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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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BurnNote said:
Aren't they? I'm not sure they've got enough of an I to have a purpose of their own.
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Oh no, they have a purpose. It's all they have, in many ways, but they have it. Reread their origin story: Shu Yue's purpose is justice. Of the 'bloody revenge of the downtrodden upon the powerful' sort...they gave up personal identity, sure, but never their Cause, their reason for existing. To utterly destroy those who abuse the weak and helpless, those who trample on the disenfranchised masses. Their lack of identity is having their identity subsumed into their purpose, not the absence of such purpose.

It's no wonder they serve Revolution, but they are not truly hers. Not the way Xia Ren is.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
Oh no, they have a purpose. It's all they have, in many ways, but they have it. Reread their origin story: Shu Yue's purpose is justice. Of the 'bloody revenge of the downtrodden upon the powerful' sort...they gave up personal identity, sure, but never their Cause, their reason for existing. To utterly destroy those who abuse the weak and helpless, those who trample on the disenfranchised masses. Their lack of identity is having their identity subsumed into their purpose, not the absence of such purpose.

It's no wonder they serve Revolution, but they are not truly hers. Not the way Xia Ren is.
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You might be able to argue that Shu Yue, the mask-that-is-a-face that Shenhua made, is hers. The nameless wraith beneath it absolutely isn't, though.
 
barty said:
Now let's be fair, Shu Yue's the one footing the bill in term of spending qi to keep Xia Ren in the liminal, they're channeling it through that hair they put on Qi's pinky. The qi expense would be enormous enough to empty out Ling Qi's reserves way too quickly otherwise. Practically speaking, Ling Qi provides only the technique itelf, not the energy to pay for it (which means she's able to use her other techniques to avoid dying from being in proximity to two Sovereigns duking it out and not being able to run away because that would cause Xia ren to return to the material).
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It does basically mean she's taking the collateral damage in place of realspace.

Xuan Shi's shield generator is some crazy bullshit alright
 
veekie said:
It does basically mean she's taking the collateral damage in place of realspace.

Xuan Shi's shield generator is some crazy bullshit alright
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The Liminal realm they're in is taking most of it, and I'd orry about the consequences of harming it so badly if I didn't know a closer... layer of Liminal was already being terraformed simply by virtue of the diplomacy happening here. Liminal damges would be hell o the local geomancy otherwise?
 
fictionfan said:
I mean maybe it can happen all high level cultivators are examples of multiple low probability events happening. Maybe someone actually does manage to get along with and be helpful to everyone.
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And someone with the power of sovereign being helpfull to everybody would absolutely be monstrous to those who would rather they weren't.
The power, aimed at a purpose they can't ignore, inevitably makes a sovereign, outside some crafters and/or hermit cultivators who nobody will ever learn about, into monsters to anyone opposed to, or an obstacle for, their purpose
 
I don't think it's going to happen, but let's say Xuan Shi takes inspiration from the North people and cultivates himself into a ship. A ship of stories.
 
fictionfan said:
I don't think it's going to happen, but let's say Xuan Shi takes inspiration from the North people and cultivates himself into a ship. A ship of stories.
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I think you may love this omake then.

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny) Original - Users' Choice!

The Wandering Story Day One For the sake of posterity, I have begun to keep this journal. I do not know who will read this should I succumb to the dangers my course has in store for me, but neither do I want my experiences to sink beneath the sands of ignorance if I do pass beyond the veil...
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com
 
We have multiple examples of roughly-concurrent Ascensions throughout history. The most notable (for me) being Post-Nuke GF with The Venomous Sun and "the one that made the WindStones that power the nomadic sleds GF people live on now". Time's of extreme strife generate extreme responses.

This is why the MoI is so upset with Jiao. Emperor An became Inexorable Justice and MoI agents are bound to shards of him to guarantee their alignment with Inexorable Justice. Jiao is a puddle of eyes, and was supposed to Ascend as some sort of targeting-insight-divination Great Spirit. Without Jiao, Inexorable Justice has to rely on the perception and insight of MoI agents rather than tailor-made shards of a Great Spirit. In some ways, you could say Inexorable Justice is blind without Jiao's Ascension.

It's unclear exactly what happened, but from Jiao's latest griping it seems like he saw that the foundations of the Empire don't match his view of Virtue. When the Empire wasn't matching his ideas of Virtue before . . he killed a lot of people.

I suspect there's ways for Jiao to progress now that are more in-line with his own definitions of Virtue, though it might require a shake-up of the Imperial Pantheon as-it-is.
 
