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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Boney said:
Blood Bowl has a really weird history. It was entirely abandoned and for years and years it chugged along under its own steam on a fan-made online league called FUMBBL with fan-made rulebooks and a bodged-together client to play online. The only reason the video games got made is that Cyanide wanted to make BB into a game and when GW said no they made it anyway and called it 'Chaos Bowl', and somehow after the dust settled from the lawyer slapfight GW owned Chaos Bowl but Cyanide had a license to make an official Blood Bowl game. So it had a head start on everything else, coming out many years before GW's current approach to video game licensing.
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That's a ridiculous yet extremely funny story. I can't believe that's the reason Blood Bowl is back on the spotlight after years of negligence. I guess I have to thank the ridiculous ballsiness of that studio for the new Amazon models.
 
Briefvoice said:
The Scrolls are a bit trickier because those won't really benefit the Library. They're so dangerous we can't admit to having them, so it's earning favor versus another research project for the pile of research projects. I guess people want the research project, but again the Scrolls will not contribute to the Library directly. They're more going to be in Mathilde's private collection hidden inside the Library.
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We really should be more thrifty with what we pick up for research. We already have year's worth of research backlog, and we keep adding more to that pile than we take out by finish a topic or item of research. If we hadn't taken the deal with the Gold College, we'd probably still have Skaven artifacts we still hadn't gotten around to.

The notes on the ring are unique, highly valuable to Mathilde and her Enchantment skills, and from an author she's familiar with. The scrolls? They're yet more vampire lore, don't hold much, if any, magical knowledge, and have been researched by vampire hunters already. (And we can't display them in the Library, either.) I would be entirely unsurprised if we don't visit the scrolls again for a very long time, and that if we do read them, they'll be relatively low value. We'd likely gain both more immediate value and more value overall by trading them away.

Mathilde is not a libromancer. She doesn't gain arcane power by how big her pile of books is, especially not her unread books. And if we grow her research backlog to the point where it starts generating Ulgu on its own? I don't think that'll be good for Mathilde's mental health.
 
Codex said:
Somehow. And they're not in the UK so I can't even access it. Of all the stores to pay up for exclusivity deals with GW, why was it Barnes and Noble?
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Try Waterstones—Barnes and Noble is owned by Waterstones (or at least, has the same CEO—I'm not super sure of the specifics) so there's a lot of overlap in what each store stocks.

I've seen a lot of Horus Heresy novels in stock, and I recently bought some Pathfinder 2e books, so Warhammer rulebooks might be possible to obtain.

In the interest of transparency, I am a Waterstones employee. Also I preemptively apologise if you order anything and it arrives late, our main warehouse has been having difficulties lately.
 
Briefvoice said:
The Amarium is do we want to earn favor with some flavor of religious militants order so we have an easier time getting their help in the future, or do we want to increase the prestige of the library? Well we want to increase the prestige of the library right at the moment.

The Scrolls are a bit trickier because those won't really benefit the Library. They're so dangerous we can't admit to having them, so it's earning favor versus another research project for the pile of research projects. I guess people want the research project, but again the Scrolls will not contribute to the Library directly. They're more going to be in Mathilde's private collection hidden inside the Library.

The Flesh is perhaps a bit more interesting, because donating it to the University of Altdorf or the Cult of Verenna could actually be of direct benefit to the Library. Give Altdorf/Verenna a copy of the Flesh and they'll probably be more more open to book-sharing agreements and letting us have copies of much of their lesser volumes. So then it becomes a question of do we want to have an easier time getting copies of less prestigious books from one of those two sources, or are we more concerned with attracting prestigious scholars to the Library by telling them if they want to read the Creeping Flesh they're going to have to travel to K8P? The consensus seems to be, use the Flesh as a tool to get scholars to make the trek out to K8P to see the wonders of the Library (and tell all their friends).

Do I have all this correct?
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Correct. There's also the fact that prestige affects how much other libraries demand in exchange for book-sharing agreements, since they'll feel like they get more out of sharing books with a more impressive library.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
Try Waterstones—Barnes and Noble is owned by Waterstones (or at least, has the same CEO—I'm not super sure of the specifics) so there's a lot of overlap in what each store stocks.

I've seen a lot of Horus Heresy novels in stock, and I recently bought some Pathfinder 2e books, so Warhammer rulebooks might be possible to obtain.

In the interest of transparency, I am a Waterstones employee. Also I preemptively apologise if you order anything and it arrives late, our main warehouse has been having difficulties lately.
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I've seen Waterstones several times and wondered if I should go there multiple times, and circumstances prevented me from doing so. I thought they only sold "proper" books, so learning they stock nerd material is great.

