Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
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Not as hard a question as you think it is
Remember Heidi's new persona associates very closely with Mathilde, and makes no secret of this fact
She's had numerous private audiences with her, along with close conversations at public events
She was personally beside her when Mandred was born and given another private audience with her and the newborn prince afterward
She offered Mathilde a job as personal bodyguard and tutor for Mandred, and she ran this by the proper officials
The natural reaction to "Mathilde is specifically the one who's investigating this as a favor to Heidi" is "Yeah that checks out"
There are likely people who find her close relationship to the Empress of interest, but those people aren't going to be more suspicious because of this incident in particular than they already are
A bigger concern is the question of why this matter is of great importance to the Empress
I mean the obvious answer is "If this matter is tied to the Haupt Andersons then of course it'd be of concern to the Empress"
But there are loose threads here that can potentially start unwinding Heidi's tapestry if the matter isn't quietly taken care of
With Alric, precisely because we have little personal experience with Alric we judge him based on the perspectives of those who do
And they are overwhelmingly unkind to him, which is informative
Alric's greatest failure was, of course, The Night of a Thousand Arcane Duels, but that has since lead to a rather unflattering decline
He shares the position of Patriarch/Matriarch in a back and forth with Mira, and the impression we've been given is that she's been increasingly the one doing the work of actually running the Light College while Alric is just stubbornly clinging to power
His best apprentice Van Horstman greatly resents him for stifling his growth and career out of a desire to keep him under his direct authority
He got turned away from Stirland by Roswita when it became clear to her that he was more interested in digging into the fate of the previous Amethyst Patriarch instead of helping, which supports the picture we've been given that he is self interested, glory seeking and petty
As we're hearing from Regimand now there are very few Lord Magisters who don't have an axe to grind with him, which speaks to an impressive history of managing to piss off or otherwise alienate his peers
And on and on
His competence at actually being a Light Wizard doing magic things is among the few characteristics that hasn't been completely dragged through the dirt yet, but the duel with Dragomas has shaken it
Out of universe dice rolls have a level of disconnect with in universe narrative, and in universe the duel was an embarrassing curbstomp
There are in universe excuses that could be made as as to why, but "I rolled low" isn't one of them and none of the excuses look particularly good
Ultimately though while completely dismissing Alric as a fuck up might be a bit premature, I do think there's plenty of reason to be skeptical of the prospect of teaming up with him
As we've got plenty of reason to believe that regardless of his competence we ought to be wary of his ambition
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Obviously he's not going to take their word as gospel. But he's at least going to check, especially if Regimand is right and the demon is the one guy who would know. And this is something that we really don't want him to be focusing on.
[x] Favour to Mira
[x] -[x] if he declines bring in Heidi
[x] -[x] if he declines bring in Heidi
My one problem is that we're also genuinely capable enough at detecting divine energy and Ranald's attention that the very fact that we haven't makes me concerned we'd be putting words in Ranald's mouth, unless phrased very carefully. We're working in what we think is Ranald's interest and protecting a major investment of his ... but we are NOT here at his behest.
A daemon would by definition know many things, some of which would drive mortals mad from revelation, they also lie like they breathe. I am not sure 'the daemon would know' is a good reason to investigate something. It would have to provide some sort of documentation or other corroboration that would at the very least be harder to fake.
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[x] Favour to Mira
At the end of the day, we are investigating Alric (and didn't take sabotaging him), and while we don't want Heidi hurt, Alric is actually qualified for this one, singular task.
At the end of the day, we are investigating Alric (and didn't take sabotaging him), and while we don't want Heidi hurt, Alric is actually qualified for this one, singular task.
I mean, I wouldn't trust information from a demon even if it provided corroborating evidence. If you are obviously getting played the best and simplest move is to refuse to play.
And while we are considering the ways this could go wrong if Alric is brought in to Mathilde's investigation, let's consider the ways it could go wrong if Mathilde doesn't bring him in. For example, consider the following scenario: Mathilde attempts to stop the Chaos threat, and fails. It then comes to light that Mathilde chose to not bring the likely presence of Chaos to the attention of a Light Order Lord Magister already present at the scene. The Grey Order puts two and two together and realise that Mathilde was there because Mira asked her to, and suspect that Mathilde might have acted that way due to political considerations (which would be true, by the way).
