Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
I for one am really excited about getting a servioscope that we can give Kragg. Like, it's absolutely fantastic that we have a really good shot at having an apparition ready in time for elfcation, but I want to see what happens when after decades of getting top shelf bling from The Grim we finally return the favor a little.
 
[X] [RIDER] The Dämmerlichtreiter

When it comes to the rider it's worth remembering that going out and getting multiple riders is feasible, exactly what the golds do, and adds significantly more omph to the spell. Four or five cavalry charging at you out of nowhere is much more worrying than a single one. This is the kind of spell you invest the extra time into to maximize the impact. If the spell to summon them has the same opportunity cost for one vs five, getting two or three times the bang for your buck makes sense as an investment. (From what I understand Gehenna's Golden Hounds summons several at once.)

(This makes having them all look like Mathilde much more awkward.)

I also suspect that we might be able to get more than one red rider for a single AP in the future if we're lucky and they're available. (And we have a way of guaranteeing that luck.) We were able to capture one and try to figure out how to bind it in one AP this turn after all.

[X] [SEVIROSCOPE] Visual
I do want to come back do auditory, especially since we know Mathilde is necessary for it.
 
Ooh, yeah. Statues like that tend to have the rider be at least close to the horse's height, if only because they need to fit in the palm of a hand and not be too heavy. It helps that that should make it clearly inhuman since horses are freaking tall.
 
Boney said:
"Fake intaglios," Eike suggests.

You take a moment to try to figure that out. Counterfeit engraved gems? "Elaborate on that," you say.

"When a noble doesn't want people to know that he's sold the jewel out of his signet ring," she explains. "Getting a stamp carved or etched in relief is expensive and there's only a few artisans who can manage it in any given place. But if you get a series of stamps made at different depths and stamp them over the wax, you can make it look like it was stamped with an intaglio, and just about any blacksmith can manage it. You can even get it done by multiple different blacksmiths."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Though it was lost in all the vote discussion, can we take a moment to appreciate that, given her family, Eike probably knows this one from personal experience? Pawning off the signet ring seems like the sort of thing Wilhelmina's sons would do.

Parabola said:
I bet the Dämmerlichtreiter doesn't even have plaits! Harrumph. Cats and Nazguls are superior, grumble grumble.

...I think there's something very funny about the title overall, honestly. Mathilde did an overall good job as Spymaster, and she did ride all around the place, identified a bunch of people who would rather not pay taxes, shut down the Stirlandian League, and kidnapped one dude who had sold out to Countess von Carstein, but overall a huge chunk of what she did that made her valuable to Abelhelm was bureaucracy and management and working hard. She didn't have nearly as much personal power as people seemed to think she did, merely the authority and boldness. And that worked out, because people can be deeply mislead by appearances and rumors.

Before the Purge of the Haunted Hills and Drakenhof (where she did actually fight wights and the Singing King and took the reins of leadership), she fought like, what? Four or so times? Not as much as the people of Stirland probably imagined. There was...
  • The weird zombie hidden in Eagle Castle in Turn 1
  • The crypt with the ledgers in Turn 3, with the failed ambush from the so-called Countess von Carstein
  • The Dhar-Matrix-modified spy/assassin in Turn 5, which led to the Underwear Incident
  • Organizing the Greatswords against the Stirlandian League in Turn 7, though really they did most of the heavy lifting
Taking that into consideration, it's kinda funny that destroying Alkahast's College, one of Mathilde's best feats of personal martial prowess and of how she protects Stirland, happened after she left.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure a lot of the original legend was about all in the time of the riding around. Looking it up, the title first comes up right at the very first Purge of the Haunted Hills turn. At that point in time, setting up and maintaining information networks with the local villages probably plays into it just as much or more as fighting foes does.

Of course, then the whole Castle Drakenhof thing happened and the legend probably changed a bit after that.

Parabola said:
I'm still partial to Bringer of Knight.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Supporting this, it strikes me that variations on "the Bringer of Knight," "Knightbringer," etc. all tie into the legend we're attempting to invoke pretty well. Since the Dämmerlichtreiter's legend is one bound up in duty to her liege lord.

Boney said:
It would be to the same proportions as the figure, which combined with the size of the apparition's warhorse would result in a significantly taller reiter.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Certainly an unusual manner for a legend to grow in the telling, but it checks out. :V
 
SpaceSloth said:
Can you imagine being some Stirlandian soldier that grew up on stories about Dämmerlichtreiter protecting people from vampires, and suddenly there she is charging fearlessly against your enemies?

It's basically Stirlandian Green Knight.... Is Green Knight actually an apparition controlled by Lady of the Lake?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You really ok with that same legend breaking loose and killing that Stirlandian soldier? Because that's an inescapable truth: that will inevitably happen, multiple times. Miscasts will happen in the next few hundred years, and that's what the result will be.
 
[X] [RIDER] Great Cat Knight

I'm voting for the Great Cat Knight because it reminds me of He-Man and I love that. I'll be fine if "The Dämmerlichtreiter" or something else wins.

