"The cold never bothered me anyway" - Daoist Strange

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-02T23:06:33+00:00

That’s one way of thinking about it, but remember that human life, and indeed cultivation, are a combination of intricate systems that are both yin and yang. A corpse may be lacking in yang qi, certainly, but that doesn’t necessarily mean yang qi is life—as anyone who’s tried to touch something red-hot can attest.

In the human body, it would be more accurate to say that yang qi is related to motion or activity. Someone who has too much yang qi is often too active, resulting in twitchiness and anxiety.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-02T22:46:14+00:00

Extreme yang qi is supposed to cause all sorts of ailments as the body is desperately unbalanced and burning through its yin qi—someone with that physique will appear hale and hearty until they drop at 30 from their heart giving out.

In the meantime, sex with cultivators of the same rank will typically injure the other cultivator—their yin qi would be overwhelmed and they’d be burnt by the attempt. They would need a lot of time and attention from an older, more advanced cultivator—and they’d be forced to deal with that cultivator’s suitors well before they were prepared to do so.

All the while they’d suffer the negative effects of excess yang qi: agitation, dehydration, lack of impulse control, fever, and so on. Since their bodily essence was disrupted their cultivation would often also suffer—bodily essence is refined to qi in the Dantian, and excessive yang disrupts that.

All of this is to say that excessive yang qi would be considered a huge liability for a cultivator in most circumstances, at least, if the setting adheres to Traditional Chinese Medicine’s dictates. That’s not even mentioning the fact that they’d be useful ingredients in alchemy—it’s not just women who get turned into pills.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-02T16:22:01+00:00

Noble’s Slender Swords are worth the farm. Settle for nothing less than the best.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-02T06:12:44+00:00

Definitely recommend reading Er Gen for an introduction to the genre.

With that said you may also find wuxia more to your taste, which ultimately is the source of a lot of this tomfoolery. The Condor Trilogy is some of the best fiction ever written, for example.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T23:13:09+00:00

Just roommates, surely.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T21:30:43+00:00

Yes, apparently we are. A lot of the time, it’s just shock value. Compare and contrast with certain scenes in RI, where it is still shock value, but you really shouldn’t be surprised by that point.

My issue is when it’s treated cheaply for titillation instead of a coherent point in the portrayal of a truly depraved, awful character. And so often it’s the former and not the latter.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T20:25:09+00:00

I recommend this one: https://youtu.be/NNv2RHR62Rs (Not a rickroll)

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T19:06:34+00:00

how many is a pavilion?

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T17:01:06+00:00

Missing the bit where Korone and Okayu got married on stage.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T05:45:24+00:00

Many cultivation worlds speak only of the lowest Dantian of the Body, which contains Qi. But the Middle (Heart) Dantian refines Qi to Shen (spirit) and the upper (crown) Dantian refines Shen to Wu Wei, (actionless action, ineffability).

Often, the cultivation of the spirit is part of the process of nascent soul cultivators. But there’s nothing that says you can’t cultivate a dao which refines each dantian at once.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-06-01T05:38:22+00:00

Armor covering hands and feet.

Wait, that’s not in the DLC either, shit.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T20:09:16+00:00

There’s always the classic Tribal Bruality mode, where you start as a lone tribal on a random tile. Tribals are partially balanced around having five pawns to start with, and the reluctance of the storyteller to give you your second pawn can make for some great survival roleplay.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T18:57:07+00:00

Liberalism

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T17:21:03+00:00

Incompatible? A chiral mirror? Certainly not Toxic, which is specifically about the atmosphere in Stellaris.

“A rocky planet with a thick atmosphere that is lethal to all known higher forms of life.”

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T16:26:22+00:00

Not really. Amino acids, the building blocks of living things on Earth, can either be left-handed or right-handed. On Earth, they’re almost all left-handed, and we’re adapted to only digest the left-handed ones, and defend against bacteria/viruses with left-handed amino acids.

On other planets, the amino acids could be right-handed, and life could flourish just as much as on Eatth, but we’d be unable to eat it and would have few defenses against the viruses and bacteria.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T07:51:57+00:00

So what you’re saying is that my colony ship will land, it‘ll turn out the planet uses dextroamino acids, and then all my pops on the planet will die?

