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.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yeah, OK.
[X] DIPLO: Collegiate
Dropping my Polyglot vote despite my earlier strong support of it. Don't get me wrong, I still support it and will be happy with it if it wins. But I think I prefer Collegiate for the stories it enables and for the themes it strengthens. Specifically: Polyglot strengthens Mathilde directly, but Collegiate strengthens Mathilde's ability to work with others. And between the two, I want to develop the latter more than the former, because I like characters and I like character interaction and "Mathilde makes stuff happen by getting the Superfriends to team up and do awesome shit" is a story I prefer to read more than "Mathilde makes stuff happen by being so personally knowledgeable."
[X] DIPLO: Dawri
[X] LESSON: Mystic
[X] LESSON: Theologian
[X] LESSON: Poker Face
Other stuff that's not gonna win but I'm still letting my freak flag fly.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Strictly speaking, Polyglot will also strengthen Mathilde's ability to work with other by virtue of communication being a somewhat important part of coorporation.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It's true! But that would be more relevant if we were planning on going places where we were unlikely to have a language in common with anyone; the primary usage people are expressing excitement about is "Mathilde, personally, can read more books." And stacking library bonuses to the sky is just less exciting to me than montages of assembling the crew for the heist of the century.
It is not just library bonuses, it is also magical languages that cannot be used to full potential though a translator.
Don't underestimate how much being able to speak to people fluently in their native tongue improves how well we can work with them, particularly as a first impression. As an example, Bretonnian may be mutually intelligible with Reikspeil, but it's likely Bretonnians would still respond better to being spoken to in their own language.
We already nearly have an Advanced Colleges of Magic diplomacy skill. We're on top of that. Mathilde is already good at working with other Imperial Wizards, it's something that we can do very well already.
If we actually want to assemble a crew for the heist of the century and want to recruit; say, a Nipponese Ninja, being able to talk to them would help. Or if, as seems quite plausible, nature spirits have their own private language, and we want to chat to a naiad. Seeing as the Empire's Cults do, it would hardly be a surprise.
Particularly when we can just buy top flight assistance from the Colleges with College Favour, meaning that Collegiate makes the least marginal difference.
We already nearly have an Advanced Colleges of Magic diplomacy skill. We're on top of that. Mathilde is already good at working with other Imperial Wizards, it's something that we can do very well already.
If we actually want to assemble a crew for the heist of the century and want to recruit; say, a Nipponese Ninja, being able to talk to them would help. Or if, as seems quite plausible, nature spirits have their own private language, and we want to chat to a naiad. Seeing as the Empire's Cults do, it would hardly be a surprise.
Particularly when we can just buy top flight assistance from the Colleges with College Favour, meaning that Collegiate makes the least marginal difference.
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- Location
- USA
[x] DIPLO: Collegiate
[x] DIPLO: Polyglot
[x] LESSON: Cartographer
[x] LESSON: Logistician
[x] DIPLO: Polyglot
[x] LESSON: Cartographer
[x] LESSON: Logistician
I'm pretty sure Shallya is bigger.
I don't think he minds.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Right, but again, that's about Mathilde's personal capabilities. Sure, we'll be able to learn Arcane Khazalid more readily (assuming it exists)... but why do we need to learn Arcane Khazalid personally if we've got a runesmith on the team who knows it? That's my whole point; I like stories about an ensemble getting to do awesome stuff as opposed to the protagonist doing everything. So I'd like to make it easier for us to recruit the College part of that ensemble.
Because Runesmiths don't have Windsight and cannot create magical enchantments. As the Waystones may well be partially implemented/written in Arcane Khazalid, that's a big deal. It could very easily be critical for Mathilde to be able to read and write Arcane Khazalid, as the archmages that created the second generation Waystones quite probably did.
Particularly as it would probably mean one person could simultaneously have an understanding of both Aonoquean and Arcane Khazalid. There are very likely magical concepts that can only be expressed in one or the other, and can't be properly translated. The combination may well be more than the sum of its parts.
