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.
kfrar
Aspiring Encyclopedia
It always brings a smile to my face that the spreadsheets are canon.
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Eh, Linqin was made to be a doll without wants of her own only perfect empathy. Our first level 5 concept was Want. I don't think we have to worry over much about becoming Linqin, we've baked wants into our very being quite deeply.
- Location
- CA
It less "makes an enemy of the concept of individual" than establishes a certain kind of humility. I would generally say that most people should remember that they are not special, and that they should be grateful for that. Because it means that your burdens aren't so heavy that you alone must bear them, or so unique that no one else can understand them, even when they don't have your exact problems. And if you ever find yourself thinking that, then you probably need to do some serious reexamining of your thought processes.
The greatest foe is 'I.' No hand may reach the one who has clenched and withdrawn.
That part is covered by Want insights. insights don't act alone in the power system.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I don't think so. Ling Qi's conception of family and community focuses on multitudes of individuals coming together to form something greater.
She's pretty individual-focused. Or latest concept rank is more the ndividual who refuses to reach out to others when they are open to it. They cause themselves suffering and perpetuate miscommunication.
I would think option one fits the "burdens are lighter if shared" better, what with the whole "The blade Isolation cannot be dulled by one heart alone." bit.
Option 2 is more about the narcists being hoisted by their own fetters, though, I do admit it is very effective against your average Xianxia cultivators (most MC included).
Still, it will be interesting how it interacts with the Ith, and if it resembles the lonely end active domain effect LQ has.
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh hey how long has this been under Saline Grotto?
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
All the time.
Oh, you're wondering when we found out? It was at the end of our geological survey. It's basically a potent, cultivator-grade magical lead. And by "Cultivator-grade", I mean it's aspected, so it'd be useful for anyone with an interest in Earth and Water based metallic reagents up to the peak of Third Realm (And presumably a viable supplementary material for some higher level stuff)
Last edited:
Year 45, Month 10 Arc 1-9
Ling Qi drew in on herself unconsciously from the pressure, her free arm curling around her chest, her shoulders hunching, even her shadow shrinking in on itself, the regal wraith she cast behind her flickering like a candle. She knew this truth too well, and the resonation made her thoughts fuzzy and sluggish.
She couldn't call the Weeping Mother wrong, and so even with the authority she had gathered around herself, the spirits Law found purchase. Her words were ephemeral things and would pass, as snowblossom would pass, as her household and family would pass, as her friends too would pass one by one by one…
It was so easy for a face to fade from memory. How many had she forgotten already, names always did slip from her mind. How easy was it then to forget her?
A crack sounded in the cavern, a groan of strained stone and the squeal of stressed metal. The ink-like shadows of the cavern were pierced by a ray of molten gold.
"I. Am. Not. Hollow."
Bao Qian looked strained, his face ruddy and red, ice formed in his hair, the skin of his hands split open, fingertips black with frost under the metallic gleam of his rings. He had never let go of Hanyi's hand.
His eyes were a little wild, darting around the room, across the two of them, before fixing on the spirit and narrowing. His free hand curled into a fist, split skin sluggishly weeping half frozen blood.
"Blasted cold," he wheezed, shoulders hunching. "You think I do not know my value comes from what I do, what I make, the coin and honor I bring in? I'll be forgotten, my works appropriated by more ambitious men, my name sanded out of history, if I have any at all? Pah, I'll still have done those things!"
Ling Qi grimaced as her vision wavered, the simple truth that had been pushed to the back of her mind surging forward. His ring had never gone anywhere. He had been standing there all the while.
"As if I have not known my every breath is weighted, measured and recorded for the metrics of success. As if I have not been told in more words that I'm not a silly, sentimental fool that the clan can afford to offload as an asset, because I've not the right mindset for 'real' business? Good work you wretch, you've broken my 'face', now what, think I'll give up and weep like a lonely child? I'll bring this hole down on us both first! The price of a Bao's life is more than you will afford." Bao Qian said angrily, each word punctuated by a pulse of gold and grey, the rock thrummed under his feet, and the gemstones woven through the fabric of his clothes, set in his belt and his rings, flashed and flared in a show of lights. It was easy to forget that he was a stage above her, and well into that stage at that. It was only then that his wondering eyes actually seemed to see them, and he froze.