I imagine it would be a great benefit for Jiao if he where to work out the foundations for a virtuous Empire. You know... the Emerald Seas has recently acquired the claims for a large territory of untamed land that has never been connected to anything Imperial, for the most part, the Cloud Tribes are well acquainted with Imperial virtue. What if we get Jiao involved in managing the region or at least as a consultant to Ling Qi and Co?
 
weeblypanda said:
I wonder if it's possible for a group of Cultivators with symbiotic Ways/Ways tooled to work through combining/in concert with each other, thus creating a more stable or spanning law.
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Isn't this a less coercive version of what happened with Diao Linqin, and how she was basically groomed though to violet by the creepy Hui dude? He created an entire infrastructure around her to guide her growth and insights such that her way was what he aimed for. Until she killed him and joined the duchess, admittedly, but she got to a high realm first.
 
Glau said:
Isn't this a less coercive version of what happened with Diao Linqin, and how she was basically groomed though to violet by the creepy Hui dude? He created an entire infrastructure around her to guide her growth and insights such that her way was what he aimed for. Until she killed him and joined the duchess, admittedly, but she got to a high realm first.
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That sort of highlights the problem with the idea, as whatever version of this you do is gonna run into the problem of variance. People are not the same and do not respond to even identical treatment the same, so pushing them in a particular way will not necessarily result in them actually being what you want them to be. He groomed Linqin to be the perfect wife. And she is. He was unfortunately (for him and his plans) nonspecific as to whom she was to be the perfect wife to which rather threw a wrench in his plans, and that sort of thing will inevitably crop up even more the less coercive your method is...probably not quite as lethally for you personally, but enough that the 'perfect plan' won't actually come together in the end.
 
So I had a few questions @yrsillar,
What level of cultuvation is required for one to be called a Sovereign? And whats the difference between ascension and Transcendance?
 
Solar Saiyan said:
So I had a few questions @yrsillar,
What level of cultuvation is required for one to be called a Sovereign? And whats the difference between ascension and Transcendance?
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Ascension is going from the 8th realm to Great Spirit in Imperial cultivation (or some kind of major God for the Polar Nation)
Transcendance is a concept that only matters to the followers of the Weilu's Dreaming Way and its variants (including the Pure Way of the Hui), and is not linked to cultivation at all. Meng Dan gave us an explanation of what it was when we went to Xiangmen, I'll edit in a quote soon.


yrsillar said:
Ling Qi chuckled politely, ignoring Sixiang and their waggling eyebrows. "Being serious though, Meng Dan - what is the Dreaming Way? What great spirit does it revere?"

Meng Dan's smile faded a touch. "It has none. There are a handful of ascended, thought of as teachers and torchbearers showing the way, but reverence isn't really the point."

"Well, what's the purpose then?" Ling Qi asked. "If it's not interceding for the favor of a god?"

"It's…" he trailed off thoughtfully. "Forgive me, Miss Ling, but I am not a monk or a teacher. It is difficult for one of middling devotion to explain properly."

"Ah, I'm sorry for putting you in a difficult position," apologised Ling Qi.

"No, no," he dismissed. "Let us see, I do not want to misrepresent us, but... in the eyes of the Dreaming Way, the material world is merely another layer of the liminal - a dream more solid and difficult to awake from. It is flawed and broken, corrupted from the intent of the Nameless. The Dreaming Way is a path to finding a true awakening - enlightenment, if you prefer. If enough people achieve this the Nameless may be reinvigorated, and their Great Dream made right."

Ling Qi frowned, considering his words. That sounded strange, but not particularly bad, though she supposed that depended on what you saw enlightenment as being.

"Isn't that like, stupid hard though?" Hanyi said. "Most humans are like, super weak, you'll never get enough to ascend."

"The truth of the Way and the truth of an individual cultivator are different things. Supposedly even a mortal can find enlightenment if they live a proper life under the strain my kin follow, but you are right that it is a distant dream at best," Meng Dan chuckled. "As I said, I am not personally devout. Perhaps you may request to speak with one more knowledgeable than I?"
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Solar Saiyan said:
So I had a few questions @yrsillar,
What level of cultuvation is required for one to be called a Sovereign? And whats the difference between ascension and Transcendance?
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Since the answers for Sovereign explain it well enough I'll try Transcendence.

In the not!-Buddhism that came over from the Thousand Princes* which is not!-India. A guy tried to convert a lot of the future province but only in Emerald Sea (I think) did it take root. Transcendence is essentially a form of Ascendence without all the Cultivation and cutting away at your humanity. The philosophy around it is trying to find Enlightenment without all the 'nastiness' of Cultivation.

*(refer to the map, it is on the other side of the jungle the Sun clan rule)
 
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