It should already be trivial to recruit Imperial Wizards for the project - the Eonir library should be a massive draw, and we can just earn and spend College Favour based on its insights to hire them if required. This makes it easier to get a unique capability.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Okay, but picture this: Founding a new We colony in Laurelorn with baby spiders and using Polyglot to teach them how to behave properly.
The We considered us for mating compatibility, it's totally possible!
- Location
- Earth
Getting any Magic User to give up secrets is like pulling teeth at best.
It definitely won't be trivial.
We can write a couple of papers and hire a Jade Lord Magister for six months almost literally trivially. We'd just have to rely on the east magical library in the Old World to tempt them into sharing what they know afterwards.
This is an area in which we are particularly strong. Finding people who know both Aonoquean and Arcane Khazalid is likely to be significantly harder. Particularly if we want them to also know the Cultic language of the Old World, or whatever languages the Damsels and Kislevites casters encode their spells and enchantments in.
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[X] DIPLO: Collegiate
[X] DIPLO: Dawri
[X] DIPLO: Polyglot
[X] DIPLO: Trucemaker
[X] LESSON: Cartographer
[X] LESSON: Dhar Insight
[X] LESSON: Leader
[X] LESSON: Logistician
[X] LESSON: Mystic
[X] LESSON: Syncretic
[X] LESSON: Theologian
[X] DIPLO: Dawri
[X] DIPLO: Polyglot
[X] DIPLO: Trucemaker
[X] LESSON: Cartographer
[X] LESSON: Dhar Insight
[X] LESSON: Leader
[X] LESSON: Logistician
[X] LESSON: Mystic
[X] LESSON: Syncretic
[X] LESSON: Theologian
There will never be a elf who can learn Arcane Khazalid and there will never be a Runesmith who learns the elf magic tongue, it is us or no one for deriving anything that might be gleamed from knowing both.
[X] DIPLO: Collegiate
I am positively surprised that this option is actually competitive. I have already stated in the past that I consider the colleges to be a total gem within the setting, so anything that incentives more interactions with them has my full support.
I am positively surprised that this option is actually competitive. I have already stated in the past that I consider the colleges to be a total gem within the setting, so anything that incentives more interactions with them has my full support.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I disagree with this.
So we should not assume that recruiting them is an ezpz slam dunk.
We could hire them with CF to do stuff for us, but not to share the secret principles they know that's relevant to the project. That's why Mathilde said she'd approach the Jades through official channels. We know from Boney that revealing the secrets without official Order sanction to do so is a death sentence:
So no, we cannot trivially hire a Jade LM to spill. We need to recruit the order, otherwise we can hire them for expertise but not for sharing knowledge.
I still don't think we can learn Anoqeyan at all without going to the White Tower, which is not currently on the table. Maybe the Grey Lords use it, but if so Boney sure hasn't said so (presumably because Mathilde has no way to know).
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I'm pretty sure all elf mages worth the name use that and it includes the Eonir.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Well, it could be relatively trivially done.
We hire the LM to do whatever job, then we surprise stab them with a cannonball-sword and raise them as a loyal servant. That jerk Alkharad was confident he could keep Mathilde both useful and loyal in undeath, and if he could do it then there's no way Mathilde can't!
Now, surviving the repercussions of doing that is very much non-trivial, but that's an entirely different question.
I don't see how Collegiate is at all relevant to the discussion then. If it's punishable by death for them to share their knowledge, it's equally punishable by death if they share it because they thought bringing the Eonir'a knowledge of Ghyran back to the College was worth the exchange or because Mathilde talked them into it because she knows what makes Collegiate wizards tick.
Classical Greek isn't a living language and isn't taught like one. That doesn't mean that people aren't talk to read, write, and even speak in it in limited ways. They just focus on it was a written language rather than as conversational one.
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