chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
We rolled a twelve. We weren't going to get anything fancy on a twelve. That we succeeded anyways was because we stacked the deck so high.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Sentences like these are pretty much exactly why Adela was all "I don't care if it'll take years before you get around to it, getting a collaboration with you on my resume will turbocharge my career." It was a very smart move on her part to do so.
Neat. Cautious estimates say there's a hard cap of 42 days out and 42 days back not including fighting (~3 months journey total), so unless we get sucked into a timey-wimey ball (a real possibility) the actual expedition/raid might well finish inside a single 6 month turn.
I am pretty sure that Belegar knows about Qrech, and quite possibly also knows that Qrech spent a great deal of time in that region. He would absolutely accept "I got a personal rundown on two major enemy factions forces and activities taking up a major chunk of the route."
Maybe? We're currently at the level of casting Fiendishly Complex spells in battle/when tired well enough that there's no chance of miscast - so it'd depend whether being in the Chaos Wastes degraded that by one step to make battle casting a roll or two steps to not being able to reliably teleport regardless.
In other words, since we're intending to go on scouting expeditions, we might well still have access to non-emergency teleports that could work for infiltration and quiet exfiltration but not if we go loud with an assassination or stop for loot. I'm pretty doubtful we'd get mess up to the point of needing an emergency getaway if we were more cautious and just observed rather than seize opportunities though - IIRC all of the times Mathilde ended up in a running chase to get away were because we tried to off a leader and bungled it rather than bungling our stealth phase.
[x] Plan Keep It Classy
Just curious would Mathilde know if Clan Angrund had a favored Guild or not before the fall of K8P or did that information get lost over the millennia?
- Location
- Earth
I wouldn't think of it as going against the request if we get her engineering training first. If anything, improving her engineering chops before reverse engineering skaven-tech sounds like the sensible thing to do.
While she's clearly been active in arranging things for herself to do, I think she'd do better under formal instruction, even if it's from Johann.
- Location
- Spain
And what do you think about the Gas Mask? I think we should have Johann get on with next turn, and even use a few Dwarf favors to improve its design and/or mass produce them for the expedition...
Because the Chaos Wastes are basically a magic "radioactive" wasteland, and anything that helps us to avoid breathing that air would be very usefeul
Last edited:
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
[x] Plan Fulfill Obligations with Gretel
[X] Plan Fulfilling Obligations v2
[X] Plan Fulfilling Obligations v2
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
I was originally envisaging this as an effect almost so low-level as to be aesthetic, rather than an actual thing, but the more I thought about it the more I realized how incredibly useful a hand on the end of our staff would be. It would certainly be cool enough that it would be worth expending effort on it specifically, rather than asking to have it as flavor text, so that we can get it to move around at will (hopefully by thought).
I won't talk in detail about all the hand puns it would allow us to make (although it would let us make many), or how useful a grabber on a stick would be (reach it through a window and yoinketh whatever's caught our eye). Instead, I'll point out something that didn't stick out even to me at first.
Right now, our ability to fight on a mount is curtailed slightly by our choice of weapon. Greatswords are great, but there's a reason Brettonians consider it a sacrifice that questing knights have to give up their lances; if your opponent is close enough to strike your mount you're way too close to be comfortable. A spear or halberd is just better because it has more reach.
We can't reforge a runic greatsword, and if we did and our opponents got in close anyways we'd be in real trouble because most of our experience is in greatswording and not lancing. In addition, a purely mundane weapon wouldn't be too great with our size and build; unless we could put the weight of our mount behind a spear we'd only scratch up anything actually worth fighting.
Finally, we can't exactly go and ask for another runic weapon to pick up a different style of combat, because that'd be super expensive and it'd require us to carry around a twelve foot long polearm everywhere which would be significantly more cumbersome than a greatsword and fit through less doors.
However, if our dragonbone staff had a hand on the end, then it could just grab on to the end of Branalhune (which we know is light enough to be one-handed, because runic weapons are all hand weapons in the lore and that was translated into the quest this way), and suddenly we've got a sword-spear.
There'd be a lot of mechanical issues with that normally, because holding onto something isn't as strong as affixing it in place, but Branalhune provides its own force upon impact in order to avoid tearing its wielder's arms off, which means we just need to make contact and its runes will handle the rest of the effort. In addition, if it gets knocked out of our staff's hand, rather than either shattering or getting lost, we can just summon our sword back to us and put it back in place.
For the mechanical issues, we'd get something much better than a simple spear. A polearm with a hand on the end would let our staff swing around Branalhune just like we do; it'd have less of a range of motion, but if you think a spear is coming in from a certain angle it'd be quite a surprise to find that it can twist itself in the middle to avoid your guard.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I strongly suspect we will not be able to replicate the gas mask. We don't have access to rubber, and without an airtight seal a gas mask is just decoration.
I do support putting him on that next turn, though.
- Location
- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Huh. Yeah, that should actually work.
We'd have to train how to use a swordstaff to get the benefit, of course, but we were planning on doing training with our sword's unique attributes anyway, and this should be more effective when mounted, which is a decent portion of our skillset.
Even without rubber, a significant upgrade to filter quality/capabilities could be quite useful for stuff like water purification and general chemistry knowledge.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This is completely insane on every level but I can't see any actual fatal flaws in it, which might just mean that I need to get more sleep.
