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

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trebobr said:
I ageee that setting up permenant MoC branch is not possible, but the Ha-Yith-Kai need to be able to communicate with us somehow. Is the army always going to be in charge of that?

To clear up my confusion, how is communication usually done between vassals?
As in, how is it currently done between a count and a duke as an example.
And how should it be done between ES and the vassalized Ith.

I assumed somewhere in the middle of that chain of command that the MoC would be involved.
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I didn't say anything about the army, they're not in charge of talking to Ha-Yith-Kai right now, because no one was. No one wanted anything to do with them until we volunteered.
"Tha capital lands at least have been safe. I do not think it would be well for them if her Grace's tributaries allowed any such thing to happen near them," Diao Hualing said neutrally.

"Has Law been cooperating with them to ensure such things?" Ling Qi asked.

"We have not, my superior's will not countenance such a thing. They are after all merely subjugated creatures, there is very little communication between their city under the roots and the people of Xiangmen, save for their regular tributes," Diao Hualing said. Her words were without any particular inflection or judgment.

Ling Qi furrowed her brows. "I understand that they cannot be fully trusted, but all the same there should be many cultivators in Law and elsewhere able to detect any mistruths spoken. At the very least, discussing what their common methods are should be a priority."

"I mean, if you got 'em on the choke chain, that makes sense," Su Ling said, frowning herself. "Have people really just not bothered?"

"Her grace is heavily absorbed with the war preparations and other matters. This subject falls to her loyal ministers. Who might squabble over whose jurisdiction it is and how to approach the matter."
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Communication between a vassal and liege could be handled by the Ministry of Communication, but they might also just use their own messengers or talismans for that. The MoC is most useful for 'horizontal' or 'diagonal' communication, stuff like the letters we exchange with Gu Xiulan. They let anyone in the Empire with some money contact anyone the Imperial bureaucracy can locate. The ES however hasn't vassalized the Ith, they've tributized them. The Ith are all still considered barbarians at best, not imperial citizens.

Valmond said:
The Empire (Emerald Seas bit of it anyway) recognices the Ith as entities with loot they want to extract.
And they behave much more like humans than most spirits, so any expertise of spiritual affairs is going to be less useful than the ability to deliver mail on consistent basis.
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The Ministry of Communication is dependent on Imperial infrastructure and bureaucracy, neither of which exist in Ha-Yith-Kai. Communication only delivers mail, they don't have anything to do with negotiations, and they shouldn't have agents on hand who can deliver mail to areas that are hostile to human life/cultivation, because they deliver to places humans live. 'They behave more like humans than spirits' is debateable, but the Empire doesn't have anyone whose job it is to talk to foreign humans, so it's a moot point. The closest thing they've got to protocols for communicating with the Ith would be talking to an organized spirit court on the frontier that exists in hostile environment, that's Spiritual Affairs.

If we want to get them out of Spiritual Affairs territory and harass Communication into creating a department for them we probably need to start with Law to get them officially recognized as human like other less alien barbarians:
Karthak Urzak said:
Some interesting answers from the Q&A:

Do barbarians count as human under the law:

What a lovely view of foreigners the Empire has.
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but Law isn't one of the options right now.

Maybe I should stop talking though, the more I say things the more people vote the opposite, lol.
 
memoryofglory said:
The Ministry of Communication is dependent on Imperial infrastructure and bureaucracy, neither of which exist in Ha-Yith-Kai. Communication only delivers mail, they don't have anything to do with negotiations, and they shouldn't have agents on hand who can deliver mail to areas that are hostile to human life/cultivation, because they deliver to places humans live. 'They behave more like humans than spirits' is debateable, but the Empire doesn't have anyone whose job it is to talk to foreign humans, so it's a moot point. The closest thing they've got to protocols for communicating with the Ith would be talking to an organized spirit court on the frontier that exists in hostile environment, that's Spiritual Affairs.

If we want to get them out of Spiritual Affairs territory and harass Communication into creating a department for them we probably need to start with Law to get them officially recognized as human like other less alien barbarians:
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And that infrastructure needs to be setup, which means talking to communications.
And not all communications go to permanent bases, especially during wartime when armies are meant to advance.
Ha-Yith-Kai needs a permanent postbox setup, be it manned permanently by someone from ministry of communications, or a person/office from Ha-Yith-Kai that is authoriced to receive messages on behalf of their community.
They are vassals, tributaries, by the degree of the Duchess Cai Shenhua, any minister that is going to try to wriggle out of doing their job, is not going be having a good time, and this is the job of the minister/ministry of communications.
 
