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.
Cecylene
Eternal Idea Engine
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- He/They
My comment was a more insinuating that there is a "spirit" in the sense that Shenhua has clearly placed an Artificial Spirit either, as you said, effectively "in vitro" to grow as desired or commanded within the gown. It seems to lack any meaningful intellectigence orb its own and we, both Ling Ai and we the players, don't understand how Artificial Spirits work and whether they can grow as other "natural" spirits do or if they require something else to allow them to advance such as an addition of other spirits essence (ie Liming's thread, Forest King's Hand, etc.).
We have something more than a talisman, which I am referring to as a "spirit" as there is something certainly more active than the other nascent object spirit we saw which had been explicitly on the cusp of awakening, but our gown is certainly less than a fully conscious spirit of its own.
I wonder if or when the gown gains the ability to communicate what it'll have to say about us and our family. Cousin-Gown would be an amusing thing to have to introduce to Qingge.
- Location
- scrabbling
well, ignoring the fact that what people need shelter and protection from in this world is much harsher than OTL, cultivation is a self-actualization practice. almost literally: if to actualize something is to bring it into being or to make it reality, then to self-actualize is to bring yourself into being or to make yourself reality. you're cultivating—growing—culturing—a sense of self as it affects reality. a domain is just an extension of that, as are all the other capabilities a cultivator gets. it's all just an extension of their selves.
Another somewhat overlooked defensive benefit of SCS is that it also upgrades GCD, giving us back the perfect defense that we had last year 
We could also raise the argument that prioritising SCS could make it more likely we get a stealth skill upgrade here - though it's equally reasonable to say that we're likely to get that in this event regardless.
We could also raise the argument that prioritising SCS could make it more likely we get a stealth skill upgrade here - though it's equally reasonable to say that we're likely to get that in this event regardless.
- Location
- UK
[X] Sable Crescent Step
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
I like that the description/title that's been used here is one that both Shenhua and Sun Shao have been called before.
AKA do not be like those people, Ling Qi.
Soldier
Soldier
It is hard work, living.
How easy the opposite.
She runs. They all run. Her boots stick to the ground, a friendly, companionable shluck, shuh-luk, shluck that is echoed back at her from all sides, a staccato of flying mud accompanying their pursuit, threatening to rip boots from their feet at every turn even as they chase their guiding star. She doesn't care though she knows she should.
She can still hear him, her old drillmaster, Goat-Faced Qin, shouting with that annoying, high-pitched cadence that you were sure would have been excised as a matter of course out of an old silver, that it would come out with the sludge when you burn out the impurities swimming in your veins, but no.
Your boots are your life, he'd say. You're a goddamn soldier, and you're all soft, and no, not soft as gold, you're as soft as tallow, you're as soft as a wet fart, with no hopes and no prospects at anything better and you'd grunt yeah, yeah, we know, shut the fuck up.
So remember this, he'd yell, over the eyeballs rolling, voice rising as he senses he's losing your attention, losing your respect, remember you miserable flakes of rust, you grimy dog-children, you artists of piss and shit, when you're on the march, the first things to go will be your feet. You can lose a lot. That sword you all love, that treasure you're hauling, that talisman you're wearing, and that blood, swirling around your belly. But not your boots.
Because your boots are your spirits-be-damned life.
And man oh man, did they all hate Goat-Faced Qin with his limp and his fake eye and his braying laugh and his face like a goat, cheeks gaunt and near hollow and that little wisp of a beard scrabbling out of his chin, graying with age and how he'd put you down even on the worst day of your life.
But he's dead now and she wasn't there to see whatever coward stabbed him in the back, slashed his good eye and stole his boots. None of them were.
None of them were here for no one and isn't that the bitterest of pills.
Old Man Zhang had a family here, or part of, he's old old, with seeds scattered all over this backwater. She'd played with his grandkid when he was only waist high and last she'd heard he had married a fat, beautiful girl and started his own family, some years back. No talent at all, not for cultivation, but a charmer who had been doing well on the exams, could make something of himself, even as a mortal.
Here Auntie Lu, I made this for you to keep you safe!
A paper charm. He made them for everyone his grandpappy talked about, when he deigned to talk at all to his hack of a no-talent grandchild. She'd lost it, years ago, and now wishes she hadn't. The curse of the memory of an Immortal.
She can see his back, broad and muscular, Old Man Zhang, the only third realm among them, their rock in any fight, near to the end of his second century, or was it third, calm and stoic no matter what the crisis. He'd had a big family. Had being that small, painfully important bone buried in the salad.
He looks like he doesn't care, he's every inch the career soldier, but she saw him at the doorway of a bloodstained house, nothing glamorous, but nice for a mortal family, saw the blood seeping through his fingers as he silently cradled a too-small body, his pipe at his feet.
