Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Omegahugger said:
We've been told "next turn" one time too many.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That's fair and I don't want to postpone the snake juice either...

But getting all the advantages when researching it seems advantageous and we could also use the Gambler bonus on the cute spiders...

On the flip side it is true that the snake juice has gone unattended for too long. A +44 bonus from learning and coin should net something good even without full research facilities.



There's a really tricky choice here...
 
WorldSlayer said:
Why would giving Johann a promotion count as a stick? Regardless of what reasons he suspects Mathilde had for arranging it it's hardly a bad thing. If he thinks Mathilde did it to cover his ass then that's a carrot and if he thinks she did it because he was worth a promotion that's also a carrot. If getting paid for education and a promotion counts as a stick then doesn't that make us all masochists?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Education and promotion? He was already a highly skilled magister. We didn't teach him anything. And when it comes to money, he's a gold magister. The payment he gets for working for us is hardly worth that much to him. He's getting paid peanuts to do work he doesn't want to do.
torac said:
I don't see any parts that turn a room into a dwarven magically neutral laboratory in your plan. Am I missing something?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The purpose of the tower will be decided mid-turn. It's most likely going to be the dwarven magically clean room.
 
Something else to check, I realise, is what range the We can speak to each other in real time. If they do have telepathy that passes through stone, even if it's range is only a few hundred meters, that would be an incredible force multiplier for underground warfare.

Pipeman said:
Yeah, thought about others just taking things up where we left them once avenues of communication exist myself (and the magic tool sorta guarantees at least one working out), but who knows what action crunch they are under, so it's basically just hoping for good background rolls getting us more spider cuteness (and tactical advantages, I guess).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is one area that I don't think that Mathilde has to do everything herself. Mathilde has some unique talents, but now that communications have been opened I don't think they're particularly applicable here. This then becomes a question that's really about working with a 'conventional' military ally that you've not fought alongside before. Just as the Rangers might have had to learn to work with the likes of Bretonnian knights or Tilean mercenaries with whom they don't share a language, then they have to do the same here. It helps that he spiders are probably more reasonable, in dwarven eyes, than some Bretonnians and Tileans as well. This is a hold lead by a unconventional pragmatist. I suspect his Marshall, who was a Ranger, will be similar.

This isn't something where Mathilde's spellcasting gives her an advantage, and there are people with more experience of dwarven semaphore who are probably better at explaining the situations it should be used in as well, and why it's worth the spiders bothering to learn.

torac said:
Yes, that is the one I want to build as well. I don't see it in Plan Not Really Preliminary Anymore, unless the one tower room automatically becomes lab without furter action.

I don't see any parts that turn a room into a dwarven magically neutral laboratory in your plan. Am I missing something?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We vote for what the room is for in the mid-turn.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
That's fair and I don't want to postpone the snake juice either...

But getting all the advantages when researching it seems advantageous and we could also use the Gambler bonus on the cute spiders...

On the flip side it is true that the snake juice has gone unattended for too long. A +44 bonus from learning and coin should net something good even without full research facilities.



There's a really tricky choice here...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There is also the fact that we'll have more of the Liber Mortis read by next turn. It's not a particularly important reason, but it may have insights relevant to snek juice.
 
@BoneyM coin faces other than the gambler aren't getting much love: maybe you could hint how our turn action would go with the same rolls and different coin faces to pick people's interest? I.e. scouting + night prowler or effects of the protector side.
 
I think there is a distinct disconnect between what evidence we have of the danger posed by studying the Snakeblood and what some people perceive that danger to be.

I mean, here is what we know of the Snakeblood:
BoneyM said:
Mathilde has not studied the liquid enough to know for sure [what it is], but the assumptions she can make based on what she knows is thus:

Creatures of magic, like the snake was/is, are not made of regular matter. They are made of magic under the creature's control so that it forms its vessel. When such a creature is slain (dis-incorporated?), said magic would usually decay back into elemental magic. The unfortunate creature being trapped in a halfway point between 'life' and 'death' (inasmuch as the two states can be applied to demons and quasi-demonic warp entities) is why, presumably, the liquid has not decayed.

The snake is not, in the conventional sense, a demon, and it is not explicitly aligned with any of the chaos gods. Therefore the magic that it is made of is not unholy magic tainted by any (or all) of those gods. Nor is it aligned with any of the winds of magic, nor is it made up of the festered and corruptive eneriges of dhar.

This is where facts run out and speculation is required.

'High' magic, of which humans know very little, is when an extremely skilled practitioner of magic uses all eight winds of magic in unison. Normally, if someone uses multiple winds of magic, the result becomes Dhar - imagine someone trying to mix paints and it inevitably resulting in a mucky brown tone. When a sufficiently skilled wizard does it, they can combine the colours into a pure magic called Qhaysh, similarly to how we are taught 'white' light is made up of all colours combined. No known human is capable of such a feat, as it (in theory) takes centuries of careful study to achieve it.

