Reborn Grandmaster Quest

The world is flawed.
It is not imperfect though, just purposefully made that way.

Life is full of suffering and conflict, a race where the living fight to find meaning and solace, either by giving themselves and each other meaning, or by taking it from those weaker.

An unwinnable race, a race against time, a race against “The World”.
A losing battle from the moment one is born, the pure soul is slowly drained of its myriad colors, then cast away once it has been consumed.

There exists a gate beyond “The World”, and past that gate is the infinite.
A cold and unfeeling infinity, impartial and silent, an infinity where despite the existence of suffering, you witnessed the radiance of all souls of all ages.

So you, Bai Hua, decided to bring “This World” into the infinite.
Not for anyone in particular, you… don’t exactly have many people you care about to begin with, not out of resentment for the life you had to live, after all that’s just how life in this world is.
Simply because you felt like things should be as they are beyond the Gate.

Another five? joined you out of their own volition, together you worked for millenia to bring the world beyond The Gate, and failed.

The Gatekeeper sent two away, who knows where. Another had to merge with the world and keep it from breaking apart under the immense strain from The Gate… And you’re not sure if the other two even existed.

As for yourself, The Gatekeeper pushed the world away using you. Your cultivation burned away as it set the skies ablaze, your body shattered as it tore through the ocean and the world’s crust, and your soul was fragmented into infinite specks of spiritual energy, leaving nothing behind.

But that doesn’t matter, you reached the gate and went beyond it. You learned things that even The Gatekeeper itself is unaware of. Your existence is perpetual, it will simply resume some indeterminate amount of time in the future. Fate is simply ABSOLUTE, and your destiny is ours.

The story so far

With a new body and soul, Bai Hua has been reborn in the body of a young master from the Ming family. Taking on the identity of Ming Bei, he has repaid the owner of the body by doing his clan three graces while following the Dao of Starlight, an unorthodox cultivation path that uses the power of the stars.

During his time in Guang City, he successfully broke through the Qi Gathering and Foundation Establishment stages, reaching Core Formation, and establishing a new cultivation method for Ming Bei’s clan and setting it up for long term prosperity. Bai Hua also made contact with a judge of the Underworld, the local master of the Silken Teahouse which has many locations across the world, and a member of the Dragon species which used to be his worst enemies.

In order to recover his former might and challenge this Gatekeeper once more, Hua has no choice but to continue his cultivation and unravel the mysteries of the age he has been reborn into. In a world where the position of the stars, the identity of the Four Symbols and the way to study the firmament have been twisted beyond recognition, only four locations still dedicate themselves to the study of the stars.

Leaving Ming Bei’s clan shortly after reaching Core Formation to travel to one of said locations, he was unable to resist his impulses and took the life of a young girl to aid his physical cultivation, creating an ill fated connection with the Vermillion clan from the Qian region, fortunately enough, the aftermath of a battle between two transcendent beings created a small chance for him to escape the chasing elders by entering the Great Desert’s heart, which he was able to seize at the cost of giving up the opportunity to obtain treasures or techniques from the fighters and having his soul marked with a tracking spell.

Stranded within a small temple in this Great Desert full of spatial distortions, with a firmament that he remembers from his former life, he is able to bring about a small miracle and resurrect the girl. The heart demon from his actions remains, and he can only get rid of it by aiding the victim of his act.

To find a way out of the desert and rid himself of this heart demon, Hua takes on the role of an informal mentor, guiding the girl, Liu Jinwu in her cultivation and continues developing the Dao of Starlight, reaching the late stage of Core Formation, helping the girl open half of the Spiritual Points required to break through to that same stage, as well as forging two divine gemstone swords.

During the latest cultivation session, Hua is able to contact the consciousness of a former companion, the Agate Bodhisattva who is also sealed in the desert, as well as awakening and facing off against an ancient automaton named Tian Lang, barely able to eke out a win when it ran out of energy, he is currently negotiating with it.

Quest Specifics

Knowledge of Wuxia/Xianxia/Chinese mythology-astrology-culture/ Hindu, Buddhist, as well as other far eastern concepts is welcome but not required, if something has yet to be explained, QM will provide enough context for it to make sense. If you still have questions, feel free to ask!

