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

[AbeoLogos]

[X] Try to get her liege to show her some needlework basics
Despite @Erebeal's vicious slander, this vote has nothing to do with Cai Renxiang and Bai Mexiang's activities with one another. It's about watching Renxiang's pain at Ling Qi being introduced to a discipline where a more freeform approach may actually be justifiable and the contradictions between their respective philosophies.

Also I miss daggers, and what is needlework but stabbing over and over and over again?

Wow. A cave with beings of impurities.

Would make a nice Song about something which could either increase Qi cost, or lower Qi effectiveness or something.

Maybe even restrict a meridian from hostile or impure Qi flooding it making opponents with critical meridians with no 'spares' unable to use some arts.


And with the way meridians can be improved upon now, this song wont even be too OP since the inportant once are likely to be buffed or something. So only the outlying meridians can be easily affected, and thus disabling only one art or something.

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If we're going to make a song about journeying underground to poke at twisted creatures of taint and impurity with a stick... wouldn't it just be AE? This could actually be the inspiration necessary to translate AE to a musical art. Which is something I've opposed before, but if we're actually personally re-enacting the journey of the art, I find myself significantly less resistant to the idea.

 

[BungieONI]

If we're going to make a song about journeying underground to poke at twisted creatures of taint and impurity with a stick... wouldn't it just be AE? This could actually be the inspiration necessary to translate AE to a musical art. Which is something I've opposed before, but if we're actually personally re-enacting the journey of the art, I find myself significantly less resistant to the idea.

Click to shrink...

And that's not because it's a Dungeon Crawl at all, right?

 

[Tallamee]

So...whats this about?
Last I knew, Meizhen didn't think anyone in her family was safe to introduce Ling Qi to, aside from Suzhen, and I'd think a Prism in the town would have been noticed.
Her father perhaps?
We sort of made a connection during the festivities, though I'm not sure he'd be introduced through her, given their poor relationship.

Or perhaps the rest of the clan took an interest in Meihen's little friend and now she has the choice of meeting on her terms, or it being forced outside her terms?

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A "lesser branch cousin" could be many things, but I would hesitate on Suzhen or Meizhen's father for a few reasons*. On my own my guess is that it is another relative who will be sent to the sect soon, but the Xiao maid theory seems much more probable.

*lesser and cousin featuring prominently

 

[archangis]

It's obviously a cute mini snek going for his first year in outer sect and meizhen prevently want to make clear that she is the top snek and that the cousin shouldn't bother LQ. Obviously.

Two potential spirits I didn't saw people talk about are our Cai robe and mom comb. Both are potential object spirits that we could bind in the close future.

 

[BungieONI]

It's obviously a cute mini snek going for his first year in outer sect and meizhen prevently want to make clear that she is the top snek and that the cousin shouldn't bother LQ. Obviously.

Two potential spirits I didn't saw people talk about are our Cai robe and mom comb. Both are potential object spirits that we could bind in the close future.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure about close future there. Neither is demonstrably sapient and we have no idea how long it will take for them to develop such awareness, with the Cai robe likely coming first.

From what we learned in the first thread it can take a century or more in continuous use by cultivators.

 

[archangis]

I'm not sure about close future there. Neither is demonstrably sapient and we have no idea how long it will take for them to develop such awareness, with the Cai robe likely coming first.

From what we learned in the first thread it can take a century or more in continuous use by cultivators.

Click to shrink...

I believe we were told by yrs that the comb was something that would be dealt with in this thread.

The Cai robe is simply because we have been told that Cai robes are much better than object spirits, and one of the issues of object spirits are their hundred of year awakening time.

 

[AbeoLogos]

And what is a comb but a series of connected, blunt, daggers?

 

[BungieONI]

I believe we were told by yrs that the comb was something that would be dealt with in this thread.

The Cai robe is simply because we have been told that Cai robes are much better than object spirits, and one of the issues of object spirits are their hundred of year awakening time.

Click to shrink...

We were, but dealing with it could mean learning where it actually comes from and by that more about Ling Qi's family history. Thinking it can become an object spirit seems overly hopeful.

 

[veekie]

It says her cousin. It sounds from context like her Xiao maid.

Click to shrink...

Possible. Meeting her maid would be interesting, but I'm unclear on why not say so...well its Meizhen so she never says shit.

*nods* Yeah those are all sensible, though I will poke a hole in your implication that all of these things are of similar difficulty by pointing some things out.

Zhengui is probably going to be one of the hardest, because as you pointed out his particular cultivation physiology makes it kinda patently obvious when he is advancing a realm. And because he is a separate character who does not share our arts, it could be quite difficult for him to have an art which conceals his cultivation realm because he has to develop it on his own, the best one being a variation of his current Stone in The Soil technique. Otherwise we need to spend a talisman on him that can conceal it, which sounds tricky just to source nevermind cost(which is kinda a lesser concern before a certain point, though that point is nebulous).

