The boiling hot struggle for power in the land of the Xianxia nobles has cooled down to a simmer as one family, that of Strano, the Emperor’s family, has reached higher pinnacles than any other.
Josiah Strano and his family are on the precipice of being an all-Elder family. Only six members of the family remain in the initial White phase of cultivation. Society is structured by family and families by cultivation groups.
Fidel Strano has experienced more years than any other, the last left-over of the older system, he was a part of the military branch of the Strano family who rebelled against the Strano Royals and were defeated by the royals and the Feddic family, who still call themselves the Loyalists.
No one in living memory remembers the earlier time when there were no hierarchies, in the days of rudimentary training and economic practices.
- Emperor – Strano Family
- Direct / Count vassal – Guzman Family
- Direct / Count vassal – Moriarty Family
- Direct / Count vassal – Sokolsky Family
- Ducal Vassal – Feddic Family
- Count vassal – Cobllari Family
- Ducal Vassal – Baird Family
- Count vassal – Pellegrin Family
- Ducal Vassal – Bannowsky Family
- Count vassal – Mcferron family
Dossiers:
Mcferron – vassal of Bannowsky
Mcferron family is a practitioner of the more elitist style of family cultivation, also being the 2nd smallest family. Leslie, Joan and Shenita are its three Green sphere cultivators, and Jordan is an up and coming scion in the 6th stage of White. The majority of their members are in the 3rd stage.
Bannowsky – ducal vassal of Strano
The least amongst the ducal vassals. Bannowsky tried their hand at being a commodities trading family twice, holding onto over 300,000 white stones and 50,000 green stones at their height. They recently ended their trading years by cashing in their mountain of stones to develop their cultivators to new heights.
They are way behind the Baird family in cultivation and production, with nine Green phase cultivators encompassing two Elder groups and three White group leaders.
They have three more cultivators in the ultimate stage of White. The Bann family is preparing the stones to reach breakthroughs with those three (Lara, Jarod and Houston) and found the third Elder group.
Pellegrim – vassal of Baird
The greatest count vassal, with the third most White stone production, behind Feddic and their liege Baird. They are the foremost advocate of the equitable cultivation philosophy. Ryann, Sol and Andera are their three Green sphere cultivators. All of the family is at the 4th stage of white or beyond, and they are the largest count family.
Baird – ducal vassal of Strano
2nd most powerful ducal family. They’ve followed several different philosophies, and now take a sort of blended approach. They have 12 green sphere members. The Baird family is pushing towards a breakthrough for Duchess Shaina; she is currently in the 6th stage of cultivation.
Cobllari – vassal of Feddic
The merger of Coble and Collari families after their loss in the Strano civil war. They follow the more elitist style of cultivation, with most of their members at the third stage of cultivation. Jorge, Andrew and Christian are the three Green sphere members of Cobllari.
Feddic – ducal vassal of Strano
After Strano themselves, the most powerful family. Jeremy Feddic has directed a lot of family resources into his personal cultivation, trying to keep up with the supercharged cultivation of Josiah Strano. The transition into Blue sphere for Jeremy has put his life in danger. With only 1 meridian at the 1st stage of Blue, his life expectancy is limited. Feddic received a significant gift from the Strano family to get Jeremy enough Blue stones to unlock his first meridian. Now the Feddic family is on thin ice with the crown, and any push to challenge Josiah’s power in Blue will be looked on poorly.
The Feddic family has spent the past two decades saving and trading for green stones to push Jeremy into Blue, if he passes, it would represent a huge setback. If they can get all 32 meridians unlocked for Jeremy, there would be a century+ of life left for the patriarch.
Feddic’s focus on their patriarch has left them with only two Elder groups, the same number the Baird and Bannowsky families have had. Feddic has the largest production of white stones and second largest of green stones.
Guzman – vassal of Strano
Exponents of a moderate approach, with 4th tier core White sphere members and three Green sphere members.