Being able to leverage our +5 Martial for fighting while mounted (from our Shadowsteed mastery) will be very nice out on the steppes.
Oh, absolutely. I was just responding to the specific notion of replicating the mask and distributing it to the expedition. I agree that the insights from studying the gas mask are valuable.
I mean. They'd better be. We killed an awful lot of skaven, trolls, and greenskins to get it
I'd like to learn some battle magic next turn, maybe see if we can count it as 'peripheral duties related to Karag Dum' like the anti-Chaos seminar, but this turn I think our plate is a bit full.
[x] Plan Fulfilling Obligations v2
-[x] Contains one Overwork action
-[x] MAX: Study an artefact: Captured Clan Moulder devices (as yet uninspected)
-[X] JOHANN: Have him teach Adela what he knows of engineering.
-[x] DUCK: Magical target-shooting is rough on normal targets. Set up a specialized target range for your ducklings, and for any other wizards at Eight Peaks.
-[X] EIC: Start hiring handlers who can then start hiring informers and begin to collect non-public information.
-[x] SERENITY: Write a paper: The We book (1/2)
-[x] PENTHOUSE: Have a tower built atop Karag Nar: -100gc for 1 room, bonus to room's purpose.
-[x] Collate useful information on the northernmost Dark Lands from Qrech and Lady Magister Grey.
-[x] Seek out merchants who have travelled the Skull Road to learn what they know of it.
--[x] COIN: The Gambler
-[x] Attend classes at the Grey College:
--[x] Anti-Chaos Training
--[X] Runes and Runecraft
--[x] Enchanting
I'm okay with Max spending this turn working on his metalworking studies, and I could wish that the EIC was going for the cipher option instead, but I can live with those. What's sticking in my craw is the enchanting and runes options, which while I approve of them in the abstract, I think we'd be better off either drip-feeding in our normal turns or sneaking in during the cartography project.
Can I convince you otherwise? It sounded like the Besiegers were preparing to either go up to Marienburg or support the canal options given how they were training with boats. They're a good unit, but I think it's more important that Belegar help cover those angles even as he sends us to help with Karag Dum.
Humans cap out at 10. You can get to 11, you just won't be quite as human anymore.
I'd mention that it'd be Chaos bait, but then I saw who I was responding to.
- Location
- UK
Here is an example of a 3 turn plan that gives up one research action to get the staff made.
This Turn
Job x2 (Overwork might be narratively preferable as one of the job actions)
Research
Anti-Chaos Training
Runes
Next Turn
Job x2
Enchantment
Turn Staff
Turn Three
Job x2
Armour
Research
This Turn
Job x2 (Overwork might be narratively preferable as one of the job actions)
Research
Anti-Chaos Training
Runes
Next Turn
Job x2
Enchantment
Turn Staff
Turn Three
Job x2
Armour
Research
- Location
- Brazil
I'd say the entire "Storm of Chaos" aspect more than makes up for that. There were like entire armies of daemons around.
Chaos Wastes is bad, but an Everchosen is way worse.
Last edited:
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This is a totally reasonable alternative, though I think it makes more sense for This Turn to drop the Coin action than one of the classes. I am approval voting @LightLan's v2 plan, which does this, and I encourage people concerned about our job to do so as well.
(Also, Overwork is no longer a specific action like in the early days of the quest, it's just a thing you can invoke on the turn as a whole to gain an extra action. You don't flag a specific action with it anymore.)
- Location
- Brazil
Overturn a barrel of AV and say Tzeentch nine times.
- Location
- UK
An option I did not opt for anticipating as I am that after the armour and the staff will be arguments for why we should sacrifice research to start sword training.
- Location
- Greece
Thats why we need an anti chaos class.
chocolote12
A Penguin Flailing Against The Keyboard Of Life.
The anti-chaos class is restricted specifically because it teaches you what to actually do to get their attention ('do this or else that will happen' means you know how to do both this and that).
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
OK, but I don't think it's reasonable to sacrifice climbing the power curve in favor of additional research when we're about to go into a very dangerous region of the world with minimal backup. If you want to spend more time on the job, sure, fine, but blue-sky research isn't going to keep us alive in the Chaos Wastes, whereas stuff like "the best staff or armor we can craft" very well might.
- Location
- Greece
[X] Plan Fulfilling Obligations v2
Yeah, that seems better to me too. I want to study Ranald's coin, but we have several things that take priority over that this turn which, hopefully, won't be factors next turn.
Yeah, that seems better to me too. I want to study Ranald's coin, but we have several things that take priority over that this turn which, hopefully, won't be factors next turn.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
[x] Plan Keep It Classy
- Location
- UK
It is unlikely that the magical equivalent of non-magical plate (instead of mail) will make the difference between surviving a scouting action or not surviving a scouting action. It might make a difference to being wounded or heavily wounded of course so it is a nice-to-have. My proposal only has a turn of difference in how long it takes to get the armour after all. Magister Mathilde is a competent scout who only occasionally risks herself in dangerous raids, she is in fact entirely capable of doing this job with her existing equipment. Of which by empire mage standards she is extremely well supplied with high-quality gear.
The advantage of blue-sky research is that it changes our vision of what 'the best' is. It used to be that dwarf runesmiths view of how long it takes to recharge their runes was measured in decades. No doubt their turns were filled with arguments towards spending AP on specially recharging a rune so they'd be ready for the next big war. Now it can be measured in Vitae.