The Realm/Level of Cultivation is possible to hide and with current thread interests I expect us to end up with an art that can hide that for Ling Qi if we stay the current course. So, I'd rate it as one of the easier ones to fix, and which will be patched inside a few months. (An aside which can help with this is concealing how many resources we are actually consuming, which isn't the hardest thing in the world, in large part because it happens somewhat automatically what with how meditation rooms are secured)

All the other stuff I would rate at about the same level, like you seem to here.

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I'd note that levels within a realm aren't that obvious, its just size. Zhengui can already hide that, and he's actually motivated to improve that ability because as he's been complaining, he can't really fit in MoBig Sister's house anymore.
Hiding his realm breakthrough probably isn't worth trying no.

Another option is sling ammunition or traps, meant to embed it into people, which is just horrible. Other options could be stuff like figuring them out and using them to extract other things via tuning or other kinds of filters.

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Fractional Impurity Distillation!
Actually hmm...taking Argent Liquid, which is a balanced mixture of eight pure elements, which is used to 'push out' the impurities so that the cores can suck it up and going on a side digression into Warhammer Fantasy...Qhyash vs Dhar?

The Cai robe is simply because we have been told that Cai robes are much better than object spirits, and one of the issues of object spirits are their hundred of year awakening time.

Click to shrink...

Not quite. Indications are that Cai Robes are not objectively(heh) better than object spirits, but better optimized.
Its like...a robot assembly line drone which performs a particular task extremely efficiently and can be built as fast as resources and artisan time allows, versus a human worker, which performs many tasks, but few of them efficiently, and takes decades to grow to maturity.

 

[Neshuakadal]

...pure impurity?!
As others said, its basically a grief seed.
Also the only things we know that gather impurity over their lifetime are basically mortal souls right? And that the shaman was gathering ghosts?
Are those ghost-cores?

Not that this is definitive, given our general ignorance.
Also I wonder that Su Ling 'discovered' it. She knew where it was. Could probably literally smell it.

Click to shrink...

I put the following post behind a spoil tag because it got way longer than I thought it would. I also started to feel a little like that guy on the history channel who talks about aliens. Just laying in bed here going insane over every little detail possible and putting worth some wild ideas.

Basically I think those creatures are super cool, not related to ghosts, but related to the gnawing ones. And the gnawing ones may be super creepy.

Spoiler: Thoughts on Gnawing Ones.

From elder Jiao's interlude
"There did remain some advantages to physicality, Jiao mused. "Yes, I suppose so," he replied, the majority of his attention still spread through the newly formed basin, exterminating the plague mutated spirits and fauna. It was a little irritating that the barbarian child had been slain by an arrow, death imprints pulled from a bow were less clear than those of a blade. "Gnawing Ones, hm," it had been clear enough to see pale, long faced figures loping in the dark, and a great deal of teeth, flesh and spirit offered in return for the tools of vengeance."

My best guess is that these creatures are related to the gnawing ones and I have a theory about what gnawing ones are.

What we know about the creation of the world right now means a massive amount of spiritual toxins and "mixed essence" or impurities were created at the very beginning. One of the key things in many spiritual ideas is that purity ascends upward while impure things descend downwards. We can see some proof that empire believes this too in the world building interlude.

"The first days of the world were harsh indeed. The bones of our Mother yet quaked endlessly, and the divine ichor of the multitude of enemies that our most honored progenitors had slain still boiled close to the surface, toxic to the children of the creators." (Emphasis mine.)

This says to me that since the divine ichor was close to the surface but importantly under the surface. It may have simple sunk below the surface instead of just disappearing. Now we get to the really interesting thought I had about the creation of the world.

"The dolls needed more motion. He poured greater essence into the effort, going so far as to longer puppet the dolls, but to infuse them himself," Elder Ying smiled. "And so, his essence mingled with the Mothers, and from it was born two things. Understanding, and the very first humans."" (Week 24)

From this tidbit of the creation myth we see that humans were made before the great conflict that built the world. This would also explain why there are humans inhabiting places all around the world. During that great conflict humans were separated from the nameless mother and nameless father in that chaotic period. This lead to them simple being in different places when the process was done. This neatly gets around the need for the migratory routes that would be needed to spread a species over such massive distances. Since this is a death world I do not believe that migratory routes survive very long. There are simply to many different threats for a migratory system to be viable. This means however that creatures and humans could have been trapped underground during the creation stage.

