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

[Cecylene]

[ ] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to the Way. The Master of Communication seeks to show how each path may join one future.

[ ] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

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Union or Harmony.

Does Communication let everything work together towards a shared goal, or prevent goals from interfering?

Does Communication seek a communion of purpose and people towards a shared future or does it seek to create frictionless boundaries between separate entities each driving towards parallel but different goals?

I'm a fan of the One Future ideal, because we are trying to bring people together beyond merely "harmony". We are changing others just as others change us, but together we all are moving towards that brighter tomorrow where Yth and Imperial and Tribe and Polar are all able to exist together.

It's not a task achievable in even a White Realm's lifetime but it's the kind of goal I think is worth striving for in terms of Communication. To seek that common ground and bring understanding so that what was once two separate entiries: spirit,mortal, or other can find that common cause.

One world, made of many parts. Walking towards a better tomorrow together.

This is all pie-in-the-sky talk, but that's what's worth considering for this kind of thing. If you aren't dreaming of the impossible when thinking of purpose and cultivation you're never going to achieve the improbable.

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to the Way. The Master of Communication seeks to show how each path may join one future.

 

[Aliya]

Ling Qi isn't actually about Unity, though. She is uncomfy with the concept, in fact. She is very Choice flavored though, and Harmony rhymes with that much better.

 

[Holliden]

[x] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Yun]

Ling Qi sucked in a sharp breath, the throbbing pain in her head that had subsided coming to the fore in an instant, as the veins in her temples. It echoed with the weight of age which exceeded the Empire, which exceeded Tsu the Diviner and the Legendary King's, harking back to the dim ages before any true history was known.

And it sang with edges of jagged glass and crumbled rubble, a structure that had broken and receded, made less again and again, broken and receded…Six Hundred Seventy Nine times.

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I imagine by this point Renxiang will be torn between exasperation for Qi finding something this old, and how such a spirit might aid in the understanding of spirit stone mines. Like basic knowledge of how they were supposed to be maintained originally would be invaluable as one of the big problems with Celestial Peaks geomancy is it not really fitting the logical region, and this would be a low level project capable of doing so, which is before factoring in the possibility of any expansion of the spirits authority into new regions being knowledge that is relevant to making spirit stone veins in the first place.

Also I suspect this spirit is tied to the balanced qi the Argent Sect has, and how the 2nd ducal clan of the Emerald Seas thought there were spirit stone veins present at first.

"None. All macro functions are defunct. Replaced. Maintenance of the internal environment and spirit creche remains. Knowledge of the Discordia project lost in the seventeenth Incarnum. Irrelevant to the current environment. Harmonious Memorial Piper. Sufficient name."

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Huh, just the spirit creche would be a pretty big deal as animals in human captivity trending toward mundane, and any clan that can produce a artificial spirit creche even when it is limited to the third realm would be making big money. Also would be a project that if done well would built upon the sense of nationalism the Summit ignited among the various clans.

 

[thebluebadger]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

Ling Qi is all about diversity and harmony, freedom of choice and mutually beneficial coexistence.

I am FASCINATED to find out more about this spirit creche and what the Piper was originally meant for... Even if the Piper itself apparently hasn't known its purpose for hundreds of incarnations

 

[Glau]

Does Communication let everything work together towards a shared goal, or prevent goals from interfering?

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Peace is a shared goal. Universal rights are a shared goal.

On the other hand, many paths in harmony is what is needed to make a cultivator army work.

 

[o11c]

[] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to the Way. The Master of Communication seeks to show how each path may join one future.

This one seems to vibe better with the Daoist foundation of the universe.

 

[ArcanaVitae]

Li Suyin merely stepped forward, shaking out her palm as her body expelled the liquifying remains of the tendril through the hole in her palm. "My, such a high content, and with a novel aspect too. XInghong, store that please."

Ling Qi stared at the wound in her friend's palm even as it closed. She still did not understand how the tendril had breached her technique. It didn't…"

"I think it does. You already decided to preserve choice, didn't you?"

Ling Qi hid a grimace. Of course… hadn't she already accepted that she couldn't let herself become a smothering force? If someone under her protection WANTED to face hardship and harm, knowingly so…

Of course her technique would be like nothing but mundane mist then.

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I really like this detail LQ has chosen who she's going to be and the effects her techniques.

I hear and watch. The Attuner understands the breadth of my gaze.

Especially as it could easily pull from her own, feel her intentions too deeply for deception.

"I do. Harmonizer of Lands, Composer of Strands. More proper names than Piper, no?"

The spirit's answer was a lingering silence, a holding thrum in its song, devoid of all but the base beat of its existence.

"Six Hundred and Seventy Ninth Incarnum of Discordia Realignment Orchestra."

Ling Qi sucked in a sharp breath, the throbbing pain in her head that had subsided coming to the fore in an instant, as the veins in her temples. It echoed with the weight of age which exceeded the Empire, which exceeded Tsu the Diviner and the Legendary King's, harking back to the dim ages before any true history was known.

And it sang with edges of jagged glass and crumbled rubble, a structure that had broken and receded, made less again and again, broken and receded…Six Hundred Seventy Nine times.

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Okay damn this thing is extremely ancient and has been around for an insanely long time, it could teach LQ a lot about various things.

What is YOUR purpose?

Ling Qi tilted her head back, that was a fair question, given her own. Though she was far from finding an answer to that herself.

"Life's a lot easier when you've only got one track to run on," Sixiang chuckled wryly. "I can't even say it's less fun… but I kinda like stumbling around a bit anyway, you know?"

