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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] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.
 
[X] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.
 
[X] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
Gloomy sneaky shadow girl.

You know Ling Qi being the tagalong to a high powered cultivator fight could be seen as the equivalent to trying to block a knife with your throat.

Zhengui is going to have to get involved in contract law to really clamp down on amending his mother's promise to stop throwing herself into danger.
 
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[X] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
 
[X] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.

One minor point that hasn't been raised yet - if we assume both options are going to cause corruption, fire is going to be easier to pick out. This contrasts the situation with Uncle Skelly, where both IC and OOC we're still not sure exactly how much is Ling Qi's own thoughts.
 
yrsillar said:
Preservation. So much had been lost, so much taken. One chop after another, felling the Forest People, a thousand insults, changes to the ways of the ancestors. Insidious things, whispers claiming betterment, superiority, even kindness. Lies all, Lies all! The stone builders, the Heavenly Jailors, the Hill Burners, the False Dreamers, the Slayer of Foundations! None had ever been worthy. Each seeking merely to crack the shell of the last and chosen people, the final stewards of the diviner's legacy. Conquerors and Kin of Beasts!

Thieves and despoilers all, that would taint even the kin, take from them the last vestiges of pride and identity. Still waters deep and cold would bear no more, would drown it all, before surrender. Ten thousand years of history sang in the foundations and the depths, and would not go quiet into the night
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Well. The Terrible Forge of Progress was definitely the antithesis to bring to bear against this one.
 
The thing is that Still Waters Deeping is right about a lot of that stuff.
Once, the worlds of man and spirit were far less separate. Before the lords of the forest turned to the north, before the temples were fractured and humbled, the people of the Emerald Seas worked much more closely with their spirit neighbors. It was common, in those long ago days for spirits to manifest themselves at their festivals, not merely for the lords, but the people as well. Once the powers to communicate and bargain with spirits were far more widely spread among the many priesthoods, whose power existed separately from the warriors and chiefs who would become lords and magistrates.
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Order. Control. This was the beat laid out by their wardrums. This was the song of the fires that burned the groves and our temples. This was the demand of their priests who said that our rituals were wrong, though they had worked for a thousand generations and more. This was the crack of the whip as the last of the wanders were collared and sent to toil under the earth for the metals that the north men loved.
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Their priests replaced ours, their rituals replaced ours, and no more did the spirits come among the people. Only the lords and their chosen priests could speak to the spirits they said. All else would bring misfortune. Misfortune for them. Of the Spirit Seekers, some fled, some resisted. All who fought were slain.
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Then there are our beasts, and O does the hypocrisy burn. The great clans are exempt from your distaste naturally, as you dare not face their strength. But for consorting with our kin, whose chains Tsu himself shattered the skulls of their gods, we are savage. You tell us it is a foul thing for children to see our companions as kin, that it degrades their humanity, degrades their loyalty to their own kind. In this the extent of your ignorance is revealed. The beasts which live beside us, which have helped us build,which have defended our homes against nomad, enraged spirit and conqueror alike, and have died beside us when we failed are far more our kin than men such as you in your far away mountains and keeps, ever and always taking from us.
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But that is the trouble with imperials. You covet the aesthetic, the appearance of order and unity. Our ways offend for the simple fact that they are not your ways, not due to any true objection. You look upon us and are offended to not see a mirror. You will take the world and erase everything which does not match your soulless peaks if you could.
But yes, come tell me more how you are improving our lands, bringing your roads and buildings which clash with the spirits and crush agreements older than the sage. Tell us how we are better packed into hovels where disease spirits and misery breed, in buildings which have no spirits, no bond to kith and kin who live within their walls. Tell us more about how barbarous our ways are in letting our children grow with companions four legged as well as two. Tell us that we are savages, little better than the wretched tribes of the Wall. How we will be much improved by answering to your lords and ministers rather than our councils and elders.
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Time and again the Imperials and their pawns have cut away at the Diviner's legacy, brutalizing the traditions and culture of the Emerald Seas, replacing more and more of it with their dragon-poisoned ways.
But somewhere SWD took a hard left turn into anti-Tsu. The Diviner brought men together. He would have been delighted to treat with distant kin and forge bonds with them. He wasn't a xenophobe.
 
Karthak Urzak said:
But somewhere SWD took a hard left turn into anti-Tsu. The Diviner brought men together. He would have been delighted to treat with distant kin and forge bonds with them. He wasn't a xenophobe.
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That was kind of the point.
Foreign influence was credited with the decline. Trade with the Bai resulted in the Masons War. Those who were bought by the Sage conquered those who didn't, and then the Peaks boosted puppet rulers who ran it even further into the ground.

Its more comforting to believe that Tsu is special and mythical in his ability to interact with foreigners and not become corrupted, than to believe that ruination lay in being too unadaptable when change came.
 
Karthak Urzak said:
The thing is that Still Waters Deeping is right about a lot of that stuff.
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"Right about a lot of that stuff" describes pretty much every Sovereign. You don't make it that far without your Way echoing with the truths of the world. But as you focus on stuff you're right about, it becomes easier to miss the stuff you're wrong about, especially as conditions that gave rise to your Way change - and so "The leadership is always out to fuck us over and we need to preserve our true ways in the face of that" becomes "That cultural contact initiated by the leadership is a danger, it needs to be stopped, mutual consent of all sides notwithstanding".
 
Karthak Urzak said:
Time and again the Imperials and their pawns have cut away at the Diviner's legacy, brutalizing the traditions and culture of the Emerald Seas, replacing more and more of it with their dragon-poisoned ways.
But somewhere SWD took a hard left turn into anti-Tsu. The Diviner brought men together. He would have been delighted to treat with distant kin and forge bonds with them. He wasn't a xenophobe.
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he isn't alone it that, that seems to be the Meng party line. Im surprised Meng Diu is supporting this summit at all

yrsillar said:
Meng Delun's charge as an elder is the guarding and preservation of forbidden secrets and the development of defenses against them. In old days he was among those who guarded the clans minds from the Hui and the perilous foreign influences that they loved.
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Adhoc vote count started by CedeTheBees on Nov 5, 2023 at 11:02 PM, finished with 286 posts and 164 votes.
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veekie said:
That was kind of the point.
Foreign influence was credited with the decline. Trade with the Bai resulted in the Masons War. Those who were bought by the Sage conquered those who didn't, and then the Peaks boosted puppet rulers who ran it even further into the ground.
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And the Pure One too. A foreigner who came to the Emerald Seas, and as a result they lost their Sublime Ancestor.
 
[X] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.
 
[X] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
 
[X] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
 
[X] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.

The words about the final stewards of the diviner's legacy make me want to delve into Tsu's dark secrets. This level of fanaticism towards his ideal persona and his unquestioned legacy raises some suspicions. We will probably be able to see a more complete and unbiased opinion during a tour of the empire, especially from Zheng. It's a shame this is at least a couple of years away.
 
[X] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
 
[X] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
 
Adhoc vote count started by CedeTheBees on Nov 6, 2023 at 11:35 AM, finished with 301 posts and 170 votes.
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I just noticed something extra funny about Still Waters Deeping.

They credit foreign influence with the decline and devastation of the Forest People.

Grandmother Snake is the sublime that rules Rivers, Venom and Still Waters all across the continent.

I.E. the Bai Sublime Ancestor is intimately tied into his cultivation of Xenophobia

Lol Meng Delun. Lmao, even
 
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