We have seen from our breakthroughs and heard from our lectures that qi and impurities are incompatible with one another if not out right antithetical. If impurities sink and qi raises then going underground becomes a terrible dangerous task. There will come a point underground where there is less qi then there are impurities. This raises some very interesting ideas.

One of those ideas is that when that line is reached then it becomes easier to fill up spiritual cores with impurities then it is to get rid of them. This could result in a complete flipped form of cultivation where instead of trying to gather as much qi as possible the creatures and "humans" under this line try and gather as many impurities as possible. I say "humans" because we know from Elder Jiao's interlude that mutations are rampant were the gnawing ones get close to the surface. We also know from the weliu that very old and strange practices have a tendency to warp humanity. If this practice is true then I severely doubt that they would look anything like humans. However I don't believe that this is what is happening with the gnawing ones.

Another idea is that once the line where qi density is less the the impurity density then every scrap of qi becomes that much more precious. I do think that the gnawing ones are humans who were trapped underground at the beginning of the world and they are desperate for every drop of qi they can get. We know from elder Hua that everything is made of qi. Even mortal flesh,blood, and teeth have qi in them. The qi in such objects would be greater than if they were created underground because of the differing qi/impurities ratio. If the gnawing ones are desperate for every scrap of qi they can get in their impurity laden world than offering such physical things that they could extract qi from would be very tempting for those gnawing ones. The plauge that Elder Jiao describes may also serve another purpose than just mutating things. If the qi that is bound in physical objects is the best way to get qi than a method for extracting that qi is needed. A method that would induce instability to the qi so that it's purpose or form shifted would likely be ideal for breaking down the physical world into a more spiritual form. This would then allow for much easier consumption of the qi. Qi that is shifting wildly into different forms may cause mutations. The plague that was unleashed by the barbarian kid may have just been a form of the gnawing ones cultivation art.

In such an environment a new breed of spiritual beast might be created through evolution. Li Suyin has already discovered how valuable those "cores" are in ripping impurities from an environment. Where large numbers of those creatures gather cultivating qi would be easier because those creatures are eating all the impurities one might other wise absorb.

 

[Nevill]

[x] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.s

 

[memoryofglory]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[BungieONI]

I put the following post behind a spoil tag because it got way longer than I thought it would. I also started to feel a little like that guy on the history channel who talks about aliens. Just laying in bed here going insane over every little detail possible and putting worth some wild ideas.

Basically I think those creatures are super cool, not related to ghosts, but related to the gnawing ones. And the gnawing ones may be super creepy.

Spoiler: Thoughts on Gnawing Ones.

From elder Jiao's interlude
"There did remain some advantages to physicality, Jiao mused. "Yes, I suppose so," he replied, the majority of his attention still spread through the newly formed basin, exterminating the plague mutated spirits and fauna. It was a little irritating that the barbarian child had been slain by an arrow, death imprints pulled from a bow were less clear than those of a blade. "Gnawing Ones, hm," it had been clear enough to see pale, long faced figures loping in the dark, and a great deal of teeth, flesh and spirit offered in return for the tools of vengeance."

My best guess is that these creatures are related to the gnawing ones and I have a theory about what gnawing ones are.

What we know about the creation of the world right now means a massive amount of spiritual toxins and "mixed essence" or impurities were created at the very beginning. One of the key things in many spiritual ideas is that purity ascends upward while impure things descend downwards. We can see some proof that empire believes this too in the world building interlude.

"The first days of the world were harsh indeed. The bones of our Mother yet quaked endlessly, and the divine ichor of the multitude of enemies that our most honored progenitors had slain still boiled close to the surface, toxic to the children of the creators." (Emphasis mine.)

This says to me that since the divine ichor was close to the surface but importantly under the surface. It may have simple sunk below the surface instead of just disappearing. Now we get to the really interesting thought I had about the creation of the world.

"The dolls needed more motion. He poured greater essence into the effort, going so far as to longer puppet the dolls, but to infuse them himself," Elder Ying smiled. "And so, his essence mingled with the Mothers, and from it was born two things. Understanding, and the very first humans."" (Week 24)

From this tidbit of the creation myth we see that humans were made before the great conflict that built the world. This would also explain why there are humans inhabiting places all around the world. During that great conflict humans were separated from the nameless mother and nameless father in that chaotic period. This lead to them simple being in different places when the process was done. This neatly gets around the need for the migratory routes that would be needed to spread a species over such massive distances. Since this is a death world I do not believe that migratory routes survive very long. There are simply to many different threats for a migratory system to be viable. This means however that creatures and humans could have been trapped underground during the creation stage.

We have seen from our breakthroughs and heard from our lectures that qi and impurities are incompatible with one another if not out right antithetical. If impurities sink and qi raises then going underground becomes a terrible dangerous task. There will come a point underground where there is less qi then there are impurities. This raises some very interesting ideas.

