- Location
- Earth
If you meant the sidestory: ruat caelum
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.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Don't fearmonger just because your vote didn't win.
"You have to be the center of attention or else you're a loser" is the root of a lot of the problems in the Empire.
I was a bit confused about the political groupings, so I asked Yrs. His answer:
The Weilu reformers we already know pretty well.Yrsillar said:
No? She's got a fairly potent Light based mass army buff/coordination art. She's actually worse at the nuke arts on a skill basis, theres whole mini arc where she's depressed because she failed to get any insights from mastering the AoE crush due to Way incompatibility. She's better at the precision lasers and dispels I think
But Liming and Cifeng are a White's masterworks, so her personal skill doesn't factor that heavily.
PowerLeca
Rapidly aging
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hm, if the AoE crush was something like a brute force/imperious/righteous override (no idea, I think I didn't join the SV side with that much arts insight until later), CRX might have a good set up to vibe with LQ on Choice?
DeusExBritannia
Red-White-Black-White
- Location
- Texas
"Ren Ren, it's me, the Ling Qi. I'm here to convince you to do tribulation. Blow up yourself and close allies."
"Ling Qi, you have to sto-"
"Okay, bye!" *self-detonates*
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not sure. I don't think so. I think Iteration or Progress is better? Administrator is more a role she plays, not a core philosophy of her Way.
I was a bit confused on the practical differences between Weilu and Imperial settlements as far as mortals are concerned since both seem to be behind barriers, so I asked Yrs.
Yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
Abby Normal said:
yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
yrsillar said:
Luo was a bit nomadic weren't they??
- Pronouns
- They/Them
To clarify, this goes down to the way mortals are living too, right? Like, within the areas controlled by these clans? Since I'm less interested in how the local Sovereign spends their days than the implications for most people.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
It sounds focused on mortals.
Its more about land use I think.
Imperial style allows theoretically 100% utilization under human management, but also for the same reason, human mismanagement and abuse can do much more damage. And theres no room for spirits beyond their roles in human society.
Weilu style treats spirits as allies/landlords, so theres a lower utilization cap(as the spirits are using it), but spirits territories are self maintaining in ways that human settlements aren't, so its more resilient but simply can't muster the same burst output.
Imperial style allows theoretically 100% utilization under human management, but also for the same reason, human mismanagement and abuse can do much more damage. And theres no room for spirits beyond their roles in human society.
Weilu style treats spirits as allies/landlords, so theres a lower utilization cap(as the spirits are using it), but spirits territories are self maintaining in ways that human settlements aren't, so its more resilient but simply can't muster the same burst output.
Well the headline for the question was "Weilu vs. Imperial cultural differences for mortals" so I certainly hope so.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmm, when Ling Qi does get her own sub-settlement, she should probably try experimenting with Weliu Reformer settlement styles, see what can be done that way.
- Location
- United Kingdom
We don't even have to wait that long, we're getting a MENG Geomancer to train us for Snowblossom.
- Location
- Rivendell
Uh oh. It would be kind of awkward if the geomancer they had in mind kind of, you know, ceased to exist because of current events
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think we're trying to convince CRX to see the benefits of a mixed style with Snowblossom, so that she'll implement some Weilu methods in the future.
Since Renxiang is big on city building and all
I sincerely doubt the Meng were ever going to send a reactionary to help Ling Qi.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Also, post-this they'd have even more reason to keep to their word with Ling Qi, because she just went hard on saving them/damning the Reactionaries. So if the Geomancer did die, they'd be more likely to find another one somewhere than go, "Oops, sorry, can't fulfill our promises."
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
There's probably a constraint on introducing new things in a weilu area too- like a smelter that is all fire and metal spirits into a pastoral area. If the spirits are the landlords they can shut that down, but an imperial style settlement could over-rule them.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Obviously in a few centuries we need a Mao to attempt to introduce industry into the countryside by killing all the bird spirits and building backyard smelters.