Write-ins are welcome and encouraged

Systems

Cultivation

The absorption of energy and knowledge to sustain and elevate one’s existence.

It has always been part of “The World”, or at least long enough to have had a clearly set and mostly unchanged categorization for ages.

Cultivation Stages

There have been 8 stages since time immemorial... We’ve yet to find a better way to categorize them. And it’s actually been so long that the experience someone goes through when cultivating became defined by the categorization itself.

Within each cultivation stage, three lower "stages" or "realms" exist for the sake of reference, exchanging pointers, and dealing with certain bottlenecks and complications unique to them.

The main stages are:

Qi gathering: Absorbing Qi to fill in all three dantians (Lower, Middle and High) and becoming accustomed to Qi as a whole.

• The initial creation of the lower marks the early stage, a full Lower dantian represents the middle stage. Fill ing two is considered the late stage, three grand perfection.
• The ritual to break through is to at least partially unlock two of the Seven Spiritual Points.

Foundation establishment: Using the absorbed Qi to unlock the “Seven Spiritual Points”, elevating the consciousness to better resonate with existence as a whole, increasing one’s affinity towards spiritual matters and mystical arts, artifacts and techniques.

Each spiritual point is associated with a color, a vague location in the physical body for the sake of conceptualization, an “element” and an aspect it governs.

The Seven Spiritual Points:

• Seven is grand perfection, Six is the late stage, Four middle, Two early.
• The breakthrough ritual is to use these seven points to compress the lower dantian into a small sphere, a pseudo core.

Core Formation: Transforming the three dantians into a core of concentrated Qi through Divine Sense.

• The early stage focuses entirely on the compression of the lower dantian into a faint, colorless pseudo core.
• The middle stage begins with a fully compressed red core, and the objective is to repeat the process with the middle dantian and integrate it
• Integrating the middle dantian into the core turns it orange, and the higher dantian can now be prepared for integration
• When all dantians are integrated, the core turns yellow and reaches grand perfection

There are no agreed upon inner stages starting from Golden Core, a stage is considered complete or incomplete, no inbetween.

Golden Core: Turning the Yellow core into a Golden Vessel through the Three Aspects, a cultivator normally aligns to a single aspect to attune the core so its "Divinity" can reside. The natures are Creation, Preservation, and Destruction:

Three Aspects:

• Creation: Benefits formations and arrays during combat, as well as certain actions outside combat.
• Preservation: Benefits non formation defense rolls during combat, as well as certain actions outside combat.
• Destruction: Benefits non formation offense rolls during combat, as well as certain actions outside combat.

When attuning to a nature, the cultivator will "Carve" their enlightenments about the nature and create a path towards the center of the core over time, ultimately creating a place where a soul can reside.

Cores will vary in size and color, mostly occurring naturally based on latent potential and the nature that is being attuned to. With enough preparation and the right insights, this can be changed at will.

Soul Dividing: Dividing one’s soul into two and pouring half into the Golden Vessel so the split half can attain the aspect's "Divinity".

Soul Nurturing: Nurturing the original soul until it obtains the aspect's "Divinity".

Soul Fusion: Integrating the twin souls into a single "Divine Being"

• At this point one is a quasi immortal, but it has become a habit to call anyone who successfully reached Soul Fusion an immortal.

Immortality: Integration of one's existence into the world, either by carving oneself, or being accepted as a part of the world that must always exist. The process is referred to as “Engraving Oneself”.

The Dao

There are many Dao in the world, but all can be categorized into Orthodox and Heterodox/Unorthodox paths.

The Orthodox Daos are The Elemental Dao and The Martial Dao, the former focuses on resonance with one of the five elements to reach that Engraving stage; the more one resonates with one element, the more one's resonance with the rest is disrupted. It is not possible to perfectly cultivate two or more elements.

The Martial Dao on the other hand, is about reaching the engraving stage through dissonance. Rituals and practices focus on accumulating energy and making it one’s own, then amplifying it to the extreme. Weapons are chosen mainly because conceptualizing “Sword Qi” “Spear Qi” or “Fist Qi” is easier than the specifics of conceptualizing oneself as a source of energy. This creates a dissonance with the elemental energies and makes a Martial practitioner largely incompatible with them.