There are a lot of ways this thing can go wrong no matter what we do, but I think Alric learning about Heidi's true identity because we got him on board is unlikely. As Regimand says, if they knew something like that there are other ways to publicize it.
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How does it come to light, for that matter how does she fail? That is a very vague threat compared to the very solid 'Alric is pants at diplomacy, here is the itemized list of him being pants, and I would not trust him around complex intrigue anymore than I would Git Guzzler with the barrel of Bugman's Best'
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Notes on Waystones
Mathy's Code Notes 2: Waystones (small update 22/04/2022)
Facts, unconnected data points and provable information:
1: First Created by the Elfs over the top of an older system of unknown make, later added to by the dwarfs, and expanded by early human cultures. (and the Eonir at some point)
2: draws in ambient Winds of magic and channels them through laylines and nodes into the great vortex in Ulthuan
3: Waystone comes in mutable, varying degrees of distinct designs and time periods of creation.
4: Known Designs observed:
- Ulthuan Obelisk
-Ulthuan and Dwarf rune Obelisk
- Dwarf mountain waystones
- Black un-runed Obelisk? (Obelisk of Laws... potentially older than the Dwarf/elf collaboration but younger than the originals?)
- Lornalim trees
- Hedgestones
- Immaterial Waystone created by the light college, currently in a tea shop. (what?)
Personal Observations:
1: Waystones present a clear challenge to the base understanding of how an 'enchantment' or 'spell' should work, as they by all appearances possess neither soul nor mind, and they clearly don't take prolonged periods to prepare each individual strand of Wind being sent along the leylines.
2: The archetypal Waystone is an upright square frustum topped by a square pyramid standing at about the height of a human. On each of the exposed faces of the frustum, if they have not been covered by accumulated dirt or grime, is the Rune used in Eltharin to represent Waystones: a diamond atop a pyramid, and above that, a teardrop. Whether this Rune is upon the Waystones simply as a label of its purpose, or whether the Rune in Eltharin is based off the Rune that marks each Waystone and the marking on the Waystone serves a deeper purpose, is an open question. At the base of the Waystone, though this is almost always underground, is a much larger square base ringed with an eight-pointed star that aligns precisely with the cardinal and ordinal directions.
3: For each of these 'normal' Waystones there are many menhirs, large standing stones of irregular shape. Many possess no Runes at all, and those that do have carvings of ancient Belthani script. (All part of the later 'hedgestone' expansion? )
- these 'hedgestone' also absorb the ambient Winds, and then seem to draw them towards a nearby Elven Waystone. A similar dynamic can be found in the east with Scythian-made standing stones supplementing the Elven network (hearsay: needs to be confirmed).
- until more information is gathered, these stones (and possibly Lornalim trees of the Eonir and the rumoured Pyramids of the far south, depending on their history and time of creation) will be grouped together as part of the 'Third expansion' creation period. characterised by the seemly uncoordinated, but titanic effort by early/primitive local populations to increase the coverage of the full Waystone network substantially in their area. (could something like this truly be uncoordinated, even if you take into account that there might have been large gaps in when each culture created their part? and if not, who or what could have been the puppeteer of such a global action?)
4: A nexus point is where multiple Waystone-controlled leylines come together into one place to form a larger deluge of energy leading directly towards Ulthuan. currently, most of these nexuses can be found in the heart of modern human cities.
--- Johann has Identified that, in at least one example, Nexus points connect in a longest point to point fashion, e.g the most south stone in a nexus will be lined up with the direction of a more northern Nexuses, the most Western will line up with a nexus to the east etc etc.
- these seem to, from the empire at least, all flow towards Marienburg, then you speculate from there it would flow to Castle L'Anguille (needs to be confirmed) and then either further along the Bretonnian coast or directly towards Ulthuan. (needs to be confirmed)
-The Waystone at the heart of the Jade College in Altdorf is one of these great nexuses, but seems like a massively upsized version of the Belthani menhirs, rather than being visibly Elven in any way. (third expansion? or even possible a full replacement of an older damaged Eleven Waystone?)
5: The waystone that was first studied in detail would trap winds at specific points in the day - Ulgu at dawn and dusk, Hysh at midday, Azyr on moonless nights etc. Judging by their position relative to the Waystone, you theorize that the buried eight-pointed star has a storage mechanism in each of the points, one for each Wind, for when the amounts of energy being absorbed temporarily outstrips the Waystone's ability to add it to the stream below.