On the extreme end of Imperial style, would just consider the spirits as self-delivering mats. But yeah, change resistance is a serious challenge because the same things that make it resilient also makes it resistant to change, since the spirits are empowered by arrangements as stakeholders
Turn 19: Arc 9-2
It was the scent of battle, that she disliked the most. The sights, the sounds so dazzling, so superficially chaotic, still painted for her a picture of order, however murky. Steps in unison showing an advance, shields locking, clashing with the charge of a slavering nightmare.
The scent of blood, and blood and ichor and fouler things still. Were nothing but repulsive muck, dogging at her thoughts, distracting other senses.
It was objectively incorrect to feel that way of course, she was certain any Luo could tell her. Scent was simply another information stream for categorizing the world properly, one she lacked the training to filter for useful data.
She disliked it regardless. It was strange, the fleeting thoughts that came and went in the stark clarity of battle.
Her light and radiance cast the long shadows of the mixed house guards long over the road they held in the center of the valley. It settled in the creases of armor, clung to the plumes on helms, filled the rings of mail. She could not give them the armaments of the White Plume, but in her presence at least, they shone like a Heavenly legion.
The heavy armored Bao armsmen held the center of the line, in thick plate encrusted with precious metals and gems, with shields of solid metal a handspan thick and chopping halberds beating the gibbering things trying to overrun them back.
Radiance pulsed sending shadows scatter, and the center line parted smoothly without a word from her. Cifeng came down, in a textbook perfect overhand chop, and blinding light tore down the road, leaving stone pulsing with Wang Lian's shen unharmed but nightmare flesh scorched to ash.
"Continue withdrawal to the Central Embassy," she ordered. Her voice was clipped and strident. Cold and unaffected to her own ears. It cut through the noise crushing lesser sound beneath it. Echoing up and down the battlespace, reaching every set of ears. "Maintain tortoise shell around civilians, do not prioritize engagement."
Tyrannical in nature. But an officer could only be a tyrant when blades were drawn.
"Hoh! You hear the Lady Cai's commands, brave warriors of the forest. Take heart, for we are nearly there!"
Gan Guangli's voice however, boomed with enthusiasm and passion, even as he grasped a writhing locust-like nightmare from the air above their heads and squeezed until it burst like a tube filled with sewage, the ichor burning away to acrid ash on his gleaming plate.
He towered over her like this, a giant of white and gold metal, grinning as fiercely as he ever did behind his helm.
Her light, calm and steady, his voice, exuberant and confident, saw shoulders straighten, and flagging qi ebb back, voices rising in a dull roar of affirmation.
She needed Gan Guangli. She could speak the language of law and academics, unravel and duel among twisting words. She could stiffen spines with calm and surety. She could not inspire normal men and women to courage and passion. She had accepted that some time ago, practicing her trade among the parties and shifting social scenes of the Sect.
She was cold and odd to most eyes, unsettling at the worst. She thought in systems, and to her distress, had come to the conclusion that the great majority mortal and immortal alike did not, and no amount of explanation would make them do so. Indeed, most saw such efforts as condescension and insult.
It was Gan Guangli, it was Ling Qi, who could transform the turning gears of her intentions into that which could take root in others hearts.
Luo skirmishers shadowed their path on either side of the road, armed with bow and knife, Jia and Wang regulars, formed the bulk of the ranks spears rising and falling, the regular thrum of volleyed crossbow fire driving back shrieking masses of oily flesh. The handful of Diao soldiers scrounged from their token representatives darted between the heavy Bao vanguards, striking out and retreating with matched curving dueling blades.
Her radiance washed out the house colors, dulled them, limned metal in glowing white, and leant mere second realms the strength to withstand the claws and cries and speed of nightmares. Its pulse coordinated men who had never fought together in their lives, brought them to fight as one.
As a child she had been fond of her toy soldiers. Ordering their formations, marching them too and fro, commanding the advance and the retreat, with Lin Hai bemusedly nudging his own forces on the painted maps rolled out on the floor of her room.
It was not the same. Men were not wood and metal to be pushed about at a whim. She could feel the shade of their anxiety, the rush of adrenaline that made hearts pound. It was only a shadow, a squirming unpleasantness resting like a blanket over her mind.