Moriarty – vassal of Strano
Very similar to Guzman, with three Green sphere members.
Sokolsky – vassal of Strano
Exponents of an elitist approach, but less developed, with only three Green sphere members, with the smallest family of them all.
Strano
The Strano family focuses first on making sure the Emperor is the preeminent power, and then is quite equal in developmental approach. The Strano has more than twice the Green stone production of the next best Feddic family. They’ve got 25 Green sphere family members, and Josiah is Blue sphere with a full set of meridians developed to Stage 1.
To avoid wasting over 200,000 green stones on an older member of the family, the Stranos chose to develop Noah Strano to be the next Blue Sphere member. He’s already at the seventh stage of Green sphere, and is still -163.
Strano’s other plan is to develop it’s sixth Elder group, and break through to Green with their entire family.
History / Looming Mortality
No one has died in a hundred years, but old age has not been defeated, just delayed. Being part of a large and powerful cultivation group extends the life expectancy of these nobles, and entering the green sphere grants 300 years reprieve on the body clock, as impurities and physical infirmities are healed, but still the clock counts.
Jeremy Feddic has 37 years to live, but opening more meridians will extend that and allow the Feddic family to keep their patriarch alive. But in 50 years many White sphere elderly will reach the end.
Families are just starting to consider the impact of family members passing on their pursuit and success. Everyone has been getting more and more powerful without end, but there will now be losses, and some family shakeup.
The breakthrough to Green sphere, if done improperly, can fail to result in the 300 year refreshing. The breakthrough to Blue does not provide any age relief at all.
The Cultivation Group
Members of each family are organized into cultivation groups. A cultivation group’s size depends on each member’s power, and in particular the weakest member’s power. Power increases as the number of meridians are activated at a higher level. In practice, family members will wait to elevate all 32 meridians to a new level in one go.
The meridian levels correspond to doubly-exponential power levels, with 2 core meridians, 6 aspect meridians and 24 specific meridians. As a practical effect, if all 32 meridians are at power level X, a cultivator’s overall power is at 12X.
Reaching the 1st stage in meridians corresponds to a power level of 120, which is the 2nd stage of power. When cultivators have less than 100 power, they can only be part of a group with 1 other, or they can lead a group that is of a junior sphere, and they are not considered part of the cultivation group size limits.
Three cultivators with at least a first stage completion can form at group, but a group of second stage cultivators is still only able to be part of a 3-group, as the power of 1200 doesn’t meet the threshold of 10,000. As a result, a common cultivation pattern is to make the jump from the 1st stage to the 3rd stage (10,000), turning groups of 3 first stagers to 4 third stagers (At 120,000 power each).
Each group can have at most one family member of a senior sphere leading it, regardless of the main group member’s size. This helps both the productivity of the main group and the productivity of the elder.
5 groups can be of any sphere (White +), 1 group of Green or higher sphere, 1 group of Blue or higher sphere, and so on. As a practical effect, this means any family that has more Green sphere members than groups to lead can establish an additional group for green sphere members.
The Strano family, and Feddic and Baird families are all using these six groups, while the Bannowsky family is still working on developing an Elder group.
Any group whose core members are Green or higher is considered an Elder group, although this is primarily just a prestigious name to distinguish these groups from the normal groups.
As a result of these group limitations, in # of groups and size of groups, each family is limited in it’s size. There is incentive, for those families trying to breakthrough with a large portion of their family, to keep numbers smaller. At the White sphere, families can keep their groups very large, reaching 7 or even 8 members, but when transitioning to green, obviously, their members will be at lower power levels, leaving less room for family.
The Strano family has lead the way in this gradual migration to Green by first making more room in each remaining White sphere group, and also developing and expanding Green sphere groups. They now have one 6 member green sphere group (plus Josiah leading that group), and four more 5 member green sphere groups. They still need to expand one more Elder group to 6 members or prepare to instantly develop their current White sphere group into a 6 member green sphere group. Whichever way it goes, the Strano’s effort is expensive and difficult because they have 32 family members.
