so treat it that way okay? You have to stay in character for the whole performance."
"I've got it!" Hanyi said, stamping her foot. "Your worse than Bao Qian before a big show today Big Sis!"
She resisted the urge to muss her junior sister's hair. She'd just spent all that time getting it perfect after all. "Well this is MY big show after all."
Hanyi pouted further, but her expression smoothed out as she looked up at Ling Qi. The willfulness in the young spirits gaze faded. Ling Qi let out a breath, feeling relief. She really did understand.
"...I'll be the best junior sis, okay? To pay you back for everything."
"Thank you, Hanyi. I know you will… You are a good girl, when you want to be," Ling Qi said wryly, laying a hand on her shoulder. "Let's head to the meeting hall now, okay?"
"Yeah! Big Sis is gonna knock 'em… um… do whatever is good for complicated grown up talky things!"
She supposed she would.
***
The meeting hall had a different tenor today. The General was absent, for one, though Xia Lin was still here. The White Sky's side lived up to its name today, because there was a truly staggering amount of white among the heads gathered at the table today. Heavily lined wary and suspicious faces, gathered in small cliques bearing different symbols and attire. Furs and headresses of bone and horn, clutches staves of twisted frozen wood and fingering charms made of feather and bone.The Imperial side was more colorful, but no less different than usual. There were quite a lot of priests here, in their colorful robes and headdresses. The jangle of ringed staffs and the rustle of paper talismans as they squinted just as suspiciously back at their counterparts across the table.
She met the eyes of Inzha, who was here in place of her husband today, standing out among the snowcapped crowd by her tall headwear. The other woman gave her a commiserating smile. Ling Qi returned it, dipping her head. They were in for a difficult time, no doubt. But really could it be as bad as having the general breathing down her neck last week?
She pursed her lips as she looked on, at the jumble of conflicting imagery that was all of these wants and drives and desires.
…There were different kinds of challenge, she supposed.
Her mistake here was looking at each individual interest here as a separate disconnecting thing. Focus the eyes a little differently, squint and tilt your head, and there was a picture to be seen. Because if she had learned one thing in all of this, it was that wants and desires and actions were not isolated things. Every word she had spoken and choice she had made had rippled out to affect others.
The things the nobles of the emerald seas wanted did not arise completely from present, momentary advantage. That was a part, but a long, long history of disunity, internal chaos, and being preyed upon in their separated weakness informed what they saw as gain.
To the Emerald Seas, the building advantage they had over the people of the Clouds since ogodei's fall and Cai Shenhua's rise was the end of a long, long winter indeed. The march of soldiers and priests and settlers were the ides of spring, the waters released to flood, uncaring of the destruction of those downstream.
She didn't have the full picture of the White Sky, their image was jumbled to her. If anything, she had her suspicions that their factions were just as deeply divided as any two provinces of the Empire, and with what she had learned from Grydja… She did not think there WAS a central authority precisely. It would be as if instead of an Emperor there was only a council of dukes and kings, like the old Weilu, before the founding era..
…They were proud and confident in their way though. With the revelation of the Sky Palace and its nature, they had lost some of their reticence. They saw themselves ascendant as well. It would be so, so easy for that to come to a clash. For the Want of nations to become war.
…The Cloud were suffering it. Whatever the reasons were, the untouchable Cloud Men who had acted with impunity on the southern hills and forests had seen that fortune reverse. Many scattered, she had learned that much. The people of the Cloud had been in slow decline since the Xi, some went east, and became of the bogs and badlands. Some went west surviving the harrowing passage to become 'Princes' of hill and mountain, a few among a thousand, in the mysterious land the White Sky called Khusan.
And many who were left now looked south. Others looked under the earth, and those that remained still gathered for war. One nation's spring was another's winter.
But that was enough musing for now. She laid a hand on Hanyi's shoulder as the low rumble of speech around the table faded as Jaromila and Cai Renxiang rose, standing across from each other.