But without it, the Heavenly Legion Art would be useless. One could not guide men well without knowing them. Knowing their limits and where those could be exceeded.
A true imperial hero, of the sort immortalized in every tale, would rise. They would shout defiance into the teeth of the world and show their unbending courage, fighting the tide with their forces retreating to safety behind them, supported perhaps, by a few boon companions.
This was not the time for such heroism.
Bells chimed softly, and light surged as the darkness crawling out the hairline cracks in the world skittered and loped forward. Bolts gleamed with radiance, and seared fissures in the squealing shapes of nightmares. Shields clashed and came together, and her light rippled with a prismatic sheen her own qi dyed by the soldiers who it was gifted too. Metal crunched and halberds braced and the wild charge was repelled.
The small plaza was behind them, the quiet garden in the center which her office overlooked overgrown with overcharged qi. The warding stones paired at the road entrances blazed with intricate formations, the traceries of elegant calligraphy still orderly and beautiful.
"Right flank, open fire. Left flank, back. Center formation rotate and narrow, begin evacuation." The words were barely necessary, her intent traveled with the rays of light. "Gan Guangli, rearguard."
The earth shook under his feet as he bounded over mens heads, the wind of his passage whipping her hair and gown alike
"Go! Form up my friends, I shall hold them all until you are ready!" He boomed. His arm swept out, more akin to a swung tree trunk than an arm and smashed beasts aside like macabre toys.
But even more were scrabbling at his legs, clambering up his stamping boots, hissing and harrying the air above his head as the brilliant light blazing from every joint in his armor increased in intensity.
Like a garden lantern to draw the moths.
She could not blame Ling Qi too much, for all her frustration. If asked to make the decision for her, to give the command. There was no other choice she would make. Ling Qi understood duty far better than she thought.
That too was who she was. She had relearned things this past year; humor, self care, deepening empathy. But in the end, she was Cai Renxiang, and she was a woman of numbers and steel.
So even with her heart twinging, she turned her back on friend, and gave the orders to speed the retreat. He had his role, she trusted he would fulfill it. She had the same surety in Ling Qi. She was needed if things were to have any chance of stabilizing, after. She did not have the luxury of self sacrifice right now.
Gan Guangli laughed aloud. She trusted him, and the men marching with her surged with his enthusiasm, pouring into the plaza and taking up defensive positions, escorting the last batch of civilians to the shelter under the building.
But even as Wang Lian's qi thrummed under their boots; raising firing positions from the stone for their archers, raising walls for the spearmen and swordsman to man against the tide, forging wardstones into gates of immovable stone, empowering the spirit wards until they formed a crackling field of impassable defiance for the things that buzzed in the air, the situation was not yet improving.
The heat baked down on them all like a furnace. Occasional yips and cries of pain came from the circling pack of hounds running the fence of reality in the sky. As she rose into the air herself, to stand even with her soldiers in the empty air. She could feel the atmosphere changing. The cracks in the sky shook, and strained and widened.
And the acrid stink of fear tinged the odorous ichor that spilled down from the gaps… as the cloven mountain shook, and they all felt something crumbling, something falling, from the compound of the Meng.
"Hold steady, Hold here. The White Plumes battle, the Ministry battles. Our loyal brethren in the Meng battle. The enemy will fall soon, we must all merely do our part," Cai Renxiang barely raised her voice as she spoke, as she let the rays of light scintillating in the air behind her grow denser, grow almost solid, the rays blazing against the reddened light of the bruised sky. A bell chimed.
And radiance fell like rain. Outside of the walls, nightmares screamed as they died, and winged toward the fortress they had made in swarming numbers.
Cai Renxiang let her light fade. That was enough to fight for now. Instead, her eyes focused down on the men manning the newly raised walls
Her hand swept out, a bell chimed, Cifeng thrummed, purring with pleasure, and Liming snarled dully, rippling against her skin. She had rejected some of her Mother's arts. She had made her own.
Heavenly Administrator's Command. Implacable Garrison technique.