Smaller families, such as the Guzman family, have less pressure in the transition, but less funds as well. Coming up with even the breakthrough stage funds for one White family member is a 5+ year process.
The Feddic and Baird families are following Strano in moving groups to Green, but they are significantly delayed. The success already in moving to 5 Elder groups and 1 White group is why Strano’s native production in Green stones is more than twice as high as Feddics, but they have a very low rate of production in less valuable White stones.
After receiving taxes from 3 ducals and 3 count vassals, they receive plenty of White stones anyway.
Critical Numbers
29 White stones are needed to raise the power level of an individual meridian by an order of magnitude. 928 White stones will raised all 32 meridians by order of magnitude.
Going from stage 1 to stage 3 (common practice) takes 3 orders of magnitude or 3*928 = 2784 white stones. Stage 4 takes 4 more orders, then 8, then 16, the cost raising until the transition from Stage 7 to breakthrough, which takes 64 * 29 * 32 = 59392 White stones.
Cultivation numbers for Green sphere are doubled, so it takes 58 stones to raise an individual meridian. For Blue, numbers are doubled again. So 1856 green stones raises an order of magnitude for all 32 meridians, and 3712 blue stones.
In theory, cultivation can be raised by smaller steps. In the event of a closely fought war where every edge counts, micro improvements might matter, but that is an experience lost in the past, and is only a theoretic notion.
Creating a new family member costs 116 stone, but to put them in an existing group often requires extensive and immediate cultivation to get them up to that group’s level. At birth, and upon reaching a new sphere, a cultivator has a target of 10 power, but all of his/her meridians are 1 one power. This is the notion of having 0 meridians unlocked.
For a current example, Jeremy Feddic has developed his first meridian (Spiritual) to power 10, unlocking 1 meridian, but the other 31 meridans are not contributing to his production. This means Jeremy has a production of only 15 stones, not 1 greater than a multiple of 33, like most cultivators.
In past eras, cultivators who had completed a full set of meridians at the current target would set a new target before getting the full set of stones to unlock 32 meridians to that target level. This resulted in a regression, productivity went down for the cultivator. Eventually it was seen as better to wait until the full set of stones is available before changing targets.
So the regular procedure for a family is to wait for 928 stones (or a multiple of depending on stage and phase), in order to make an sudden rise to the new target and new stage. Or trade for the stones needed.
The common practice for newborns is to already have ever stone needs to get them up to the common cultivation level for their new group, whether stage 3, 4 or even higher. For family members breaking on to green phase, if they are leading, 1856 green stones are gathered along with the collection of white stones, so that they can lead at Green stage 1.
Breakthroughs into Elder groups happen either in a block, where all the resources to reach the new group level are gather, or either resources for the new entry in the elder group are gathered beforehand.
So families spend a great deal of time gathering stones in preparation of making an advancement for one member or several members.
But there is some discussion of saving stones for trading, or for the next generations. With people living for several hundred years, family generations are spaced out, and there hasn’t been a new member of the Strano family in 137 years. Some of the count clans have expanded in recent years with a few new members, but with the groups already expanding to their limits, there has been no space for a large influx of children.
Many family members were born during the baby boom in which families expanded from a half dozen members to twenty plus. There hasn’t been a marriage between two families in over 150 years, as families are largely composed of many sons and daughters of a few couples. Cultivators don’t face fears or limitations on having children, even at 300 years old.
So most family members are brothers and sisters to each other, and families are largely structured by cultivation status rather than traditional relationships.
The Strano family retains more family structure, with Fidel being the husband who was retained as a concession after the Strano civil war becoming the husband of Josiah’s royalist mother. After Josiah, Loria, Josiah’s daughter, was considered the next in line, but due to concerns of age, Noah, Loria’s brothers who is 190 years younger, is to become the second Strano family Blue sphere cultivator.
