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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] Plan Measured Support
-[X] Lord Magister Egrimm van Horstmann (1 Favour)
-[X] Lady Magister Elrisse (2 Favours)
-[X] Investigate Alric (2 Favours)
-[X] Introduction to the Order of Guardians (1 Favour)
 
K von Carstein said:
That single fact makes the Jade Order one of the most important College for the survival and growth of the Empire. A major cause of death in the past was famine caused by bad harvests, especially the fact that it weakened the immunity of everyone involved. Having a large-scale way to make sure the harvests are plentiful more often than normal is a huge boon, that impacts every aspects of the Empire.
More food means more people surviving for longer and having more kids survive, more soldiers, more people to settle new lands, more potential wizards, …
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I wonder if the Damsels perform similar rituals as they're also Ghyran users.
 
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[X] Plan Ritual Support
I think people are underestimating the value of having ritualist/enchanting knowledge on board from the start. People have suggested just hiring it when we need it but I think there is a good chance when we need it is when we are trying to figure out how waystones work, aka right from the beginning.
 
The thing is, I think we've been told that even ritualists don't understand how rituals work (at least in the Colleges). They're even less of an exact science than regular spellcasting is.

As a result, I don't think they'd be that good at reverse engineering or understanding from first principles.
 
Boney said:
Skaven physiology has a supercharged adrenaline spike during battle that burns through the energy reserves of a Skaven's body so rapidly and thoroughly that they can drop dead if they don't eat immediately afterwards. This is known to Skaven as 'the Black Hunger', and the height of Skaven discipline is waiting until the battle is actually over to start eating.
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I knew about the Black Hunger, I was just under the impression that Clan Eshin were the most disciplined of all the Skaven in the Under-Kingdom and they could perhaps surpress their desires. Thinking back on it, they were fighting for like 6 hours, so maybe I was overestimating their restraint. Even regular humans can't fight for that long without severe side effects, and it's certainly worse for Skaven who are constantly squirting the Musk of Battle and pushing past their limits.
 
Boney said:
In combat, the average Clanrat moves and reacts faster than a typical state trooper of the Empire while having about equal strength, toughness, and martial ability, despite being about a foot shorter and about a quarter lighter.
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Huh. I guess I should have looked it up at some point. Seems like the only difference between Clan Rats and State Troops (other than Swordsmen) is that they trade movement and initiative for leadership (ignoring special rules and equipment about which I know too little).
 
Rafin said:
Huh. I guess I should have looked it up at some point. Seems like the only difference between Clan Rats and State Troops (other than Swordsmen) is that they trade movement and initiative for leadership (ignoring special rules and equipment about which I know too little).
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Aside from your regular state troops, it should be noted that this is an Empire General:
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And this is a Skaven Warlord:
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At the higher levels, your average Skaven leader is significantly stronger than an Empire General, but to be fair the General is more focused on leading than combat. This is personal power specced Lord unit, the Grandmaster of a Knightly Order:
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Grandmasters are also Immune to Psychology, so they're very powerful. This is the pinnacle of the Empire's strength in terms of warriors (with the exception of Kurt Helborg, the strongest swordsmen in the Empire). People like Ruprecht Wulfhart and Sigwald Kriegersson, 50 year old men who spent the majority of their lives honing their skills fighting battle after battle. And your average Skaven Warlord is about as strong as them.

The downside of course is the Skaven's lack of Leadership. Also, the Empire's strength is not in its heroes, but in its vast and incredibly diverse armies. The Empire has a mind boggling array of options and tactics that can let you entrap and decimate enemy formations, and their lords are focused around holding the line and not breaking. That is where they excel.
 
Codex said:
The downside of course is the Skaven's lack of Leadership. Also, the Empire's strength is not in its heroes, but in its vast and incredibly diverse armies. The Empire has a mind boggling array of options and tactics that can let you entrap and decimate enemy formations, and their lords are focused around holding the line and not breaking. That is where they excel.
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While skaven have poor leadership individually, their strength in numbers special rules (which adds rank bonus to their leadership), means that a skaven general in a large unit counts as Ld10 for that unit. As they take casualties and lose ranks, that bonus will decrease though. It makes skaven characters' lower leadership much less of an issue that it initially appears, although it incentivises operating in units even further.
 
