Yeah. And if you think about it, them allying with the Sun would be problematic for them since it would be giving the Bai reasons to go out of their way to screw them over. It could actively help the Xuan get better trade deals from the Bai.
There are of course going to be a whole lot of other politics going on that we aren't aware of, but the Jin helping the Sun would not be my first guess.
Eh, no Ducal is going to be there just to see the sights.
What I'd expect in the Outer Sect scenario faction goals:
-Bai - Humiliation of the Sun. Support of the Cai.
-Cai - Maintain dominance. Support of the Bai
-Sun - Humiliation of the Bai
-Jin - Disruption of Xuan interests. Support of the Sun.
-Han - Claim half the fighting tourney spots.
The Jin are unlikely to directly move against Cai, but they would do so indirectly because the Sun are their allies and they need to back that commitment and because the Xuan are dealing with the Cai+Bai bloc and they need to discourage that somehow.
It doesn't matter that the Sun don't want to aggro the Cai at this point, because their target is the Bai who's working with the Cai, and thus hurting Cai interests is a necessary phase of their true goal.
The Sun's goals are more subversive, I think, in a lesser replay of his gathering of dissenters within Thousand Lakes. They want to pressure Cai in a deniable way, not to stop the Cai/Bai thing, but to loosen her hold enough on Emerald Seas that it doesn't matter as much. Sending scions to make friends with Emerald Seas scions, selective "native" raids popping up and hitting some families and not others. Connections, and trade deals, and organization for all those who are discontent with Cai, who despite appearances is on somewhat shaky political ground mid move between Imperial Supporter to Old clan supporter. If enough clans shift to bothering by the book and slow down type tactics backed by "Of course I'm loyal, but I'm also loyal to our beloved Empress and her laws. I must make sure everything is done properly, blah blah" type excuses that can't be crushed and purged the way other types of rebellion would be it makes it more difficult for Shenhua to govern and takes up more of her time, effort, and attention. If Shenhua can be forced to turn her attention towards internal matters, and the trade routes between the Bai and the Cai made unsafe, this heavily neuters the Bai/Cai alliance and potentially makes it unsustainable. To Sun, the idea outcome would be the alliance collapses (due to lack of benefit), the imperial throne asserts more authority in the aftermath in retribution, and the Bai shrink in on themselves even more.
Sun isn't going to get all of that, but he likely thinks even a partial success will help weaken the Cai/Bai connection, and he's not wrong. I think he also has fundamentally miscalculated when it comes to Shenhua. Their wildly different background might lead him to consider her a politically weak leader who has relied on the support of others, and even her latest play just elevates her to politically savvy and opportunistic leader who relies on others. And in some ways he's not wrong (the Cai as a family are even more fragile than the Sun. Sun Shao, who is intimately aware of how fragile his own clan is, is probably reading his own concerns but larger into Shenhua's position), but fundamentally it's a misread. Shenhua relies on herself and her order, and she uses others and weaves them into her order. The Emerald Seas is not going to have the fault lines it should have, and it's not going to respond the way one would expect it to. It's still a work in progress, and it does have fault lines, but Shenhua has been shaping it into something slightly off from the old Emerald Seas and the Imperial Standard.
I also think the border friction is the leading contender for the flash point that accidentally turns this from a political realignment to erode centralization into an outright RoTK war setting. That's most likely at least a thread away though, but Yrs's style of worldbuilding is the type to have put the pieces in place, even if the whole picture isn't readily visible to the reader, long before the dominos start falling.
Short version is that the Emerald Seas has been in a functionally permanent state of On Fire for most of recorded history, and Sun's most efficient strategem is to leverage that and just hand out matches to everyone
Hah, yeah.
Anyway, just had a brainstorm of something we might explore in the later archive parts, but Cold/Fire is a valid elemental combination that can do some nasty stuff, is it?
Actually, what does the Cold Element even do? Music is what lets us play music that ignores whether the other guy can physically hear us or not, Cold seems to be a similar elemental kicker.
Cold:
-Lingers
-Persistent
-Static
-Is an absence that is filled by that which it desires.
Fire:
-Clings
-Spreads
-Energetic
-Consumes others to make more of itself
Fusing the two...gives you Ice Nine.
Actually asked in a PM, apparently it's going to be elaborated on at some point during this turn but it's "temperature themed entropy", and will probably count as Darkness or Water for the purposes of Meridians, whatever's more convienent.
Water continues to infiltrate. It has picked up a disguse.
This does raise a very interesting question: where is the empress in all of this? I refuse to believe that the son of her guard commander was anything but a play by his family, but that implies that the empress is basically letting this drama between houses play out, despite the advantage it brings to the Cai, who might be a dynastic threat.
We saw one ministry of integrity person in the Forges prologue, but I can't recall anything else representing the nominal ruler since. What's up with that?
Worth noting that while this is not Imperial China, it has enough similarities that I'd note that in Imperial China, the Emperor is in principle supposed to be above politics.
Engaging in the petty games of the Dukes and Kings means the Emperor might have to take a loss, and since their authority is predicated upon being an inviolate superior force, they can't lose. Ever.
