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.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I am also rather unsure what the rolls are about? Is it one roll for each of the three actions, or is this all about the Materials?
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think it's all the materials, but I could be wrong.
Dealing with them may be a nightmare, but those Bai tourists do bring in the cash (the best fishing is of course at lake Hei, but all of the good fishing spots are contested in at least one millenia old blood feud).
Yeah sorry for not explaining clearly the culti mats option gives you one mat guaranteed with additional rolls for more in that options case, the variable for where it came in the vote order was how many rolls you'd get. Since it was first, it was three rolls at descending chances of success. So here you got one success and one crit success so you'll get your guaranteed mat plus two others
Looking forward to seeing what that crit success does for a material!!!
The Meng geomancer who isn't used to our shit is gonna be flabbergasted
The Meng geomancer who isn't used to our shit is gonna be flabbergasted
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Year 45 Month 11: Arc 2-5
"First and most greatly, we beg the blessing of Qi, to water the guardians of this place, to grow their strength, to ensure that no strife comes upon the shores of Shenglu. For these we offer our own in return, on three festival nights shall the chosen go out upon your waters and offer the the fruit of their experience, the sharing of memory and triumph and a return of a tithe
Qi grew and multiplied in cultivation, though it would take careful management, it would be possible to ensure that the offering, more complex than her spoken words implies, rippling and buzzing through the waters with values and amounts promised. The rites and proto-cultivation art exercises through which qi would be expelled and returned ritualistically.
Eagerness, waters shimmering, acceptance.
"Second we ask to set in contract the bounty of your waters, teeming with wealth of scale and bone and flesh, of the great schools which flock freely under your waters, we ask bounties fit for all who will ply these waters, from mortal shallows to immortal deeps. For this we will give our prayers upon each casting of net or line or spear, and twice monthly offerings upon our altar of incenses."
Curiosity, Water building bone and scale and fin from unformed motes of lake qi, Ling Qi twitched, sucking in a sharp breath and adjusting the cycle and skien of the qi protecting them as she was bombarded with…. 'Body plans' structures, bones, skeins of muscle and the qi composition of scale and bone and reproductive weights and…
She shuddered and tasted copper, forcing the great majority of it out of her head, leaving only the phantom impression that the variety to be found under Snowblossom's waters would soon explode. She had been right; the bounty of fish had been the thing the lake had offered first; it was what she… Wanted. Snowblossom was happy for its first gift to be desired further.
She certainly would have been wroth for it to be ignored in these requests.
"And last we would beg for only this. The healthiest and cleanest waters, building upon the blessings you have wrought in the veins of fire with the Prince of High Garden. For sturdy bodies and spirits, to endure the cold. For this and the rest, the prince offers his roots, to drink the waters and draw your powers together. And we our art, our vision, our hope for the future, and temperate stewardship of your shores."
Blooming delight, the impression of a network of roots, spreading all across the land, a whole forest that was not one, but many in communion. This was the keystone. To make a spirit into a settlement place god was not simple. Because to make it so, the god could not be distant and unknowable, to make it so, a spirit had to be bound, not by contract or qi binding, but by the same bond which held any member of a community together.
It required that she bring a spirit to care for their flickering sparks. It was the work of mortal generations, if not immortal ones. But it was a task she would happily take up. Because while Imperial rituals were neater and less maintenance intensive and that could be fine for distant hostile spirits… when it came to your neighbor… that should not be what was important.
Community IV->V
Each bond brings with it new ones, branching, and branching again. Love is obligation, the desire to see another prosper. Through these countless small loves, Community blooms and evolves.
Accepted.
Ling Qi knelt at the prow of the barge, Qiyi's silk pooled around her legs like a slick of ink. She felt a small trickle of wetness on her upper lip, and tasted the coppery scent of blood. Yet her mind's eyes was far from the still frail shell of her mortal body. She could see the lights, all the flickering lights reflected on the water, bobbing with the serene rippling of the waters.
Community required exclusion. Required there to be those inside and outside of it for it to have any meaning. This she had seen in the stagnant waters boiling under the Generals blade, and knew that she could not deny. But she refused to accept those terms as primary. Lights could drift away, bonds could thin and snap, new roots could curl out and bind themselves to others, reaching out.