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Alratan said:
While skaven have poor leadership individually, their strength in numbers special rules (which adds rank bonus to their leadership), means that a skaven general in a large unit counts as Ld10 for that unit. As they take casualties and lose ranks, that bonus will decrease though. It makes skaven characters' lower leadership much less of an issue that it initially appears, although it incentivises operating in units even further.
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Skaven don't add their Rank bonus to their leadership when they flee. If the Skaven break, their leadership is absolutely garbage. The Skaven General also does not add his Rank Bonus to the leadership he conveys to the army. This is explicitly said so that you don't break the game. The Skaven general gives you his LD 7 and then you modify it with your own rank bonus. You also don't benefit from that rank bonus if you're disrupted, which occurs when someone charges you to the flank or rear. There's a bunch of ways to destabilise the Skaven and screw them over.
 
Alratan said:
Or they worked them out themselves. The Fey Enchantress, at least, appears to perform magical research in her tower, and the other Damsels and Prophetesses may do as well.
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One doesn't prevent the other. The Lady could have teach them the basics, then the Fey (or some other Damsels) could have build on it and improve their methods.
 
Jreengus said:
[X] Plan Ritual Support
I think people are underestimating the value of having ritualist/enchanting knowledge on board from the start. People have suggested just hiring it when we need it but I think there is a good chance when we need it is when we are trying to figure out how waystones work, aka right from the beginning.
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Oh I think ritual support is important, which is why I want to get it from the specialists. The jade order should have much better on offer, and here we can get unique secrets.
 
Burned_Cookie said:
Oh I think ritual support is important, which is why I want to get it from the specialists. The jade order should have much better on offer, and here we can get unique secrets.
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I don't think it works that way, every order of magics ritual experts are only going to be experts at rituals using their own wind and more importantly ritual magic seems to be vastly more whimsical than other tiers of magic. The end methodology for a given ritual may have little to nothing in common with what was proposed at the start of creating a ritual.
 
Boney said:
"Very well." You take a sip of the tea that had been waiting for you, and find it quite similar to what you've grown accustomed to in Eight Peaks, though the taste is somewhat duller than you're used to. "The Dwarves and the Elves are coming into this Project with millennia of accumulated knowledge. For this Project to work, we must do the same."

"Dear Teclis was not exactly forthcoming with information on the Waystones, even to his favourite pupils."

"If the Light Order wanted to pretend they were all autodidacts in the style of Volans, it should have chosen a less exotic building style. I aim to sit us at a table where Hoeth and Thungni already have seats. We must meet their antes with our own, and ours have lineages to match theirs. Let us bring Tahoth Trisheros to the table."
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Jreengus said:
[X] Plan Ritual Support
I think people are underestimating the value of having ritualist/enchanting knowledge on board from the start. People have suggested just hiring it when we need it but I think there is a good chance when we need it is when we are trying to figure out how waystones work, aka right from the beginning.
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What we need rn (and it was the entire point of asking the Light College) is knowledge of the Waystones, so we can pool it with what the Elves and Dwarfs know. The more knowledge we have, the easier it be to figure what must be done. Having very good ritualists is useless if we don't have the piece of the puzzle needed to tell those ritualists what they must do. I don't think that rituals will be particularly useful trying to figure how Waystones work, that looks more like a job for a few specialists with a broad knowledge.

It will be easier to entice more ritualists from more sources if we know exactly what must be done.
 
K von Carstein said:
I don't think that rituals will be particularly useful trying to figure how Waystones work
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This is I think the main point of contention. Put simply I don't agree, I think that if rituals are intwined in the creation and maintenance of waystones knowledge of them and enchanting will be useful for any reverse engineering effort.

I think the knowledge of enchanting/rituals Steven brings to the table is more likely to be valuable than the clearance for random other knowledge Elrisse has, especially if we are also trading for LM level clearance to waystone knowledge for Egrimm.
 
Jreengus said:
This is I think the main point of contention. Put simply I don't agree, I think that if rituals are intwined in the creation and maintenance of waystones knowledge of them and enchanting will be useful for any reverse engineering effort.

I think the knowledge of enchanting/rituals Steven brings to the table is more likely to be valuable than the clearance for random other knowledge Elrisse has, especially if we are also trading for LM level clearance to waystone knowledge for Egrimm.
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Stephen is a skilled ritualist, but his skill at casting a ritual is somewhat perpendicular to a reverse-engineering effort. Elrisse knows everything about the Light Order's rituals he does, even if he has better intuition and is more skilled at using them.

And again, the whole point of this project is that we aren't trying to be better at this than anyone who's tried before, we're trying to gather all of the obscure secrets we can to simplify the problem to a point where it's solvable.
 
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