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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
Not really comparable to what the Jade College knows.
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We don't actually know the extent of the knowledge that the Jades possess. They're definitely better and more knowledgeable when it comes to tapping into the power of waystones, but we don't know how far it extends beyond that- they might have more knowledge on what to do if you encounter a fucked-up waystone or a ritual to defile one, or they might be just as dependent on the instructions the elves handed out as the rest of the colleges. Though honestly, wanting to bring Pan along for a single unlikely and very specific scenario doesn't seem like the greatest reason. Personally, I'd want to bring her to see more cheerful plant-based murder, and in the hopes she'll pick up some healing magic for the trip.
 
Glau said:
Because you haven't laid out any way to do anything with it that *doesn't* involve decomposition. Decomposition is what AV does- bump it too hard, show it to the wrong moon, heck even *look* at it a bit too hard and angerly, it explodes. So I assume everything you talk about either involves AV decomposing, or requires some as-yet-unknown way to work with it that doesn't decompose it.

And we have no evidence yet that it can be anything other than winds. Heck, I'm not even really convinced divine energy is different in type rather than just being more complex- lace instead of raw wool of the winds.



What is 'that energy'? Like, I like this in concept, but I feel like you are dodging the practical question of 'How?' in favor of playing in conceptual space. Do we bind the spirit physically in one place and pour AV over it, a drop at a time? Why do you think this would this reinforce the spirit, rather than blowing holes in it with foreign energy?

There's like six assumptions in here about energy, spirits, AV, and how AV converts to different states, and I think I disagree with at least a few of them.


Overall, I'm looking at this stuff as a liquid. It's in a bottle, we can't really use magic on or near it, it doesn't like to mix into other stuff or be absorbed by living things. How, in a physical, crafter sense, is it to be used?

That's where I see the main disconnect. There is a bunch of stuff we could do IF we could figure out how to magically manipulate it without exploding, but until that becomes a possibility, whatever we do with AV we need to be able to also do with a glass of water.

So, how would we use water to fill up a spirit?
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If divine energy was made of the Winds, all wizards would be able to see the actions of gods, and we wouldn't need the Avatar trait to do so.

Also, you're acting like AV is made of the Winds, rather than AV reacting with reality to make the Winds.

As to how, there is no how, anymore than there's a how to how the AV transforms into the Winds on contact with concentrations of them. I expect it to transform into whatever flavour of magical energy it touches. Touch it to a concentration of Ranald energy, and I expect it to transform into more of Ranald. Touch it to a concentration of Dammerlichter energy, and it will transform into more Dammerlichter.

If we use the Protector face of the Coin to take on the identity of the Dammerlichter, I think we can (possibly using ritual magic) become a focus for the energy of people's belief, although this would probably require Ranald's cooperation so it didn't touch his own energy. This is more of a long shot though. The little charms of the Dammerlichter are another option, although they probably have too little energy.
 
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Alratan said:
If divine energy was made of the Winds, all wizards would be able to see the actions of gods, and we wouldn't need the Avatar trait to do so.

Also, you're acting like AV is made of the Winds, rather than AV reacting with reality to make the Winds.

As to how, there is no how, anymore than there's a how to how the AV transforms into the Winds on contact with concentrations of them. I expect it to transform into whatever flavour of magical energy it touches. Touch it to a concentration of Ranald energy, and I expect it to transform into more of Ranald. Touch it to a concentration of Dammerlichter energy, and it will transform into more Dammerlichter.
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Does that mean if we poured it on our shadow, it'd turn into more Mathilde? :V
 
Alratan said:
Also, you're acting like AV is made of the Winds, rather than AV reacting with reality to make the Winds.
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Yes, we've observed it behaving in a manner consistent with it being made of winds thus far and have not observed it behaving in any manner inconsistent with it being made of winds. I don't think many would say that it's absolutely guaranteed that it's made of winds, but that really isn't an implausible interpretation of its nature. Of particular note is that exposing it to any wind produces all eight, not just the one it was exposed to.
 
Saidoro said:
Yes, we've observed it behaving in a manner consistent with it being made of winds thus far and have not observed it behaving in any manner inconsistent with it being made of winds. I don't think many would say that it's absolutely guaranteed that it's made of winds, but that really isn't an implausible interpretation of its nature. Of particular note is that exposing it to any wind produces all eight, not just the one it was exposed to.
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Apart from it not looking like it's made of Winds when examined under Windsight. It would then be a liquid Qhyash construct, essentially a persistent High Magic spell.

Thorek also told us what he perceives it as, the raw material of the Aethyr, not a construct of the eight Winds.
 