"We have come far. We have established the foundation for law between us," Cai Renxiang began.
"We have come together and determined without swords where the borders of our realms will lie," Jaromila said.
"Now we must address less material matters. Things of spirit and ritual."
"Things of knowledge and artisianship," Jaromila agreed.
Ling Qi was pleased with the effect and glad that she had helped them arrange it.
"Thus, we will begin our discussion here, at the Embassy itself, once again using this locale to test matters," Cai Renxiang said.
"The spirits of the place are unsettled, it is far less now, and not all on account of… sudden changes," Jaromila said. "But the spirits of this place will remain in confusion, until we align our practices here.
"Which we must now decide how to proceed with," Ling Qi said, rising from her seat. "I ask that the experts in the affairs of the gods, small and large, share their wisdom here, and with respect to their counterparts."
There was murmuring among the gathered priests, and when one finally spoke up, it was an elderly imperial man in dark green robes, leaning heavily on his ring headed staff. His silver hair was woven through an a circlet of gold, molded into the shape of woven wheat stalks and heads. "This is a wild land, its spirits do not know us. They are confused, firhgtened and angry. The many disparate pieces of casual ritual trouble them. Only where construction has been laid down are they… quelled."
"Slain and broken, more like," One of the White Sky priests spoke, an old, old man himself with skin like dried tree bark and only a few wispy strands clinging to his bald pate. He wore a half mask of leaves and woven branches. "It is not always the wrong way. To carve the world in our shape is the way of living things, to adapt our environment as we adapt to it, but there is no need to dance around it."
"Harmony is not the absence of violence, but rather a sustainable state between all factors," the imperial Priest agreed. "Which is why we cannot simply both perform our rituals. As the embassy is far closer to the lands which we have claimed, it is only sensible for our rituals to have primacy."
"Unacceptable," a woman with dark geometric lines painted on her wrinkled face said, rising to her feet as well. "How can this be a place of neutrality if your gods are supreme?"
"Ritual division, marking the boundary between us then, to tell all of the spirits here where one begins and one ends."
"There will be spiritual pollution along such a border, where spirits are divided."
"And what of shrines? In the hall itself that is. It holds for now, but…"
Ling Qi listened as discussion opened in earnest, priests from both sides debating on the matter of boundaries and rituals. Eventually though, one voice spoke over the others carrying the weight of qi.
"There will be no foreign shrines nor gods in imperial spaces," Cao Chun said, the inspector scowling. "Though it will be difficult, surely the answer is simple. There is a border here as anywhere else. Let each side see to its own matters, and assign some exorcists to deal with any pollution where rituals clash."
"That is impossible for this meeting hall at least," INzha pointed out mildly. It is already a place of both peoples, rough as it might be."
Cao Chun grimaced. "So there may be some allowance for this. There is no need to overcomplicate matters."
"...I must disagree, honorable inspector," Luo Jie said, shaking his head. "At least those devoted to spirits of roads and wilds must speak. "If we are the base resting soldiers, then the gods of hearthfires and guestrights must be attended. Avoidance here will only bring harm."
"I agree with the venerable Voice of Hounds," Dzintr spoke up from among the murmuring priests. "Though it will be difficult now. Trading ease in the present for future troubles is unwise. Let those who speak for the Crowfather, the Wastewalker, and the smaller gods of journeys, hearths and boundaries gather with their imperial counterparts and determine the way forward."
Ling Qi raised an eyebrow at the title, but Luo Jie showed no offense. She glanced to Inzha, as the other Emissary rose.
"If we are to gather a council of priests to match our council of lawmakers, why be so limited. Let each side gather the small voices of gods and spirits they deem relevant to the mountains, to this place and places like it. Let them convene here under the aegis of safety we have established. For this new place and new thing, let a full suite of new rituals and correct methods of propiation be designed, and new cults be established, if necessary. When setting foundations, one must be thorough."
"That is entirely unnecessary," Cao Chun grumbled.