Also, since you work at Waterstones, you clearly posess the ability to access their teleportation chambers right? I expect to meet you when I go there. Tottenham Court Road Waterstones tomorrow 6 PM in London UK ;)
 
Derpmind said:
The scrolls? They're yet more vampire lore, don't hold much, if any, magical knowledge, and have been researched by vampire hunters already. (And we can't display them in the Library, either.) I would be entirely unsurprised if we don't visit the scrolls again for a very long time, and that if we do read them, they'll be relatively low value. We'd likely gain both more immediate value and more value overall by trading them away.
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If we had any reason to need favour curried with the Priory of the Spear, I'd agree. But in practice they're a random group of vampire hunters in a part of the world we're unlikely to visit. Favour with them doesn't strike me as valuable. It would be sitting there uncashed until the gratitude naturally faded. As for the scrolls being "relatively low value",

You'd have to learn Nehekharan to even begin to try to extract anything from the scrolls, but they'd make quite a crown jewel in your library
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Mathilde seems to think they're worth hanging on to for the library's sake, even if there's nothing useful for her own projects in there.
 
Codex said:
I've seen Waterstones several times and wondered if I should go there multiple times, and circumstances prevented me from doing so. I thought they only sold "proper" books, so learning they stock nerd material is great.

Also, since you work at Waterstones, you clearly posess the ability to access their teleportation chambers right? I expect to meet you when I go there. Tottenham Court Road Waterstones tomorrow 6 PM in London UK ;)
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We've spent the last few years aggressively expanding our ranges with what we call "Related Products", which covers board games, manga, science toys, stationary etc. I'd estimate that 60% of my store is for books, and the rest for RP.

Unfortunately, I'm based in a small northern market town, and our "teleporter" is called national rail and is far to costly for me to visit London. Otherwise I'd travel down there more than once every two years.
 
Derpmind said:
We really should be more thrifty with what we pick up for research. We already have year's worth of research backlog, and we keep adding more to that pile than we take out by finish a topic or item of research. If we hadn't taken the deal with the Gold College, we'd probably still have Skaven artifacts we still hadn't gotten around to.

The notes on the ring are unique, highly valuable to Mathilde and her Enchantment skills, and from an author she's familiar with. The scrolls? They're yet more vampire lore, don't hold much, if any, magical knowledge, and have been researched by vampire hunters already. (And we can't display them in the Library, either.) I would be entirely unsurprised if we don't visit the scrolls again for a very long time, and that if we do read them, they'll be relatively low value. We'd likely gain both more immediate value and more value overall by trading them away.

Mathilde is not a libromancer. She doesn't gain arcane power by how big her pile of books is, especially not her unread books. And if we grow her research backlog to the point where it starts generating Ulgu on its own? I don't think that'll be good for Mathilde's mental health.
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I mean we do know of at least one person who would probably be very interested in vampire lore and who unlike the Priory of the Scroll is bound to have a lot of juicy lore. A pale fellow in Nuln... why I bet he would not even mind if we read them first and got whatever use we may out of them. ;)
 
It's interesting that the 11 result, the highest roll, was "Chambers of Vlad and Isabella". And what we got from that was "study notes of the Carstein Ring". The 10 got the Scrolls of Zandri, and the 8 got the Creeping Flesh. Since higher is better, that would result in:

Ring Notes > Scrolls > > Creeping Flesh. But if you'd asked me to figure it out just from the descriptions, that's not what I would have said. I would probably have put it at Creeping Flesh > Scrolls > Ring Notes. I would have a prestigious volume for the Library is of high value, the Scrolls are a "this might possibly provide some actionable intelligence at some point, who knows", and a few von Carstein notes are a "nice to have".

I think probably the issue is me way underestimating the value of notes from a legendary master of magic on an artifact that just might have been created by Nagash. Notes that because they're on enchantment might help Mathilde improve her enchanting skills in ways otherwise blocked. Personal improvements, very powerful. Then for the Scrolls, I guess it's this line I should be focusing on. "Though they're named for the Prophecies that are the most famous feature of them, they also contain every errant thought that W'Soran gave voice to during the siege of Lahmia, making them a treasure trove of horrifically dangerous insight." Not sure exactly what sorts of insights to expect, and it will likely require at least two actions of language studies to take advantage (and only two because we took the Polygot trait).

EDIT: Looked up W'Soran on the wiki. Is basically the rule that the closer you get to Nagash, the more awesome magic is, and even insights filtered twice through from Nagash are better than any other human magic?

The Creeping Flesh is still great for the Library as opposed to Mathilde, though.
 
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Briefvoice said:
It's interesting that the 11 result, the highest roll, was "Chambers of Vlad and Isabella". And what we got from that was "study notes of the Carstein Ring". The 10 got the Scrolls of Zandri, and the 8 got the Creeping Flesh. Since higher is better, that would result in:

Ring Notes > Scrolls > > Creeping Flesh. But if you'd asked me to figure it out just from the descriptions, that's not what I would have said. I would probably have put it at Creeping Flesh > Scrolls > Ring Notes. I would have a prestigious volume for the Library is of high value, the Scrolls are a "this might possibly provide some actionable intelligence at some point, who knows", and a few von Carstein notes are a "nice to have".