So they don't play the games, and in exchange when they DO move, they should not be resisted.
I keep seeing comments like this, and... in this case, it honestly doesn't seem like it'd be bad?
Minimizing elements was important back when you could stack equip effects for one element up to god-like effects, but that was patched out of the old system and I'm pretty sure it isn't possible in this one either. Minimizing elements is good when you don't have cultivation effects for those elements, but Wood-Fire is the same as Wind (.2 + .2 from Spirit Beast versus .2 from Spirit Beast + .2 innate). Wind arts do specifically have a +hit, but Zhengui's specifically-elemental effects are kind of weak and I'd expect him to develop more in that direction later. With Sixiang and Hanyi, almost the entire binary regarding cultivation bonuses is, "is it music?"
You can say something about personality effects, but I'd honestly think more elements might be better--it nudges you toward adhering more closely to your Way than to your elemental affinities (because it diffuses their influences), and most people aren't going to cultivate the grand way of I Am Literally A Tree.
Is this just an old thought people aren't questioning any more?
Pretty much. We were told by Meizhen that the typical Yellow Cultivator should have around 3 primary elements and 'others' as secondary. Having less than 3 primary elements was considered by the Bai to be potentially too skewy for your personality, and this does reflect in those we see, anyone with one element is either Red or playing very strongly to archetype, and even the dual elements like Renxiang(Heaven/Mountain) or Xiulan(Fire/Heaven) tend to be a little intense in their behaviors.
Some important bits of context:
-Breakthrough bonus wise, having 5 meridians of one element is enough to count for a bonus.
-Due to our high Talent, we have a lot of meridians.
-As a result of the above two, we registered as having something like 5 primary elements to spiritual sensing, recalling that normally we only can detect the primary elements with any accuracy and that meridian count is hidden.
-Additionally, due to our great fortune and spreadsheet powers, we were cultivating more like a Count scion than a commoner relying on random drops.
--Ergo, most of the people scanning Ling Qi were thinking of her as either Darkness/Water with numerous secondaries(those with high perception or high quality scanners) or they see her with something like 10 primary elements because they can't easily differentiate an element with 3 meridians and an element with 8, since 3 is supposed to be a lot already) and promptly declare Mess. And of course, you can swap your elemental alignment out with like an hour or so. Its not as important as it seems.
We ALSO see that 'exotic' elements like Music, Cold, Moon, Sun, Life, Death, Light, Darkness tend to show up mainly in Green, while functioning using more common(5 Trad/8 Imp) elements as a proxy in Red and Yellow. Ling Qi at the time was pretty weird in how many exotics she was working towards, and that didn't help.
Short version: As long as our primary meridians are solid we don't have much to worry about. We already know in Green that elements are starting to be less important while Keywords and Domains become more important.
If it was a serious problem, Meizhen and Renxiang who are well informed, and certainly quite perceptive would have cautioned us by now.
Argent arts are designed for a balanced element build though, right? I though our sect founder pursued a path of balance between all elements and got a white ranking out of it.
Naw, you can hit up the Argent Soul description(taken from Royal Road version):
The Argent Soul technique and its more advanced forms functioned on the principle that every individual was unique and held the potential to find a perfect balance among the imperial elements.
Few ever achieved this potential, but balance remained the core of the technique. It was essentially the reinforcement of the self. The exercises the Argent Soul technique was based on had the purpose of purifying the qi the cultivator absorbed of all elemental essence, leaving only the pure and unadulterated qi of the World. In principle.
What they were actually doing was nowhere near that purity, and their bodies would not be able to handle it if it were. The Argent Soul was designed to allow its users to slowly spread a foundational layer of 'pure' qi throughout their bodies beginning with the dantian then spreading to the bones and organs, reinforcing them to handle larger and denser quantities of qi.
What exactly balance meant differed from person to person as every individual was unique. It was implied, Ling Qi thought, that the strong personalities of certain elders was a result of mastering the Argent Soul line of cultivation arts because it magnified the unique quirks of the individual who used it.
Every individual has a unique balance point.
Though I'm guessing the reason it just balances all eight Imperial Elements at Yellow is because the whole process sounds like its focused on using that balance to build your Domain rather than for Balance's sake.
Wow Yrs,
SMB was already going to be OP at the Tourney assuming we got the next Domain level, but this....
This...
THIS IS A WEAPON TO SURPASS METAL GEAR!!!
I suspect at some point the Domain Weapon is going to start getting disconnected from elements and meridians, and just run on Domain Power directly.
Though granted that's probably not within the scope of Green yet.
I think we are at the point where we should stop planning our actions and skills based on available arts and start searching for arts that suit our planned skill progression.
We did the Art searching. I think the conclusion is that they aren't going to be competing much with the random drops.
But remember that this is not priority 1 for the head archivist. So it makes sense for this to take time because he is doing other things too.
Also keeping in mind he's doing an art search for someone he's never met, in a library that's definitely not organized or indexed in a form conducive to searching.