They were not close, not really, but she still should not have been able to forget him so easily. He'd been wiped from her mind, and she'd not even noticed.
"Oh! Oh! Crap, I totally forgot," Hanyi whispered.
Bao Qian's expression twisted. "...I forgot as well. So much for my artifice. My apologies for interrupting your negotiation."
"My defenses were insufficient as well," Ling Qi said. The copper scent of blood, the surge of his qi, it shook away the frost from her mind, and she looked up now at the glowering teary eye of the Weeping Mother, who swayed too and fro now like a tree in a gale hissing softly in displeasure, sending the string strands of her hair swaying. Oily tears splashed upon the icy stone.
Rejected, rejected, always children reject their gifts, spit defiance, flee away, run, run now, the cold will come and mortal sparks shall flee away.
Sullen. That was the only way she could describe the spirit's demeanor. And why?
It was a simple, painful Law that gnawed at her from all directions. The Weeping Mother was two things at her core.
Abandonment.
A sheet of glacial ice left behind in eons old retreat, whose waters flowed always away and here above the clouds never returned. A spirit that had been dying by inches for longer than whole imperial dynasties had ruled. The truth of Ending she held at her core was the inevitability of loss.
It was a weakness too. She was not like Zeqing, Ling Qi though. She could not stop them from leaving this place if they turned on their heels and left of their own will. Because they were her kin, and her story, her core was that they would always leave her.
But her second truth was a more insidious thing. Despair.
The grey wasting that sapped life and drive as surely and as inevitably as any physical cold. It was its own form of Isolation. The Isolation which the mind inflicted on itself, for good reason and bad. This too Ling Qi understood. On the worst days, on the coldest days, the mind wandered. Was it worth it, to struggle through another season, was it worth it to scrape by for one more day?
No one wanted her. No one would help her. Nothing would change. Any hand that reached out could only be hiding the malice in its grip. Wouldn't it be so much more restful to lie down and let it end?
She understood the isolation of privation. Xuan Shi had let her see a glimpse of what it was to be alone even when you had a seat at the hearthfire. Zeqing had shown her how to be alone even as you strangled the life from the ones you embraced. Now, the Weeping Mother of Lonesome Streams showed her another facet of the truth of Isolation.
Ones own self could isolate just as effectively as anything external to you, the choices of others, material circumstances… if you chose not to be helped, chose despair, even when escape stood before you, no one's hand could ever reach you.
She could reach for the spirit, imbue her voice, promise visitation or rites, ritually carrying the waters of the streams back to the peak…
If she succeeded it would kill this spirit just as surely as taking a student and releasing her daughter had killed Master Zeqing. Because the core of her was Abandonment. Ling Qi could gather every fairy born of the young winter's snows and bring them back to this place… and she was not sure the spirit would even be able to see them. She would not, could not reach out her hand, and that too, was Isolation.
As starvation is privation of the body, isolation is privation of the soul. Thus, the greatest foe is I. No hand may reach the one who has clenched and withdrawn. The blade Isolation rends all warmth into cold.
No effort could reach one who did not want to be reached, or was convinced that they did not. Ling Qi let out a long breath, straightening up. Down in her dantian, she felt a churning in her qi, flecks of impurity scraped clean from a surface, the edge of a blade sharpened.
Blades were cruel things, could be nothing else. It was their purpose to separate, to sever, to destroy. Such things could be done in the name of creation, but that did not change their nature in the moment.
…It was so important to keep them sheathed. Oiled, sharpened, and drawn only when no other tool would do.
"...Ugh, this is stupid. Its like all of Momma's sisters are miserable," Hanyi muttered.
Ling Qi looked her junior sisters way with a sigh, and then turned her gaze back to the ice spirit looming in the darkness, meeting her bloodshot white eye beneath writhing black tresses. "None shall tread in your domain, save I, or one who bears my authority. Your peak shall not be trampled, your ways not besmirched. Mountain and glacier, this sacred land will not know human feet."
A hiss like the rattle of wind through a ribcage, escaped the spirits hidden mouth.
"You will receive respect and an offering no less than once per year, and in return you will not not raise your voice against those under my protection, the clouds will flow ever away from you on the paths they choose," Ling Qi intoned.
