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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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[X] [SADDLE] Donate it to the Colleges
[X] [SADDLE] Donate it to Stirland

I can't decide between Heidi and Regimand.

[x] Interrogate the Unfahigers
 
VoiceOfTheRiders said:
So 1 good, 2 neutral, 1 which has both positive and negative aspects, with the negative being the greater and 2 pure bad marks. Lets hope for no more low rolls with magic.
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Only Forgettable is purely bad.

Trickster is likely +Intrigue -Diplomacy; which wouldn't be great but wouldn't suck too much unless the diplomacy debuff is huge. We've always relied more on stealth rather than toughness so I don't see the other Marks being a problem.
 
dycouza said:
The problem with bringing Heidi in is that while she'd no doubt have a lot of sway we very much does not want Alric to get disrupted here and start looking into the Empress instead. The Empress' influence is anything but subtle, regardless of how deftly it's used someone like Alric might notice it. The former Patriarch of the Lights would be a nightmare for our Ranaldian conspiracy if he caught sight of it. Regimand has the same issue. We care about stopping Alric, keeping the Heidi conspiracy secret and stopping whatever is happening here, but Regimand only cares about the last. If we bring him in specifically for his knowledge about the last conspiracy against the Haupt-Anderssens he's likely to start looking into Heidi. We might be able to leverage our personal relationship but I'm not sure we can stop him if he uncovers something he shouldn't.

If either of these two men find anything strange we're in a lot of trouble. Maybe we should take on this one on our own.
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I think that Heidi might be able to provide assistance beyond just the Empress's influence. Mainly since I doubt she set up her fake backstory without laying some groundwork to make it legitimate. I give it good odds of her having a Ranaldite network of her own set up in the area that could assist us.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Only Forgettable is purely bad.

Trickster is likely +Intrigue -Diplomacy; which wouldn't be great but wouldn't suck too much unless the diplomacy debuff is huge. We've always relied more on stealth rather than toughness so I don't see the other Marks being a problem.
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In the RPG where Trickster comes from, the fluff isn't fully accurate to the mechanics. All it does it inflict a -5% penalty to Fellowship (Diplomacy). No positive effect. Basically, what it does is it makes you look like you're up to no good, regardless of whether you really are up to no good.
 
Zero Gravitas said:
Only Forgettable is purely bad.

Trickster is likely +Intrigue -Diplomacy; which wouldn't be great but wouldn't suck too much unless the diplomacy debuff is huge. We've always relied more on stealth rather than toughness so I don't see the other Marks being a problem.
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Possibly, but I was summing up the work of @Codex and looking at that work again it seems to me that the trickster mark is the magical equivalent of holding up a poster stating "I am a trickster" in which case both intrigue and diplomacy can go down.

Edit. Mathilde'd
 
Boney said:
Waystone
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A great deal of data. But very little actual knowledge.

I suppose if this were easy someone would have done it by now.

Ward of Frost
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Interesting place.
Wonder how well their political system will handle the chaotic situation of increased contact with the Empire.

If Cadaeth is an Elf then she will have some sort of residence here, and if she is a Dryad she will have a tree that she resides within, and if the lurid tales of Tor Lithanel are correct and she is a little of each, then she will... have a dungeon within which she will lure innocent yet consenting young Elves into for all sorts of wondrous torments.
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These people are in critical need of new romance books.

and after a moment a vine covering a nearby window twitches aside for a startled and familiar face to peer out at you, before slamming back into position. You carefully keep from laughing and wait patiently until the Vicereine finally emerges, the foliage sliding away from the door as she steps out dressed in leather and bark. "Lady Magister," she says to you in greeting. "I had no forewarning," she pauses to direct a glare upwards at the Mischiefs, which zoom away with a chorus of tinkling laughs, "of your visit."
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We are encountering an elf-dryad with a soul big enough to fill a grove and you still manage to make it adorably domestic.

Ritual
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…let us hope rituals are not required for Waystones.

[Mathilde Windherding: Learning, 6+29+10(Enchanter)=45.]
[Miscast roll: Unnatural Aura. Chance of Arcane Mark. Rolling: Shrouded.]
[Arcane Mark acquired: Shrouded. Shadows you are in grow deeper and cling more tightly to you. +2 Intrigue.]
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A net benefit. But we are getting critically short of non-crippling Arcane Marks.

Nightrider Saddle
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I take it this thing works as intended?

[X] [SADDLE] Give it to the Hochlander

you and Egrimm take Johann to his quarters to sleep off the concussion he managed to pick up in his latest adventures with Kadoh
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Johann really needs to get on with gilding his head. I know not wearing a helmet is a very Warhammer thing but nonetheless.

