- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Provoke an imperial response that lets them sell 'unite or die' to their population, and use that to take out the upper ranks of ES cultivators in the opening battles, I think.
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.
Provoke an imperial response that lets them sell 'unite or die' to their population, and use that to take out the upper ranks of ES cultivators in the opening battles, I think.
It's actually worse than that for the Ya, as those demands? Are demands of the Empire itself, given the demands to destroy the Argent Vents, which would destroy the Argent Sect. An Imperial institution. Meaning that in theory, Shenhua would be justified in notifying the Empress and requesting Imperial aid in slapping the Ya down for their presumption in making demands like this.
- Location
- Europe
If they do that they will die. Even if they take out the ES, a Major gamble especially when the ES has already shown they will allow surrender for Ith polities, the rest of the empire will crush them in response.
That and all they'd achieve, best case- them being a threat to the Empire itself- would be the Empire waking one or more of the Sublime Ancestors available to deal with the Ya permanently.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
You are assuming they have less reinforcements to call on than the emerald seas do. How many ith cities exist that aren't in the league of seven, do you think?
- Location
- Europe
How many people do you think are willing to get into a fight where even just attempting to win will cost you your life span, if instead you can just not do that?
That just escalates things to the Empire itself joining in, given the demanded conditions.
NoxOfUmbra
Shadow of the night
- Location
- Colombia, South América
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
"Hey, the humans aren't going to freak out over these demands, are they?"
"Nah man, this is just what you call an opening bid. We put our maximum ask in the opening, they reject it out of hand and give us their maximum ask, and then we go to the negotiating table and work it out."
"So it won't offend their human honor or something?"
"What?! No, absolutely not, look I've spent plenty of time of time spying on human markets, this is how they operate. Open big, then negotiate down. They'll totally understand. You have nothing to worry about."
"Nah man, this is just what you call an opening bid. We put our maximum ask in the opening, they reject it out of hand and give us their maximum ask, and then we go to the negotiating table and work it out."
"So it won't offend their human honor or something?"
"What?! No, absolutely not, look I've spent plenty of time of time spying on human markets, this is how they operate. Open big, then negotiate down. They'll totally understand. You have nothing to worry about."
I don't think most noble posturing and demands in the prelude to war include demands you do things you don't actually have the authority to do. (Destruction of the Argent Vents. That's not within the authority of the Emerald Seas, since the Great Sects have authority directly from the Empress.)
That an irrelevant internal detail as far as an outside party would be concerned? There's no reason for them (or any other foreign party) to be aware of that or care.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Can they 'just not do that'? Will the empire full of sovereigns that are always sovereigns leave them alone, or will it pick them apart piecemeal until they cannot resist even if they did join together?
If there's any suspicion of the second, then then the ith cannot afford to sit out the first wars- they will doom themselves by doing so; the best hope they have of victory against a peer or superior is to use all of their strength right away before any of it is lost.
This depends on a lot of other moving pieces in the empire, but assuming that it is true, and the ith know this from their spies, then you are still left with the problem the no one deliberately starts a way they know they will lose.
So they think they can either take the empire, or convince it to stand down through MAD.
It would be an interesting direction to take the story, if a bunch of the prisms and whites in the empire were killed, making it vulnerable to the other civs we've seen and demanding new leadership step up.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sounds like the 'war arc' is definitely going to live up to its name.
In other areas of the Empire there's non-hostile relations with the Ith in those areas (the Zheng, for instance) though details are sparse. Meaning that at a minimum, Ith civilization is not under threat globally. Unless the Ith do something stupid like escalate things to involving the entire Empire, even the places they are at peace with.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
What's crazy is that these are splintered colonies of a peer civ to the Empire. BTW how did the main Yith polity compare in power to the whole Empire?
- Location
- Colorado
IIRC the only thing we've heard from the Zheng was that their Sublime Ancestor beat up some 'cave demons' back in the day. I wouldn't call that 'non-hostile relations with the Ith,' unless I've forgotten something.
"Yeah, demand the Duchess surrender and threaten an Imperial Throne institution. Hey, apropos of nothing I'm going to vacation in the polar regions in the near future." -Yan Renshu already exploring his parachute options.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I feel like that implies Yan Renshu has more functioning brain cells then he actually does. Though then again….getting pissed off that his 'honor and dignity were disrespected' or whatever term he likes to use is kinda his entire shtick, so maybe he would understand the connotations there.
Considering the war scenarios from the Ya-lith-kai perspective:
-Extended skirmishing/black ops raiding
Thus far they are winning this at a tactical level, because their low level assets used in this process are highly expendable, and they are punching us with negligible ability to be punched back. They aren't actually hurting our ability to mobilize though, just wrecking our economy long term.
However at a strategic level this is not good for their ambitions. Long drawn out conflicts with no clear returns or terminus are terrible for enlisting other cities into their league.
-High level clashes between Sovereigns
This is not a good day for the Ya-lith-kai, from what we've seen their 'persistent' assets cap out at Cyan equivalent, after which their units have increasingly shorter operation runtime before they just expire with all invested resources. If a clash between sovereigns happen it HAS to be happening on their terms, because booting up their gestalt sovereigns takes time, and only lasts so long. Fortunately for them, imperial sovereigns cannot operate for long in their realm, their territories are unmapped, and so more or less we cannot deploy our humanoid atomic bombs without spending most of their energy reserves carving blindly through solid rock.