- When magic enters the leylines, it's 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.
- you never observed a single Wind being dropped in, always at least two- the Waystones seem to need at least two Winds to be present to drain away magical energies, (is it possible that the waystone is designed to use the winds 'natural' repulsion of each other and some sort of 'valving' mechanism to create movement in the correct direction?) 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. ( could a mono-wind environment 'overload' a waystone? or is there a safety mechanism?)
6: In regards to Dhar: It has proved impossible from unaided observation 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.
Contributor Observations and contributions
Ward of Frost:
- Vicereine of Oldenlitz has confirmed that to the best of her knowledge that the Lornalim trees were not created with knowledge of the standing stones of the Belthani despite serving the same function. (this doesn't prove a lack of conspiracy, just that the potential acters were not made aware of each other by the directors)
WEB-MAT
- Johann has proven that he can accurately pinpoint the direction of flow between nexuses thinks to his type of windsight.
- Johann has found that despite the fact that the Kislev City nexus, below the Bokha Palace, was active, there is no connection to the Ostermark network.
Hypotheses:
No data yet
Testable Hypotheses:
Areas to be studied or investigated:
Something is blocking the connection between Ostermark and Kislev city.
Johann and possibly the jades could map out any other unexplainable blockages
if you have something to add, @ me.
Facts, unconnected data points and provable information:
1: First Created by the Elfs over the top of an older system of unknown make, later added to by the dwarfs, and expanded by early human cultures. (and the Eonir at some point)
2: draws in ambient Winds of magic and channels them through laylines and nodes into the great vortex in Ulthuan
3: Waystone comes in mutable, varying degrees of distinct designs and time periods of creation.
4: Known Designs observed:
- Ulthuan Obelisk
-Ulthuan and Dwarf rune Obelisk
- Dwarf mountain waystones
- Black un-runed Obelisk? (Obelisk of Laws... potentially older than the Dwarf/elf collaboration but younger than the originals?)
- Lornalim trees
- Hedgestones
- Immaterial Waystone created by the light college, currently in a tea shop. (what?)
Personal Observations:
1: Waystones present a clear challenge to the base understanding of how an 'enchantment' or 'spell' should work, as they by all appearances possess neither soul nor mind, and they clearly don't take prolonged periods to prepare each individual strand of Wind being sent along the leylines.
2: The archetypal Waystone is an upright square frustum topped by a square pyramid standing at about the height of a human. On each of the exposed faces of the frustum, if they have not been covered by accumulated dirt or grime, is the Rune used in Eltharin to represent Waystones: a diamond atop a pyramid, and above that, a teardrop. Whether this Rune is upon the Waystones simply as a label of its purpose, or whether the Rune in Eltharin is based off the Rune that marks each Waystone and the marking on the Waystone serves a deeper purpose, is an open question. At the base of the Waystone, though this is almost always underground, is a much larger square base ringed with an eight-pointed star that aligns precisely with the cardinal and ordinal directions.
3: For each of these 'normal' Waystones there are many menhirs, large standing stones of irregular shape. Many possess no Runes at all, and those that do have carvings of ancient Belthani script. (All part of the later 'hedgestone' expansion? )
- these 'hedgestone' also absorb the ambient Winds, and then seem to draw them towards a nearby Elven Waystone. A similar dynamic can be found in the east with Scythian-made standing stones supplementing the Elven network (hearsay: needs to be confirmed).
- until more information is gathered, these stones (and possibly Lornalim trees of the Eonir and the rumoured Pyramids of the far south, depending on their history and time of creation) will be grouped together as part of the 'Third expansion' creation period. characterised by the seemly uncoordinated, but titanic effort by early/primitive local populations to increase the coverage of the full Waystone network substantially in their area. (could something like this truly be uncoordinated, even if you take into account that there might have been large gaps in when each culture created their part? and if not, who or what could have been the puppeteer of such a global action?)
4: A nexus point is where multiple Waystone-controlled leylines come together into one place to form a larger deluge of energy leading directly towards Ulthuan. currently, most of these nexuses can be found in the heart of modern human cities.
