[LP CYOA] 傳

[a bear named spigot]

B3 is so tempting, but I do want to link up with the fire cult. I don't suppose anyone else is willing to vote C1?

C1 > B3

My first thought was to go with the same two options you've picked, actually. But I'll wait a while for people to sway me with their persuasive and well thought out arguments.

 

[Kipeci]

I was thinking that C1 might be a bit of a distraction from our mission, but then I realized that we could theoretically participate as one of the Fire Cult's dudes in the challenge six months off from now and assault people then, so that could still work out fairly well.

Also, treave , is there any chance of a relationship counter for the fire cult folks?

 

[treave]

It's still at zero now, but I'll add it in.

 

[Baltika9]

These fire cultists have Yunzi (what is it with our princesses getting inducted into cults, seriously?). Screw subtlety, I say we train up for a year and go Zhang Jue on their asses. And bring our Master along, he'll definitely want to "test" them. As a matter of fact, I feel a great PR opportunity coming up for the two of us. "Champions of the Central Plains," standing up for the Chinese pugilistic community where everyone else fails. Oh, the irony.
Shun must know of this shit ASAP. In fact, I may flop to follow them for just this reason.

 

[Baltika9]

No, going after them is a bad idea, the public still doesn't know our name and face yet and just up and leaving still leaves our name up for the taking. Kinda like the "Naim steals Senya's MEGA GLORY!" from the EPIC LP. Sadly, this was the drawback of going in anonymously, we have to secure our position here and now.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Going for B2 for now.

I think we do need to have some closure with BJ before leaving, if for nothing else then to return him his medicine and tell him we'll be seeing him later. Not returning the medicine would be kind of a dick move. This way he would have a harder time to paint us as a coward, and we would have an easier time getting those fights we need. That was the point behind voting to not use the medicine in the first place, so let's not waste that. The Abbess will still be there, so I doubt BJ is going to try anything outright stupid.

Itching powder, while a hilarious idea, isn't going to work the way we want it to. Simply put, this medication is only likely to be used in case of a serious injury or emergency, it's just too valuable to waste on anything else. And that means that the powder is all too likely to not be used by the next time we meet BJ or, even worse, it will be used by someone else instead.

 

[Esquilax]

This man is strong. He might even be the equal of Master Zhang.
...
Six months from now, the strongest fighters of Gushnasp, including our temple's lord, will be present at Heihu Valley.

treave, this implies that Vahista is not the Lord of their temple, is that correct? Bros, if that's the case, then this sect has someone leading them that could be even more powerful than this man, who is described as being on par with Master Zhang. If so, then that means that this group has some insanely powerful martial artists among them, and that perhaps we ought to take the rep hit here in exchange for gaining closer ties with such a strong group.

Also, I'm curious as to how a lot of the Eight Sects see our victory, in particular the ones that we just improved our rep with. It strikes me that even though we are Zhang Jue's apprentice, the public and a few of the sects (i.e. Wudang, Shaolin) are probably glad that a foreigner didn't claim the title over a Han, regardless of who our Master is.

 

[Smashing Axe]

B2
We should make a spectacle with B2, and as someone said before, remind BJ that we as the challenged have the right to set terms.

 

[treave]

He's not the leader, yes. As for the sects, you'll find out more about their disposition when you interact with them more closely after this.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

B2

 

[Kipeci]

It'd be one thing if the medicine kicked in immediately, but remember that it's delayed in effect. If he had the sort of immediate emergency that needed his health restored right away, the medicine would do him no good even without itching powder.

Succumb to the r00fles, guys. If we have to go with B, it might as well be humorous.

 

[Baltika9]

treave, will the primary votes all be counted together and then the winning choice picked from their subcatogries, or is every combination counted individually?

 

[Kashmir Slippers]

B2

 

[Ifeex]

B2.

 

[Tigranes]

Interesting. Bal Jiutian may now be more amenable to delaying or laying aside the challenge, given what has transpired; if he is truly good-natured but arrogant he should be persuaded that there are greater things at hand here and you believe you and Zhang Jue do not want to see these people fuck everything up. If he is truly stupid and insistent, we can still say the same, and at least perform that impression. treave would we communicate our refusal publicly or privately? I'm hoping publicly, so we can make it clear. I think after the final fight the crowd would readily believe that we want to go after the fire cult, too.

I'm toying between B3 and C1, either we do that then go to Yuhua Hall or we try and find out more about the cult. It's a good chance to play double agent and know more, though Jing is probably going in over his head trying such subterfuge. B3 for now.

 

[XenomorphII]

C2

 

[Nevill]

The plot thickens.

This is bad. Really bad.

