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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Boney said:
Compared to the baseline of 'we bricked up the windows because otherwise we would have had to pay a tax on them, so bring your own candles', a fancy shopping mall would be unimaginable decadence.
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That's why I said that a con of this option might be that it won't result in something that is inconceivably over the top to the players. And that's why I'm still voting for it.
And yes, the Dwarven baseline also being low compared to, well, anything actually objectively comfortable to Humans, is what I am worried about.
Fayhem said:
I've seen a couple of people mention things like this. I would advise surrendering this hope now. The point of guild secrets, whether Dwarven or wizardly, is not to keep the knowledge from everybody else (as in, from the general public). It is to keep the knowledge from anybody else - as in, anybody who isn't a member of that guild. I'm highly dubious that the prospect of the knowledge being really secure in the hands of somebody who is not a member of that guild would be a draw. Especially in the case of Dwarven guilds, as Boney has confirmed several times that a), Dwarven guild secrets are never written down in the first place, and b), knowledge being lost, if not passed on through a master-apprentice system where the master identifies and teaches a "worthy" apprentice, is regarded as a feature rather than a bug in Dwarven culture.
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The Security option would allow to keep it from anybody else. It would be like a private bank vault, except organized and accessible like a library specifically for those that have a key. It would be at the ass end of the world for any Human organization, but it would allow Humans to store their secrets in places where they won't ever be murdered or burned. So for instance the Gold College could be sure that as long as just the secret key and a way to show that one does in fact still belong to the Gold Order survives then even after the fall of the Empire the Gold Order could still rebuild.

As for Dwarven Guilds, the chance of this working is even slimmer, but it might not be zero. A truly secure library with multiple hidden levels of back rooms for each Guild might within this generation convince at least the members of the relatively more radical K8P Guilds to store knowledge that would otherwise have only been passed by mouth. And over a couple of centuries that trend might even spread further throughout the Karaz Ankor, especially once the Runesmith Guild (often an example for the proper traditional ways) has gone through a massive upheaval due to Thorek.
One problem with the current system is that in times of crisis even a master with a worthy apprentice won't teach them all of their secrets simply due to constrains on time and having to prioritize the imminently useful. But if a Master can just give their apprentice a key and keyphrase to a private room literally invisible and impenetrable to anyone else, then they might just do so once they are willing but not able to share their secrets.

I mean we are talking about a library where we would dare to store the Liber Mortis here.

Still, I see the chance of this working out like that at all at maybe 20-30%. It's appealing enough to think about, but doesn't seem actually worth voting for to me when compared to my top three choices.
Boney said:
There's plenty of Cityborn willing to scribe from the public sections of the library for pay, so all the way to +5 for non-magical subjects. Magical subjects would require a fair bit more negotiating, and it's probably best to leave that until you've got a library to negotiate with and for.
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Wasn't access to Laurelorn's library a big part of why we came here in the first place? When do we expect to get that access?
 
Codex said:
I mean, just look at this:

"Khorne favours his Flesh Hounds above all the other Daemons in his service, and he lavishes them with generous gifts." 8th Edition Daemons of Chaos Pg 31.

Khorne clearly doesn't favor Flesh Hounds above all the other daemons because they're the strongest. Bloodhunters, which are Bloodletter squad leaders, are about as strong. Heralds, Juggernauts and Bloodthirsters are all much more powerful. Yet none of them get a Collar automatically. Khorne just likes his dogs.

Dogs for the Dog God. Collars for the Collar Throne.
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You know, this topic raises an important question: we know Khorne is a dog person and Slaanesh is pretty obviously a cat person, but what sort of pets do Tzeentch and Nurgle favour?
 
I understand the desire for Order in our library, as it is the thing even my modern scientific sensibilities would most want out of such an undertaking. But keeping in mind that this is Warhammer and what kind of knowledge well accumulate and looking at it with the sensibilities of a Grey Wizard Security seems simply the most sensible option.

[x] Security
 
Belkar said:
I understand the desire for Order in our library, as it is the thing even my modern scientific sensibilities would most want out of such an undertaking. But keeping in mind that this is Warhammer and what kind of knowledge well accumulate and looking at it with the sensibilities of a Grey Wizard Security seems simply the most sensible option.

[x] Security
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This is the inside of a dwarf hold, that is pretty damn secure by default and more to the point we are not really planning to focus on forbidden lore, that is more in the nature of what we keep in our private library. This is our attempt to make books that should be public more available. I mean sure we will have some propriety information in there, but only incidentally.
 
Codex said:
It should be noted that the Daemon involved here is a Bloodletter, albeit a powerful one. Khorne doesn't have degrees of servants. He's got Bloodletters and Bloodthirsters and nothing in between, but Bloodletters are typically not Greater Daemons. Skulltaker might count, but I'm not sure if the Red Flayer (the Daemon in question) is. The artifact also only contains a third of his essence as a note.
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Also Blood Thrones, Skull Cannons, Heralds, Daemon Princes, Exalted Bloodthirsters and Furies (although Furies are a bit weird).
 
DragonParadox said:
So all of them shift at once, or is it and individual thing? I always thought it was the latter, sort of like imps.
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That's an interesting question. I don't think canon answers. I think it'd be partially individual (based on local circumstances like being in a temple of Khorne or something) and partially a species wide thing (if Khorne is ascendant amongst the four, Furies without a powerful local circumstance default to him).
 
deathofrats0808 said:
Also Blood Thrones, Skull Cannons, Heralds, Daemon Princes, Exalted Bloodthirsters and Furies (although Furies are a bit weird).
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Maybe I should put more specifics, conditionals and clarifications in my posts.