She herself had a lover. A little dish to the side that she kept to herself.
It wasn't going to go anywhere though he'd wanted it to. He'd wanted children. She hadn't. It should have ended there.
She can see his eyes, so big and soft, like those of a child, and his dark curls that framed his head and his lips whispering
Love you, Lil Lu.
She nearly stops. But everyone's boots are shluck-shuh-luck-shulucking their way through the muck, cuz' they're in this together, cuz' out here there ain't no one that hasn't lost someone to this farce of a tragedy and the white rage so close to black despair is kept on the precipice once more, fuel for their inner fires.
So they run.
Don't become a soldier, her father used to tell her, it's all just rutting, one way or another. You fuck or get fucked and that's no life for a woman.
I like fucking, she'd tell him, amused at how his face would go crimson and how he'd begin to sputter, you can't say that you little harlot.
He was wrong. It's not all fucking. The thickened skin on her hands and feet attest to her training, day in and day out, cultivating the Threefold Way, that incomparable art for mediocre talents, the scars that mar her form give proof to her experience. Army took her apart, brick by brick, and built her back up, stronger, faster, meaner than before.
Don't do it, her father tells her, the day before she runs to see Uncle Xu and join the army, the edges of his long mustache quivering with emotion as he speaks, they will fill your ears and head until it is bursting with righteous indignation and marching songs, but truly, there is no honor in it. Become a potter, become a weaver, become a painter, hell, become a butcher – anything but this wretched magpie vulture existence. It isn't worth a goddamn fiddler's fart. Who needs another soldier? Another pair of eyes to watch the border and get stabbed by barbarians or lured by spirits? There are more than enough in the world already.
You're a soldier, Baba.
So shouldn't I know? It gets to you, all the killing. A soldier never gets to choose. So you'll never know. Never know if it was right or wrong, if the blood on your hands is good or bad or in-between, if it deserves mercy, or if it doesn't.
And it's true. It's true as anything she has ever heard come out of his mouth. They never tell you about the days you're hunting down deserters who just want to go home, scared kids who signed up for glory only to get the gore, or the gang of thieves that hoodwinked an official but never drew a drop of blood, men and women who beg and beg as the noose approaches, sometimes not even for themselves, they know that wouldn't work, but for their student, for their lover, for the stupid dipshit they tricked, yeah, yeah, this was all just a long con I'm the only one that deserves to lose my head, please, please, please, all pathetic with hope, or the barbarians who, yeah, you know in your bones they'll grow up and wanna destroy the empire, but right now, right now they're nothing more than brats and sir, no one would notice if we let them slip away, they're so small, c'mon, sir, we're not monsters, sir, for mother mercy's sake, they cry and bleed and shit just like us and sir, sir, SIR.
Yeah?
I didn't sign up to this gig to kill children.
No one ever does, Lu.
But. On this day, on this one occasion, in this singular moment, she knows. She burns with the knowledge.
Today her enemies deserve everything that is coming for them.
It is hard work, living.
How easy the opposite.
She runs. They all run. Her boots stick to the ground, a friendly, companionable shluck, shuh-luk, shluck that is echoed back at her from all sides, a staccato of flying mud accompanying their pursuit, threatening to rip boots from their feet at every turn even as they chase their guiding star. She doesn't care though she knows she should.
She can still hear him, her old drillmaster, Goat-Faced Qin, shouting with that annoying, high-pitched cadence that you were sure would have been excised as a matter of course out of an old silver, that it would come out with the sludge when you burn out the impurities swimming in your veins, but no.
Your boots are your life, he'd say. You're a goddamn soldier, and you're all soft, and no, not soft as gold, you're as soft as tallow, you're as soft as a wet fart, with no hopes and no prospects at anything better and you'd grunt yeah, yeah, we know, shut the fuck up.
So remember this, he'd yell, over the eyeballs rolling, voice rising as he senses he's losing your attention, losing your respect, remember you miserable flakes of rust, you grimy dog-children, you artists of piss and shit, when you're on the march, the first things to go will be your feet. You can lose a lot. That sword you all love, that treasure you're hauling, that talisman you're wearing, and that blood, swirling around your belly. But not your boots.
Because your boots are your spirits-be-damned life.
And man oh man, did they all hate Goat-Faced Qin with his limp and his fake eye and his braying laugh and his face like a goat, cheeks gaunt and near hollow and that little wisp of a beard scrabbling out of his chin, graying with age and how he'd put you down even on the worst day of your life.
But he's dead now and she wasn't there to see whatever coward stabbed him in the back, slashed his good eye and stole his boots. None of them were.
None of them were here for no one and isn't that the bitterest of pills.