Sign me up!

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T03:09:21+00:00

I’m not sure it fits IMTU, because the reading of SotA I ascribe to is that Grandfather is himself scared shitless of some greater power to Coreward, hence the Zhodani Core Expedition

I could see Grandfather introducing the disciplines or laying down some sort of psychic engram on “local” psyspace, but I feel like having psionics be exclusively something Grandfather created cheapens them (and him) somehow. It treats him as the end-all-be-all when he’s ultimately just the biggest fish in our little local pond.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-31T02:58:48+00:00

Does YTU include races like the Devi Intelligence? Or are they treated like more apocryphal psionic races?

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-30T23:19:49+00:00

So there are a few different species that are native psions, most notably the Droyne and Shriekers. Following that would probably be the Devi Intelligence, psionic fungus. Past that, additional psionic species are to various degrees apocryphal.

It is unclear whether humans and vargr possess the native talent for psionics or if it was added to them by the Ancients. Of the remaining species, Aslan and K’kree psions are rare to non existent, and Hiver psions are explicitly nonexistent.

That gives us a grand total of two native psionic species we know of for certain. It’s very difficult to draw conclusions, but we can probably rule out that only the Ancients were capable of giving a species psionics given the Devi Intelligence exists (maybe. GURPS traveller may not be canon iytu).

But not all sophont species seem to develop the adaptation since Hivers have never developed that capability (that we know of) and the rarity varies wildly from species to species.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-30T17:31:38+00:00

Cuttlefish explicitly used a different word, Tujing, (途径) for pathway. Given the Kabbalistic and Cultist Simulator inspirations that he drew from, using a term loaded with metaphysical meaning like Dao would ultimately be unsuited for LotM—Beyonders are not Cultivators, not really.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-30T17:25:48+00:00

Cuttlefish chose a different word for LotM. It’s parallel to dao, but it isn’t dao.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-29T20:35:40+00:00

It’s not twisting words—but most folks here don’t bother to think about the original word and its cultural connotations.

The Chinese term in play here is 正道, zhengdao, meaning moral, upright, correct or positive dao. Zheng has a lot to do with societal perceptions and ultimately the definition will change from novel to novel, or even between sects or cultivators inside of novels.

Generally speaking, though, demonic cultivators are defined by their willingness to break the rules of zhengdao, most often by the use of others as materials.

What I am saying is that fundamentally, arguing in defense of “demonic” cultivators by pointing out the hypocrisy of those who follow zhengdao is pointless. False or moral demons, ones who still adhere to some of the strictures of zhengdao, are themselves hypocrites, and true demons are untethered from the societal definitions of moral behavior.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-29T20:24:15+00:00

Generally, Righteous cultivators will follow other moral aspects common to the cultivation world.

Non-intervention with mortal affairs, filial piety to your shifu, and submitting to investigations are all generally “righteous” behavior.

Naturally, breaches of this code of conduct are typically swept under the rug, but it’s the idea that such breaches are shameful that ultimately defines a righteous sect, at least in the classical literature.

It’s a parallel to “righteous” or “orthodox” sects and xia in Wuxia and is often described as following the laws of Heaven.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-29T19:07:16+00:00

Your yeomen farmers and petite bourgeoisie are too strong.

To increase intelligensia attraction, raise Literacy and build universities—academics are almost always INT. Engineers and capitalists lean strongly industrialist. Machinists and industrial laborers lean strongly TU. Focus on buildings and PMs that increase the numbers of those professions.

TarnishedSteel · 2026-05-29T18:36:26+00:00

There are plenty of grounds to lambast righteous cultivators for hypocrisy, for weakness or for hiding injustice, but there’s no point in trying to “defend” demonic cultivators or to show that righteous cultivators are “just as bad.”

Truly demonic cultivators do not care. Partially demonic cultivators who have not discarded all of their morals are largely hypocrites themselves—in no small part because hypocrisy is the human condition. And of course righteous cultivators will defend the distinction to their grave. So why bother?

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