Formations tightened across the courtyard, perfection down to the millimeter. The vague awareness of the Heavenly Legion art sharpened, but not only for her. In the square, every man and woman gained awareness, took synchronicity with their fellows.
Qi cycled and bow strings were drawn back, not in perfect tandem, but in rolling continuous motion. Techniques and missiles alike firing in coordinated volleys. A nightmare like a spider with a man's hands and weeping face leapt the wall at a Bao soldier's back and a Luo soldier had already loosed a blazing missile of green tinged radiance before it was halfway through its leap.
One man was pushed back, his ankle turning, buckling his stance, and the man next to him was moving, lashing out and pushing the foe back before it could take advantage.
Cai Renxiang was moving. The full force of her charge struck a gap in the line in a flare of radiance that cracked the rapidly repairing stone and reduced nightmares to burning paste, in the next instant she was gone, across the courtyard, cleaving something like a heart from the core of a multi limbed horror made of squirming fingers.
The truth was an administrator was only as good as the information they received, only as good as the eyes and ears and hands of their subordinates. It was not enough to be a perfect distant figure, high in the sky.
Her light criss crossed the courtyard a dozen times, lingering sometimes twisting to lance out where her blade could not be.
And as the sky began to boil, not an inch was given. Every time the swarm looked to clear, to spread, a controlled pulse of radiance and power brought them back.
Gan Guangli returned with a crash, planting himself in front of the northern gate like a rampart himself, smeared in ichor, his chest heaving like a bellows, he too fell under her technique. She could feel his exhaustion, his remaining vigor… and his unshakable belief in her.
She raised her eyes briefly to the sky, where she felt a ripple of power. Something on the cloven mountain had fallen, something powerful. She could feel the tremors in the air, like the quiet lowering of waters before a flood.
She did not so much as twitch as a ragged, weathered crow landed on her shoulder, cocking its head curiously.
Potent arts to penetrate here.
"Speaker of this pantheon, do your gods accept aid in sealing the sky?" Asked the crow, in a low, raspy voice.
Common sense said that it would show her weakness to need foreigners support. That they could only interfere, that she would be a fool to allow any merging of defenses.
Cai Renxiang, thrust Cifeng down, sending a rippling pulse of qi into the courtyard, into Wang Lian's network, giving anew a command.
"Yes."
The scent of blood, and blood and ichor and fouler things still. Were nothing but repulsive muck, dogging at her thoughts, distracting other senses.
It was objectively incorrect to feel that way of course, she was certain any Luo could tell her. Scent was simply another information stream for categorizing the world properly, one she lacked the training to filter for useful data.
She disliked it regardless. It was strange, the fleeting thoughts that came and went in the stark clarity of battle.
Her light and radiance cast the long shadows of the mixed house guards long over the road they held in the center of the valley. It settled in the creases of armor, clung to the plumes on helms, filled the rings of mail. She could not give them the armaments of the White Plume, but in her presence at least, they shone like a Heavenly legion.
The heavy armored Bao armsmen held the center of the line, in thick plate encrusted with precious metals and gems, with shields of solid metal a handspan thick and chopping halberds beating the gibbering things trying to overrun them back.
Radiance pulsed sending shadows scatter, and the center line parted smoothly without a word from her. Cifeng came down, in a textbook perfect overhand chop, and blinding light tore down the road, leaving stone pulsing with Wang Lian's shen unharmed but nightmare flesh scorched to ash.
"Continue withdrawal to the Central Embassy," she ordered. Her voice was clipped and strident. Cold and unaffected to her own ears. It cut through the noise crushing lesser sound beneath it. Echoing up and down the battlespace, reaching every set of ears. "Maintain tortoise shell around civilians, do not prioritize engagement."
Tyrannical in nature. But an officer could only be a tyrant when blades were drawn.
"Hoh! You hear the Lady Cai's commands, brave warriors of the forest. Take heart, for we are nearly there!"
Gan Guangli's voice however, boomed with enthusiasm and passion, even as he grasped a writhing locust-like nightmare from the air above their heads and squeezed until it burst like a tube filled with sewage, the ichor burning away to acrid ash on his gleaming plate.