--- Johann has Identified that, in at least one example, Nexus points connect in a longest point to point fashion, e.g the most south stone in a nexus will be lined up with the direction of a more northern Nexuses, the most Western will line up with a nexus to the east etc etc.
- these seem to, from the empire at least, all flow towards Marienburg, then you speculate from there it would flow to Castle L'Anguille (needs to be confirmed) and then either further along the Bretonnian coast or directly towards Ulthuan. (needs to be confirmed)
-The Waystone at the heart of the Jade College in Altdorf is one of these great nexuses, but seems like a massively upsized version of the Belthani menhirs, rather than being visibly Elven in any way. (third expansion? or even possible a full replacement of an older damaged Eleven Waystone?)
5: The waystone that was first studied in detail would trap winds at specific points in the day - Ulgu at dawn and dusk, Hysh at midday, Azyr on moonless nights etc. Judging by their position relative to the Waystone, you theorize that the buried eight-pointed star has a storage mechanism in each of the points, one for each Wind, for when the amounts of energy being absorbed temporarily outstrips the Waystone's ability to add it to the stream below.
- When magic enters the leylines, it's 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.
- you never observed a single Wind being dropped in, always at least two- the Waystones seem to need at least two Winds to be present to drain away magical energies, (is it possible that the waystone is designed to use the winds 'natural' repulsion of each other and some sort of 'valving' mechanism to create movement in the correct direction?) 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. ( could a mono-wind environment 'overload' a waystone? or is there a safety mechanism?)
6: In regards to Dhar: It has proved impossible from unaided observation 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.
Contributor Observations and contributions
Ward of Frost:
- Vicereine of Oldenlitz has confirmed that to the best of her knowledge that the Lornalim trees were not created with knowledge of the standing stones of the Belthani despite serving the same function. (this doesn't prove a lack of conspiracy, just that the potential acters were not made aware of each other by the directors)
WEB-MAT
- Johann has proven that he can accurately pinpoint the direction of flow between nexuses thinks to his type of windsight.
- Johann has found that despite the fact that the Kislev City nexus, below the Bokha Palace, was active, there is no connection to the Ostermark network.
Hypotheses:
No data yet
Testable Hypotheses:
Areas to be studied or investigated:
Something is blocking the connection between Ostermark and Kislev city.
Johann and possibly the jades could map out any other unexplainable blockages
if you have something to add, @ me.
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This is a weird question. Mathilde can fail in any number of ways, such as trying to fight a demon, or not trying to fight a demon but running into one any way, and then losing. It can come to light in any number of ways, such as the fight becoming visible and people seeing it, or the demon doing very visible things like killing people while escaping Mathilde. Are any of those things likely? We don't know, because we don't know what exact shape this threat will take, but the idea that Mathilde failing and people learning of it is some sort of crazy hypothetical seems really weird to me.
If at some point Mathilde realizes she is over her head she will ask for help, and then her involvement will become known because she herself will make it known. And Mathilde may very well be over her head: we had exactly two encounters with the forces of Chaos (that we know of), and in both of them Mathilde survived only because someone else bailed her out.
Sure all that is possible I just do not think Alric is more likely to hurt than help because well... *points to the last page*.
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Those encounters were in the Chaos Wastes or close to it against a Higher Daemon and an Exalted Champion respectively. Daemons are at their strongest when there is an anchor holding them to the material realm, such as being close to the Realm of Chaos up north. The idea that whatever we face here is going to be as strong as a Kul Exalted Champion or Higher Daemon is shaky at best. Those types of Daemons are rare and they struggle to manifest without some serious build up that cannot be ignored. Five murders is not enough to summon a Greater Daemon.
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Iirc, the Kul champion was practically Khorne, at that point.
Eh... I would not go that far, Khorne had divided attention in the roll. That said yeah I do not think we will be meeting any Greater Daemons.
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Eh, he was favored enough to get direct intervention from Khorne, even if the big dude was pretty distracted, and that's something, but it's not the limits of a Champion. He didn't ride in on a Daemonic Steed and use a Daemon Forged Weapon with the soul of a Greater Daemon sealed inside it for example.
Chaos has a ridiculously high cap for the bullshit they can get to, but the probability of getting there is so hilariously low because you have so much more of a chance of getting snake eyes and blowing up in the process.
