It Belongs to a Museum

Museums are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Museums are marvellous. They contain marvels.
Museums are fantastic. They perpetuate fantasies.
Museums are terrific. They beget terror.

The phenomenon of the Kunstkammer, or 'cabinet of curiosities', began in Europe as a predilection of the learned to collect objects that fell outside the limited boundaries of early scientific understanding. But as the habit of these collections spread through institutions dedicated to scholarship and academia, they began a transformation in purpose from an implement for furthering education to one of furthering status. The contents of such rooms began to include works of art, relics of great monetary value, and trophies taken from exotic beasts, objects that provoked little scholarly interest but a great deal of awe and jealousy. As the practice spread to people who had influence among the nations forming and ruling colonial empires, the collections grew to such a size that no mere room could contain them - entire buildings needed be set aside to contain the novelties harvested from across the world. As they outgrew the ability of any one person to curate, and outlasted the lifetimes of those who originally accumulated them, they began to sprout into institutions in their own right, and as institutions do, they sought new purposes to justify their continued existence. In an era where a nation's legitimacy was irrevocably tied to its prestige, they had little trouble finding them.

But as times change and moralities evolve, the legacies of such institutions become complicated by the often horrible circumstances that allowed such wondrous collections to be gathered, usually only indirectly but sometimes very much directly. What began as curiosity and is run today in the name of education and understanding has so many more other motives interwoven with the long histories of their collections that the love many have for them begins to feel like a guilty pleasure, something that might need qualifying or sometimes outright hiding. My purpose here is not to speak directly to that quandary - I do not and can not offer absolution or justification, that's not my place or my skillset. What I can do, is allow a different venue for that love to be engaged in and explored - the setting of Warhammer Fantasy, one deeper than most realize and one I've been exploring with SV for quite some time now. It is a world where the villains are unambiguously so and the empires are carved out of terra horribilis. Where Egyptomania might get your city besieged by angry mummies, where Conquistadors find themselves up against enormous frogs with enough magical might to shatter continents, where numerous pirate superpowers make any claim to rule the waves a hilarious dream.

The question, I suppose, is this: is it better to attempt to do an imperialism to those that can and will do it twice as hard back to you if you're not careful?

Well, I don't know about better, but it seems like it might be more fun.

Dust off your fanciest hat and polish your pince-nez, as it is time to curate.

---

The history of the world is a history of denying its end. At the start of the 24th century (by the Imperial calendar) a great incursion of Chaos was fought off by the civilized forces of the known world, with the Humans and Dwarves of the Old World defeating the forces of Daemons, Beastmen, and Chaos Marauders under the Twelfth Everchosen, and the High Elves of Ulthuan repelling yet another invasion of Dark Elves and Daemons led by the would-be usurper of the Phoenix Crown, Malekith. In the wake of this bloodshed the civilized realms were born anew: the Empire was reforged after the Time of Three Emperors and a thousand years of civil war under Emperor Magnus the Pious, the Dwarves declared the Age of Vengeance under High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer, the High Elves confirmed the wisdom of the Age of the Seafarer and shrugged off millennia of isolationism to turn their attention to the wider world, and Bretonnia... invaded the Empire. Unfortunately, such things are never universal. But even accounting for the petty conflicts that have inevitably broken out in the dozen or so decades since the saving of the world, this is an age brighter than any that has been known for thousands of years, an age of learning and science and understanding between peoples. The Colleges and universities of Altdorf push back the borders of the unknown, marvels are created daily in the forges and workshops of Nuln, the great ships of Lothern and Barak Varr and Marienburg cross the oceans to bring exotic treasures from faraway lands that were once mere myths. Between inquisitive minds, clever hands, and bold hearts, there are more treasures in the world today than in any era previous, and though they fill armouries and treasuries the world over, there is another, more noble use that such things can be put to. That of the mouseion, the house of inspiration, where all can come and witness the wonders of the world they live in and may one day be called upon to die to defend. The Museum.

Such a noble cause may or may not be what drives you, but it certainly wouldn't be what drives the powers that be that have allowed your institution to come into being, nor the benefactors you will look to to contribute their trinkets to its halls, or the employees you will need to better understand and display those objects. You cannot approach this as a Dragon does, as a mere accumulator of shiny objects to be piled up haphazardly and slept upon; you must balance interests, demands, requests, trends, and zeitgeists for your institution to ring with footsteps instead of echoes, and to fill its cabinets with objects worthy of interest you must learn as much as you can about the world around you and the ways in which you can wield words and gold to have others alter it to your designs. And all of that varies immensely based on exactly where the institution you are to found is located.