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Ekzentric Lohner said:
Edit: Could we specify a favor budget for "emergency enchanted item for when I need to break out of a melee and am too pressed to cast safely (or at all)" and then leave the choice of wind/spell up to Mathilde?
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We could enchant something that would work for that ourselves IMO; at least, if it's possible to make an item that casts two spells simultaneously. Because I think that Universal Confusion + Shroud of Invisibility would work great for that.
 
Alratan said:
If divine energy was made of the Winds, all wizards would be able to see the actions of gods, and we wouldn't need the Avatar trait to do so.
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We know that windsight can see emotions, and lies, but not all wizards can use it for those purposes either. I think this is more of a tier thing than a difference in type; the more subtle things only become apparent at greater skill levels. I think it goes something like this, though the last few are speculative:

Your attuned wind > magic in general > distinguishing the other winds > reading emotions > non-wind magics in general > distinguishing between different types of non-wind energy > seeing dim magics overlaid on bright energy sources > reading unfamiliar enchantments.

And we do know, I think, that wizards can see the more brute forms of divine energy- the smiting and the healing- via even crude magesight, right? Avatar seemed like it was for the subtle stuff.

We've seen, I think, Sigmarite, Shallayn, Ranaldian, and Mork/Gork flavors of divine energy, even if that last is a bit debatable. All were flavors distinct from each other, and from the winds, but all of them were perceived through magesight. The one working of Ranald we were watching closely for *looked* like a vastly more-complex version of the workings that we do, similarly to how Ranald himself looked like a human soul but bigger.

So if AV is the most basic form of warp energy (and not a limited subset of only winds or dhar due to it's source in a manifested apparition) then I would expect that providing it to a god wouldn't actually turn it divine until it is cycled through the god's soul, like the way we cycle wind through our soul to cast spells. And the gods have an infinite supply of this energy all around them, which means that something else has to be going on for AV to be valuable to a god.

So my suspicion, if there is a large barrier to bringing arbitrary amounts of divine energy into the real world, is that having the AV already here might be a work-around and allow the god to act 'freely'. I'm assuming this is your mental model, where Ranald would expend a tiny amount of effort to poke the AV on the other side of the barrier into a useful form. I don't expect this to be divine energy, because it hasn't passed through Ranald's soul and it isn't in an environment where that is the dominant ground state, not like the winds are in the real world or dhar is when wrongmoon is out.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I expect the AV on the coin to decompose into winds that are spontaneously woven into spells opaque in purpose and outcome to us. I don't think more divine energy would result.

We should try it though. See who is right.
 
Saidoro said:
Yes, we've observed it behaving in a manner consistent with it being made of winds thus far and have not observed it behaving in any manner inconsistent with it being made of winds. I don't think many would say that it's absolutely guaranteed that it's made of winds, but that really isn't an implausible interpretation of its nature. Of particular note is that exposing it to any wind produces all eight, not just the one it was exposed to.
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I would actually say it's categorically not the eights winds in a superposition. It's something much more than that and whilst it can become the eights winds of magic that's because raw Aethyer becomes that when interacting with reality. Godly power doesn't become the eight winds of magic when it enters the material world. Otherwise as Alratan states we wouldn't need a special trait to perceive divine magic as it would just be eight flavours of the winds of magic in a spell formation.

Consider that Waaagh energy as well isn't just the eight winds of magic as controlled by an orc/goblin shaman. it's something more than the sum of the parts due to the waaagh field and Mork+Gork.
 
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[X] [COLLEGE] Aqshy item emulating Dragon Breath (20 Favor).
[X] [PURCHASE] Commission a painting of the duckling club together from an artist.

Alratan said:
If divine energy was made of the Winds, all wizards would be able to see the actions of gods, and we wouldn't need the Avatar trait to do so.

Also, you're acting like AV is made of the Winds, rather than AV reacting with reality to make the Winds.

As to how, there is no how, anymore than there's a how to how the AV transforms into the Winds on contact with concentrations of them. I expect it to transform into whatever flavour of magical energy it touches. Touch it to a concentration of Ranald energy, and I expect it to transform into more of Ranald. Touch it to a concentration of Dammerlichter energy, and it will transform into more Dammerlichter.
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First off, you're conflating Windsight and Avatar. Avatar is what lets us attribute Divine energies to being used by a God as opposed to passively doing whatever that flavor of energy does or being directed by a priest. Virtually every form of Windsight can detect spellcasting/miracles from a priest (which absolutely fall under "actions of a God") - Avatar has nothing to do with that.

Secondly, your argument is based on the idea that decomposition of AV into Winds is merely a subset of the greater pattern of AV turning into whatever form of energy it touches - but it completely fails to account for the fact that there is zero evidence of AV->(insert energy type) actually being a larger pattern since we only have the example of it turning to Winds. Or Dhar, but we've already seen Winds->Dhar in the presence of Dhar so even then it's tough to claim to that will hold. You're extrapolating from a very small set of data points, which would allow for virtually any other hypothesized pattern to be equally valid.