The snake's 'blood' seems to be similar to Qhaysh, but it is not quite. When magic enters the world through the polar gates, the effect the world and/or the polar gates has on it is to separate it into the eight 'winds' of magic. This is magic that never passed the polar gates, and has never been separated.

Also, magic is naturally similar to energy, or gas - it blows freely and gathers and pools according to its nature. Some extremely skilled wizards are capable of exerting their will over magic and forcing it to crystallize into a solid known as power stones, which power the most rare and puissant of magical artifacts. Magic in liquid form is unknown to you, and as far as you know, to the Colleges in general. Potions are not magic in liquid form, but derived from magic-influenced plants, animals and minerals.

The implications of all of the above are as yet untested and unknown to you.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So, we know that it is not aligned with any of the chaos gods, it's not aligned with any specific wind of magic, nor is it made up of dhar. This leaves precious little in terms of how it could be intrinsically dangerous to poke and proud for an investigation.

The next question is if it's volatile. Well, we transported it all the way from Stirland to Karak-Eight-Peaks, so it's not physically volatile. Is it magically volatile? We don't have enough information to be sure, but we know that it's not dhar and that the wisdom asp is a self-contained entity that doesn't seem to explode magically when it is kept in a state of perpetual life and death. Which to me indicates some form of magical stability.

So I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that the Snakeblood is going to be dangerous and requires a Magister Lord level lab in order to investigate. We have a lab in our pent house, that lab should be sufficient for poking and proding at the Snakeblood to determine its properties and what it is most analogous to.

If the vote was for this:
BoneyM said:
[ ] Instead of seeking the secrets of the blood, simply see if it can be weaponized in some way.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Then I would be more concerned, as that implies trying to figure out uses for the substance. But people are voting for this:
BoneyM said:
[ ] Investigate the constantly-dripping blood of the Wisdom's Asp. Current accumulation: 13 gallons.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
which seems much more like trying to understand what it is and attempting to classify it. And for that purpose, I think that a Magister Lord level lab is grossly overkill.
 
Also, an additional reason to go with Johann when he pokes around Clan Mors looking for loot, it means we can apply the Gambler's face of the Coin to this. As he's likely to poke the skaven anyway, for those people who are worried that engaging with them will cause them to change their focus to the dwarves, this should actually make it significantly less likely, as it should make a critical or severe failure significantly less likely. The loot we hopefully hope him recover will then hopefully keep him busy investigating it for a turn or two, when we don't have to worry about him triggering the skaven.
 
Thor's Twin said:
I think there is a distinct disconnect between what evidence we have of the danger posed by studying the Snakeblood and what some people perceive that danger to be.

I mean, here is what we know of the Snakeblood:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's raw Aethyr, the blood of a daemon spilling out into the material world. Assuming it's safe is what's most dangerous. Within it is probably contained the raw potential of any and all of the Winds. We have no idea of what will set it off, which could include someone thinking the wrong type of thoughts around it.

Particularly as it is still connected to the eternally dying Wisdom's Asp, and the themes of that creature aren't the safest thing to investigate. It could well be that investigation itself, or knowing more about it is the thing that triggers the blood of an All-Knowing Serpent. We're flying blind here.
 
Last edited:
I still don't understand why everyone is so concerned about Johann's feelings. If he weren't willing to accept being under our authority he wouldn't have accepted, he knew going in that we were going to make some demands on his time and judged that that was worth it for having official support for his own projects and a official position within the Hold. But, if we establish a pattern of letting him do whatever he wants just because we want him to like us, he's more likely to balk later when we judge something really needs his attention for several turns and we don't turn him loose on his own projects, because he might have come to expect that we're his super friendly boss who just lets him coast because we're too afraid of him getting pissy. We recruited him, that means he's our employee. He needs to earn his keep.

Not only does not having him do that even a little, right after he was gone for six months, send very bad messages to him but it also sends bad messages to the Dwarves that even though we recruited him we either don't trust him to aid in our work or think it's beneath his rank, in which case why did we recruit him and then insist that he get his new rank.

Furthermore, people are talking about 'mechanical' benefits to having him poke at Skaven with settling the We, but there's literally none. The actions do not mention the We at all, nor do that do anything to secure our lines. There is potentially a narrative benefit, but absolutely nothing indicates any mechanical benefit. Nor, honestly, shoulder there be; one is an option requiring us to survey a fortified area and choose a suitable location within it for our new allies, while the other is someone who is not us going beyond those confines and looking for signs of Skaven Tech he wants to grab and research. Pairing it with our own actions to 'help Johann poke' might make it more likely to succeed but it also provides another point of failure at a time when our new allies will almost certainly not be fully established. There's a non-zero risk that a significantly bad failure on our or Johann's part will trigger an attack of opportunity or reprisal form Mors which could see the We injure, destroyed, or simply scare off. If we're lucky Johann is the failure point and we can avert total disaster, but if we are there's likely nothing he'll be able to do, since we're aiding his action rather than the other way around.