The spirits head twisted to the side, suddenly very close, her icy breath washing over her. The Mother's jaw worked beneath her hair, and Ling Qi glimpsed long teeth of rusted iron. But it was different now. Now the spirit spoke, a voice as cracked as crumbling stone, as miserable as the whisper of woman about to loop a hanging cord about her own neck.
"Why? Do you. Think you can dictate. Child."
"Because we have all rejected you. You cannot take what we do not surrender. Despair has failed you," Ling Qi said calmly. "Right, Hanyi, Bao Qian?"
"Hmph, I'm sad, but I'm mostly just disappointed, if I didn't let Mama eat me, why would I let you?" Hanyi said scornfully.
"I don't much care for leonine contracts, but if you need it, I will provide my services in setting the binding wards over this mountain at cost," Bao Qian said gruffly.
Ling Qi smiled thinly. "It's a fair deal. If you give nothing… you will receive nothing. Your daughters will reap rewards and grow… and you will merely be forgotten."
The Weeping Mother's tears splattered, cold and hissing upon the stone, her power howled around them, but between the authority she had been granted, Bao Qian and Hanyi's resolve, and the now reversed resonation of their truths, it could not reach them anymore.
"Grief. Regret. Cold Embers. Whispered into the wind. Tears. That which cannot be replaced."
"You may share in them, not take them whole. Along with tokens and idols made and imbued in image of loss," Ling Qi rejoined, relaxed now that the spirit was… cooperating.
Iron teeth gnashed. Screeching as they ground together. "Done."
"...Hmph, I'll come once a year and sing to you too, nobody should be alone all the time, even if they're a jerk."
"Hanyi… that may not be…"
"It might break her?" Hanyi said with a sniff. "Yeah, maybe. I'm gonna do it anyway, unless Big Sis absolutely says I can't."
"No Absolution. Unfilial Daughter."
"Good, cause I don't need that," Hanyi said stubbornly.
Ling Qi frowned in consternation, the spirit was willing to accept ritual distance, because it could see an echo of its own tale in her, but if Hanyi was going to stir it up that fragile connection might fracture, could she really…
[ ] Allow Hanyi to do as she has said. (Risks of future changes to winter ecosystem, ???)
[ ] Do not allow this, your sister should not risk herself on this spirit (Ensures winter ecosystem stability, ???)
She couldn't call the Weeping Mother wrong, and so even with the authority she had gathered around herself, the spirits Law found purchase. Her words were ephemeral things and would pass, as snowblossom would pass, as her household and family would pass, as her friends too would pass one by one by one…
It was so easy for a face to fade from memory. How many had she forgotten already, names always did slip from her mind. How easy was it then to forget her?
A crack sounded in the cavern, a groan of strained stone and the squeal of stressed metal. The ink-like shadows of the cavern were pierced by a ray of molten gold.
"I. Am. Not. Hollow."
Bao Qian looked strained, his face ruddy and red, ice formed in his hair, the skin of his hands split open, fingertips black with frost under the metallic gleam of his rings. He had never let go of Hanyi's hand.
His eyes were a little wild, darting around the room, across the two of them, before fixing on the spirit and narrowing. His free hand curled into a fist, split skin sluggishly weeping half frozen blood.
"Blasted cold," he wheezed, shoulders hunching. "You think I do not know my value comes from what I do, what I make, the coin and honor I bring in? I'll be forgotten, my works appropriated by more ambitious men, my name sanded out of history, if I have any at all? Pah, I'll still have done those things!"
Ling Qi grimaced as her vision wavered, the simple truth that had been pushed to the back of her mind surging forward. His ring had never gone anywhere. He had been standing there all the while.
"As if I have not known my every breath is weighted, measured and recorded for the metrics of success. As if I have not been told in more words that I'm not a silly, sentimental fool that the clan can afford to offload as an asset, because I've not the right mindset for 'real' business? Good work you wretch, you've broken my 'face', now what, think I'll give up and weep like a lonely child? I'll bring this hole down on us both first! The price of a Bao's life is more than you will afford." Bao Qian said angrily, each word punctuated by a pulse of gold and grey, the rock thrummed under his feet, and the gemstones woven through the fabric of his clothes, set in his belt and his rings, flashed and flared in a show of lights. It was easy to forget that he was a stage above her, and well into that stage at that. It was only then that his wondering eyes actually seemed to see them, and he froze.