It made it so much harder. But there were many hard things which were worth doing. And many easy things that men claimed were hard. She refused that path, The path of Still Waters and the All consuming Crucible alike. Kinship was not only blood. Community was not tradition alone. It was a continuous act, choices and motion from many minds, in harmony and not, pushing forward something greater than any one person.
And now, a hundred, hundred tenuous links reached out, from the lake to the people. As Snowblossom did right by them, so too would they need to do right by her. She remained kneeling, eyes on the depthless waters around the boat, the countless curious, happy eyes and too dense whispers prodding at her mind.
"Rise," she croaked. Bring forth the lakebottom altar."
She heard the shifting of cloth and the sharp intake of breath from her trainee priests, both men scrambling-with dignity- to obey, relieved of the pressure of the lake's generosity and encouragement by her careful deflection of the pressure. Stone scraped over wood, and she heard the uptick of their breathing, the grunts of effort that came from first realm cultivations having to haul such a weight up.
"O Snowblossom, I thank you for your generosity, for your understanding, for your kindness. You are our guardian, and our Queen of Waters, and so we give our next offering, a symbol of our trust and our contract, etched upon it in the Old Tongue, the True tongue are the terms I have given, and which you have accepted. One for your depths and one for our shore, a connection that we may always speak. Will you accept this?"
The Altar was a smooth, vertical block of pale blue stone, imported from the thousand lakes, it was infused with potent lake qi, and the characters of the dragon language, of formations wrote out the clear terms of the contract she had laid out, burning with pale green-blue light the last of the characters still curling out across the damp stone as they adjusted to the terms the lake had had offered them.
Gifting, speaking, me to you and you to me and they to they and I? Little souls flashing scales, small among the school, here and listen, give and take?
"I will return, always, to speak with you myself, but on other days these souls, and others will speak, and they will listen. Through the stone, through the wood, your echoed whispers, too quiet to harm will come. Would you like this?" Ling Qi agreed.
Yes Yes. New. Interesting, little figures, so far, so small, so distorted. I can touch, I can feel, will you lift your veils?"
She could feel her companions' tension rise.
"One day, Lady Snowblossom, but they are very small. It is better if only you and I speak directly now. Through the stone you may adjust your voice, to not deafen fragile ears."
As if mere deafness was the worst that she could do without meaning too.
Impatient, she could feel that the lake's nature was dangerous here. She was curious, she wanted to poke and prod and speak with the little things who supped on her waters.
"I beg, Lady Snowblossom, your patience, and your trust. I will promise that I, or another who is able, will speak to you directly for at least one night every thirteen turns of the moon," Ling Qi said.
It was a tie, a limitation until she could train another to commune like this without rupturing something, but one she would have to manage. Such a good relationship with a spirit could not be costless.
The spirit's presence swirled around them. The last of the offerings disappeared into the depths. Ling Qi felt her acceptance.
Come. Sink Speaking Stone Deep. Patience. Patience.
Images of the world in timelapse, the lake unchanging as clouds rush by like comets as plants spring up and die, animals come and animals go, the lake waits serene. But it is tempered by the yearning pressure, the cold waters desire warmth, now that they have tasted it. She will wait and be content, but not forever.
"Give over the altar," Ling Qi said quietly.
Her companions murmured an affirmative, moving to the side of the boat, their blue lit torches wavering and their white knuckled grip on the altar tight…. And a pair of delicate feminine hands, slender and dainty, snaked out of the water, visible only where the torchlight met a curve or an angle, the limbs seeming to be no more than clear liquid glass. Those dainty hands snatched the stone altar and dragged it down into the dark, surrounded by hundreds of bubbles shimmering with the reflections of eyes.
It was getting easier, she realized. The pressure was no less the alien attention of the lake's full mind no less hostile to small mortal minds. But she understood better, by the moment, how to cycle her qi just so to deflect rather than resist, how to coax rather than defy. How to keep this filmy bubble of identity keeping them from being made one with the lake intact.
She could even feel that the two men with her were aware of it, the lightening of the threat, not consciously, but there was a small loosening of tension in them, they probably didn't fully notice themselves.
They fell back and behind her, they knelt too.
