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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Fayhem said:
How on earth have people reached the conclusion that they're out of reach for the Giant Ritual of Doom if we aggro it right now?
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There's a real possibility the 200-year Giant Ritual Of Doom isn't something you can just activate early, or target easily, or redirect.
What we would then be facing is the response the Giant Ritualists have prepared, following the Ancient Widow clearing the weather.

Likely this is also a real threat to the Expedition, but hopefully orders of magnitude smaller than 'blanket Praag in the Wastes once more' or 'taint the Dwarven Waystone network with a flood of corrupted magic' or whatever has been in motion for 200 years.
 
wrecksalot said:
Stand your ground is the option where we keep an eye on it and counterspell any funny business it attempts, and get some bodyguards around us so that we can investigate safely.
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That description is missing the words "try to" before the word "counterspell". If you really wanted to be accurate, it would be "try to counterspell, with zero assistance, while simultaneously doing everything we possibly can to alert them that right now is their best chance to trigger their ritual with a minimum of interference".

Edit: and bodyguards will only protect us from physical threats. Magical threats, Krag's belt might stop once and even then only if it's a targeted spell attacking Mathilde directly. More than one direct spell or just dropping AoE spells on our head would be a threat only other wizards could help us with.
Jyn Ryvia said:
I mean, that's an argument for aggroing it early, while most everyone is far enough away to just run on and the kill targets will 'only' be Mathy and a few rangers if its two strong to beat.
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Meant to reply to this directly before; everyone else is only a mile away. The steam wagons can go for a long time each day, but they're not fast at all. They're not going to outrun anything a ritual like this might potentially summon. I mean, Nurgle daemons maybe. Anything else, no.

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Ericwinter said:
unless you're expecting said army to be summoned directly on top of the expedition
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If I was going to summon an army to attack the expedition, why would I put it anywhere else?
 
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[X] Stand your ground
I'm not at all sure of this plan but I'm even less sure of the alternatives. That said there is one course of action which I am 100% certain is the right move and that is declaring that:
[X] Stone is an excellent insulator of magic.
 
If "Stone is an excellent insulator of magic" somehow won, do you think Boney would try to run with that, or just take the runner-up?

[X] Stand your ground
[X] Stone is an excellent insulator of magic.
 
Fayhem said:
If I was going to summon an army to attack the expedition, why would I put it anywhere else?
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I mean, if it were me I'd throw the army at the person who's actively trying to muck about with my ritual and sitting on my doorstep, not the giant steam tanks a mile away. But the point was more questioning whether they would summon an army at all. Considering how hard translocation of even one person is, it would take significant effort to do that to an entire army. And, as has been pointed out before, while they've got enough power to do that, it would be greatly disruptive to whatever they were actually planning to do with that power.
 
fictionfan said:
Because we don't have an option to sneak in. Sneaking away is just delaying the inevitable for no purpose and giving away the initiative.
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Getting the convoy informed and ready, especially all the mages, isn't to no purpose. We're far, far more likely to survive all sorts of potential things with all of our allies at hand than we are with just ourselves and a few rangers.
 
Mopman43 said:
If "Stone is an excellent insulator of magic" somehow won, do you think Boney would try to run with that, or just take the runner-up?

[X] Stand your ground
[X] Stone is an excellent insulator of magic.
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Boney would absolutely kick us in the shins if we memed away the vote like that by making mathy, in story, minded fucked enough to forget what she was worried about.

and we would deserve it.
 
Ericwinter said:
I mean, if it were me I'd throw the army at the person who's actively trying to muck about with my ritual and sitting on my doorstep, not the giant steam tanks a mile away. But the point was more questioning whether they would summon an army at all. Considering how hard translocation of even one person is, it would take significant effort to do that to an entire army. And, as has been pointed out before, while they've got enough power to do that, it would be greatly disruptive to whatever they were actually planning to do with that power.
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Summoning is not translocation. I would expect a Chaos ritual to summon an army to be bringing in daemons from the Realm of Chaos, not teleporting in Norscans or something. And if they're not going to summon an army at all (which is a very real possibility!)... how exactly is calling over the dragon and the knights supposed to help anything? My point was that even if the threat takes the form of summoning in some beasties, they're going to drop them on their target, not on the clump of hardasses who have helpfully moved away from the comparatively squishy target.

Edit: also, we're not actively trying to muck about with their ritual in any vote option. Even "stand your ground" just has us waiting to react to something.
 
Fayhem said:
That description is missing the words "try to" before the word "counterspell". If you really wanted to be accurate, it would be "try to counterspell, with zero assistance, while simultaneously doing everything we possibly can to alert them that right now is their best chance to trigger their ritual with a minimum of interference".

Meant to reply to this directly before; everyone else is only a mile away. The steam wagons can go for a long time each, but they're not fast at all. They're not going to outrun anything a ritual like this might potentially summon. I mean, Nurgle daemons maybe. Anything else, no.