They were not close, not really, but she still should not have been able to forget him so easily. He'd been wiped from her mind, and she'd not even noticed.
"Oh! Oh! Crap, I totally forgot," Hanyi whispered.
Bao Qian's expression twisted. "...I forgot as well. So much for my artifice. My apologies for interrupting your negotiation."
"My defenses were insufficient as well," Ling Qi said. The copper scent of blood, the surge of his qi, it shook away the frost from her mind, and she looked up now at the glowering teary eye of the Weeping Mother, who swayed too and fro now like a tree in a gale hissing softly in displeasure, sending the string strands of her hair swaying. Oily tears splashed upon the icy stone.
Rejected, rejected, always children reject their gifts, spit defiance, flee away, run, run now, the cold will come and mortal sparks shall flee away.
Sullen. That was the only way she could describe the spirit's demeanor. And why?
It was a simple, painful Law that gnawed at her from all directions. The Weeping Mother was two things at her core.
Abandonment.
A sheet of glacial ice left behind in eons old retreat, whose waters flowed always away and here above the clouds never returned. A spirit that had been dying by inches for longer than whole imperial dynasties had ruled. The truth of Ending she held at her core was the inevitability of loss.
It was a weakness too. She was not like Zeqing, Ling Qi though. She could not stop them from leaving this place if they turned on their heels and left of their own will. Because they were her kin, and her story, her core was that they would always leave her.
But her second truth was a more insidious thing. Despair.
The grey wasting that sapped life and drive as surely and as inevitably as any physical cold. It was its own form of Isolation. The Isolation which the mind inflicted on itself, for good reason and bad. This too Ling Qi understood. On the worst days, on the coldest days, the mind wandered. Was it worth it, to struggle through another season, was it worth it to scrape by for one more day?
No one wanted her. No one would help her. Nothing would change. Any hand that reached out could only be hiding the malice in its grip. Wouldn't it be so much more restful to lie down and let it end?
She understood the isolation of privation. Xuan Shi had let her see a glimpse of what it was to be alone even when you had a seat at the hearthfire. Zeqing had shown her how to be alone even as you strangled the life from the ones you embraced. Now, the Weeping Mother of Lonesome Streams showed her another facet of the truth of Isolation.
Ones own self could isolate just as effectively as anything external to you, the choices of others, material circumstances… if you chose not to be helped, chose despair, even when escape stood before you, no one's hand could ever reach you.
She could reach for the spirit, imbue her voice, promise visitation or rites, ritually carrying the waters of the streams back to the peak…
If she succeeded it would kill this spirit just as surely as taking a student and releasing her daughter had killed Master Zeqing. Because the core of her was Abandonment. Ling Qi could gather every fairy born of the young winter's snows and bring them back to this place… and she was not sure the spirit would even be able to see them. She would not, could not reach out her hand, and that too, was Isolation.
As starvation is privation of the body, isolation is privation of the soul. Thus, the greatest foe is I. No hand may reach the one who has clenched and withdrawn. The blade Isolation rends all warmth into cold.
No effort could reach one who did not want to be reached, or was convinced that they did not. Ling Qi let out a long breath, straightening up. Down in her dantian, she felt a churning in her qi, flecks of impurity scraped clean from a surface, the edge of a blade sharpened.
Blades were cruel things, could be nothing else. It was their purpose to separate, to sever, to destroy. Such things could be done in the name of creation, but that did not change their nature in the moment.
…It was so important to keep them sheathed. Oiled, sharpened, and drawn only when no other tool would do.
"...Ugh, this is stupid. Its like all of Momma's sisters are miserable," Hanyi muttered.
Ling Qi looked her junior sisters way with a sigh, and then turned her gaze back to the ice spirit looming in the darkness, meeting her bloodshot white eye beneath writhing black tresses. "None shall tread in your domain, save I, or one who bears my authority. Your peak shall not be trampled, your ways not besmirched. Mountain and glacier, this sacred land will not know human feet."