"We give our thanks to Lady Snowblossom, goddess of Shenglu-by-the-lakeside. Giver of plenty and health. O Sparkling waters of cold beauty," they echoed her as she spoke. "Our offerings given, the contract set, our agreement made. Under light of the Moon, by the honor of the Celestial Court, let none shatter this covenant."
Let none shatter this covenant. Water and earth intertwine. Heat and cold intertwine. As Hearth and Firmament intertwine, since beginning of all days. Welcome little ones.
Ling Qi rose, and offered her hands up to the vast eyes looking down upon them, and accepted the invisible pressure of much larger, colder hands pressing down on hers, her qi and the lakes mingled, a faint puff of crimson clouded the glassy hands, and a rush of ice spiked in her own veins.
Her first true contract was complete.
AN: Mechanical benefits and finding out what your rolls got you coming in the next update.
Qi grew and multiplied in cultivation, though it would take careful management, it would be possible to ensure that the offering, more complex than her spoken words implies, rippling and buzzing through the waters with values and amounts promised. The rites and proto-cultivation art exercises through which qi would be expelled and returned ritualistically.
Eagerness, waters shimmering, acceptance.
"Second we ask to set in contract the bounty of your waters, teeming with wealth of scale and bone and flesh, of the great schools which flock freely under your waters, we ask bounties fit for all who will ply these waters, from mortal shallows to immortal deeps. For this we will give our prayers upon each casting of net or line or spear, and twice monthly offerings upon our altar of incenses."
Curiosity, Water building bone and scale and fin from unformed motes of lake qi, Ling Qi twitched, sucking in a sharp breath and adjusting the cycle and skien of the qi protecting them as she was bombarded with…. 'Body plans' structures, bones, skeins of muscle and the qi composition of scale and bone and reproductive weights and…
She shuddered and tasted copper, forcing the great majority of it out of her head, leaving only the phantom impression that the variety to be found under Snowblossom's waters would soon explode. She had been right; the bounty of fish had been the thing the lake had offered first; it was what she… Wanted. Snowblossom was happy for its first gift to be desired further.
She certainly would have been wroth for it to be ignored in these requests.
"And last we would beg for only this. The healthiest and cleanest waters, building upon the blessings you have wrought in the veins of fire with the Prince of High Garden. For sturdy bodies and spirits, to endure the cold. For this and the rest, the prince offers his roots, to drink the waters and draw your powers together. And we our art, our vision, our hope for the future, and temperate stewardship of your shores."
Blooming delight, the impression of a network of roots, spreading all across the land, a whole forest that was not one, but many in communion. This was the keystone. To make a spirit into a settlement place god was not simple. Because to make it so, the god could not be distant and unknowable, to make it so, a spirit had to be bound, not by contract or qi binding, but by the same bond which held any member of a community together.
It required that she bring a spirit to care for their flickering sparks. It was the work of mortal generations, if not immortal ones. But it was a task she would happily take up. Because while Imperial rituals were neater and less maintenance intensive and that could be fine for distant hostile spirits… when it came to your neighbor… that should not be what was important.
Community IV->V
Each bond brings with it new ones, branching, and branching again. Love is obligation, the desire to see another prosper. Through these countless small loves, Community blooms and evolves.
Accepted.
Ling Qi knelt at the prow of the barge, Qiyi's silk pooled around her legs like a slick of ink. She felt a small trickle of wetness on her upper lip, and tasted the coppery scent of blood. Yet her mind's eyes was far from the still frail shell of her mortal body. She could see the lights, all the flickering lights reflected on the water, bobbing with the serene rippling of the waters.
Community required exclusion. Required there to be those inside and outside of it for it to have any meaning. This she had seen in the stagnant waters boiling under the Generals blade, and knew that she could not deny. But she refused to accept those terms as primary. Lights could drift away, bonds could thin and snap, new roots could curl out and bind themselves to others, reaching out.
It made it so much harder. But there were many hard things which were worth doing. And many easy things that men claimed were hard. She refused that path, The path of Still Waters and the All consuming Crucible alike. Kinship was not only blood. Community was not tradition alone. It was a continuous act, choices and motion from many minds, in harmony and not, pushing forward something greater than any one person.
