[LP CYOA] 傳

[Nevill]

What had brought our rep with the bandits to -50 in the first place? I thought it always was at -25.

 

[Kipeci]

A2 > B

I'd prefer not to repay Wu Tong for allowing us to both come up the mountain and retreat the battle with our dignity intact (there's zero chance that one of the better young stars of the Taiji stuff doesn't know that we were desperately flailing rather than pulling of an actual move) by utterly ignoring the favor he's asked of us in return so that we can try to steal their stuff.

I prefer A2 over B because it helps us to continue the perfection of our bullshitting skills and helps to keep the situation under control for the intersect relations, which again is what we were called up here for. A1 just seems kinda dumb.

 

[Nevill]

Why do you assume we will be trying to steal their stuff with C? Even if we would, we'll need to find it, first, and they kind of want that.

 

[GreyViper]

So much potential for trolling, haha thank you treave .
I agree C looks a good choices, yet the lulz factor with others is tempting.

 

[Stygian Lurker]

B > C

 

[XenomorphII]

A1

 

[Kipeci]

Well, stealing is what I assumed we were doing... when we have buzz words thrown around like 'high-risk, high reward' I assumed that there would be a reward that we were looking for. But it really isn't clear at all what we want to do with C, which is why I find it stange that people are flocking towards it. C-voters, what are you hoping will happen with C? To me it just seems like we're intent on being a dick to Wu Tong for no reason.

 

[Jester]

C
Would like to see crime scene. Either someone did interesting trick or super stealth check.

Flip B
Mby listening to their conversation unseen will help more.

 

[Esquilax]

Kipeci, I think that C voters are hoping to find some clues about who might have stolen the blade before the Huashan inevitably make their way to Qingmu Hall.

“Anyway, if we let Huashan know that the sword and manual went missing under our care, I am afraid relations will be irrevocably damaged. We cannot afford such a rift between the Eight Sects, not when the challenge is so close.”

When you arrive at the mountain, Wu Tong first brings you past the hall where Nie Wuxing is meeting with the acting head of the Wudang Sect, Daoshi. You hear a strident discussion coming from within; it seems that Nie Wuxing is pressuring the acting head to come up with the manual, having been waiting here for more than a week. On Taoist Daoshi’s part, it sounds like he is beginning to lose his cool. “This is bad,” mutters Wu Tong. “I’ll go find my brothers – wait here for a moment.” He runs off, leaving you standing in front of the meeting hall. It sounds like the argument inside is getting more and more heated. Suddenly, you hear Daoshi exclaim exasperatedly, “We do not have it! It is lost!” and Nie Wuxing respond with an outraged sputter.

Well, the cat's out of the bag, so how will walking in help the situation? I think that the damage has already been done. It's difficult to see things getting worse than they are now, unless of course we were to suddenly waltz in and grin like an idiot. A2 is worth considering though, but the suspicion would immediately fall upon us because of our awful reputation. treave, who exactly would Jing blame in A2? Obviously he wouldn't be able to name names, but he'd have to make some sort of bullshit up to buy time for the Wudang. At the very least, Daoshi would probably appreciate the save.

Waiting outside for Wu Tong's brothers to come by might work, and I suspect he wants our involvement here to remain secret to the Huashan. Sitting tight ensures that.

I see a lot of things going wrong with C. The meeting is going terribly, and I'm expecting Nie Wuxing to storm out towards Qingmu Hall any minute now. I'm not sure what sort of clues we'd find, though:

You hear a strident discussion coming from within; it seems that Nie Wuxing is pressuring the acting head to come up with the manual, having been waiting here for more than a week.

So the sword and manual have been missing for at least a week. I'm not sure what sort of things that we'd be able to dig up that long after the fact - there must have been a ton of people passing through Qingmu Hall in that time. It just seems way too vague and I think that it's putting ourselves in the line of fire for very little potential gain. Also, treave, are the manual and sword up for display or are they kept in some sort of hidden chamber in the Hall?

On that note, I'm going with A2. The Huashan will no doubt be suspicious of us, and it blows our cover, but at least it ensures that both parties are working together for the time being. The Wudang will appreciate the move on our part, and I have faith in Jing's abilities to bullshit people. I could still flop to pretty much anything, though.

 

[Kipeci]

And why couldn't we see it in due time with A2's investigation, or probably when they set up something in B? Wandering around unauthorized and causing trouble for the guy who let us on for something that trivial to secure just seems bad.