The Fire Cult is a much bigger enemy than anything we have encountered before. These people are foreign agents that seek to discredit and destroy the only thing that still keeps the Empire together - the pugilistic world. They want to undermine people's trust in the sects and displace them, offering their own services as a home guard - and assert their control over the country's economics in the process. Basically, they want to annex and occupy China. They are no better than invaders, and should be treated as such.

They are not just the enemies of Shun - they are the enemies of your people as a whole. Look at how they carry themselves - they act as if they own the country already. They have no respect for the rules of the tournament they attended as guests, they have no respect for the sanctity of human life - they attacked you with a killing intent in a broad daylight. What makes you think that they will pay any more heed to the laws or desires of the people they allegedly want to protect? They can not be allowed to win the battle that will take place six months from now, even if you have to fight back-to-back with BJ to prevent it - if they do, this will signal the end of the Tang dynasty as we know it, and probably of everything that Jing holds dear.

I wonder how Yunzi got involved with them. She may have been kidnapped, or offered to them as a Holy Maiden to secure an alliance with them, or ran away with them in exchange for a favor her people desperately needed. In any case, I strongly doubt that she shares their ideals, whatever those are. There has to be something that forces her to remain with them.

You should not, however, go with them. Remember the plan to ingratiate yourself with Marduk to then stab him in the back when he least expected it? That plan required Elan slaughtering Gutians by dozens - men, women and children alike, - and assisting Nusku with his deprived experiments on living people. These Zoroastrians are up to no good, and the mere thought of what would be required to become privy to their inner secrets fills me with disgust. Besides, do not fool yourself, you are not a spy - you will have no way to relay whatever information you might get to where it is needed the most - to the Imperial Palace. Shun needs to be informed of what is happening ASAP. Moreover, you can not allow yourself to investigate a foreign threat while leaving the domestic one to fester and rot undisturbed. You need to get to the bottom of the WiB case. Perhaps they and the cult stem from the same roots, or perhaps they are using the cult as a straw to distract and weaken the land's defenders from an even bigger issue at hand. You have six months until the deciding battle - you can not afford to postpone your mission anymore, and you can not waste them trying to get in the cult's good graces.

There are things that you can only do here. You need to mobilize every resourse. Bring your master out of the hiding - Zhang might want to test his strength against theirs. Get everything you can on the cult from Qilin - especially of what kind of deals they made with her sect. Weed out the seeds of the conspiracy in the sects that are friendly to you - the Masters are wise enough to understand the danger. Send a letter to the Khan of Ashina in case he does not know where his daughter is - this might help the situation in the north. There are a lot of things to do, and not a second to waste.

These matters require you to stay. Do not worry about Yunzi for now - we will pry her from the hands of dead cultists in Heihu Valley. As their most sacred symbol and their most talented disciple, she will be present. We will not be parted for long.

That said, why would you want to have anything to do with Bai Jiutian, now that the pugilists have bigger things to worry about? Didn't you want to evade the challenge without taking a heavy reputation hit? Well, now is your chance - with everything that is going on, no one will pay much attention if you disappear quietly, especially since you just publicly received an offer from the cultists to follow them. No one will think about it twice if you consider them to be more important than settling the matter of whose ego is bigger with BJ. Screaming "hey! hey! look at me! it was all about me just a day ago!" is so petty and so Jiutian-ish that it isn't even funny. The orthodox community has a common enemy right now and, just this once, it isn't you or your master. Let things stay that way. Otherwise you risk dividing them and BJ screwing over you in yet another way. Why would you want to waste your precious time on his schemes?

C2 to leave the town and do the damned homework we set out to do three years ago.

C1, because 'prince' comes before 'principles'.

 

[Nevill]

I think we do need to have some closure with BJ before leaving, if for nothing else then to return him his medicine and tell him we'll be seeing him later. Not returning the medicine would be kind of a dick move. This way he would have a harder time to paint us as a coward, and we would have an easier time getting those fights we need. That was the point behind voting to not use the medicine in the first place, so let's not waste that. The Abbess will still be there, so I doubt BJ is going to try anything outright stupid.

He will have an even harder time to paint us as a coward when no one but him cares about this shit anymore.

We agreed not to use the medicine when we had no idea that something greater wouldl steal the limelight from a duel between the two champions. And now we are yesterday's news. Why do we need to remind people of ourselves? We have a perfectly valid reason not to face Jiutian, since we just have been invited to the cult as a guest.