And now, a hundred, hundred tenuous links reached out, from the lake to the people. As Snowblossom did right by them, so too would they need to do right by her. She remained kneeling, eyes on the depthless waters around the boat, the countless curious, happy eyes and too dense whispers prodding at her mind.
"Rise," she croaked. Bring forth the lakebottom altar."
She heard the shifting of cloth and the sharp intake of breath from her trainee priests, both men scrambling-with dignity- to obey, relieved of the pressure of the lake's generosity and encouragement by her careful deflection of the pressure. Stone scraped over wood, and she heard the uptick of their breathing, the grunts of effort that came from first realm cultivations having to haul such a weight up.
"O Snowblossom, I thank you for your generosity, for your understanding, for your kindness. You are our guardian, and our Queen of Waters, and so we give our next offering, a symbol of our trust and our contract, etched upon it in the Old Tongue, the True tongue are the terms I have given, and which you have accepted. One for your depths and one for our shore, a connection that we may always speak. Will you accept this?"
The Altar was a smooth, vertical block of pale blue stone, imported from the thousand lakes, it was infused with potent lake qi, and the characters of the dragon language, of formations wrote out the clear terms of the contract she had laid out, burning with pale green-blue light the last of the characters still curling out across the damp stone as they adjusted to the terms the lake had had offered them.
Gifting, speaking, me to you and you to me and they to they and I? Little souls flashing scales, small among the school, here and listen, give and take?
"I will return, always, to speak with you myself, but on other days these souls, and others will speak, and they will listen. Through the stone, through the wood, your echoed whispers, too quiet to harm will come. Would you like this?" Ling Qi agreed.
Yes Yes. New. Interesting, little figures, so far, so small, so distorted. I can touch, I can feel, will you lift your veils?"
She could feel her companions' tension rise.
"One day, Lady Snowblossom, but they are very small. It is better if only you and I speak directly now. Through the stone you may adjust your voice, to not deafen fragile ears."
As if mere deafness was the worst that she could do without meaning too.
Impatient, she could feel that the lake's nature was dangerous here. She was curious, she wanted to poke and prod and speak with the little things who supped on her waters.
"I beg, Lady Snowblossom, your patience, and your trust. I will promise that I, or another who is able, will speak to you directly for at least one night every thirteen turns of the moon," Ling Qi said.
It was a tie, a limitation until she could train another to commune like this without rupturing something, but one she would have to manage. Such a good relationship with a spirit could not be costless.
The spirit's presence swirled around them. The last of the offerings disappeared into the depths. Ling Qi felt her acceptance.
Come. Sink Speaking Stone Deep. Patience. Patience.
Images of the world in timelapse, the lake unchanging as clouds rush by like comets as plants spring up and die, animals come and animals go, the lake waits serene. But it is tempered by the yearning pressure, the cold waters desire warmth, now that they have tasted it. She will wait and be content, but not forever.
"Give over the altar," Ling Qi said quietly.
Her companions murmured an affirmative, moving to the side of the boat, their blue lit torches wavering and their white knuckled grip on the altar tight…. And a pair of delicate feminine hands, slender and dainty, snaked out of the water, visible only where the torchlight met a curve or an angle, the limbs seeming to be no more than clear liquid glass. Those dainty hands snatched the stone altar and dragged it down into the dark, surrounded by hundreds of bubbles shimmering with the reflections of eyes.
It was getting easier, she realized. The pressure was no less the alien attention of the lake's full mind no less hostile to small mortal minds. But she understood better, by the moment, how to cycle her qi just so to deflect rather than resist, how to coax rather than defy. How to keep this filmy bubble of identity keeping them from being made one with the lake intact.
She could even feel that the two men with her were aware of it, the lightening of the threat, not consciously, but there was a small loosening of tension in them, they probably didn't fully notice themselves.
They fell back and behind her, they knelt too.
"We give our thanks to Lady Snowblossom, goddess of Shenglu-by-the-lakeside. Giver of plenty and health. O Sparkling waters of cold beauty," they echoed her as she spoke. "Our offerings given, the contract set, our agreement made. Under light of the Moon, by the honor of the Celestial Court, let none shatter this covenant."
Let none shatter this covenant. Water and earth intertwine. Heat and cold intertwine. As Hearth and Firmament intertwine, since beginning of all days. Welcome little ones.