Altdorf, 2453
Affinity: Magic, Religion, Trophy
Bonus affinity: anything that directly endangers the city with its presence

Altdorf is the current capital of the Empire of Man, the greatest nation of Humans ruled by Humans to be found anywhere in the world. Founded by a confederation of iron-age tribes under the leadership of Sigmar to last a thousand years, then splintered into a squabbling triad of pretenders for another thousand, the reforged Empire is teetering on the brink of redissolution after the disastrous stewardship of the Unfähiger dynasty. With rule now passed to the Holswig-Schliestein dynasty of Reikland, many hopes for competence seem to have been dashed by the disastrous failed reconquest of Marienburg and the attempt at furthering the persecution of the rebelling Colleges of Magic. It is a reputation in dire need of being rehabilitated.

If one were to point out that Altdorf was a strange city, most listeners would believe you would be referring to the presence of the Colleges of Magic and the effect those institutions have had on the now-unmappable geometry of the city's streets, especially after those streets were recently rebuilt after the 'Great Fire'. Others might believe you to be referring to its political superposition as sometimes provincial capital, de facto Imperial capital, lapsed status as a chartered free town, or it technically being a principality. But one of the strangest compulsions of its inhabitants is to gather to this place everything that the darker forces of the world would be willing to sack a city to retrieve, and how for some reason everyone else tolerates this even as those forces batter down the city's walls again and again. In the later years of Emperor Wilhelm III, in the immediate aftermath of the sack of Altdorf by Arkhan the Black to retrieve something concealed within the vaults of the Holy Temple of Sigmar, it has been decided that the city needs to move on from the rubble that remains of the Altdorf Museum, the Grand Imperial Museum, the Grand Museum of Altdorf, the Imperial Museum, and the Magnus Museum, and to create an entirely new museum to gather and display the wonders of the Old World and beyond. And for reasons nobody seems able to even begin to explain, nobody is going to stop you from doing so.

- The 'vanilla' option. The Empire is not unlike an early renaissance Holy Roman Empire, and pretty much the protagonist of the setting and where most of the stories told in it are located.
- 'Vanilla' is a relative term. Altdorf is still a pretty weird place - it has a predilection for riots and inadvisable collections, and the founding of the Colleges of Magic within it left the streets unable to be mapped.
- The dominant affinities are Magic, as the city contains the Colleges of Magic, Religion, as the city hosts the Grand Conclave and the Empire is a land of many faiths, and Trophy, as the Empire seeks to celebrate its martial history and the Emperor to repair his martial reputation.



Sith Rionnasc, 2458
Affinity: Age, History, Religion
Bonus affinity: Elven history and influence in the Old World

Marienburg is the independent city-state at the mouth of the Reik river system, a network of waterways that criss-cross the largest portion of the Old World and are vital to trade within the Empire and Kislev, and at the shore of the Sea of Claws, a turbulent sea framed by the savage marauders of Norsca to the north, the frozen land of Kislev to the east, the civilized realms of the Empire and Bretonnia to the south, and the Great Ocean forming a gateway to the rest of the world to the west. Once part of the Empire, it won its freedom through bribery, warfare, and above all an alliance with the High Elves of Ulthuan, whose colonies once dominated the Old World. As part of the treaties that bound Marienburg to Ulthuan, part of the city was given extraterritorial status as legally Ulthuan's soil. At first it became the site of harbours, shipyards, and warehouses, and other means of projecting economic and military power, but over time a population of sailors, merchants, explorers, and adventurers collectively known as 'Sea Elves' settled in the city-within-a-city, forming businesses and institutions of every type imaginable.

Formally the Continental Exarchate of the High Kingdom of Ulthuan, formerly Sith Rionnasc'namishathir in a time before Humanity dominated the Old World, called Elfsgemeente by the local Humans and simply Elftown by visitors, Sith Rionnasc is home to many organizations that seek to extract and exploit many resources from the Old World. But a front neglected by Elves is that of its culture and its history, for the simple reason that it looks down upon the former and is embarrassed by the latter, as it culminated in a disastrous war with the Dwarves that had previously been their allies and that they ultimately lost. But this is the era of the eleventh Phoenix King, Finubar the Seafarer, said by many to be a throwback to the second, Bel Shanaar the Explorer. The possibility exists to stoke within the Elves an interest in their lost history and the lessons it could teach them. And with the Cult of the Sea God Manann launching the 'Pirate Wars', a crusade against followers of the heretical god Stromfels, God of Sharks and Shipwrecks, there will be plentiful opportunities to recover the materials required for such an interest to be stoked.