And believe me, you don't want BJ to try anything smart either. Last time he did, he almost forced that challenge on you. Let's ignore him - to him, this is the worst punishment there is.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Hey, we can do C2 tomorrow just as well. I doubt that one day is going to make a difference after all this time. As for why B, it would be worth it just so that BJ can't claim we ran from him when we will be forced to face him - and we will if we wish to complete the task Zhang gave us. We get to return the medicine to him, tell him see you later and leave. If he still decides to make problems out of that he will be the one looking foolish now that the sects have bigger problems to worry about, not us.

 

[Nevill]

Hey, we can do C2 tomorrow just as well. I doubt that one day is going to make a difference after all this time. As for why B, it would be worth it just so that BJ can't claim we ran from him when we will be forced to face him - and we will if wish to complete the task Zhang gave us.

We didn't face him because we had something more important to do - like paying the visit to the cult. If he says he deems himself more important than the upcoming threat, it only makes him sound pathetic and laughable. Ignore him, he can't harm you now that the bigger players showed up.

And keep the medicine without looking like a dick.

 

[Kipeci]

Why would we go to Yuhua Hall when it's been confirmed that it's a rogue agent that wouldn't be affiliated with them any longer? I mean, yes, we could probably pick up some names to investigate and all, but why do you guys want to go that route when we could pick up the badass Zoroastrian contacts and maybe techniques?

We always miss out on the fun cult stuff in treave's LPs, let's go in this one time.

 

[Zero Credibility]

We didn't face him because we had something more important to do - like paying the visit to the cult. If he says he deems himself more important than the upcoming threat, it only makes him sound pathetic and laughable. Ignore him, he can't harm you now that the bigger players showed up.

And with B we can still say that we have more important things to do, and so does he if he starts insisting to fight us. Only this way we can say it in public, so that latter:

He will not be able to say that you stole his medication and dodged his challenge.

We still need to beat this jackass and the rest of the best fighters of our generation. If we give him the opportunity BJ will drag our reputation through the mud even more, making it more difficult to get people to accept our challenges.

 

[Nevill]

Why would we go to Yuhua Hall when it's been confirmed that it's a rogue agent that wouldn't be affiliated with them any longer?

Too much rogue agents. The original Woman-in-Black and the girl we met on the rooftops were different. Three figures that accompanied her were different. If you have an idea of how to discover their identities without travelling to their place of origin, I'm all ears.

why do you guys want to go that route when we could pick up the badass Zoroastrian contacts and maybe techniques?

Because fuck'em. The only way I am interacting with these guys is by clawing their throats out.

 

[Nevill]

And with B we can still say that we have more important things to do, and so does he if he starts insisting to fight us. Only this way we can say it in public, so that latter:

He will not be able to say that you stole his medication and dodged his challenge.

We still need to beat this jackass and the rest of the best fighters of our generation. If we give him the opportunity BJ will drag our reputation through the mud even more, making it more difficult to get people to accept our challenges.

He can not say "that you stole his medication and dodged his challenge" after everything that happened, it just makes him look stupid and petty.

But alright, if you want it to be about you and BJ - it's your choice.

 

[Esquilax]

Zero Credibility, I'd like to state that if we meet up with the cult and perhaps even infiltrate them, many of these fighters will still have to fight us whether they like it or not. Given that Abbot Fangzhang has accepted their challenge, their best students would have to fight us regardless.

They have no respect for the rules of the tournament they attended as guests, they have no respect for the sanctity of human life - they attacked you with a killing intent in a broad daylight.

This isn't an accurate representation of the cult. We nearly called Yunzi out by name, and considering the secrecy around her identity (and the religious significance around her as well), perhaps Vahista saw us as a threat to her. I'm not saying that the Fire Cult are not worthy of further investigation, but there's more to the situation than what you describe. If Vahista saw our victory and our attempt to engage Yunzi after the fight as mockery of a figure of worship, I can totally see why he'd have killing intent towards us.

Doesn't make him right, but these people aren't as bloodthirsty as you're painting them - you're using a lot of black-and-white langauge here to paint this group as evil, and they very well might be, but we can't exactly make firm conclusions just based on this. However, while they aren't the WiB, I believe that it's plausible that they might lead us to them or have connections to them. This particular piece stood out to me:

They don’t appear to be Persian, but neither are they Han; their looks are exotic and you cannot place their ethnicity. Turning to the Abbot and the audience, he introduces himself in perfect Han.

This part really hit me. The Temple of Gushnasp must have been operating in China secretly for years if they have members who are ethnically foreign, but speak Han as well as any native speaker. We knew that they've been here for a while thanks to Qilin's info, but this really goes to show that they've been operating undercover for years. And more importantly, it shows that they've been wanting to disrupt the current order for years as well.