Ling Qi rose, and offered her hands up to the vast eyes looking down upon them, and accepted the invisible pressure of much larger, colder hands pressing down on hers, her qi and the lakes mingled, a faint puff of crimson clouded the glassy hands, and a rush of ice spiked in her own veins.
Her first true contract was complete.
AN: Mechanical benefits and finding out what your rolls got you coming in the next update.
Abby Normal
High Clerk of the Ymaryn
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Happy birthday snowblossom! Next year we'll have to have a joint birthday party for her and qiyi 
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wow that's really cool.
Also dodged a bullet there with picking one of the fish bounty options, phew!
Also dodged a bullet there with picking one of the fish bounty options, phew!
- Location
- FR
- Pronouns
- He/Him
melodies of the Spirit Speaker was from the sect, IIRC. She was planning to buy the rights to use it and to make lesser variants of it for the priesthood (see her convo with Sima Jiao before the accords)
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Wait, question, does this action count as this?
- Spirit Seeker: One must walk the ways, know the paths to seek the spirits. You may raise the Bastion, Court the spirit lords, decipher what is malice and what is being. There are a hundred hundred melodies in the world, and not one is the Master, the chosen. Each speaker, each spirit, calls for a different song. What paltry few you have been taught are only the beginning, the foundation and tools upon which you may build your own. In Mastery, you find that you have only just completed apprenticeship, and only in walking hill and glen, mountain and valley, will you come to know the world. Listen to every melody, and only then decide what is yours. +1 XP to Community and Expression. Increase Spirit Seeker Trait by 1. Unlock Trait Advancing Project. (0/5)
Shared qi, amazing fish, and healthy water. Pretty good things to ask for from a lake. I wonder how the other options would have been portrayed. I think we asked for two things very pleasing to Snowblossom, and one that doesn't make a ton sense, but was non-negotiable to us.
I am concerned about how tied to the lake we are. Ling Qi sure promised a lot. I thought that Zhengui would be more involved in the communication, rather than Ling Qi having to do it so often until the priests can take over. I hope they can do it before the war arc, or there might be a huge problem for Shenglu if something happens to her against the Ith.
I am concerned about how tied to the lake we are. Ling Qi sure promised a lot. I thought that Zhengui would be more involved in the communication, rather than Ling Qi having to do it so often until the priests can take over. I hope they can do it before the war arc, or there might be a huge problem for Shenglu if something happens to her against the Ith.
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- Location
- United States
Looks like picking fish was super lucky. I'm not sure if the lake wanting to offer it will give us a stronger effect or just a bonus to it's happiness. We might also get a synergy bonus from the blessings. Healthy waters make it easier to have larger varieties of fish, which makes it easier to have valuable fish.
Ryumancer
Dragons Are Romance
Oh dear. I feel as though this was a mistake, even if it wasn't intended to be one by yrsillar. It's a promise we cannot keep. High realms still have a lifespan, and if LQ ever ascends it might make this promise impossible to keep. 'Always' is a very, very long time.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
If any great spirit can keep up regular communications with an earthly one, it's the one LQ intends to become.
I'm always low-key amused when xianxia settings have strict copyright laws.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Damn. No MoSS insight?
Threnodist
occupying Haudenosaunee & Osage land she/her/hers
- Location
- Pittsburgh
I think in the full context of the paragraph the terms are modified that Ling Qi "or someone else who is able" will return and speak once every 13 lunar cycles.
Ryumancer
Dragons Are Romance
Different interpretations, I think. The strict, as-promised interpretation is that she will always return eventually, but sometimes the regular thirteen day cycle will be handled by someone else. It doesn't absolve her of her promise if she for whatever reason becomes permanently unable to return (aka, dies. Or ascends, depending on the nature of her ascension.)
Mr.Error
The Clock-Hand that Tampers with Time
- Location
- The Cosmos
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wait, iirc Melodies of Spirit Seekers was one of the arts we got from the Three Moons' quest, along with Songseeker's ceremony and LFWT?
I don't remember that well tho, somebody correct me if I'm wrong
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Wait, is a turn of the moon a day? I assumed "thirteen" in this case was the months in a year?
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
So, are we expecting to find a Green willing to become a priest, or are we going to powerlevel a priest to Green?