Year 357 (Emperor Josiah)
It was a quiet year, with Baird family continuing to push towards placing Shaina Baird in Blue sphere. Shaina was waiting for 59k green stones to progress to the final stage of green.
Bannowsky members Lara, Jarod and Houston are waiting for enough white and green stones to establish a new Elder group, as the Bann currently has only five groups active. Maria Bannowsky is at the sixth stage of green, but the family only has a stage of 14k green stones to Baird’s 29k.
Cobllari are saving stones to develop their future leader of the 4th White group. Jarred Cobllari is at the fifth stage of white.
Feddic is saving Blue stones for Jeremy, but hasn’t made any plans yet for their next group to make the jump to Green.
Guzman is preparing Alexandria for leadership of its 4th group. Mcferron is preparing Jordan for leadership of its 4th group, but Jordan is at 6th stage, ahead of the 5th stage Jarren and Alexandria.
Moriarty’s Hyun is at the seventh stage, awaiting white stones for breakthrough, to lead that family’s fourth group.
The Pellegrin family took things out of order, with Clarita in her seventh stage, waiting to breakthrough and lead Pellegrin’s 5th group. They don’t yet have a leader for the fourth group, however.
Sokolsky’s Carroll is only in his fourth stage on the way to leading that family’s fourth group. So all the counts are working towards their fourth green sphere member, but the Pellegrin family already has 40k stones. Sokolsky is further behind than the rest with the lowest white stone production.
Strano family is banking blue stones for Noah’s ascent, saving white and green stones to make room for the last group of White sphere family members. The Strano family has less White stone production than even Sokolsky, but their Green stone production is vast.
Strano Royal I, the last White group, make need to breakthrough as a group, as if a few at a time leave the group, the remaining members may not have the vitality to survive, as they are all in their late 200s (Marcelina is 297, Sally, Bonita and Vertie are 290, Errol is 270 and Hassan is 237 years old.)
Josiah is at the rarely seen 2nd stage of Blue sphere, in part to make a statement that the Strano family patriarch will maintain a higher power than Jeremy Feddic, who they think of as an overly arrogant upstart.
The Strano family has started receiving blue stone taxes because of Jeremy. At 20% of Jeremy’s 15 blue stone production they receive 3 blue stones a year.
| Actions | White | Green | Blue | Yellow | Red | Black |
| 58511 | 17895 | 280 | ||||
| Baird | 9562 | 2784 | 0 | |||
| Bannowsky | 4767 | 1659 | 0 | |||
| Cobllari | 4442 | 597 | 0 | |||
| Feddic | 8207 | 2387 | 15 | |||
| Guzman | 6425 | 696 | 0 | |||
| Mcferron | 4475 | 597 | 0 | |||
| Moriarty | 6822 | 696 | 0 | |||
| Pellegrin | 7219 | 696 | 0 | |||
| Sokolsky | 4210 | 597 | 0 | |||
| Strano | 2382 | 7186 | 265 |
Year 358
Cobllari: Jarred goes from 5th stage White to 6th stage (-14848 white stones).
Feddic: Wants to trade green stones for Strano’s blue stones @ 100 – 1, but Strano refuses as they are trying to both save blue stones for Noah and prevent Feddic from being a potential rival for the throne. Develops youngster Allen (132 years old) to White stage 6.
Guzman: Develops Alexandria to stage 6.
Sokolsky: Develops Carroll to stage 5.
Years 359, 360
No developments, continued saving.
Theoretical Extensions
There is some speculation that after Blue sphere will be Yellow, Red and then Black spheres with their corresponding stones.
The intense time and effort in reaching even the Blue sphere will limit the capacity of even the Stranos to reach this levels however. Without an intergenerational savings of money (where intergenerational means more than 400 years of saving) some of these higher sphere will remain out of reach.