Honestly, not that worried about how unpredictable this thing could be. I've played D&D for a long time this kinda summoning & binding to my service scenario is something I've done. We just need to use sound judgement if/when the option presents itself. Boney himself has stated repeatedly for years he's not the kind of guy to give us a trap option.

Good things go bad in the heat of combat? Maybe but that's just the dice being dice. Even if we had absolute control over something there's always a chance it could do more harm than good. Take the Eye of Gazul, it's an indiscriminate WMD but when used smartly it is the perfect weapon.

So please y'all let's all take a step back and see what happens next.
 
I don't think people would panic over a battle wizard casting something that looks scary. All battle magic looks terrifying and evil if you have a front row seat for it, and wizards have been using it on the empires battlefields for two centuries now.

Even miscasts shouldn't be a huge issue. I don't think the end result is much different to the other kinds of random horrible deaths that happen in a battle. The wizard who fumbles a spell isn't going to be the most popular person in the army, but I doubt they're treated worse than a mortar crew who fires a short round, or handgunners who misaim through a cloud of gunsmoke , or cavalry that get confused and trample through their own lines. It's just bad luck that could have happened to anyone.
 
Andres said:
You really ok with that same legend breaking loose and killing that Stirlandian soldier? Because that's an inescapable truth: that will inevitably happen, multiple times. Miscasts will happen in the next few hundred years, and that's what the result will be.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Dämmerlichtreiter would obviously never do that, therefore it could not be her and the Stirlander must have just made a mistake.:V

But more seriously, I think there is enough of a degree of separation that it should not bring troubles to Mathilde, so I'm okay with it.
 
SpaceSloth said:
Dämmerlichtreiter would obviously never do that, therefore it could not be her and the Stirlander must have just made a mistake.:V

But more seriously, I think there is enough of a degree of separation that it should not bring troubles to Mathilde, so I'm okay with it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's not about bringing trouble to Mathilde, it's about bringing trouble to the legend. The whole point of the idea is to make the legend of the Dammerlichtreiter a cooler thing, but that's entirely undercut by everything about it that isn't its base aesthetics. I think it's bad to attach our legend to this spell.
 
Andres said:
It's not about bringing trouble to Mathilde, it's about bringing trouble to the legend. The whole point of the idea is to make the legend of the Dammerlichtreiter a cooler thing, but that's entirely undercut by everything about it that isn't its base aesthetics. I think it's bad to attach our legend to this spell.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think the people of drakenhof would say it's spot on, the velvet glove and the iron fist.
 
Andres said:
It's not about bringing trouble to Mathilde, it's about bringing trouble to the legend. The whole point of the idea is to make the legend of the Dammerlichtreiter a cooler thing, but that's entirely undercut by everything about it that isn't its base aesthetics. I think it's bad to attach our legend to this spell.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The spell would save many more Stirlander than it would kill. Wizards miscast, it sucks sure but they're still deployed and in constant demand on the battlefield. Because the value they bring is worth it.

The stance that everything about it but aesthetics is "entirely undercut" when it's going to be extremely helpful the vast majority of the time doesn't really wash to my eyes.
 
Loltop said:
I think the people of drakenhof would say it's spot on, the velvet glove and the iron fist.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The iron fist of killing innocent people for no reason? That's what you're trying to spin as a positive?

Thomasfoolery said:
The spell would save many more Stirlander than it would kill. Wizards miscast, it sucks sure but they're still deployed and in constant demand on the battlefield. Because the value they bring is worth it.

The stance that everything about it but aesthetics is "entirely undercut" when it's going to be extremely helpful the vast majority of the time doesn't really wash to my eyes.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The spell is good even though it can cause friendly fire on a miscast, same as any other spell. My issue is with attaching an entirely heroic legend to this not-entirely-heroic spell, rather than making the monster on a leash look like it's a monster on a leash.
 
Last edited:
We can do other things with the Dammerlichtreighter legend, things that fit it in a wholly positive way. We don't need to accept the legend becoming associated with killing innocents just to make something magical out of it.
 
The Phoenixian said:
Though it was lost in all the vote discussion, can we take a moment to appreciate that, given her family, Eike probably knows this one from personal experience? Pawning off the signet ring seems like the sort of thing Wilhelmina's sons would do.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think her nobility diplo skill might be from her childhood before Wilhelmina came in, and I'm pretty sure she's had minimal interaction with her father.

A professional courtesan probably sees and hears a great deal about what disreputable nobles get up to.
 
Andres said:
The spell is good even though it can cause friendly fire on a miscast, same as any other spell. My issue is with attaching an entirely heroic legend to this not-entirely-heroic spell, rather than making the monster on a leash look like it's a monster on a leash.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Nothing is ever perfectly clean. Discarding something merely because it cannot achieve perfection isn't a standard I'm willing to adhere to.

Andres said:
The iron fist of killing innocent people for no reason? That's what you're trying to spin as a positive?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is an extremely prejudiced framing, no one is going to be casting this spell for the lols, it'll be cast because there's a military necessity. It's no more killing friendlies for no reason, than an artillery barrage falling short is.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top