As a former immortal, you’re also privy to unorthodox paths that do not follow the standard methods.

Spectral Dao: The practitioner cultivates the Eight Passages, and taps into the power of the underworld, they can turn their very soul into a weapon, and in the later stages, command ghosts and other spirits. All seventeen Chief Underworld Judges have followed this Dao and reached immortality.

Extreme Yin/Extreme Yang: The practitioner cultivates only one of the Two Forces of Yin and Yang, and two of the Four Aspects (Great and Lesser Yin, or Great and Lesser Yang).
Spells and Mystical arts of the chosen power will be greatly amplified, weapons and treasures of the opposite power are needed to achieve balance. Six Supreme Absolute Immortals have ascended through this path.

Dao of Starlight: The practitioner will absorb energy directly from the stars and use it to cultivate, this stellar energy’s purity is poisonous to most living beings, and will also encroach on most weapons and treasures. It is a path that few have dared follow, no Immortals have ascended through this Dao.

There are other Daos in this category, but they are paths that are not open yet, if the conditions arise, you may be able to see them.

“Why is it impossible to reach elemental unity, and why is the Martial Dao unable to harmonize with the elements?” The strongest and wisest immortals have always set out in search of answers, but no one has come back to tell them.

Rituals

Rituals are a crucial aspect of cultivation whether one follows an orthodox or a heterodox path, it helps accumulate energy faster, it can reduce the backlash of failures, techniques and medicines or increase their positive effects. They are also used when advancing through certain stages to manipulate heavenly tribulations in certain ways.

A ritual consists of a set of actions, things like gathering, preparing, positioning, consuming, destroying or creating can all be parts or the ritual as a whole. The practitioner’s rituals have the objective of amplifying or disrupting their resonance with energies, beings or concepts, and said energies/beings/concepts are not limited to things “higher” than oneself either, there are rituals that can be made to resonate with lower existences.

Known rituals

• Yin Yang Wuxing: A ritual made to ressonate with the five elements of yin and yang with a wide variety of applications
  • Star Elixir Distillation: A method to passively gather and purify starlight for absorption, while also purifying and separating the five elements from it and creating an elixir of pure starlight.
  • Star Lake Ballet: Large scale application of the Elixir Distillation, a lake is created where cultivators can absorb the separated purified elemental qi, and the lake becomes pure starlight
• Starry Winds Step Into Starry Waters: A ritual made to alter the flow of wind and actively gather starlight from the surroundings
• Air Purifying Array: A condensation array using solidified starlight as threads that connect the wuxing nodes of the ritual
• Starlight Sampling Training: Injecting small doses of starlight into the target, allowing them to absorb it and purify themselves to refine the body and qi.

Tribulations

Starting from the Grand Perfection of Core Formation, a living being has to undergo a heavenly tribulation in order to advance to the next stage, these tribulations increase in intensity as one becomes stronger, and they can be resolved by either abandoning the breakthrough attempt, or enduring/neutralizing/destroying it through rituals and preparations... or pure brute force.

The more offensive the approach, the higher the chance of the tribulation intensifying, however, the benefits from breaking through will increase.

Dice

Fate is a fickle mistress, be prepared to roll terribly and lose progress, or roll perfectly and soar into the heavens

• 3 votes minimum to continue, majority wins (2-1, etc. Subject to change if needed.)
• Highest roll value of the winner option is used (i.e. If choice A has a roll of 20, but choice B wins with rolls of 10-11-15, 15 will be the roll used.)
• If multiple dice rolls are requested, the highest of each vote will be used (i.e. vote 1 has 9-11-19, vote 2 has 5-9-12, vote 3 has 13-2-4, the used rolls will be 19-12-13)
• Nat 1 Rolls are locked in
  • If a bonus applies before a check, it will add up to the roll and avoid failure.
  • If a bonus applies after a check, it will offset the failure.
  • Only a max dice roll can fully counter it.
• The specified DC(s) are the final number, no need to math it.
• Won't use preemptive rolls even if it is a crit.