There is some hope that blue will eventually be as ubiquitous as green and blue stones will be frequently traded like green stones are now.
Currently trade in blue stones is sporadic and at a quite high exchange rate of 100 green to 1 blue, whereas green stones trade for only 7.5 white.
Technical Details of System
Target
Each person has a cultivation target. A meridian counts as fully activated if it is at the target’s power level.
A person’s target is set to 10 at birth, and upon transcending to a new sphere, set to 10 again. Otherwise, they may never lower their target, and no meridian can be developed beyond the target.
The only valid values for targets are: (0.1, 1), 10, 100, 10000, 1e8, 1e16, 1e32, 1e64, [1e128].
When transcending, the target must be set to 1e128 and achieved in the same turn. Because of system limitations, achieving 1e128 with some meridians and not others causes an overflow in power and actions calculations. This is not allowed.
You do not need to reach the target with all 32 meridians to set it higher.
As a result of battle, all meridians may end up at or below 1 in power, in which case a target of 1 is allowed, and 0.1 is allowed if all meridians are at 0.1 or lower.
Power
Power is calculated as follows: (rounded to the nearest integer)
Power = (3 * sum of core meridians [spiritual and physical] * 2 * sum of capacity meridians [breath, circulation, will, ferocity, solidity, grace] * sum of technique meridians [sword, spear, hammer, polearm, daggers, unarmed, sling, bow, crossbow, thrown, targeted magic, buffing, debuffing, aoe, persuasion, influence, speech, leadership, craft, stealth, trade, spirit whip, bloodlust, mentalism]) ^ 1/3
If power is ever less than 1, death by injuries occurs immediately.
Action Bonus
The action bonus is added to the group size bonus and multiplied by the number of meridians + 1, to get the total number of actions generated per turn.
Action Bonus = Floor(Log2(Log10(power)))
Power less than 1 causes an error in the action bonus calculations, power near one causes a large action penalty.
12 -> 0
120 -> 1
1200 -> 1
120,000 -> 2
1.2e9 -> 3
1.2e17 -> 4
1.2e33 -> 5
1.2e65 -> 6
Group Size Bonus
The number of members in the group is the group size bonus.
Actions
1 + (1 + Meridians Active) * (Action Bonus + Group Size Bonus)
Actions count as stones generated of the appropriate color. Each family collects its stones, pays tax to its liege, and accumulates its stones with a particular family member, called the treasurer. For the purposes of tax and trade, stones can be divided into fractional parts.
Battle
Spread – Spread is a logarithmic measure of power. When considering a higher sphere person against 1 or more lower sphere people, given them 300 additional spread.
Spread = Floor(Log10(power)) + sphere bonus (300 for 1 phase, 600 for 2, etc).
A strong person can face off against 2 people who have half or less of its spread, three who have a third or less of its spread, and so on.
In a battle, the highest power person or persons match up first, or if there is a person alone at the top they may spread attack against multiple weaker foes.
Each person takes damage equal to the power of their opponent. If they would take over 90% of their power in damage, they are decimated. If they are on the side declaring the attack, they can be doubly decimated if they would take over 99% of their power in damage.
If they would take between 1% and 89% of their power in damage, take their initial power and subtract the damage. De-level meridians until their power is reduced to the new lower amount or lower.
If a combatant is of a higher sphere than their opponent, or they would take less than 1% of their power in damage, they are unaffected.
If a combatant is decimated, reduce the power of each meridian by a factor of ten. For doubly-decimated attackers, reduce meridians by two factors of ten. Set the target to the lowest stage higher than or equal to the survivor’s most powerful meridian.
The combatant dies immediately if there overall power drops to or below 1.
Combat Rounds
At the beginning a new turn, after aging, anyone who wants to declare a fight must do so. The declaring becomes the attacker, and their target foe is the defender. Other families can join on the attack or defense.