Old Man Zhang had a family here, or part of, he's old old, with seeds scattered all over this backwater. She'd played with his grandkid when he was only waist high and last she'd heard he had married a fat, beautiful girl and started his own family, some years back. No talent at all, not for cultivation, but a charmer who had been doing well on the exams, could make something of himself, even as a mortal.
Here Auntie Lu, I made this for you to keep you safe!
A paper charm. He made them for everyone his grandpappy talked about, when he deigned to talk at all to his hack of a no-talent grandchild. She'd lost it, years ago, and now wishes she hadn't. The curse of the memory of an Immortal.
She can see his back, broad and muscular, Old Man Zhang, the only third realm among them, their rock in any fight, near to the end of his second century, or was it third, calm and stoic no matter what the crisis. He'd had a big family. Had being that small, painfully important bone buried in the salad.
He looks like he doesn't care, he's every inch the career soldier, but she saw him at the doorway of a bloodstained house, nothing glamorous, but nice for a mortal family, saw the blood seeping through his fingers as he silently cradled a too-small body, his pipe at his feet.
She herself had a lover. A little dish to the side that she kept to herself.
It wasn't going to go anywhere though he'd wanted it to. He'd wanted children. She hadn't. It should have ended there.
She can see his eyes, so big and soft, like those of a child, and his dark curls that framed his head and his lips whispering
Love you, Lil Lu.
She nearly stops. But everyone's boots are shluck-shuh-luck-shulucking their way through the muck, cuz' they're in this together, cuz' out here there ain't no one that hasn't lost someone to this farce of a tragedy and the white rage so close to black despair is kept on the precipice once more, fuel for their inner fires.
So they run.
Don't become a soldier, her father used to tell her, it's all just rutting, one way or another. You fuck or get fucked and that's no life for a woman.
I like fucking, she'd tell him, amused at how his face would go crimson and how he'd begin to sputter, you can't say that you little harlot.
He was wrong. It's not all fucking. The thickened skin on her hands and feet attest to her training, day in and day out, cultivating the Threefold Way, that incomparable art for mediocre talents, the scars that mar her form give proof to her experience. Army took her apart, brick by brick, and built her back up, stronger, faster, meaner than before.
Don't do it, her father tells her, the day before she runs to see Uncle Xu and join the army, the edges of his long mustache quivering with emotion as he speaks, they will fill your ears and head until it is bursting with righteous indignation and marching songs, but truly, there is no honor in it. Become a potter, become a weaver, become a painter, hell, become a butcher – anything but this wretched magpie vulture existence. It isn't worth a goddamn fiddler's fart. Who needs another soldier? Another pair of eyes to watch the border and get stabbed by barbarians or lured by spirits? There are more than enough in the world already.
You're a soldier, Baba.
So shouldn't I know? It gets to you, all the killing. A soldier never gets to choose. So you'll never know. Never know if it was right or wrong, if the blood on your hands is good or bad or in-between, if it deserves mercy, or if it doesn't.
And it's true. It's true as anything she has ever heard come out of his mouth. They never tell you about the days you're hunting down deserters who just want to go home, scared kids who signed up for glory only to get the gore, or the gang of thieves that hoodwinked an official but never drew a drop of blood, men and women who beg and beg as the noose approaches, sometimes not even for themselves, they know that wouldn't work, but for their student, for their lover, for the stupid dipshit they tricked, yeah, yeah, this was all just a long con I'm the only one that deserves to lose my head, please, please, please, all pathetic with hope, or the barbarians who, yeah, you know in your bones they'll grow up and wanna destroy the empire, but right now, right now they're nothing more than brats and sir, no one would notice if we let them slip away, they're so small, c'mon, sir, we're not monsters, sir, for mother mercy's sake, they cry and bleed and shit just like us and sir, sir, SIR.
Yeah?
I didn't sign up to this gig to kill children.
No one ever does, Lu.
But. On this day, on this one occasion, in this singular moment, she knows. She burns with the knowledge.
Today her enemies deserve everything that is coming for them.
Another great one @FixerUpper
Anyway kinda forgot to post up the warning, but I think we can lock up.
Anyway kinda forgot to post up the warning, but I think we can lock up.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
I'm guessing this is one of the soldiers that was following Cai Renxiang?
Real world conflicts are rarely about food, shelter and basic needs. Those are often an excuse, but conflicts are rather about ideology, status, and pride.
- Location
- Las Islas Filipinas
I've never met a soldier before. Or at least never had a meaningful conversation with them. But from my meager understanding of military training. Aren't soldeirs supposed to be trained to make sure the killing gets very easy? I mean, it would be very bad for a nation if their armed forces start asking certain questions in the middle of a campaign.