He towered over her like this, a giant of white and gold metal, grinning as fiercely as he ever did behind his helm.
Her light, calm and steady, his voice, exuberant and confident, saw shoulders straighten, and flagging qi ebb back, voices rising in a dull roar of affirmation.
She needed Gan Guangli. She could speak the language of law and academics, unravel and duel among twisting words. She could stiffen spines with calm and surety. She could not inspire normal men and women to courage and passion. She had accepted that some time ago, practicing her trade among the parties and shifting social scenes of the Sect.
She was cold and odd to most eyes, unsettling at the worst. She thought in systems, and to her distress, had come to the conclusion that the great majority mortal and immortal alike did not, and no amount of explanation would make them do so. Indeed, most saw such efforts as condescension and insult.
It was Gan Guangli, it was Ling Qi, who could transform the turning gears of her intentions into that which could take root in others hearts.
Luo skirmishers shadowed their path on either side of the road, armed with bow and knife, Jia and Wang regulars, formed the bulk of the ranks spears rising and falling, the regular thrum of volleyed crossbow fire driving back shrieking masses of oily flesh. The handful of Diao soldiers scrounged from their token representatives darted between the heavy Bao vanguards, striking out and retreating with matched curving dueling blades.
Her radiance washed out the house colors, dulled them, limned metal in glowing white, and leant mere second realms the strength to withstand the claws and cries and speed of nightmares. Its pulse coordinated men who had never fought together in their lives, brought them to fight as one.
As a child she had been fond of her toy soldiers. Ordering their formations, marching them too and fro, commanding the advance and the retreat, with Lin Hai bemusedly nudging his own forces on the painted maps rolled out on the floor of her room.
It was not the same. Men were not wood and metal to be pushed about at a whim. She could feel the shade of their anxiety, the rush of adrenaline that made hearts pound. It was only a shadow, a squirming unpleasantness resting like a blanket over her mind.
But without it, the Heavenly Legion Art would be useless. One could not guide men well without knowing them. Knowing their limits and where those could be exceeded.
A true imperial hero, of the sort immortalized in every tale, would rise. They would shout defiance into the teeth of the world and show their unbending courage, fighting the tide with their forces retreating to safety behind them, supported perhaps, by a few boon companions.
This was not the time for such heroism.
Bells chimed softly, and light surged as the darkness crawling out the hairline cracks in the world skittered and loped forward. Bolts gleamed with radiance, and seared fissures in the squealing shapes of nightmares. Shields clashed and came together, and her light rippled with a prismatic sheen her own qi dyed by the soldiers who it was gifted too. Metal crunched and halberds braced and the wild charge was repelled.
The small plaza was behind them, the quiet garden in the center which her office overlooked overgrown with overcharged qi. The warding stones paired at the road entrances blazed with intricate formations, the traceries of elegant calligraphy still orderly and beautiful.
"Right flank, open fire. Left flank, back. Center formation rotate and narrow, begin evacuation." The words were barely necessary, her intent traveled with the rays of light. "Gan Guangli, rearguard."
The earth shook under his feet as he bounded over mens heads, the wind of his passage whipping her hair and gown alike
"Go! Form up my friends, I shall hold them all until you are ready!" He boomed. His arm swept out, more akin to a swung tree trunk than an arm and smashed beasts aside like macabre toys.
But even more were scrabbling at his legs, clambering up his stamping boots, hissing and harrying the air above his head as the brilliant light blazing from every joint in his armor increased in intensity.
Like a garden lantern to draw the moths.
She could not blame Ling Qi too much, for all her frustration. If asked to make the decision for her, to give the command. There was no other choice she would make. Ling Qi understood duty far better than she thought.
That too was who she was. She had relearned things this past year; humor, self care, deepening empathy. But in the end, she was Cai Renxiang, and she was a woman of numbers and steel.
So even with her heart twinging, she turned her back on friend, and gave the orders to speed the retreat. He had his role, she trusted he would fulfill it. She had the same surety in Ling Qi. She was needed if things were to have any chance of stabilizing, after. She did not have the luxury of self sacrifice right now.