I think probably the issue is me way underestimating the value of notes from a legendary master of magic on an artifact that just might have been created by Nagash. Notes that because they're on enchantment might help Mathilde improve her enchanting skills in ways otherwise blocked. Personal improvements, very powerful. Then for the Scrolls, I guess it's this line I should be focusing on. "Though they're named for the Prophecies that are the most famous feature of them, they also contain every errant thought that W'Soran gave voice to during the siege of Lahmia, making them a treasure trove of horrifically dangerous insight." Not sure exactly what sorts of insights to expect, and it will likely require at least two actions of language studies to take advantage (and only two because we took the Polygot trait).

The Creeping Flesh is still great for the Library as opposed to Mathilde, though.
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I can't overstate the importance of those notes, if we can figure out how to make something of even a quarter of the rings power without touching the bad magic, we will have performed a truly great deed indeed.

Maybe even a literal Great Deed if we can put the process down in a form that other wizards can replicate.
 
Briefvoice said:
It's interesting that the 11 result, the highest roll, was "Chambers of Vlad and Isabella". And what we got from that was "study notes of the Carstein Ring". The 10 got the Scrolls of Zandri, and the 8 got the Creeping Flesh. Since higher is better, that would result in:

Ring Notes > Scrolls > > Creeping Flesh. But if you'd asked me to figure it out just from the descriptions, that's not what I would have said. I would probably have put it at Creeping Flesh > Scrolls > Ring Notes. I would have a prestigious volume for the Library is of high value, the Scrolls are a "this might possibly provide some actionable intelligence at some point, who knows", and a few von Carstein notes are a "nice to have".

I think probably the issue is me way underestimating the value of notes from a legendary master of magic on an artifact that just might have been created by Nagash. Notes that because they're on enchantment might help Mathilde improve her enchanting skills in ways otherwise blocked. Personal improvements, very powerful. Then for the Scrolls, I guess it's this line I should be focusing on. "Though they're named for the Prophecies that are the most famous feature of them, they also contain every errant thought that W'Soran gave voice to during the siege of Lahmia, making them a treasure trove of horrifically dangerous insight." Not sure exactly what sorts of insights to expect, and it will likely require at least two actions of language studies to take advantage (and only two because we took the Polygot trait).

The Creeping Flesh is still great for the Library as opposed to Mathilde, though.
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If I had to guess what horrifically dangerous insights W'soran disciple of Naghash might have it would be on 'what's a god', 'what's divine magic' and maybe 'how do you take it apart and redesign it with Dhar'. These are deep insights about magic that are likely impossible to directly obtain by sane people. Both of those sources are one step removed from the creator of necromancy... which makes them one step less than the Liber Mortis. It goes:

Nagash -> taught W'soran whose thoughts are in the scroll
Nagash made the ring -> which was studied by Vlad whose notes we have

As opposed to

Nagash wrote the book of Nagash -> which was mined for lore by Vlad -> Who taught Vanhells who wrote the Liber Mortis
 
Briefvoice said:
Looked up W'Soran on the wiki. Is basically the rule that the closer you get to Nagash, the more awesome magic is, and even insights filtered twice through from Nagash are better than any other human magic?
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Nagash was the only human pretty close to approaching 2nd generation Slan levels of power, and they could body the entirety of golden age dwarven Empire by realigning the continental plates. So yeah, he was pretty good at magic stuff.
 
Alitur said:
Nagash was the only human pretty close to approaching 2nd generation Slan levels of power, and they could body the entirety of golden age dwarven Empire by realigning the continental plates. So yeah, he was pretty good at magic stuff.
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Slann and Nagash isn't a great comparison simply because of the nature of their power. Nagash's power is his immense genius and innovative, albeit megomanial, mind. He created Necromancy from his own personal studies by extracting information from Dark Elves he tortured and combining it with the Mortuary Cult's lore, and he was so good at it that he defeated all the Sorceresses who taught him magic in one on one duels when they tried to escape. He literally did a "Student defeats the master" against Elves.

Slann are powerful because that's how they were created. They are constantly declining because of the Chaos of the world, and what they used to take for granted and for certain is constantly in flux and they are in constant contemplation and debate about how to move forward. Nagash blazes his own path and makes his own rules. He dictates how things go, and while he often fails, his brilliant mind keeps conjuring up some of the most ridiculous yet impactful schemes the mortal mind could conjure.
 
If I had to guess at the scrolls, possibly they could give Necrarch Lore, in the same way the Liber Mortis gave Von Carstein Lore - a glimpse into a bloodline's progenitor. Probably one or two other things too, but since these are stream-of-consciousness writings, I'd say that first one is likely.