 

[Nevill]

Being the first on the scene helps to find clues. So does Per 8. We won't find the sword there - the Wudang have probably turned the place upside down, but we might find something.
Hiding there and listening to people talk about how it disappeared might be useful, too.

There are several ways for the sword to disappear, starting from the conspiracy theory, and ending with some poor bloke borrowing the sword without permission and not knowing how to return it. We need to narrow it down.

 

[Nevill]

Esquilax, name Mao Sanjiao.

 

[Kipeci]

There's been at least a week of people desperately combing through the area to find the manual and sword, we're clearly not going to be 'first on the scene' so I'm not sure why we desperately need to break off and turn up there unauthorized. If we turn up evidence by our own, our reputation is sketch enough that people probably won't trust us, anyway. This is a situation where we should work with people, not against them.

 

[Esquilax]

Being the first on the scene helps to find clues. So does Per 8. We won't find the sword there - the Wudang have probably turned the place upside down, but we might find something.
Hiding there and listening to people talk about how it disappeared might be useful, too.

There are several ways for the sword to disappear, starting from the conspiracy theory, and ending with some poor bloke borrowing the sword without permission and not knowing how to return it. We need to narrow it down.

PER 8 is good, but it's not going to give us Cao'er-like powers of observation and deduction. It's good, but I'm certain there are Wudang disciples around here that are even more perceptive than we are. That being said, we might find certain clues based on our (limited) knowledge of the conspiracy so far:

“Where did you get that crest, I wonder?” he muses, “No matter. I will investigate that later. You probably waylaid one of our men and killed him before picking it up anyway. No, what really interests me is that you recognized it for what it is, when by all rights some uncouth fist-fighter wouldn’t and would probably just pawn it off for money. In fact, you knew enough about it to impersonate a member of the secret police convincingly enough that Hei Zuolong was almost taken in… Just who are you, Xu Jing?”

We know that the government is somehow involved in sabotaging the Eight Sects, and that Mao Sanjiao is their agent. This is all stuff that the Wudang aren't aware of. We might find clues that someone else wouldn't be able to recognize or dismiss as nothing. But still, it feels like too much of a long shot - if the Wudang disciples have turned this place over trying to find the sword and the manual, I don't see why we'd find something that they could not.

 

[Nevill]

And how come spewing some vague insinuations and not naming the thief outright is 'working with people'?

 

[Nevill]

Thing is, they are looking for the items. We are looking for a thief. It's a bit different, so we might find something they would dismiss.

 

[Kipeci]

It distracts them so that they won't blow up on each other more than they have already, and provides a way for us to legitimately come into the investigation rather than doing our own thing. If you plan on hearing out people to go after the thief, then that also opens more options for investigation than creeping on the rafters and waiting to see if someone chats about something vaguely relevant before we get found out and ejected.

 

[Baltika9]

I think A is a bad idea period: dude, we dishonored Nie Wuxing's daughter, we ducked on BJ's challenge for the honor of his sect by citing "hurr, patriotism! I don't like foreigners either!" and then took down one hundred Chinese pugilists to save Japanese outlaws, and now we're going to just barge in with "lololo the thi4f is near, trust me bros!"
What kind of plan is that?

 

[Kipeci]

We're definitely a scumbag, but they're not exactly in a position to ignore us. At the very least, A is still a plan (at least, A2 is) while C is not, and option B is still open for any that don't wish to take those ones. Anything but C is more of my thinking, we shouldn't just be a dick to Wu Tong in order to 'be the first on the scene' after a week of everything being upended.

 

[Baltika9]

And I definitely agree with option B: Wu Tong had an actual plan when he brought us here, and now he went to get us some backup. I am considering flopping to that option. However, he also brought Jing ehre to be, well, Jing and do Jing-like stuff to help them out. Which is exactly what C is, Jing being Jing.

At the very least, A is still a plan (at least, A2 is)

I'd rather have no plan at all, than a bad plan that puts us into deep shit. As things stand right now, they'll probably blame us, and since the Wudang are pretty desperate to salvage relations with the Huehues "Gib manualz pls", they may just roll with it and use us as a scapegoat. Remember, we are in no condition to defend ourselves from fighters of their caliber right now (that is, if Nie Wuxing doesn't call first dibs for daring to touch his daughter; we're totally fucked then).

That being said, C is not at all a waste of time that you picture it out to be, Esquilax has it right:

That being said, we might find certain clues based on our (limited) knowledge of the conspiracy so far:

“Where did you get that crest, I wonder?” he muses, “No matter. I will investigate that later. You probably waylaid one of our men and killed him before picking it up anyway. No, what really interests me is that you recognized it for what it is, when by all rights some uncouth fist-fighter wouldn’t and would probably just pawn it off for money. In fact, you knew enough about it to impersonate a member of the secret police convincingly enough that Hei Zuolong was almost taken in… Just who are you, Xu Jing?”