Valmond said:
And that infrastructure needs to be setup, which means talking to communications.
And not all communications go to permanent bases, especially during wartime when armies are meant to advance.
Ha-Yith-Kai needs a permanent postbox setup, be it manned permanently by someone from ministry of communications, or a person/office from Ha-Yith-Kai that is authoriced to receive messages on behalf of their community.
They are vassals, tributaries, by the degree of the Duchess Cai Shenhua, any minister that is going to try to wriggle out of doing their job, is not going be having a good time, and this is the job of the minister/ministry of communications.
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Can people stop calling them vassals? Vassals are imperial citizens, they have titles and rights and obligations. Ha-yith-kai are barbarians who don't have any of those things, beyond the duty to send up tribute every so often. Should they get those things? Yes I think so, but they don't have them right now, and we're not going to get them those things any time soon. The Ith might not even be recognized as human yet considering how our side of the delegation reacted to the White Sky saying they were.

Should the MoC set up that stuff? Absolutely, but it has little bearing on our mission. We're not writing them a letter, we're going in person on a fact-finding mission. It would be nice to lay the groundwork for communication that doesn't rely on just us, but I doubt the MoC has the expertise to set up something quickly in this environment anyway, while Spiritual Affairs might.

I don't really want to talk to Spiritual Affairs about the Ith, I'm more interested in sounding them out about everything else we do, I'm just pushing back on the idea that Communication and Finance have anything to do with our mission to personally walk down there and ask them about Ith combat doctrine.
 
memoryofglory said:
Should they get those things? Yes I think so, but they don't have them right now, and we're not going to get them those things any time soon.
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Shenhua is gonna treat them as vassals, and indeed seems to be doing so already in practice. Official legal status will follow before all that long I suspect. Shenhua is a monster, the Tyrant Progress, but she is exactly the person to declare them vassals and make it stick. They have sworn to her and she accepted it, woe be to anyone who treats those who have sworn to her incorrectly.
 
memoryofglory said:
Can people stop calling them vassals? Vassals are imperial citizens, they have titles and rights and obligations. Ha-yith-kai are barbarians who don't have any of those things, beyond the duty to send up tribute every so often. Should they get those things? Yes I think so, but they don't have them right now, and we're not going to get them those things any time soon. The Ith might not even be recognized as human yet considering how our side of the delegation reacted to the White Sky saying they were.

Should the MoC set up that stuff? Absolutely, but it has little bearing on our mission. We're not writing them a letter, we're going in person on a fact-finding mission. It would be nice to lay the groundwork for communication that doesn't rely on just us, but I doubt the MoC has the expertise to set up something quickly in this environment anyway, while Spiritual Affairs might.

I don't really want to talk to Spiritual Affairs about the Ith, I'm more interested in sounding them out about everything else we do, I'm just pushing back on the idea that Communication and Finance have anything to do with our mission to personally walk down there and ask them about Ith combat doctrine.
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Vassalized society.
I guess we could call them a client state, but that implies lot more independence than i imagine them having.

And the idea that finance, of all people, would not be involved with a group of people producing annual (i think?) tribute, is somewhat dubious.
Or that communications would not be involved.
Having ES treat them as spirits, even after Duchess brought a translator from them to join her at the Argent Sect, or that Shenhua would entertain such silliness, feels, unlikely.
 
Valmond said:
Vassalized society.
I guess we could call them a client state, but that implies lot more independence than i imagine them having.

And the idea that finance, of all people, would not be involved with a group of people producing annual (i think?) tribute, is somewhat dubious.
Or that communications would not be involved.
Having ES treat them as spirits, even after Duchess brought a translator from them to join her at the Argent Sect, or that Shenhua would entertain such silliness, feels, unlikely.
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We're not going to talk to them about their tribute though. We're just using the same corridor the Duchess established for them to bring tribute up. Our only connection to Finance is that we use the same elevator to go talk to these guys.
 
memoryofglory said:
We're not going to talk to them about their tribute though. We're just using the same corridor the Duchess established for them to bring tribute up. Our only connection to Finance is that we use the same elevator to go talk to these guys.
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And spiritual affairs may have no access to the elevator.
There are good reasons for talking to both ministers.
But getting more/better help with the Ith is not going to be one for the Spiritual affairs one.
 