A hiss like the rattle of wind through a ribcage, escaped the spirits hidden mouth.
"You will receive respect and an offering no less than once per year, and in return you will not not raise your voice against those under my protection, the clouds will flow ever away from you on the paths they choose," Ling Qi intoned.
The spirits head twisted to the side, suddenly very close, her icy breath washing over her. The Mother's jaw worked beneath her hair, and Ling Qi glimpsed long teeth of rusted iron. But it was different now. Now the spirit spoke, a voice as cracked as crumbling stone, as miserable as the whisper of woman about to loop a hanging cord about her own neck.
"Why? Do you. Think you can dictate. Child."
"Because we have all rejected you. You cannot take what we do not surrender. Despair has failed you," Ling Qi said calmly. "Right, Hanyi, Bao Qian?"
"Hmph, I'm sad, but I'm mostly just disappointed, if I didn't let Mama eat me, why would I let you?" Hanyi said scornfully.
"I don't much care for leonine contracts, but if you need it, I will provide my services in setting the binding wards over this mountain at cost," Bao Qian said gruffly.
Ling Qi smiled thinly. "It's a fair deal. If you give nothing… you will receive nothing. Your daughters will reap rewards and grow… and you will merely be forgotten."
The Weeping Mother's tears splattered, cold and hissing upon the stone, her power howled around them, but between the authority she had been granted, Bao Qian and Hanyi's resolve, and the now reversed resonation of their truths, it could not reach them anymore.
"Grief. Regret. Cold Embers. Whispered into the wind. Tears. That which cannot be replaced."
"You may share in them, not take them whole. Along with tokens and idols made and imbued in image of loss," Ling Qi rejoined, relaxed now that the spirit was… cooperating.
Iron teeth gnashed. Screeching as they ground together. "Done."
"...Hmph, I'll come once a year and sing to you too, nobody should be alone all the time, even if they're a jerk."
"Hanyi… that may not be…"
"It might break her?" Hanyi said with a sniff. "Yeah, maybe. I'm gonna do it anyway, unless Big Sis absolutely says I can't."
"No Absolution. Unfilial Daughter."
"Good, cause I don't need that," Hanyi said stubbornly.
Ling Qi frowned in consternation, the spirit was willing to accept ritual distance, because it could see an echo of its own tale in her, but if Hanyi was going to stir it up that fragile connection might fracture, could she really…
[ ] Allow Hanyi to do as she has said. (Risks of future changes to winter ecosystem, ???)
[ ] Do not allow this, your sister should not risk herself on this spirit (Ensures winter ecosystem stability, ???)
Last edited:
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
She's going to keep her company once a year with a song. This might cause her to explode Zeqing style because being abandoned and despairing is literally a core foundation of her Existence.
[ ] Allow Hanyi to do as she has said. (Risks of future changes to winter ecosystem, ???)
As if I would pass up the opportunity for Explosion Therapy.
As if I would pass up the opportunity for Explosion Therapy.
This statement has me convinced that this is gonna be incredibly important to Hanyis development in the long term.
A whetstone to better define herself by is gonna be vital for when the time comes for her Winter Wonderland Tour.
Edit: Also for the more mercenary of us, this gives us the chance for a future where this site is open for cultivation properly
Last edited:
Hanyi doing hanyi things but the problem is that it's antithetical to the spirits very core ideas. So at some points those ideas will change, and with that the Spirit. And that's unpredictable.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Incidently a re-read has revealed to me that Bao Qian is the prospective candiate for Ling Qi that has been on screen the most, overtaking all others easly.
I like him more than I thought I would on a re-read. Didn't really liked him the first time around but I am coming to it for his persistance if nothing else.
I like him more than I thought I would on a re-read. Didn't really liked him the first time around but I am coming to it for his persistance if nothing else.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
But yeah, Hanyi isn't a complete blank slate, and her instincts are basically telling her "I've gotta do this". I'm inclined to let her do her thing. Just like Zhengui knew how to deal with the Land innately, Hanyi seems to feel she has to do this, and she's still a Winter Spirit dealing with another Winter Spirit. For good or ill, I'm inclined to trust her instincts on this bit. She's not a child anymore even if she's still a brat.