"Too much, too fast," Luo Jie agreed, shaking his head. "There is no need for such disruptions."
"I don't see the need to go beyond the connections, the roads and the hearths and the meeting places," Wang Lian said, shaking her head. "We'll just have priests getting underfoot this way."
"...Are you're geomancers not a form of priest?" Jaromila asked, frowning.
"No," Wang Lian replied, looking baffled.
"Do they not commune with the land to determine…."
Ling Qi glanced to Cai Renxiang and Gan Guangli, frowning. This was the baseline before they could discuss individual matters, they needed to bring this debate to a close. To that end, they should support…
[ ] Completely separate spiritual ecosystems. Ech side will attend their own rituals and establish a spiritual boundary between our spaces. The meeting hall itself will be allowed some small shared rituals (+1 MoI Favorability. -1 PT, ES, and WS Favorability)
[ ] Priests and spirit speakers who work with the small gods of roads and hearths and wild places will be allowed to confer with each other, and arrange new rituals and methods to placate the spirits whose realms cross over the borders, as well as opening study into proper practice for travelers. (+1 PT, WS Favorability, -1 MoI Favorability)
[ ] A full slate of the appropriate priests will be assembled here, to study the spirits in the borderlands and create a full slate of shared rituals which might be shared across the Embassy grounds and perhaps in the future, be applied to other border regions. -2 MoI favorability, -1 ES Favorability. +2 Pt Favorability, +1 WS Favorability)
1 point of MoI Favorability penalty can be defrayed here, for the second and third choice. Chances are…
20%+20%+5%=45% Chance
1 point of PT Favorability can be defrayed for the first choice. Chances are…
20%+30%+5%=55% Chance
Emerald Seas Nobility: 8 (+2 Ducal Support, +2 Personal accomplishments, +1 Historical Proofs, +1 Expansionist Interests Catered, +2 High Land Claims, +1 Tech Sharing -1 Incomplete Hall)
White Plumes: 3 (+1 Satisfactory security, +1 Heron General's Patience, +1 High Land Claims)
Ministry of Integrity: 2 (+1 Satisfactory Security, +1 Imperial Support, +1 Judicial Concessions, +2 Investigation progress, -2 Ignored Interests, -1 Uncivilized Mingling)
White Sky Confederation: 7 (+2 Completed all three familiarity actions, +2 Leadership Support, +1 Historical Proofs, +1 Shared Evidence, +2 Tech Sharing, -2 High Land Claims, +1 Limited Military)
Polar Theocracy: 3 (+1 Satisfactory Security, +2 Historical Proofs, +1 Internal Concessions, +1 Tech Sharing, -1 Incomplete Hall, -1 Unstable Outsiders, -1 High land Claims, +1 Limited Military)
Modifiers:
All Xia Ren Rolls +5% Success Chance
+5% All rolls
White Plumes: 3 (+1 Satisfactory security, +1 Heron General's Patience, +1 High Land Claims)
Ministry of Integrity: 2 (+1 Satisfactory Security, +1 Imperial Support, +1 Judicial Concessions, +2 Investigation progress, -2 Ignored Interests, -1 Uncivilized Mingling)
White Sky Confederation: 7 (+2 Completed all three familiarity actions, +2 Leadership Support, +1 Historical Proofs, +1 Shared Evidence, +2 Tech Sharing, -2 High Land Claims, +1 Limited Military)
Polar Theocracy: 3 (+1 Satisfactory Security, +2 Historical Proofs, +1 Internal Concessions, +1 Tech Sharing, -1 Incomplete Hall, -1 Unstable Outsiders, -1 High land Claims, +1 Limited Military)
Modifiers:
All Xia Ren Rolls +5% Success Chance
+5% All rolls
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White Plumes: 3 (+1 Satisfactory security, +1 Heron General's Patience, +1 High Land Claims)
So far we haven't performed a single action that pissed off Xia Ren. Incredible.