It also fails to account for the fact that even your extrapolation based off of zero evidence is true, the AV-> Winds process is favored over other transformations somehow because it's not just happening when AV touches Winds but also when AV is physically/chemically disrupted even when there is no Wind involved.
 
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Glau said:
We know that windsight can see emotions, and lies, but not all wizards can use it for those purposes either. I think this is more of a tier thing than a difference in type; the more subtle things only become apparent at greater skill levels. I think it goes something like this, though the last few are speculative:

Your attuned wind > magic in general > distinguishing the other winds > reading emotions > non-wind magics in general > distinguishing between different types of non-wind energy > seeing dim magics overlaid on bright energy sources > reading unfamiliar enchantments.

And we do know, I think, that wizards can see the more brute forms of divine energy- the smiting and the healing- via even crude magesight, right? Avatar seemed like it was for the subtle stuff.

We've seen, I think, Sigmarite, Shallayn, Ranaldian, and Mork/Gork flavors of divine energy, even if that last is a bit debatable. All were flavors distinct from each other, and from the winds, but all of them were perceived through magesight. The one working of Ranald we were watching closely for *looked* like a vastly more-complex version of the workings that we do, similarly to how Ranald himself looked like a human soul but bigger.

So if AV is the most basic form of warp energy (and not a limited subset of only winds or dhar due to it's source in a manifested apparition) then I would expect that providing it to a god wouldn't actually turn it divine until it is cycled through the god's soul, like the way we cycle wind through our soul to cast spells. And the gods have an infinite supply of this energy all around them, which means that something else has to be going on for AV to be valuable to a god.

So my suspicion, if there is a large barrier to bringing arbitrary amounts of divine energy into the real world, is that having the AV already here might be a work-around and allow the god to act 'freely'. I'm assuming this is your mental model, where Ranald would expend a tiny amount of effort to poke the AV on the other side of the barrier into a useful form. I don't expect this to be divine energy, because it hasn't passed through Ranald's soul and it isn't in an environment where that is the dominant ground state, not like the winds are in the real world or dhar is when wrongmoon is out.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I expect the AV on the coin to decompose into winds that are spontaneously woven into spells opaque in purpose and outcome to us. I don't think more divine energy would result.

We should try it though. See who is right.
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I don't think Ranald channels any form of energy through his soul to produce divine energy. I think he's made of divine energy, and that's the same thing he uses to perform his miracles.

Your views of Windsight are also unlikely to be true. It's usually weaker and less practiced wizards that can see all the Winds. Experienced wizards tend to lose the ability to perceive the other Winds as they become more attuned to their own. That's not a hard and fast rule, but it's a strong tendency.

Witchsight is generally very personal and different wizards see different things. Some see echoes of past (or future) events. Some read memories. Some see emotions. Some see none of this.


me.me.here said:
Secondly, your argument is based on the idea that decomposition of AV into Winds is merely a subset of the greater pattern of AV turning into whatever form of energy it touches - but it completely fails to account for the fact that there is zero evidence of AV->(insert energy type) actually being a larger pattern since we only have the example of it turning to Winds. Or Dhar, but we've already seen Winds->Dhar in the presence of Dhar so even then it's tough to claim to that will hold. You're extrapolating from a very small set of data points, which would allow for virtually any other hypothesized pattern to be equally valid.

It also fails to account for the fact that even your extrapolation based off of zero evidence is true, the AV-> Winds process is favored over other transformations somehow because it's not just happening when AV touches Winds but also when AV is physically/chemically disrupted even when there is no Wind involved.
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Dhar is the second example. It doens't go AV->Winds -> Dhar. It goes AV->Dhar. From this we know that AV can transform into both the different kinds of magical energy we've tried exposing it to.

Raw Aethyric energy reacts with reality to produce the Winds. That's the source of all the Winds, so it's not a surprise, and is accounted for in my description
 
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Alratan said:
Your views of Windsight are also unlikely to be true. It's usually weaker and less practiced wizards that can see all the Winds. Experienced wizards tend to lose the ability to perceive the other Winds as they become more attuned to their own. That's not a hard and fast rule, but it's a strong tendency.
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Citation? This is new information to me, so I'm a bit suspicious of it.

I'm also pretty sure that your view on how divine magic works suffers because it implies that there is a fixed and limited amount of energy a god can draw- IE, everything that makes them up- and restricts any methods to restore it, if they can't take in ambient warp around them. So warp->soul->effect seems like it should hold for both gods and humans.
 
Alratan said:
Apart from it not looking like it's made of Winds when examined under Windsight. It would then be a liquid Qhyash construct, essentially a persistent High Magic spell.