And i always figured wars are fought for geopolitical reasons. i.e. we need this resource there and the dont want to share. It is the ideals that are the excuse, or rather, the rallying point. Afterall, no matter how much your leader wants to fight for sake of Belief A, a war has to be profitable or it would just destroy you as well.
And i always figured wars are fought for geopolitical reasons. i.e. we need this resource there and the dont want to share. It is the ideals that are the excuse, or rather, the rallying point. Afterall, no matter how much your leader wants to fight for sake of Belief A, a war has to be profitable or it would just destroy you as well.
Other way around.
Take Japan for example. They said they needed coal, or iron, or oil, or wheat, or rubber, or molybdenum. But they really went to war because of an ideology that combined the worst of western imperialism and racism with a twisted idealization of samurai ethos.
And now? They don't fight wars anymore, and control much less territory and natural resources than they did in the 1930s, but they're hardly short of iron, or oil, or rubber. They fought wars for resources that they needed to fight wars, not to live prosperously.
Wars are never profitable from an economic standpoint. Profitable to certain people or interest groups, perhaps, but never to the nation as a whole. At least since the Industrial Revolution. Even before then, profitability would be debateable.
- Location
- Europe
Saying that a nation went to war for resources, or because of ideology or whatever is too reductive to be useful.
It's a bit like saying Apple created the iPhone because Steve Jobs wanted to make money.
Sure, that was probably involved, but there were a whole bunch of different, even contradictory drives that really made it happen. Because these kinds of large scale processes involve a lot of people and a lot of factors to create momentum in one direction or the other, not just one or two things.
It's a bit like saying Apple created the iPhone because Steve Jobs wanted to make money.
Sure, that was probably involved, but there were a whole bunch of different, even contradictory drives that really made it happen. Because these kinds of large scale processes involve a lot of people and a lot of factors to create momentum in one direction or the other, not just one or two things.
- Location
- The Space Between
Peisistratos - Wikipedia example of Good Tyrant. If I remember my etymology correctly, this was the guy that led to the modern definition of being cruel and unreasonable. Not because he was, but because the aristocracy hated him and decided to smear him as such lol. Propaganda has been powerful at all times of history
- Location
- The Space Between
Yeah I totally disagree with this read. Sure you can claim that for modern wars, but throughout history many wars were fought for simpler things like territory and resources. The culture group that would become the Inca had a cycle of growth, overpopulation, and war for resources that repeated until they decided to create a more permanent empire. Egypt often went to war solely for slaves. Saying that all war is complex in reasoning is itself a reductive statement.
EDIT: also a lot of the cold war regime change wars were solely about securing sympathetic governments and denying the spread of communism. Part of their awful-ness is the overly simplistic and reductive stance we (the US) decided to take
Last edited:
- Location
- Europe
I'm not sure how you've missed this, but both these examples involve multiple different motivations coming together.
The Egyptians: Were motivation in part by the "economic" reasons, ie the utility of slaves, but they were also motived by cultural reasons to decide to they should be going out to get slaves in the first place. That's two different motivations pushing a generally similar direction, right there.
The proto Incans, as you describe also have at least these two dimensions as well. It is physically and culturally possible to form sustainable population sizes, they didn't want to though, so they then had to also act with resource acquisition in mind.
Imagine it this way, abstractly obviously. Your economic advisor might decide that your country needs X resource which you can only get through war, your culture advisor believes that war will divert attention from failings on the governments part, meanwhile, the military supplier wants to keep supplying military equipment that is mainly used during active engagements. They all have different reasons to go to war. Saying the war happens because your economic advisor wanted resources is reductive. Given that no nation is just one man, excluding joke states, this is just about always the case. I can't think of an example where everyone involved from the individual soldiers to the leading general/s had exactly the same motivations.
Not at all.
Training soldiers to make sure the killing gets very easy means that once they're done fighting you have an army of sociopaths.
Soldiers are trained, first and foremost to obey without question.
You don't need soldiers to even accept killing, you need them to stab when you tell them to, where you tell them to.
You need them to keep their shieldwall together, and stab the enemy in front of them, not break formation to parry, save their own life and expose both soldiers beside them. For that, you need your orders to override even survival instincts to some degree.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
In some countries, sure.
Since Nuremberg in most of the West soldiers have a duty to refuse illegal orders. If you shoot a bunch of compliant restrained prisoners, the fact that your CO ordered you to do so will be irrelevant at your court martial.
You are ignoring content by this member.
Show ignored content
I don't know about that. My knowledge of the military and recent American military history seem to indicate that even if western soldiers are in theory supposed to decline illegal orders, they usually don't, and almost never face any consequences.
- Location
- Las Islas Filipinas
This makes way more sense than my post