Even if both actions fail they're incredibly unlikely to have any narrative or mechanical benefit on the relocation of the We, Johann's purpose is to study not sabotage so he'll favor capture intact samples and even leaving non-immediate threats extant. If our intent is to help him, we're likely to do the same. If people we really looking for mechanical benefits, the scouting actions focused on the third source of pressure seems much more likely to actually have some potential synergy; it's an unknown threat that might be doing something right now that could endanger the We, meanwhile we know what Mors is doing in a general sense. Which is not mobilize to deal with a threat they don't know about (the We).
 
torac said:
Yes, that is the one I want to build as well. I don't see it in Plan Not Really Preliminary Anymore, unless the one tower room automatically becomes lab without furter action.

I don't see any parts that turn a room into a dwarven magically neutral laboratory in your plan. Am I missing something?

I want to use another action slot to turn the new room into a laboratory this turn so that we can do proper research next turn.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

that's decided in the post results vote before the next turn.
 
killfr3nzy said:
the staff on Stirland, the Guard, etc is that we set up the EIC and left for months while it grew hugely, while the others we searched for danger, then set up a system of spies and informants that would continually warn us of new possible danger.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
A few months isn't really that long. Especially since we have our two competent Councillor friends directly involved.
killfr3nzy said:
And actually we did have problems with organisations we built ourselves, such as not catching on about infiltration of the staff we built and expanded till we became far more thorough and rolled luckily, at least one Council member being more corrupt than we thought and weakening Stirland's army through greed. The Guard's spies was how we knew what was going on, what they thought of everything and what they wanted, when they hated and resented Mathilde for attempting to force Ranald on them and wouldn't tell her jack all.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The palace staff was inherited from the previous elector. Sweeping it was the Priest's job and he initially bungled it. He only knew about Sigmar at the time and made no attempts to learn about the other gods, so he wasn't able to question them properly when they applied for the job. We didn't build it until after and it was fine then.

The council was like that by design. The quest is called divided loyalties for a reason. Almost all of the council members were compromised. Hell, we were compromised. The only ones who weren't were Anton and Wilhelma who run the company. Hell, we investigated the others not because of paranoia or catching spies but because our mysterious 'benefactors' asked us to.

The guards were totally under our control. You remember this very differently then I. Yes, the Ranald action flopped but that was because of Ranald, not because of us. Also just because an organisation dislikes us doesn't mean enemy action.
 
Last edited:
[X] Plan Not Really Preliminary Anymore

I refuse to wait any longer to do the snake juice.
The argument can be made that we might have a fetter set up next turn, that argument can also be repeated on that turn, and the turn after that on into infinity.
 
Andmeuths said:
If this is the case, doing it in a semi-public lab where our fellow Wizards around seem like a recipe for disaster.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's one of those things where we just don't know. Also, there may be certain kinds of magic that it would react badly with. It's really a very unknown substance.

At some point, when we have a lab, we can try having the Journeymen very carefully poke very small amounts of the snakeblood with their wind, and watch what happens.

Even here, we have to be careful. Mathilde believes that the reason that the snake blood doesn't automatically evaporate even when sealed is because the snake isn't dead. That rather suggests there's a connection between the snake and its blood, even when separated, and we don't know whether messing with the blood in the wrong way could affect the snake

NavySeel said:
I refuse to wait any longer to do the snake juice.
The argument can be made that we might have a fetter set up next turn, that argument can also be repeated on that turn, and the turn after that on into infinity.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It can't really. Once we get the lab, what more could we wait for? We've read Liber Mortis, we've bought the books, when we have the lab, there's literally nothing left we can get before the initial investigation starts.
 
Last edited:
[X] Plan Not Really Preliminary Anymore
-[X] Have Maximilian attempt to write a paper (choose which from 'Publish or Perish')
--[X] Write a paper on the Waaagh energy and magic witnessed during the Expedition.
-[X] Current Task: Have Johann investigate the properties of the spiders' webs.
-[x] Help the We establish their new nest below the Citadel. [ACTION 1][COIN]
-[X] Spend time assisting with a fellow councillor's task: specify who and how.
--[X] Assist Gunnar with burial rites for Humans
-[X] Request the translation item yourself (does not cost an action; converts 3 College Favour to Dwarf Favour).
-[X] Investigate the constantly-dripping blood of the Wisdom's Asp. Current accumulation: 12 gallons.
-[X] Teach the We Dwarven semaphore.
-[x] Instil corporate policy: always be scrupulously honest when dealing with Dwarves.
-[X] Wolf is now fully grown, and is a very large dog or a regular-sized wolf. Train him. (increases his intelligence, may deepen Familiar bond)
-[X] The Gambler: specify an action this will apply to.
--[X] Investigate the constantly-dripping blood of the Wisdom's Asp. Current accumulation: 12 gallons.
-[X] Have a tower built atop Karag Nar: -100gc for 1 room, bonus to room's purpose.
 