Gan Guangli laughed aloud. She trusted him, and the men marching with her surged with his enthusiasm, pouring into the plaza and taking up defensive positions, escorting the last batch of civilians to the shelter under the building.
But even as Wang Lian's qi thrummed under their boots; raising firing positions from the stone for their archers, raising walls for the spearmen and swordsman to man against the tide, forging wardstones into gates of immovable stone, empowering the spirit wards until they formed a crackling field of impassable defiance for the things that buzzed in the air, the situation was not yet improving.
The heat baked down on them all like a furnace. Occasional yips and cries of pain came from the circling pack of hounds running the fence of reality in the sky. As she rose into the air herself, to stand even with her soldiers in the empty air. She could feel the atmosphere changing. The cracks in the sky shook, and strained and widened.
And the acrid stink of fear tinged the odorous ichor that spilled down from the gaps… as the cloven mountain shook, and they all felt something crumbling, something falling, from the compound of the Meng.
"Hold steady, Hold here. The White Plumes battle, the Ministry battles. Our loyal brethren in the Meng battle. The enemy will fall soon, we must all merely do our part," Cai Renxiang barely raised her voice as she spoke, as she let the rays of light scintillating in the air behind her grow denser, grow almost solid, the rays blazing against the reddened light of the bruised sky. A bell chimed.
And radiance fell like rain. Outside of the walls, nightmares screamed as they died, and winged toward the fortress they had made in swarming numbers.
Cai Renxiang let her light fade. That was enough to fight for now. Instead, her eyes focused down on the men manning the newly raised walls
Her hand swept out, a bell chimed, Cifeng thrummed, purring with pleasure, and Liming snarled dully, rippling against her skin. She had rejected some of her Mother's arts. She had made her own.
Heavenly Administrator's Command. Implacable Garrison technique.
Formations tightened across the courtyard, perfection down to the millimeter. The vague awareness of the Heavenly Legion art sharpened, but not only for her. In the square, every man and woman gained awareness, took synchronicity with their fellows.
Qi cycled and bow strings were drawn back, not in perfect tandem, but in rolling continuous motion. Techniques and missiles alike firing in coordinated volleys. A nightmare like a spider with a man's hands and weeping face leapt the wall at a Bao soldier's back and a Luo soldier had already loosed a blazing missile of green tinged radiance before it was halfway through its leap.
One man was pushed back, his ankle turning, buckling his stance, and the man next to him was moving, lashing out and pushing the foe back before it could take advantage.
Cai Renxiang was moving. The full force of her charge struck a gap in the line in a flare of radiance that cracked the rapidly repairing stone and reduced nightmares to burning paste, in the next instant she was gone, across the courtyard, cleaving something like a heart from the core of a multi limbed horror made of squirming fingers.
The truth was an administrator was only as good as the information they received, only as good as the eyes and ears and hands of their subordinates. It was not enough to be a perfect distant figure, high in the sky.
Her light criss crossed the courtyard a dozen times, lingering sometimes twisting to lance out where her blade could not be.
And as the sky began to boil, not an inch was given. Every time the swarm looked to clear, to spread, a controlled pulse of radiance and power brought them back.
Gan Guangli returned with a crash, planting himself in front of the northern gate like a rampart himself, smeared in ichor, his chest heaving like a bellows, he too fell under her technique. She could feel his exhaustion, his remaining vigor… and his unshakable belief in her.
She raised her eyes briefly to the sky, where she felt a ripple of power. Something on the cloven mountain had fallen, something powerful. She could feel the tremors in the air, like the quiet lowering of waters before a flood.
She did not so much as twitch as a ragged, weathered crow landed on her shoulder, cocking its head curiously.
Potent arts to penetrate here.
"Speaker of this pantheon, do your gods accept aid in sealing the sky?" Asked the crow, in a low, raspy voice.
Common sense said that it would show her weakness to need foreigners support. That they could only interfere, that she would be a fool to allow any merging of defenses.
Cai Renxiang, thrust Cifeng down, sending a rippling pulse of qi into the courtyard, into Wang Lian's network, giving anew a command.
"Yes."
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