I do get that. But while I don't deny that Alric could end up being more problem than help, even Egrimm says:
So I do think this is one of the few things Alric can actually do well.
I'm not saying that this is as dangerous as a higher daemon, or that the threat we will face will definitely be as dangerous as the ones Mathilde faced before. But it's not like anything less than the best Chaos has is no danger to Mathilde. Mathilde has no experience dealing with Chaos plots of this sort, and even if whatever is doing this isn't a danger to Mathilde personally it may well be the case that Mathilde is incapable of containing it, and then she will still need to call for help.
Also, on the subject of a ritual: before this investigation started I've made a crazy guess that maybe this is some Chaos cult that needs blood of an Emperor's line for some ritual. With what we now know that doesn't seem likely, but I do wonder if the murders are not just revenge, but rather some sort of ritual.
Being a potent wizard does not make him a competent investigator, in fact for the Lights I would argue the opposite, the more in tune you are with Hysh the more the enemy will be able to see you coming a mile away, and by this point the daemon has had a lot of time to see Alric coming. Let us not sit under his blinding and sometimes irritating light.
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Yes I am quite certain it is a ritual:
Alberich is probably going for eight dead Unfahigers in similar methods and with similar times to the Haupt-Anderssens. If he finishes it correctly, I'm sure it'll do something horrible. But he's only at five murders out of eight, and the next is in two months. We have and should use the time we have to shut him down, but it's not like we have a one week time limit on him ending the ritual or whatever.
If we chose to follow up on the Talabheim thing later instead of clearing our debt early, chances are Alberich would have been further in on his plans, so I'm glad we chose to do this quick.
I don't think that's right. The Lights deal with Chaos all the time, I don't think they are that allergic to subtlety or else they would never get anything done. If Alric agrees to work with Mathilde (and he may choose not to, for stupid personal reasons, I admit that's a possibility) he isn't going to insist that she doesn't use her shadow magic to work subtley but instead join him in doing the exact things he is already doing, he isn't that stupid.
While I think that's probably right, for all we know you can also do the ritual even without getting the times right, at the cost of increasing the chance of miscast or something. And while two months feels like a long time, it's not at all inconceivable that Mathilde fails to find the culprit by then.
Maybe we can justify taking two months to look into this without letting Alric know, though I'm personally against that. But anything more than that is outright dereliction of duty, in my opinion.
For anyone who's going "alric is soooo bad at investigating he would never find out the empress is a fraud?" are you really willing to take the chance? Because this absolutely would be the big thing he needs to get back into power. And so he would at least check it out. He does not need to belief the daemon to be thorough. The only thing we know for sure is that's he's bad at diplo and that he can't beat Supreme patriarch "I will drop a dragon on you" dragomas. And if heidi gets ousted do you know who's also under scrutiny then? Us, because Heidi was not subtle about liking us.
The lights are good at dealing with daemons and dark magic specifically because their magic is conceptually opposed to all 'darkness', that does not inherently make them good investigators and it specifically does not make Alric a good investigator when most of what he has done over the past few decades was sit in Aldorf and send Horstman on missions for him... and given his recent track record of being run out of Stirland.
- Location
- Utrecht
Alric is described as having a keen insight: he won't go bumbling into things.
His mind is still sharp, and what has foiled him so far has been the relevant authority telling him to go be nosy somewhere else.
The Unfahrigers welcome his nosiness in the hopes of being saved from a grisly fate.
It's best to assume that whatever Chaos thing is going on, if Alric comes across it, he'll notice it.
Hell, his presence alone should have chaos cultists shitting their pants.
Regimand himself said:
His mind is still sharp, and what has foiled him so far has been the relevant authority telling him to go be nosy somewhere else.
The Unfahrigers welcome his nosiness in the hopes of being saved from a grisly fate.
It's best to assume that whatever Chaos thing is going on, if Alric comes across it, he'll notice it.
Hell, his presence alone should have chaos cultists shitting their pants.
Regimand himself said:
The only reason to stick our nose in is because of Heidi and Ranald.
That comes from a very biased source.
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That's still not proff except for that he's bad at diplo. And being run out of stirland is again diplo, not intrigue. Maybe he's bad at it, maybe he's not but I wouldn't bet the stability of the empire on it, and that's what at stake, because if Heidi's out so is Manfred and at that point there is no clear winner for Emperor
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