So far we haven't performed a single action that pissed off Xia Ren. Incredible.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'm thinking the middle one. There's a chance we can stop any MOI losses, but even more importantly I think the floor for the Ministry of Inquiry is a LOT lower.
Like if we lose a point with the MOI... like, sure?
Like if we lose a point with the MOI... like, sure?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
We have to be really careful with the MoI, because they tend to take any slight as a deadly insult, doubling the losses.
Which makes option 3 just a non-starter from the get-go.
EDIT: Nevermind, apparently we've gotten enough out of the hole that their Numbers Are As They Seem.
Which makes option 3 just a non-starter from the get-go.
EDIT: Nevermind, apparently we've gotten enough out of the hole that their Numbers Are As They Seem.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think you mean the first choice?
Eh. This one is a bit more complicated, but not really that unmanageable. In terms of pure Favorability count, the first or second choices seem like our best options. For long-term purposes, the third sounds like the best - but it sounds like it's going to be too much MoI loss to be safe. Ultimately, we have plenty of ES and WS favor to soak, one way or another.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Anyway, Option One is a non-starter, Option Three is the Best Option IMO but it's also the one that's diciest because we can't actually afford to take a -2 hit to MoI if the roll fails.
Option Two is a fairly reasonable ask? It's telling that only the MoI dislikes it.
Option Two is a fairly reasonable ask? It's telling that only the MoI dislikes it.
Going bold seems to be the better option. -1 favourability with ES? Like, okay, sure? We can afford it.
The -2 to the MOI is the real kicker here. If we can get that to -1, this'll be a great threading the needle.
On a related note, it's interesting to see how much of an omake point sink the last couple arcs have been.
The -2 to the MOI is the real kicker here. If we can get that to -1, this'll be a great threading the needle.
On a related note, it's interesting to see how much of an omake point sink the last couple arcs have been.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Yeah, but it's too risky, because even with bonuses, Option 3 is only marginally better than a cointoss, and we don't dare bring them to -0 at this stage of the game.
Option Three is the best idea in the long run, but we're not looking for 'The Long Run' yet, we're looking to set precedent, and Option Two gets us what we need to minimize harm until it becomes more acceptable to properly sort this thing out.
- Location
- USA
I think the second option is the most reasonable, especially if we can tack on reconsidering the point maybe when we start the eastern road in... 50? 100? years?
- Location
- United Kingdom
Do you mean 'can be defrayed for the first choice'? That's the only one which loses us PT Favourability.
[ ] Priests and spirit speakers who work with the small gods of roads and hearths and wild places will be allowed to confer with each other, and arrange new rituals and methods to placate the spirits whose realms cross over the borders, as well as opening study into proper practice for travelers. (+1 PT, WS Favorability, -1 MoI Favorability)
as much as i dislike the middle ground on principle, this really is the best option here, everyone approves of this except the MoI and with them we have pretty good odds of cancelling the -1 anyway
as much as i dislike the middle ground on principle, this really is the best option here, everyone approves of this except the MoI and with them we have pretty good odds of cancelling the -1 anyway
- Pronouns
- He/Him
As a gut reaction, I like this one best.
Start with a proof of concept and then expand on it with time. And we really can't afford the -2 MoI in the other option, 65% (with omake points) is just not it.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
But yeah, on the whole, I think option two is the reasonable ask here. It's still risky, but there's not enough trust for a full commission yet, but we still do need to avoid the friction of completely separate ecosystems. Risking irritating the MoI a bit for that is a fair trade, and we have enough wiggle room that we can risk a -1 if the coin toss fails.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Option 2 seems like the clear best option, especially considering there are already planned negotiations in the future over additional roads and such. Best practices can easily be updated at that time for a wide array of things. Best option in the short term should win out since policy can always be adjusted in the future if it is deemed important enough.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
I expect Heron General's Patience to drop to 0 eventually.
Anyway I'm all for the midway option here. I think it's the right call and it comes with a little less than a coin flips chance of not losing any rep.