On another note, it's amazing how the Sheets vote is going. It's gotten very close, but I don't think Yes has actually surpassed No even once here.
 
Briefvoice said:
It's interesting that the 11 result, the highest roll, was "Chambers of Vlad and Isabella". And what we got from that was "study notes of the Carstein Ring". The 10 got the Scrolls of Zandri, and the 8 got the Creeping Flesh. Since higher is better, that would result in:

Ring Notes > Scrolls > > Creeping Flesh. But if you'd asked me to figure it out just from the descriptions, that's not what I would have said. I would probably have put it at Creeping Flesh > Scrolls > Ring Notes. I would have a prestigious volume for the Library is of high value, the Scrolls are a "this might possibly provide some actionable intelligence at some point, who knows", and a few von Carstein notes are a "nice to have".

I think probably the issue is me way underestimating the value of notes from a legendary master of magic on an artifact that just might have been created by Nagash. Notes that because they're on enchantment might help Mathilde improve her enchanting skills in ways otherwise blocked. Personal improvements, very powerful. Then for the Scrolls, I guess it's this line I should be focusing on. "Though they're named for the Prophecies that are the most famous feature of them, they also contain every errant thought that W'Soran gave voice to during the siege of Lahmia, making them a treasure trove of horrifically dangerous insight." Not sure exactly what sorts of insights to expect, and it will likely require at least two actions of language studies to take advantage (and only two because we took the Polygot trait).

EDIT: Looked up W'Soran on the wiki. Is basically the rule that the closer you get to Nagash, the more awesome magic is, and even insights filtered twice through from Nagash are better than any other human magic?

The Creeping Flesh is still great for the Library as opposed to Mathilde, though.
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So I said before that maybe the scrolls contain some info on Waystones. I was mostly being facetious, but now that I think about it:
Boney said:
it's time to talk about other networks[...] Are there any others we should be considering?"

"Nehekhara," Elrisse says, "made of obelisks and pyramids, and the Mortis River itself. Walled off by border forts from Ka-Sabar to Zandri, across the southern border of the Badlands, and from Lahmia to Lybaras to Rasetra."
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Would 'every errant thought' of a powerful caster sitting on one of the nexuses of the Nehekharan Waystone network include some comments on Waystones? I honestly think the answer might be yes. Probably not detailed or actionable information, but when combined with the Light Order's lore, which would hopefully provide her with some background information which W'Soran obviously won't bother to provide in his rants, Mathilde might manage to actually learn something. Any insights will be difficult for us to share with the rest of the project, but still, I think this loot might prove to be key when we get around to looking at the Nehekharan network.
 
Parabola said:
If I had to guess at the scrolls, possibly they could give Necrarch Lore, in the same way the Liber Mortis gave Von Carstein Lore - a glimpse into a bloodline's progenitor. Probably one or two other things too, but since these are stream-of-consciousness writings, I'd say that first one is likely.

On another note, it's amazing how the Sheets vote is going. It's gotten very close, but I don't think Yes has actually surpassed No even once here.
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It did for at least a a few minutes yesterday, I know because I was the changed vote that tipped it.
 
Briefvoice said:
EDIT: Looked up W'Soran on the wiki. Is basically the rule that the closer you get to Nagash, the more awesome magic is, and even insights filtered twice through from Nagash are better than any other human magic?
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Nagash is arguably the greatest magic user in the setting. Considering he's a human, and his competition consists of people like Lord Kroak, Morithai, and Kairos Fateweaver, that's one hell of a claim.

Notably, his claim to fame is inventing an entirely new discipline of magic by combining two different existing disciplines, which is something I think nobody else has actually achieved in the setting.

Considering that a fragment of the Liber Mortis—which is three generations away from Nagash—could turn an amature into a regional threat, a fragment of his actual work could potentially catapult someone to existential threat levels.

That's why we can't give the notes away—they are firmly in Article 7 territory.
 
Yeah, despite being more-or-less equal steps removed from Nagash, the Ring notes are definitely more dangerous than the Scrolls simply because the former is actually directly about magic, while the latter is not.

Mad ramblings about divinity, Nagash, and weird evil prophecies are... pretty bad. But stuff that can directly help a magic-user get better enchantments is a category above that in terms of potential danger.
 
Nagash is one of those people that if you find his toothbrush, official empire policy is probably to put it in a lead lined box, get the next elector count to give you an armed escort, get to Altdorf, let the grand theogonist burn the toothbrush with holy fire, then move to middenheim, let the ar-ulric burn the remains again in holy fire. Then get back to Altdorf to inter the remains with the light college.

Because if you don't it's quite possible a tooth fairy daemon will come out, take over your body and start a tooth based reign of terror in the empire...
 
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