Alratan said:
Right, ok. I assume that we don't have background jobs equivilent to those a more conventional learning adviser might be expected to keep on top of? Like a Runesmith continuing to teach apprentices or an engineer to supervise his guild's workshops? I suppose that really just gives us more freedom.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

An Engineer candidate would take care of the local Engineer's Guild, a Runesmith his apprentices. As a wizard, your job is commanding some wizards and providing for the others.

Quest said:
@BoneyM A question on the topic of learning spells. You mentioned that if we want to learn a particular spell, we either need to attend a class for a single spell or wait around and hope there is someone there whose teaching something we want to know. I was looking at the ways we can spend college favors and noticed we can hire Magisters and Lord Magisters for a 5/10 favor every turn for use in a project. Couldn't we just hire a magister who already knows the spells we lack and is willing to spend an action teaching us?

How effective would this be over the usual options? Would getting a Lord Magister involved be more effective or get us something special?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Those who are best at teaching spells are already doing so through classes. You could monopolize one at quintuple the favour cost if you really wanted to.

Alratan said:
Another option, which might be a touchy subject for the dwarves, but if there are the descendants of any famous dlain runesmiths around (as all runesmiths are part of or descended from a specific clan), I wonder if:

Knocks of the Departed
Description: You ask and can receive an answer to one question you ask of a specific deceased individual, as long as that question can be answered with a number of audible knocks other than zero ("How many robbers came into your house on the night you were beaten to death?"), or answered with a yes or no ("Would it please you for us to bring your body on our pilgrimage to Altdorf?"). In the case of yes/no questions, the spirit of the deceased knocks once for "yes," and twice for "no." No matter the question, the spirit is not compelled to answer at all, has no knowledge beyond that which he had in life, and can lie if he wishes. The act of answering is neither inherently pleasant nor odious to the deceased, though it may well be emotionally painful because of the living who are present or due to the nature of the question. This spell must be cast in the presence of either the deceased's body or the presence of one of his living descendants. It is said the dead answer by knocking on the gates of Morr's realm.

Works on dwarves. Mathilde may be the only dwarf friend with enough reputation to talk to the dwarves about this since the Colleges were formed who would know about the spell. It could be a massive game changer, if they're willing to talk to their ancestors with magic - and note that the dwarves talk to their ancestors all the time, it's not just the ancestor gods that are prayed to, they just don't usually expect an answer. If this works it could have incredible possibilities if cast say, once a day. If we take the opportunity to befriend Gunnars, it's the kind of thing that could come up naturally. They'd probably be much happier if a magic item rather than a spell was used as well.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

'A touchy subject' is certainly one way to put it.

That War of the Beard, that sure was a disagreement.

vsh said:
@BoneyM coin faces other than the gambler aren't getting much love: maybe you could hint how our turn action would go with the same rolls and different coin faces to pick people's interest? I.e. scouting + night prowler or effects of the protector side.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Their possible benefits are definitely discussed fairly frequently, it's just that the other faces of the Coin benefit things Mathilde isn't currently doing much of. I don't mind if it takes a while for the Coin to have a chance to strut its stuff.
 
Alratan said:
We vote for what the room is for in the mid-turn.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And, if we roll high enough for Mathilde to remember lighting the signal fires, Magister Lord Sigwald, Grand-architect of the Grey College, will know that Karak Eight Peaks calls for aid and leap upon his spectral horse so that he'll arrive in time to tell us which shade of grey works best for lab curtains.
 
Alratan said:
It's one of those things where we just don't know. Also, there may be certain kinds of magic that it would react badly with. It's really a very unknown substance.

At some point, when we have a lab, we can try having the Journeymen very carefully poke very small amounts of the snakeblood with their wind, and watch what happens.

Even here, we have to be careful. Mathilde believes that the reason that the snake blood doesn't automatically evaporate even when sealed is because the snake isn't dead. That rather suggests there's a connection between the snake and its blood, even when separated, and we don't know whether messing with the blood in the wrong way could affect the snake



It can't really. Once we get the lab, what more could we wait for? We've read Liber Mortis, we've bought the books, when we have the lab, there's literally nothing left we can get before the initial investigation.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Better tools, more journeymen, more books, a better learning Stat and an even better lab Also I don't think we've finished the Liber mortis.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top