Ok, so to clarify, I'm talking about Daemonic Servants that are unique to Khorne and I generally mean Intelligent ones. I said "Bloodletters, Bloodthirsters and nothing in between", which I maintain as correct. Flesh Hounds and Juggernauts are not intelligent so I placed them below Bloodletters. Furies are not unique to Khorne and much weaker compared to Bloodletters besides. Heralds are strong Bloodletters. Bloodcrushers are Bloodletters on Juggernauts. Exalted Bloodthirsters are still Bloodthirsters, they're just blessed by the Blood God. Blood Thrones and Skull Cannons are war machines so it's like saying "the Steam Tank and Imperial Great Cannon are soldiers of the Empire". I will give you that Daemon Prince is between Bloodletter and Bloodthrister, even though they are not unique to Khorne.

Note to self, if you make a post in this thread where you make a statement, be as absurdly specific as possible.
 
Codex said:
Blood Thrones and Skull Cannons are war machines so it's like saying "the Steam Tank and Imperial Great Cannon are soldiers of the Empire". I will give you that Daemon Prince is between Bloodletter and Bloodthrister, even though they are not unique to Khorne.
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Blood Thrones and Skull Cannons are sapient though. They're not just machines, they're daemons in their own right.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
Blood Thrones and Skull Cannons are sapient though. They're not just machines, they're daemons in their own right.
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Neither of them are sapient. Aside from the argument Boney already made over whether you could count any Daemon as Sapient since they're all fragments of a Dark God, both are unintelligent machines powered by artifice and daemonic engineering and operated by a Bloodletter Crew that happens to have the soul of a Daemon. They are not "Servants of Khorne" anymore than the chair I sit on. It just so happens that this chair screams and wails.
 
Codex said:
Neither of them are sapient. Aside from the argument Boney already made over whether you could count any Daemon as Sapient since they're all fragments of a Dark God, both are unintelligent machines powered by artifice and daemonic engineering and operated by a Bloodletter Crew that happens to have the soul of a Daemon. They are not "Servants of Khorne" anymore than the chair I sit on. It just so happens that this chair screams and wails.
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They're daemon engines. Literally daemons trapped in machinery. It's the same thing as a Soul Grinder, just aligned to Khorne.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
They're daemon engines. Literally daemons trapped in machinery. It's the same thing as a Soul Grinder, just aligned to Khorne.
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Yes and they're incapable of doing anything without a Bloodletter Crew, so I'm maintaining my position that they can't do anything without them and therefore aren't sapient. The crew aren't "handlers" like the Dwarf Hellcanon, which is capable of doing stuff by itself. The Soulgrinder doesn't need a crew to fight. The fact that these two things need a Crew indicate the Hellcannon and Soulgrinder have things that these warmachine lack.
 
Codex said:
Yes and they're incapable of doing anything without a Bloodletter Crew, so I'm maintaining my position that they can't do anything without them and therefore aren't sapient. The crew aren't "handlers" like the Dwarf Hellcanon, which is capable of doing stuff by itself. The Soulgrinder doesn't need a crew to fight. The fact that these two things need a Crew indicate the Hellcannon and Soulgrinder have things that these warmachine lack.
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I disagree, I think they have crew because those aid them, not because they're necessary to operate them. A Skull Cannon can fight without rew but cannot load itself, while a Blood Throne is built to be a mark of favour. I think it's a question of purpose, not ability.
 
fictionfan said:
I would expect that to be something of a baseline actually. Extreme should be being able to find a book using incomplete information such as only knowing the name of the author, or the date of publication, or maybe even only the topic.
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You are vastly overestimating how organized a typical library is. We've been told the term "stacks" is sadly literal where pretty much every library kinda gives up on sorting a good chunk of its books and just chunks them in physical piles.

The Lone badger said:
[X] Order
A book you can find is worth two in the stacks.
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This analogy is off by factor of 10
 
Huh. I saw a community post for Warhammer revealing the Border Princes in Warhammer the Old World, and the reason I was interested in it is that the map is astonishingly close to my memories of the various maps of the Border Princes availble in Warhammer Fantasy, except it's somewhat more fleshed out. A reminder that Old World takes place around the time of Magnus the Pious, but they clarified that while the rulers in the area aren't the same, the places/settlements mostly remain:
Ignore the factions presented there I don't think they're relevant. The geographic features match from memory, and I recognside Akendorf, Munzig, Mirstadt, Zenres and of course Karitamen's Tomb. There's also a bunch of new places alongside the old.

Overall, the map is very pretty. I prefer the way it looks over the WFRP 2E's maps tbh.
 
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Codex said:
Huh. I saw a community post for Warhammer revealing the Border Princes in Warhammer the Old World, and the reason I was interested in it is that the map is astonishingly close to my memories of the various maps of the Border Princes availble in Warhammer Fantasy, except it's somewhat more fleshed out. A reminder that Old World takes place around the time of Magnus the Pious, but they clarified that while the rulers in the area aren't the same, the places/settlements mostly remain:
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That makes sense. No reason for people to leave the few safe places around. And anywhere that attracted settlement once is more likely to do it again without something like Dhar poisoning or warpstone meteors to provide incentive to move away.
 
deathofrats0808 said:
They're daemon engines. Literally daemons trapped in machinery. It's the same thing as a Soul Grinder, just aligned to Khorne.
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What exactly is a Daemon Engine?

Because according to how DoC defines it, Skullcannons and Bloodthrones are the only Daemon Engines, given that Daemon Engine is a rule and they're the only ones with it.
 
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Codex said:
I'm maintaining my position that they can't do anything without them and therefore aren't sapient.
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... Um.

This would seem to imply you think, e. g., a brain in a jar hooked up to various sensory equipment doesn't count as sentient, if it isn't also hooked up to motive systems.

It would be a moral atrocity to do that to a sentient, but Chaos.
 
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