Thorek also told us what he perceives it as, the raw material of the Aethyr, not a construct of the eight Winds.
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Would you describe water as particularly resembling steam? "Not Looking Like" and "Looking Like Not" aren't the same thing and neither is always representative of reality. And as far as I'm aware Vitae can only claim the former wrt Winds.
Thorek has made a guess as to what it is based on what it physically looked like, he's not any more of an expert on the warp generally than Mathilde is, and he's had less time to study the Vitae in particular.
 
Glau said:
Citation? This is new information to me, so I'm a bit suspicious of it.

I'm also pretty sure that your view on how divine magic works suffers because it implies that there is a fixed and limited amount of energy a god can draw- IE, everything that makes them up- and restricts any methods to restore it, if they can't take in ambient warp around them. So warp->soul->effect seems like it should hold for both gods and humans.
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Realm of Sorcery in the section on Witchsight, I believe. We're not allowed to quote primary sources on SV.

Mortal worship creates and fuels the gods, so would continually replenish them as the souls of mortals touch the Aethyr. I don't think there is ambient warp energy around them. It think the gods are the (overlapping) landscape of the Aethyr, and they encompass all those parts of the Aethyr that is their portfolio.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
maybe this one? (why are all Druids or nature wizards red-haired?)
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Because druids are implicitly Celtic and nothing visually screams 'Celt' like red hair, which is nigh-unique to Northern Europe and by far most common in the most emphatically Celtic bits of it, namely Ireland and Scotland. Also, red visually contrasts well with green, so if you're going to dress someone in green, red hair just works as an offset.
 
Alratan said:
Realm of Sorcery in the section on Witchsight, I believe. We're not allowed to quote primary sources on SV.

Mortal worship creates and fuels the gods, so would continually. I don't think there is ambient warp energy around them. It think the gods are the (overlapping) landscape of the Aethyr, and they encompass all those parts of the Aethyr that is their portfolio.
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Huh. I'm going to wait for that to appear in canon then, because it seems counter to how magical development and windsight development have worked in-quest thus far.

As far as mortal worship creating and fueling the Gods, I am also suspicious. This sounds a lot like mortals centering themselves in the stories they tell about the cosmos than a reality, because it seems like the most powerful gods are the ones with the lowest amount of explicit worshipers (the chaos gods) followed by the ones with the largest amount of explicit worshipers. (Gork, Mork, and the horned rat.) So that mechanism is... incomplete, or it requires epicycles. I'm more of the opinion that gods are independent warp entities, but how much they can reach into the world is determined by how much worship pulls them towards it.

I don't think the gods would cease without worship, because we know of old forgotten gods still kicking about, even if weakened greatly. And I don't think worship is required for an ascension, because we've got saints who haven't become gods and Ranald who did, without the benefit of a cult backing him up at the time. (The horned rat also seems like someone whose cult came after his becoming a god.) Hashut was, I think, a never-living warp entity that became a god on the backs of the chaos dwarves, but pretty sure there was more going on there too than just worship.

So what a divine is, how it differs from a mortal or a saint, and how many fundamentally different types of divine there are all seem open questions.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
So, big question with important philosophical implications.

Now that its been confirmed that Pan does, in fact, like wearing boots. she can no longer look like the default 'female jade wizard'

I now must seek out a new Pan avatar.

I somewhat like this one, but its a bit to Celtic. (and Red haired, like red hair, but its not Pan)

maybe this one? (why are all Druids or nature wizards red-haired?)
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Glau said:
I appreciate this attempt to put a face to a name! I went through the image search for druidess and really liked these:


and


Edit: added spoiler tags. The first one is going to be my head-cannon for Pan regardless of what else comes up, I think- the pose, the background, and the outfit are all really close to what's in my head.
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I quite like this one.
and this
 
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Alratan said:
Dhar is the second example. It doens't go AV->Winds -> Dhar. It goes AV->Dhar. From this we know that AV can transform into both the different kinds of magical energy we've tried exposing it to.

Raw Aethyric energy reacts with reality to produce the Winds. That's the source of all the Winds, so it's not a surprise, and is accounted for in my description
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We've also exposed AV to Runes, which are at least as 'other energies' as divine ones, and yet the AV did not then turn into Runic energies. In any of the multiple possible reactions. There's also the way that the Raw Aethyric energy reacting with reality to produce Winds doesn't cover everything, because we know for a fact that AV can sit in a jug/glass vial (which is very obviously part of reality) without turning into Winds.

If your theory requires picking and choosing between examples (or playing silly buggers with definitions of what is or isn't reality or a specific energy, which you are also trying to do) it isn't a very good theory - it's at the very least incomplete, so relying on its predictive power is a crapshoot.

We're pretty sure we have some eggs, but we're not at the point where we can start counting hens/roosters.
 
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