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It's a pretty important question for LQ and is going to define a lot of things.

+2 Expression XP

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With this we get Expression to level 5.

[ ] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to the Way. The Master of Communication seeks to show how each path may join one future.

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[ ] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

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This feels like a Union or Harmony kind of things.

Piper sounds more and more like some sort of purposefully built machine. All that remains is the regulation of a spirit creche, which is insane. Some crazy ancient science lab and we pulled an incubator out.

I like #2 better. Many paths and many ways. #1 sounds benign, but the end bit about joining one future sounds less like communication and more like persuasion/coercion.

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Oh yeah it feels like it was designed and the deliberately broke and remade itself.

Oooooooo

This thing is OLD. And used to be much bigger, possibly stretching as far as the beaver ponds? Definitely an indication that our spirit stone mine is artificial. I wonder what destroyed the anima of the spirit before.

Discordia Realignment suggests that this was built to refine chaos rather than defeat or suppress it, and orchestra suggests that it was done by adding additional 'instrumental' parts in a medley. I bet this is a clue as to how we can restore it.

As far as the choices...

I do like the idea of many paths to many ways. But I also really like underlining that no matter how many visions of the future there are, there will only ever be one real one and when it comes everyone will have to deal with it in the present. We can't have multiple futures leading to multiple presents.

No communication leads to strife as people try to force different visions of reality into existence against over another.

Therefore the whole point of communication is to align everyone's visions of what the future will be as much as possible before strife becomes inevitable. We do, in the end, all live in a singular, comprehensive, reality.

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Oh yeah it's insanely old and likely knows an insane amount about Art, Music and Communication.

We need to figure out how to repair the Piper as much as possible. If we can restore even a portion of its original capabilities...muahahaha!

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I kinda want it as a tutor for LQ, it would be insanely good at what it does.

[ ] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

This feels like what we've been angling for a while, it allows choice while working together.

 

[Glau]

That is actual a good reminder. I don't think framing the choice in this manner is what we are being asked to decide:

Ling Qi isn't actually about Unity, though. She is uncomfy with the concept, in fact. She is very Choice flavored though, and Harmony rhymes with that much better.

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Ling Qi is all about diversity and harmony, freedom of choice and mutually beneficial coexistence.

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This feels like what we've been angling for a while, it allows choice while working together.

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Because:

"I think it does. You already decided to preserve choice, didn't you?"

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So whatever we pick here, we should recognize that we've already chosen to preserve choice. This isn't about whether there is choice or not.

 

[T_of_A]

I wonder if this spirit was created by Dragons, back when they reordered the whole continent and structured its geomancy to aid them.

 

[DeadmanwalkingXI]

So whatever we pick here, we should recognize that we've already chosen to preserve choice. This isn't about whether there is choice or not.

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Oh, we're definitely preserving choice, but #1, but deciding that there is a correct future, pretty directly sets us up to think we know better than everyone else and try and force our vision of the future in ways that are...less than ideal. The second option doesn't have that issue nearly as much.

 

[KarmaA]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Glau]

Oh, we're definitely preserving choice, but #1, but deciding that there is a correct future, pretty directly sets us up to think we know better than everyone else and try and force our vision of the future in ways that are...less than ideal. The second option doesn't have that issue nearly as much.

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But we do have a vision of the correct future, and we do think it is better than everyone else's, and I'm not interested in having Ling Qi lie to herself about that.

Peaceful coexistence and the end of tyranny.

This is what the thread consistently advocates and votes for.

We are fighting for it, and so we should be willing to say so. It's not a very widely shared vision, so it's unlikely to come to pass out of the harmonization of a bunch of ways each striving for domination.

 

[TimEd]

I'm leaning more towards the Harmony pick. Singular Way might seem like the more correct thing in the absolute sense. The singular nature of reality, the whole Power argument, seemingly universal creation myth, etc. But still I wanna go for Harmony instead because it ultimately still lead to practically the same end when viewed in a similarly abstract view, just without letting the responsibility fall on any singular being. Those who follow and those who oppose must do so by choice, so that none can deny their complicit liability in whatever it is that happens next.


[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.


As an aside, do we have a collated list of all the Names Ling Qi has been called before? Might be good to have on hand to help us make sense of what she is shaping up to be, from the eyes of someone else.

 

[memoryofglory]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[ElizatronicWarfa]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Synthesizer]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

This reflects in part our diplomatic efforts, that there can be many good Choices to lead people in a positive direction. Foreign or Imperial, Traditional or New, a Way should be judged on how it affects humanity and society. One True Way as a thought throws that out.

 

[random--logic]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

Suyin maintaining her choice in the face of LQ's technique in this chapter shows that LQ already leans towards each having their own way rather than influencing others to join hers only - that already she is more harmony than unity, or rather perhaps she is unity of intent through harmony of actions

 

[SillyLittleCoffe]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Bitterman]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

Uncle Bones would be proud. The myopic focus on Unity rather than Harmony was part of what doomed the Weliu, at least from what we've seen, and I like the idea of Ling Qi not making the same mistake. Also, [Extremely Long Descriptive Name] of a quasi-organic synthetic mechanism is peak naming convention. My only question is if the longer name means it's weaker.

 

[wabbitking]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Lena27]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Orbmorb]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[Waci]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to many ways. The Master of Communication seeks the parallel, the flow of many paths in harmony.

 

[LucidProp]

[X] The truth of art is Communication. There are many paths to the Way. The Master of Communication seeks to show how each path may join one future.

Glau's arguments convinced me. There are many paths, but only one present we'll all have to live in.