We know that the government is somehow involved in sabotaging the Eight Sects, and that Mao Sanjiao is their agent. This is all stuff that the Wudang aren't aware of. We might find clues that someone else wouldn't be able to recognize or dismiss as nothing. But still, it feels like too much of a long shot - if the Wudang disciples have turned this place over trying to find the sword and the manual, I don't see why we'd find something that they could not.

And we will also be able to eavesdrop on these guys. Question is, are we confident in our 5 stealth and 8 PER to go through with such a risk? If we get caught, we're probably done.

 

[Kipeci]

They are not in a position to straight up attack us. With A2 presenting us as having an idea of who might be at fault, they need the information, and furthermore as a guest here at a Wudang member's request they're obligated to keep Huashan from pounding our face in unless we start eating babies or something similarly out of the pale. They may have their suspicions, but with nothing to back them up and a guy who brought us up here specifically to help handle this business, they will be forced to have the investigation.

I'm not sure how that section is supposed to convince me of C's superiority. You think we might be able to eavesdrop on people talking in the open about what limited parts of that particular conspiracy we know of by going to this particular wing of Wudang? Why? What relevance does that have to the manual? We're just going somewhere else to see what happens because we're bored. The true Jing option is to jump in and bullshit our way out of this to help our bro and improvise. Remember, we almost convinced the incredibly suspicious Black Dragon Society guys that we were the secret police while barely knowing anything about them, we should be able to handle this.

If this isn't enough of a sell to overcome the buzzwords of 'high-risk, high-reward' attached to C, I'll revive the ones we used before those came into vogue and mention that the update itself says that A2 would be more of a long-term decision.

 

[Zero Credibility]

C if for no other reason than to not be here when the guests storm out of there in anger. These are the last people we would like to meet right now and our presence here would only complicate things, both for ourself and for our hosts. So by all means, go look for clues. Hell, maybe, just maybe we could actually find something.

 

[Baltika9]

They are not in a position to straight up attack us. With A2 presenting us as having an idea of who might be at fault, they need the information, and furthermore as a guest here at a Wudang member's request they're obligated to keep Huashan from pounding our face in unless we start eating babies or something similarly out of the pale. They may have their suspicions, but with nothing to back them up and a guy who brought us up here specifically to help handle this business, they will be forced to have the investigation.

Why the fuck would they cooperate with us, though?

 

[Esquilax]

C if for no other reason than to not be here when the guests storm out of there in anger. These are the last people we would like to meet right now and our presence here would only complicate things, both for ourself and for our hosts. So by all means, go look for clues. Hell, maybe, just maybe we could actually find something.

Qingmu Hall is the most likely place that the guests are most likely to go after they storm out in anger. That's where the sword and manual are kept, ffs. What do you think their impression of the situation is going to be if they see us there all alone, without Wu Tong around to vouch for us? A2 at least allows us to control the narrative and give Daoshi a much-welcome diversion now that shit has hit the fan, and B at least allows us to link up with Wu Tong and make plans from there - it might also allow us to maintain secrecy from the Huashan and investigate things covertly. If we get caught at Qingmu Hall right after the Huashan find out the manual has disappeared, they'll immediately make the worst conclusions about that.

Why the fuck would they cooperate with us, though?

Who, the Huashan or the Wudang? The former, because there's a possibility that we might be telling the truth and because Wu Tong is vouching for us, and the latter because we're a guest and Daoshi will be grateful for any sort of distraction that allows him to buy time. The Wudang are desperate to maintain unity between the sects before the challenge against the Fire Cult, so they'll take whatever help we can get. Since we're in Wudang turf and we have the permission of one of their students to come here, the Huashan can't simply attack us. Though, to be fair, I concede that BJ might have some grounds to challenge us at some point (although not immediately, since the manual is a more pressing issue for them).

 

[Kipeci]

Oh, come on. If that's your problem, surely Jing wouldn't have difficulty in using his stealth abilities around a nearby corner until they're gone in B.

Why the fuck would they cooperate with us, though?

Because we'd bullshit them into thinking that we have a clue with our silver tongue? Because they need that manual and they've already shown that they consider the wider scale fight against the Zoroastrians to take precedence over putting us in our place?

edit: Darn phone, I'm so slow to respond and it only shows Esquilax has already done the job after I finish.