Edit:

If I was going to summon an army to attack the expedition, why would I put it anywhere else?
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Surely the best chance to trigger the ritual with a minimum of interference is when the Lady Magister is walking away from you.

If I was a Chaos sorcerer casting nearby the expedition, what do I have to do with the giant ritual going on under the mountain? counterspelling is messing with a spell as it is being cast, not afterwards.
 
Fayhem said:
Summoning is not translocation. I would expect a Chaos ritual to summon an army to be bringing in daemons from the Realm of Chaos, not teleporting in Norscans or something. And if they're not going to summon an army at all (which is a very real possibility!)... how exactly is calling over the dragon and the knights supposed to help anything? My point was that even if the threat takes the form of summoning in some beasties, they're going to drop them on their target, not on the clump of hardasses who have helpfully moved away from the comparatively squishy target.

Edit: also, we're not actively trying to muck about with their ritual in any vote option. Even "stand your ground" just has us waiting to react to something.
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...is it at all easier to summon an army of demons than it is to teleport them? And by what metric is a few hundred knights and a dragon less squishy a target than half a dozen or so giant steam tanks filled with rangers, slayers, cannons, and more wizards than there are Colleges?

And you are distinctly wrong with your edit. We will be actively investigating once our reinforcements arrive, while also keeping watch for something to disrupt.
 
I don't believe for a minute that this ritual is happening "under the mountain".

Mathilde stopped being able to follow the thread of power, but that doesn't mean that Chaos is actually doing something inside solid stone. A bit much even for them. Much more likely it's something going on up here on the surface, hidden by memetic effects. At least the battery portion of it.

All of this "it's under a mountain, Mathilde can't get to it" stuff is misunderstanding. If it was down there, it couldn't do anything! High probability that the enemy is up here with us, and the battery is also around here somewhere.
 
Briefvoice said:
And that's just on the dawi side. Any story you're telling the Colleges that starts with, "So I decided to follow up on Teclis's work and I found something he must have missed at the time...." is the ultimate brag if you can back it up.
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True, but unless I've missed something that's been said, Teclis didn't actually miss this, there was just nothing there when Teclis went to look. The thing that tipped Mathilde off is that there was no giant pool of built up magic lying around for her to spot, but Teclis went and looked at this a couple centuries ago, when there wouldn't have been a giant pool of built up magic anyway.
 
Jyn Ryvia said:
Boney would absolutely kick us in the shins if we memed away the vote like that by making mathy, in story, minded fucked enough to forget what she was worried about.

and we would deserve it.
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Yeah, it makes sense that the memetic effect would have a presence on the votes, but we should absolutely not let it win. A 10% of the winning vote presence or so accounts for the memetic fuckery just fine.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
True, but unless I've missed something that's been said, Teclis didn't actually miss this, there was just nothing there when Teclis went to look. The thing that tipped Mathilde off is that there was no giant pool of built up magic lying around for her to spot, but Teclis went and looked at this a couple centuries ago, when there wouldn't have been a giant pool of built up magic anyway.
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We don't mention that bit. After all the dwarf waystone network is classified.
 
I think the vote has probably been mostly decided now.

Although it is true that stone is an excellent insulator of magic.

Adhoc vote count started by Aranfan on Dec 8, 2020 at 8:54 PM, finished with 835 posts and 237 votes.
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I'm fairly certain we've already blown the whole Waystone Network secret already. Had a conversation with Algard about it and everything. Granted, we didn't tell everybody, but all the important people we would want to brag to are probably in the know.
 
Assuming we survive next update, the interesting thing is that we might want to tell Borek about the waystones. Or even Gotrek and Snorri.

Why? Because the trickle of power is still coming south from Karag Dum. Which means the waystone there is still sending power. Which means... well we don't know anything for sure, but it's notable that the K8P waystone only started working again when dwarves retook the karak. Does that mean that Karag Dum is still under dwarven control?!

Arguably Borek doesn't strictly need to know, but on the other hand it's the sort of piece of information that can help weight future decision-making.
 
Briefvoice said:
Why? Because the trickle of power is still coming south from Karag Dum. Which means the waystone there is still sending power. Which means... well we don't know anything for sure, but it's notable that the K8P waystone only started working again when dwarves retook the karak. Does that mean that Karag Dum is still under dwarven control?!

Arguably Borek doesn't strictly need to know, but on the other hand it's the sort of piece of information that can help weight future decision-making.
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It's impossible to tell what the Dum Waystone still being functional actually means, but it's a good sign.
 
Mopman43 said:
If "Stone is an excellent insulator of magic" somehow won, do you think Boney would try to run with that, or just take the runner-up?

[X] Stand your ground
[X] Stone is an excellent insulator of magic.
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Take the runner up 'cuz to take the joke vote would be a dick move and shitty GM'ing imo.
 
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