These Zoroastrians are up to no good, and the mere thought of what would be required to become privy to their inner secrets fills me with disgust. Besides, do not fool yourself, you are not a spy - you will have no way to relay whatever information you might get to where it is needed the most - to the Imperial Palace. Shun needs to be informed of what is happening ASAP. Moreover, you can not allow yourself to investigate a foreign threat while leaving the domestic one to fester and rot undisturbed. You need to get to the bottom of the WiB case. Perhaps they and the cult stem from the same roots, or perhaps they are using the cult as a straw to distract and weaken the land's defender from an even bigger issue at hand. You have six months until the deciding battle - you can not afford to postpone your mission anymore, and you can not waste them trying to get in the cult's good graces.

There are things that you can only do here. You need to mobilize every resourse. Bring your master out of the hiding - Zhang might want to test his strenght against theirs. Get everything you can on the cult from Qilin - especially of what kind of deals they made with her sect. Weed out the seeds of the conspiracy in the sects that are friendly to you - the Masters are wise enough to understand the danger. Send a letter to the Khan of Ashina in case he does not know where his daughter is - this might help the situation in the north. There are a lot of things to do, and not a second to waste.

I know we've had some fundamental disagreements about the character, but Jing is not Ean. You're making a bunch of huge leaps of logic with regards to what they will or won't make us do if we go and talk to them right now, and it feels like it's all based on your initial assumptions about this group. We don't really need to relay this info to Shun, either - the Fire Cult has revealed themselves publicly and issued a challenge. Their entire reason for being here is to put themselves into the public consciousness. They want to be known, and soon Shun will know about them anyways. What he needs is someone he can trust on the inside.

And after all, this group could very well be directly involved with our mission, since they seem to have a common goal with the WiB in that they want to make the orthodox sects look bad and to destabilize the country. This definitely warrants investigation, and I don't think we can let the opportunity slide here.

That said, why would you want to have anything to do with Bai Jiutian, now that the pugilists have bigger things to worry about? Didn't you want to evade the challenge without taking a heavy reputation hit? Well, now is your chance - with everything that is going on, no one will pay much attention if you disappear quietly, especially since you just received a public offer from the cultists to follow them. No one will think about it twice if you consider them to be more important than settling the matter of whose ego is bigger with BJ. Screaming "hey! hey! look at me! it was all about me just a day ago!" is so petty and so Jiutian-ish that it isn't even funny. The orthodox community has a common enemy right now and, just this once, it isn't you or your master. Let things stand that way. Otherwise you risk dividing them and BJ screwing over you in yet another way. Why would you want to waste your precious time on his schemes?.

I agree. We were just offered an invite by Vahista after winning the tournament. They've stolen his thunder to a certain extent, and now the focus will be on their challenge six months from now. Rejecting Bai Jiutian's challenge publicly might be giving him more attention than he deserves, you're right.

However, I am absolutely on board with getting into the good graces of the Fire Cult. I disagree with Tigranes in that I think Jing has the charisma and the intelligence to make a good undercover agent. Yes, his recklessness and impulsive manner of speaking (which provoked Vahista into trying to kill us) are problems, but he is intelligent and socially savvy enough to know that he needs to conduct himself properly in the circumstances that he's in.

Infiltrating the cult grants us benefits to all of our goals:

1. They are a clandestine organization that has been in China for many years, and they are a threat to the Empire. They have the same common goals that the WiB seem to have, so they present the most likely avenue to figuring them out.
2. The challenge that they've issued gives us the opportunity to remove more of our rivals six months from now. Regardless of their attitude towards us, they cannot refuse to fight us there.
3. Once we get closer to the Holy Maiden, we can start figuring out what happened in the three years since we left the Ashina and how it relates to the WiB. She would know of their whereabouts and of the border tensions to the northwest. The political situation among the Tujue seems muddled, and we'd discover things from the inside.

In terms of information, it's unbeatable. And it alows us to progress through both of our main goals simultaneously, which is something that the other choices don't allow us to do. In light of how the circumstances have changed, I don't like B2 that much. There's this group out there that have challenged the orthodox sects, but it isn't BJ that fought them, we did. At best, what BJ will try to do is to turn the fight against us into a morale boost for the orthodox sects; if he can beat the guy who beat their best fighter, then that would inspire the rest of the orthodox world, which would probably be his goal at this point.

However, for our part, we have a unique opportunity: Vahista has given us a valid "out" of this situation with BJ, but at the same time, we have established some degree of trust between ourselves and a few of the orthodox Masters. So it seems like we've got some leverage on both sides that we can take serious advantage of that will allow us to get to the bottom of things. Once the Cult leaves their stop at Wufushan, we likely won't see them until six months from now. We must take the opportunity now, else we'll lose it. Fuck BJ, the rep hit is nothing compared to the knowledge to be gained.

C1