That is cause for concern.
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Impressive understatement.

[X] Approach the Unfahigers openly
[X] Interrogate the Unfahigers
The direct approach.
 
Angelform said:
Johann really needs to get on with gilding his head. I know not wearing a helmet is a very Warhammer thing but nonetheless.
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VoiceOfTheRiders said:
What makes you think that a gilded head would make any difference :)
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The consequence for failing to Gild the head is Instant Death. No saves or lighter consequences for a good roll or anything. You fail to gild, you die.

Maybe Mathilde would be able to revive him if she was at the ready, but maybe the Chamon of the Gilding would turn the Ghyran into Dhar and he'd stay dead. I wouldn't want to risk it after two consecutive failed gildings of the eyes. I'd prefer if he went with gradual gilding of what remains of his body that hasn't been gilded so he can handle the full force of his prosthetic.
 
Be glad that we are Shadow-attuned. We actually have positive arcane marks that aren't "mark of [wind]". Amber, for example, doesn't: all its marks are either cosmetic (gameplay-neutral) or debuffs (mostly to Fellowship).
 
honestly, I dont know why people are so scared of Arcane marks.

we are very unlikely to not get them all at some point, especially as we picked the most magically experimental job we could.

might as well just roll with the punches.

Aule said:
Be glad that we are Shadow-attuned. We actually have positive arcane marks that aren't "mark of [wind]". Amber, for example, doesn't: all its marks are either cosmetic (gameplay-neutral) or debuffs (mostly to Fellowship).
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WHBF never really balanced magic well, it's very flavourful, but there are clearly better and worse winds in the RPG.
 
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Aule said:
Be glad that we are Shadow-attuned. We actually have positive arcane marks that aren't "mark of [wind]". Amber, for example, doesn't: all its marks are either cosmetic (gameplay-neutral) or debuffs (mostly to Fellowship).
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I mean, Amethysts, Brights and Celestials are the exact same (mostly, Celestial has a double edged sword Mark that makes everyone around them calm, including allies and enemies, which weakens their martial prowess). Hierophants have Arcane Marks that make them suck at Stealth but release light that brightens their surroundings, Jades have some beneficial Arcane Marks like Attuned to the Seasons (which is detrimental depending on the season) and one that gives Resistance to Disease, and Chamon has a bunch of negative ones as well as one that makes the Gold Wizard slower but more heavily armored by Gilding them automatically. I suppose that was the inspiration behind the ritual.

The Grey College actually lucked out on Marks.
 
K von Carstein said:
What does it do? Enhance our powers in general?
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Mark of Ulgu will increases our raw Magic score, taking us to a 10 and pushing the limits of human potential.
Jyn Ryvia said:
honestly, I dont know why people are so scared of Arcane marks.

we are very unlikely to not get them all at some point, especially as we picked the most magically experimental job we could.

might as well just roll with the punches.
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Maybe next turn we can block out some time to try to control one of our Marks? See what happens with that.

Anyway, I am weirdly nervous about the Unfahiger investigation. I think Regimand is the safest option, but I keep feeling like I'm missing some angle on the mundane options that makes them more attractive. That might just be my general anxiety rearing its head.
 
Boney said:
From what you've heard, a similar dynamic can be found in the east, with Scythian-made standing stones supplementing the Elven network. Most scholars who note the connection believe the ancient humans were merely aping the Elven visitors, but it's seeming to you that the original network of Elven waystones was supplemented by a titanic effort by the much more primitive local populations that increased the covering of the full Waystone network substantially.
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Hmm, so, it's possible that the Elves worked together with, or just hired, ancient locals on herding together the winds towards waystones. That, if there was cooperation involved, it was in the vein of the Elves going "Hey can you guys make some dirtroads to connect to the concrete roads? Thanks." sort of thing. Maybe the ancient humans just knew what they were doing, and knew to construct menhirs and aim their magic towards the Elf waystones all their own and the Elves merely negotiated (or threatened or bribed or etc) them to put up some of their menhirs. Or maybe the Elves taught them... an entirely different style of waystone than the Elf waystone in order so that the humans could build some of them and help out? Well I mean, Teclis did leave a curriculum of magic for the Colleges of Magic so... ... on the other hand, he also gathered together a lot of extant local magical traditions, people who were already using magic, he just organized them. Either way, it looks like the ancients did have some knowledge of their own. Which leads me to believe that...
Boney said:
You don't have access to enough of these to draw conclusions, but the one at the heart of the Jade College seems like a massively upsized version of the Belthani menhirs, rather than being visibly Elven in any way.
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That the Jade College menhirs were indeed human made menhirs.