Shenhua's planned giant invasion borehole would change this. We'd have a beachhead into their tunnel networks that we can deploy and withdraw Sovereigns through, and each time they contest this they have to spend lives booting up their own.
-Ultimate Battle of top tier ES forces vs top tier Ya-lith-kai forces
This, from all the clues we've gathered, strongly favors them. We don't know how much copium Ha-lith-kai was was huffing, but they believe 3 cities is enough to fight Shenhua evenly. 7 cities should be enough to fight Shenhua AND her Heavenly Kings. Such a scale of assault would also be a convincing argument for their unaligned settlements to believe there is a genuine existential threat and join together. The entire scenario favors their model of Sovereigns- since they can only operate for a short time, if all of ES's strongest throw hands against Ya-lith-kai they get to use all their power at once, while we cannot, and we cannot replace losses on any relevant timescale either.
-Supreme ultimate battle of Imperial Muster vs the Ya-lith-Kai
This is much more power than they can take on by any measure…however a full Imperial Muster takes at least decades of negotiations to arrange, if the threat isn't convincing enough(noting the last one turned out badly enough that there's going to be a lot of feet dragging). Even with a direct insult against the imperial institutions, the best we can expect is the Empress dispatching a few elite squads on short notice.
This, I think is key to how they are being insulting - they want to provoke an immediate, maximal force retaliation that happens on the most favorable terms for them. They don't want to kill Shenhua and then lose to her Heavenly Kings a few months later after their gestalt falls apart. They want a grand set piece battle where all of ES's best are arrayed in one force, after which they only need to grind down the rest.
-Extended skirmishing/black ops raiding
Thus far they are winning this at a tactical level, because their low level assets used in this process are highly expendable, and they are punching us with negligible ability to be punched back. They aren't actually hurting our ability to mobilize though, just wrecking our economy long term.
However at a strategic level this is not good for their ambitions. Long drawn out conflicts with no clear returns or terminus are terrible for enlisting other cities into their league.
-High level clashes between Sovereigns
This is not a good day for the Ya-lith-kai, from what we've seen their 'persistent' assets cap out at Cyan equivalent, after which their units have increasingly shorter operation runtime before they just expire with all invested resources. If a clash between sovereigns happen it HAS to be happening on their terms, because booting up their gestalt sovereigns takes time, and only lasts so long. Fortunately for them, imperial sovereigns cannot operate for long in their realm, their territories are unmapped, and so more or less we cannot deploy our humanoid atomic bombs without spending most of their energy reserves carving blindly through solid rock.
Shenhua's planned giant invasion borehole would change this. We'd have a beachhead into their tunnel networks that we can deploy and withdraw Sovereigns through, and each time they contest this they have to spend lives booting up their own.
-Ultimate Battle of top tier ES forces vs top tier Ya-lith-kai forces
This, from all the clues we've gathered, strongly favors them. We don't know how much copium Ha-lith-kai was was huffing, but they believe 3 cities is enough to fight Shenhua evenly. 7 cities should be enough to fight Shenhua AND her Heavenly Kings. Such a scale of assault would also be a convincing argument for their unaligned settlements to believe there is a genuine existential threat and join together. The entire scenario favors their model of Sovereigns- since they can only operate for a short time, if all of ES's strongest throw hands against Ya-lith-kai they get to use all their power at once, while we cannot, and we cannot replace losses on any relevant timescale either.
-Supreme ultimate battle of Imperial Muster vs the Ya-lith-Kai
This is much more power than they can take on by any measure…however a full Imperial Muster takes at least decades of negotiations to arrange, if the threat isn't convincing enough(noting the last one turned out badly enough that there's going to be a lot of feet dragging). Even with a direct insult against the imperial institutions, the best we can expect is the Empress dispatching a few elite squads on short notice.
This, I think is key to how they are being insulting - they want to provoke an immediate, maximal force retaliation that happens on the most favorable terms for them. They don't want to kill Shenhua and then lose to her Heavenly Kings a few months later after their gestalt falls apart. They want a grand set piece battle where all of ES's best are arrayed in one force, after which they only need to grind down the rest.
That may be true from game theory standpoint, but in reality, no one wants to start an extremely costly war on a mere suspicion that their situation will be worse in the future if they don't. There's always a million arguments why they shouldn't do that, from logical to "it's just not going to happen, calm down, you're delusional".
You'd be surprised how far can a state sleepwalk between the need to score short-term political points, not wanting to look weak and vague hopes that things will work out somehow.
- Location
- Colorado
Firstly, he Ha don't have 3 cities, they have 3 communities that make up one city.
Secondly I've finally dug up this statement from yrsillar that Karthak Urzak helpfully archived:
I'm not taking that as anywhere near 'the Ha could've fought Shenhua evenly.'
The funny part is that, while that is true against most Whites, it gets more complicated against crafters like Shenhua. Depending on how much she knows about the mechanics of the Ith's cultivation system, she might get to whip out a super weapon tailored*badums* against them.
Even if there isn't an angle to fuck with the coherency of the gestalt god, just messing around with Brother Time could cut their deployment time short.