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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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An ideas for a song. I think it's about time we tried to combine our specialties. The song about isolation, dreams, barriers, community, dreams, freedom and something else (guess). For the purpose of slipping through barriers or subverting them against their user.
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The Beast.
Long ago there was a beast, so alien, and dangerous, and strange was it, that men erected a thousand walls around it while it slept. The Beast would woke up and found itself with structures it couldn't smash through, so people felt safe and glad and put the beast out of their mind, the tall walls, standings tall, reminding them that they were safe, not of the danger of the beast.

And the Beast was awake, but it was truly alien, so it could not understand that the walls were walls, and barrier a barrier. So it didn't try to break a wall, sabotage a barrier, avoid a trap. As it always did, as it could before, the Beast walked through the strange new mountains, swam through the river not made out of water, lurked through the forest with trees it never knew and same as always.

The people lived their lives and were content, not afraid of the beast, for the walls were not broken, barriers were proudly erect and traps ready. And so every night they went to sleep in shadows of walls they built.
~~
 
LucidProp said:
You can't have multitude and diversity without borders, since borders is how we're able to see the differences between people instead of just a vague slurry of traits that we assume are on our side.
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While true, you also can't have multitude and diversity if all your borders are permanent lines.

Doors imply the existence of a border, but they are fundamentally about making those boundaries porous.
 
Doors are also within houses. They separate spaces that are all for the same person from one another, not just people or things from eachother. They are a different thing entirely than borders. Borders do not have, do not need, doors. People can just walk across them anyways.

So I think trying to set the two opposed to eachother in concept is a fundamental mistake; doors apply to walls. They are physical first, before they are metaphorical. Borders are metaphorical first, and then can be reinforced physically with other things that are not borders.

I think it's telling how many people are using 'boundaries' in their explanations of why they are voting for doors- boundaries are different things than borders.
 
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Candesce said:
While true, you also can't have multitude and diversity if all your borders are permanent lines.

Doors imply the existence of a border, but they are fundamentally about making those boundaries porous.
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Studying the nature of borders doesn't actually mean Ling Qi's going to come out of thinking borders are impermeable and permanent, so I have no idea what your point here is, especially when her experience says otherwise.

Borders establish a community's identity, but that doesn't inherently mean that community is closed off.
 
[X] Study the nature of doors

Doors are things that are commonly locked when good loot is behind them. Understanding doors better will allow us to heist better and isn't that the REAL purpose of this wonderful story?
 
Karthak Urzak said:
If any Imperials tried that argument I'd throw in their face the deplorable state of the Celestial Peaks spiritual landscape before Emperor An. :p We know that Ran Fen's family were elevated to Viscounts because of:

And nothing we've learned of the Peaks before An leads me to believe it was an isolated incident.
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The Celestial Peaks are the center of an Empire, able to centralize and organize resources to deal with existential threats, including creating institutions and infrastructures to support mortals. It also produced the horrors of such bureaucracy, but the system has also constantly produced heroes and reformers.

The Emeral Seas and the heirs of the Weilu produced what? A Dynasty that fucked off and a dynasty that drugged itself with dream opium and did nothing to protect itself? And instead broke itself through constant petty squabbles. An Ancestor that was so disgusted by them it straight off flipped the Seas off and left?

The virtues of a system are the benefits it brings to its people and its ability to regenerate from failures. All else is coping. By those standards, the Heirs of Tsu have failed, either because their methods are not as good/simple as you think or because they are plainly unworthy of their ancestors' legacies. In contrast, the Celestial Peaks for all their hubris are at least more worthy than the Dragon Gods in that they are willing to turn their blades on themselves to cut out the rot and learn from their mistakes.
 
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Deadly Snark said:
The Celestial Peaks are the center of an Empire, able to centralize and organize resources to deal with existential threats, including creating institutions and infrastructures to support mortals. It also produced the horrors of such bureaucracy, but the system has also constantly produced heroes and reformers.

The Emeral Seas and the heirs of the Weilu produced what? A Dynasty that fucked off and a dynasty that drugged itself with dream opium and did nothing to protect itself? And instead broke itself through constant petty squabbles. An Ancestor that was so disgusted by them it straight off flipped the Seas off and left?

The virtues of a system are the benefits it brings to its people and its abilities to regenerate from mistakes. All else is coping. By those standards the Heirs of Tsu have failed, either because their methods are bad or because they are plain unworthy of their ancestors' legacies. While the Celestial Peaks for all their hubris are at least more consistent than the Dragon Gods in that their are willing to turn their blades on themselves to cut out the rot.
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Ok, but making Twilight King is kinda a big stain on the Peak/Dragon culture. Sure, they managed to organise to fix it, but it still took Daughter of the Sun exploding to actually stop this.

Like, sure, Scions of Tsu fucked it majorly, but they never produced something on par with the old Twily.
 
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Aliya said:
Ok, but making Twilight King is kinda a big stain on the Peak/Dragon culture. Sure, they managed to organise to fix it, but it still took Daughter of the Sun exploding to actually stop this.

Like, sure, Scions of Tsu fjcked it majorpy, but they never produced something on par with the old Twily.
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That's what happens when you become a Superpower yes. Your deeds are mighty and your failures mightier still, it's the inevitability that comes with power.
 
Which means that, barring outside threats, it's maybe better for no superpowers to be. A 90% loss wipes out a LOT of 100% gains.
 
It would be cool if Xuan Shi's gift were something more related to his Narrative or Travel concepts...
Holy crap is he going to make a printing press? A theater? Rocket Turtle powered train??
 
[X] Study the nature of borders

One of the main elements of being a baron is being able to make and maintain the boundary wards, and while we *do* have people for that and resources that most dont have, i do think its good to go for it. also i think there's less overlap with ling qi's existing liminal capabilities on that front, whereas door-related formations are likely to have some stuff that just aren't as important with her ability to enter the liminal so much more advanced than her overall 'level'
 
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