One of those ideas is that when that line is reached then it becomes easier to fill up spiritual cores with impurities then it is to get rid of them. This could result in a complete flipped form of cultivation where instead of trying to gather as much qi as possible the creatures and "humans" under this line try and gather as many impurities as possible. I say "humans" because we know from Elder Jiao's interlude that mutations are rampant were the gnawing ones get close to the surface. We also know from the weliu that very old and strange practices have a tendency to warp humanity. If this practice is true then I severely doubt that they would look anything like humans. However I don't believe that this is what is happening with the gnawing ones.

Another idea is that once the line where qi density is less the the impurity density then every scrap of qi becomes that much more precious. I do think that the gnawing ones are humans who were trapped underground at the beginning of the world and they are desperate for every drop of qi they can get. We know from elder Hua that everything is made of qi. Even mortal flesh,blood, and teeth have qi in them. The qi in such objects would be greater than if they were created underground because of the differing qi/impurities ratio. If the gnawing ones are desperate for every scrap of qi they can get in their impurity laden world than offering such physical things that they could extract qi from would be very tempting for those gnawing ones. The plauge that Elder Jiao describes may also serve another purpose than just mutating things. If the qi that is bound in physical objects is the best way to get qi than a method for extracting that qi is needed. A method that would induce instability to the qi so that it's purpose or form shifted would likely be ideal for breaking down the physical world into a more spiritual form. This would then allow for much easier consumption of the qi. Qi that is shifting wildly into different forms may cause mutations. The plague that was unleashed by the barbarian kid may have just been a form of the gnawing ones cultivation art.

In such an environment a new breed of spiritual beast might be created through evolution. Li Suyin has already discovered how valuable those "cores" are in ripping impurities from an environment. Where large numbers of those creatures gather cultivating qi would be easier because those creatures are eating all the impurities one might other wise absorb.

Click to shrink...

That is a particularly creepy theory, which I'm kinda sad we won't have much chance to fully confirm. But the metaphysics at least make sense and it could be a thing.

Also could be that any humans trapped underground died due to the incredibly hostile environment.

E: Actually I just realized, this theory reminds me of C.H.U.D. Which is a movie I still should watch because it sounds entertaining.

 

[spiritualatheist]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[Peter87]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[Terrastorm]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[D.Rockstar]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[Theunderbolt]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[Atix]

[x] would suggest that they have a spar after their talk

 

[Ayashi]

Two potential spirits I didn't saw people talk about are our Cai robe and mom comb. Both are potential object spirits that we could bind in the close future.

Click to shrink...

I'd be for developing and binding mom's comb's spirit! Considering how the thing isn't sentient yet, that's a step further beyond simply being there for the spirit's birth.
It'll probably to fill Sixiang hole when s/he leaves.

 

[SITB]

I'd be for developing and binding mom's comb's spirit! Considering how the thing isn't sentient yet, that's a step further beyond simply being there for the spirit's birth.
It'll probably to fill Sixiang hole when s/he leaves.

Click to shrink...

I don't know why people repeatedly clamor for Sixiang to leave.

Sixiang said when Ling Qi bound them that they will stay until it stops being fun (since Sixiang is not bound to Ling Qi in the same way Zhengui is); if Ling Qi will have a positive relationship with Sixiang they wouldn't necessarily want to leave.

 

[FallenPears]

[X] talk tea over a cup of the stuff, Cai Renxiang seemed to think it was important.

 

[fictionfan]

-User receives between 1 and 30 successes toward spiritual, physical, Moon, or Yin aligned arts when discovering unknown information or hidden treasure, depending on value.

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This is something to consider for the value of investigation.

 

[BurnNote]

Hey @yrsillar I don't think I ever assigned my omake reward to anything, but it doesn't appear on the recent rollover from last thread post.

 

[commando2341]

I don't know why people repeatedly clamor for Sixiang to leave.

Sixiang said when Ling Qi bound them that they will stay until it stops being fun (since Sixiang is not bound to Ling Qi in the same way Zhengui is); if Ling Qi will have a positive relationship with Sixiang they wouldn't necessarily want to leave.

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I'd like to note I wasn't clamouring for Sixiang to leave, I was bringing up options earlier in the thread for our 3rd spirit and/or an alternative for if Sixiang wants to leave. What kind of spirit would our comb become? I'd be cautiously interested, but I would prefer Hanyi at this point given we know roughly how she could be of help.

So, I don't know if @yrsillar will show us some arts for the art action, but what kind of arts do you want to see if he does?

So here is my proto-Idea thanks to @Katreus:

Probably a bit too good for the first floor of inner sect archive, but I think this would fit well our current desires.

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@yrsillar would this art work as the reward for the EPC7 quest?