Just, it's not clear whether the Elves taught them to make them, or whether they simply did the equivalent of asking them to add on to the magical road networks in the old world and the humans took their knowledge and skills and did it.

The difference between being able to turn on a waystone because you taught them how to make it in the first place. Versus being able to turn on the waystone because you once commissioned them to make some dirtpaths to connect to the concrete paths -- or commissioned locals to make radios to connect to the internet network -- long ago and so of course you were going to be able to do stuff with it, since it was intended to work together.

Or it could be somewhere in between. =/
 
Boney said:
You spend the chilly months of late winter and early spring working with your employees on various subsets of magical academia. With Max, you alternate between lessons in Altdorf and research in Tor Lithanel as you grapple with the bizarre and confusing world of ritual magic. This field serves the purpose of proving that the Colleges of Magic are far from a thorough understanding of the underpinning logic of magic, as the connections between cause and effect are as tenuous and fleeting as dream logic. It makes a certain amount of vague sense that the blood of a judge might be used in a ritual to force an oathbreaker to follow through on their promise, but trying to look deeper into it than that is a sure path to madness. Why blood, specifically? And why does it need to be written on the skin of a stillborn lamb? Despite involving a great deal of research, the creation of a new ritual is more similar to a fever dream or a vision quest than any form of logical undertaking, and involves many months of meditation, experimentation, and trial and error, and the requirements of it accumulate new and often ungainly accoutrements along the way. By the end of the lessons, you reach the conclusion that neither of you have actually been taught how to perform or invent rituals - you have simply been shown how to get started, and have to let instinct and mysticism take you the rest of the way, and been told in exhaustive detail how terribly it can all go wrong. Both you and Max agree that it would probably be for the best if you never need to engage in ritual, but at least now you have the option.

[Skill gained: Ritual. Able to perform rituals, and to attempt to invent entirely new ones.]
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It looks like rituals lean heavily into the Mysticism side of things, where Mathilde leans much more heavily towards Elemental. Although... is it just me, or does this imply that the Colleges actually aren't all that great at rituals in general? At least compared to other magical traditions that make more use of them, like Nehekaran stuff and Runesmithing. I wonder if that's a side effect of taking an academic approach to magic, which is inherently less inclined to the mystic approach of doing things without understanding why?


Boney said:
After almost a week spent in concentration, you finally begin to make out the precise point when magic enters the leylines, as constellations of tiny sparks drip from the points of the foundational star into a position directly below the Waystone, and then drop with sudden speed downwards to join the leyline. Sometimes eight, but often less, as there is definitely not exactly equal amounts of each Wind present here. But though at certain points during the daily cycle the amount of Winds being dropped into the leyline sometimes falls as low as two at a time, you never see a single Wind being dropped in, always at least two. You suppose this explains why in Altdorf, a city practically riddled with Waystones, mono-Wind environments such as the Colleges still exist - because the Waystones seem to need at least two Winds to be present to drain away magical energies, and thus a specific Waystone would only be able to drain away as much of a given Wind as there exists the total of the other seven Winds.

The final night of observation happens with Morrslieb's baleful influence overhead, with the hideous throb of Dhar creeping along the landscape and being drawn into the Waystone. To your consternation, it proves impossible for you to see anything of the Dhar after it enters the Waystone itself, even as the Waystone absorbs amounts of it that would leave one of the storage mechanisms visible if it were one of the Winds. Perhaps the Waystones are built to contain the malign energies of Dhar and so not even a glimmer of them can be seen by the sharpest of Windsight, or perhaps they are dumped into the leylines below immediately, rather than a few sparks at a time.
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I wonder if the Waystones' need for more than one Wind at a time is related to their invisible handling of Dhar? Dhar being, of course, nothing more than multiple winds tangled and mashed together.
 
That's actually a pretty good arcane mark to get, even if the Windherding experiment itself was a bit of a disaster. Also, Johann being unable to contribute to the arm paper because he knocked himself out made me giggle.
 
[X] [SADDLE] Give it to the Hochlander
[X] [SADDLE] Donate it to Stirland

Stirland needs a Dämmerlichtreiter. And if Mathilde's not there herself for it, she'll damn well make one.

[x] Bring in Regimand
[x] Bring in Heidi
 
[x] Bring in Regimand
[X] [SADDLE] Give it to your fief

Approval voting:
[X] [SADDLE] Donate it to Stirland
 
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