Pairings are made by top power order, so the most powerful attacker is matched up with the most powerful defender, and so on with the 2nd, 3rd, etc. Except, if the most powerful attacker or defender has more spread than the top 2 or more on the other side they may spread attack/defend each of those opponents.
A spread attacker uses his full power against each defender, and vice versus in the unlikely event of a defender powerful enough to spread defend against an attacker.
Before combat begins and the matchups are declared, all families can cultivate and decide what side to participate except the initial attacker and target are locked in and must fight.
Rebellion
Members of a family may rebel and fight against their own family members to try to take the reins of power. After a combat within a family, even if most of the conflict was with other sides, the faction disagreeing with family leadership must be considered a different family entirely, with its own family group limits. Choose a new family name for the rebels.
Cultivation
There are 29 stages to raise a meridian’s power from one order of magnitude to the next: 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, 2, 2.2, 2.4, 2.6, 2.8, 3, 3.3, 3.6, 3.9, 4.2, 4.6, 5, 5.5, 6, 6.6, 7.2, 7.9, 8.6, 9.4, 10
It takes 1 point to raise a White sphere meridian 1 step, 2 points to raise a green sphere one step, 4 points to raise a Blue sphere, and so on. So it takes 29 points for a white meridian order of magnitude, and double that for each successive sphere.
Stones
Spirit stones can be transferred to other players, and even fractional amounts can be transferred. However, no player may go negative in any type of spirit stone. No player may hold a spirit stone higher than their phase, so a Green sphere person cannot hold Blue stones, and a White sphere person cannot hold Green or higher stones.
Groups
Rearranging and transferring groups can be done, but all groups must satisfy the group constraints.
- Each group may have 1 leader, which must be of a higher sphere than the members of the group. All other members of the group must be of the same sphere, called the group’s sphere.
- There are 5 white+ groups, 1 green+ group and one group exclusively with each higher sphere. Any group may be occupied by a higher sphere than its limitation, but never by a lower sphere.
- Each group member must have a power level sufficient for its group size [size does not include the elder’s position, so a size 4 group can have 4 members plus an elder]
- Initially qualify for group size 2
- 100+ power: group size 3
- 10000+ power: group size 4
- 1e8+ power: group size 5
- 1e16+ power: group size 6
- 1e32+ power: group size 7
- 1e64+ power: group size 8
Age
Age begins at 0 at birth, and when transcending to Green phase, age is reduced by 300. If you forget to reduce the age at that time, the benefit is lost.
A character dies of old age if their age is greater than:
Threshold = 70 + actions.
Marriage
Characters can become married. They must marry a member of a different family. Both spoouses must choose a particular family, and they both become part of that family.
Children
In order to have children, a family must have at least one married couple. Pay a fee of 116 white stones per child born. Children must have enough cultivation resources assigned to them to immediately join a cultivation group.
Black Sphere
Upon transcending Black sphere, a person becomes an elder spirit, providing permanent production bonuses to family members. Each elder spirit provides a 10% bonus to actions. This is an unexplored aspect of the system as no one is higher than blue sphere currently.
Taxes / Vassalage
Taxes and/or vassalage are merely negotiated and not part of the system per se. Negotiations & contests of power can change any or all aspects of the currently emergent system.
Current System Model (excel)
VBA logic to advance year and assign stones:
Sub Macro4()
‘
‘ Macro4 Macro
‘
‘ Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+J
‘
Range(“CI2:CI278”).Select
Range(“CI278”).Activate
Selection.Copy
Range(“C2”).Select
Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks _
:=False, Transpose:=False
Range(“ER2:ET278”).Select
Application.CutCopyMode = False
Selection.Copy
Range(“F2”).Select
Selection.PasteSpecial Paste:=xlPasteValues, Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks _
:=False, Transpose:=False
End Sub
The end roll (278) depends on the number of characters currently in existence.
The Blackboard 