Valmond said:
And spiritual affairs may have no access to the elevator.
There are good reasons for talking to both ministers.
But getting more/better help with the Ith is not going to be one for the Spiritual affairs one.
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The only thing we had to do to get access to the route was ask. Any of the Ministries could use that route if they took the initiative to offer to do their jobs down there, they're just too busy playing hot-potato with the issue to do that. People can say as much as they like about what Shenhua wants, but her ministers just really don't want to deal with this from what Hualing told us, and will probably continue to not do anything about it until Shenhua gets done killing barbarians and banging her wife so she can loom over their shoulders, which could take decades.

Again, I want to talk to Spiritual Affairs about all the waves we're making above ground, not our upcoming mission. If Communication isn't already doing their jobs they're not going to start because we ask them to. I don't think any of the 4 ministries listed are willing to do much to help us on the upcoming mission, so if we were discussing fringe benefits to our mission I thought I'd throw SA in there.
 
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memoryofglory said:
The only thing we had to do to get access to the route was ask. Any of the Ministries could use that route if they took the initiative to offer to do their jobs down there, they're just too busy playing hot-potato with the issue to do that. People can say as much as they like about what Shenhua wants, but her ministers just really don't want to deal with this from what Hualing told us, and will probably continue to not do anything about it until Shenhua gets done killing barbarians and banging her wife so she can loom over their shoulders, which could take decades.

Again, I want to talk to Spiritual Affairs about all the waves we're making above ground, not our upcoming mission. If Communication isn't already doing their jobs they're not going to start because we ask them to. I don't think any of the 4 ministries listed are willing to do much to help us on the upcoming mission, so if we were discussing fringe benefits to our mission I thought I'd throw SA in there.
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Ok, cool.
I have zero issue with that.
But when people argue that we should talk to the spiritual affairs guys because they will be better equipped to helping with the Ith, then i have things to say, which is where my entry into the conversation happened.
 
I think there's a bit of a misconception going on concerning the purpose of Minister access for us here, narratively, as well as general propriety. We aren't going to get to submit requests or concerns to any of the Emerald Seas Imperial Bureaucracies' Ministers. It's not the time, place, or procedure, and our britches aren't anywhere close to big enough. The notion of doing so also misses the underlying factors that lead to Diao Hualing asking for our help and the narrative purpose of the Ith subplot. We can't preemptively shortcut it, here; that doesn't make sense in or out of universe. If a word dropped here could ease the problem at all, the problem wouldn't exist in the first place.

No, we (and they) are here for worldbuilding, fleshing out the to-date kind of neglected Emerald Seas political scene, possibly getting ourselves in trouble, and giving Ling Qi general institutional insight as she asks after broad ministry conditions and interests. Offering suggestions to or asking favors from an Emerald Seas Minister here would be insultingly presumptuous and reflect horribly on Renxiang, who we'll effectively be conducting any conversation in the name of. We're basically an organ of Renxiang's influence, both outgoing and ingoing. At this stage, in this setting, things should remain tacit and exploratory.

One consideration is that a more normal Ducal scion/heir tasked with running a barony/viscounty as a test might be expected to query a ministry for an aide to provide advice. Ministries like this because it's a way of sharing their priorities and needs with the scion. If you look at the Ministry of Spiritual Affairs, for instance, it institutionally might be a bit disappointed that a future boss to be declined to do so in favor of letting loose a half-literate peasant with zero formal training on the spiritual landscape instead. Renxiang has a kind of unusually non-institutional retinue. It makes sense for ministry heads to gently prod for sympathies or lack thereof.

To put it extremely bluntly, the Ministers want something from us, but what they want isn't something we can actually sell to them to our profit at this juncture. They want a read on Renxiang's priorities, they want to highlight their preferences, and maybe they like lecturing children. This isn't an opportunity to bypass middle management.
 
I think we can probably make a good impression on the ministers we talk to, which could matter (especially given our current low rep with the southern clergy), but I doubt we're pumping them for huge amounts of useful info.
 
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