- Marienburg is a Dutch-flavoured thalassocracy and often plays the 'heel' of Human politics, as an oligarchy that bribed its way out of the protagonist confederation often rubs people the wrong way. This offers a way of exploring it without having to be it - by being part of its Elven benefactors, experiencing the Old World afresh as they return to it after a four thousand year absence.
- This does not come with a side of beef with the Dwarves. The War of Vengeance has been over for four thousand years.
- The dominant affinities are Age, as Marienburg may be the oldest city on the continent, History, as the Elves seek to catch up with the millennia of continental history they missed, and Religion, as Marienburg attempts to harmonize its religious practices with those of its new benefactor.



Tilea, early 2500s
Affinity: Magic, Age, Trophy
Bonus affinity: anything with direct military use

Tilea is a warm and prosperous peninsula of city-states on the southern edge of the Old World. Sheltered by mountains on three sides and far from the terrors of the poles, it has had the freedom to hone its political institutions into a varied array of republics and principalities, and its mercenary institutions into some of the world's most skilled and competent warriors money can buy. Some of the world's greatest explorers, inventors, statesmen, and generals have been Tilean, and its gods, knights, and academies have been welcomed throughout the nations of the Old World.

In recent years, a border skirmish between the Estalian Petty Kingdom of Larhgoz and the Tilean Principality of Tobaro escalated beyond all prediction when Larhgoz revealed itself to have the allegiance of a cult of Skin Wolves and the backing of the loathsome Skaven. However, Tobaro averted its doom when the group, organization, league, or conspiracy known as the 'Council of Tears' revealed itself, using a cache of magical artefacts to buy the loyalty of several powerful Wizards and bind a menagerie of extremely dangerous beasts. In the aftermath the Council of Tears rivals only Prince Tibaldus Marsarius de Vela for influence within Tobaro, and a growing movement within the city seek to turn power over to the Council and rename the city to Vedenza. This demonstration of both power and danger has revealed to the rest of Tilea that there is a gap in their arsenals, and now each is scrambling to assemble their own answer to Tobaro's 'Red Vault'.

- Tilea is Renaissance Italy with a milder Rome and fewer foreign powers butting in, and you can find in it all the archetypes you'd recognize - schemers, statesmen, explorers, inventors. There will be a subvote for which Tilean City-State you are located in, and the precise date will vary slightly depending on the winner.
- The dominant affinities are Magic, which Tilea is scrambling to rectify its lack of native access to, Age, as all of Tilea draws legitimacy from an ancient empire allegedly founded by the Goddess Myrmidia incarnate, and Trophy, as the city-states take great pride in the skill and adventures of their resident mercenary bands.



Vampire Coast, 2522
Affinity: Trophy, Magic, History
Bonus affinity: Vampiric and necromantic diaspora

For over sixteen centuries, on the opposite side of the Great Ocean from the Old World, a thousand miles of Lustria's coastline has been ruled by the Vampire known to history as Luthor Harkon. Though his relentless pursuit of magical artefacts of the Lizardmen of Lustria shattered his mind long ago, this simply led him to pursue power through a constellation of means too varied to be stopped. He distributes magical trinkets called Ebony Skulls throughout the Norscans of Skeggi that can grant temporary necromantic power at the cost of permanent service to Harkon, and pays mercenaries with cursed Pieces of Eight that will bring them unnatural success in life and lead them back to his service once more in death. He ensorcells the winds and currents to deliver fresh ships to him, both wrecked and soon to be wrecked, to bolster his riches and his forces. He has seemingly somehow fathered two separate Vampiric bloodlines, the apparent underwater equivalents to Abhorash's Blood Knight get known as Depth Guard, and the blend of leadership and necromancy that echoes Vashanesh's Von Carsteins in the admiralty of his pirate fleet. He has access to a form of blackpowder that ignites even when soaking wet or underwater. He bargains with Stromfels for access to the Lore of the Deep, and with the Druchii of Ghrond for magical secrets that are undoubtedly even more terrible. And not least of which, he captains his flagship, the Dread Abyssal, against the coastlines of the world to personally loot and plunder all of its riches and mysteries.

It would seem an unassailable reputation, and it was up until some up-jumped Von Carstein with a fake name and a floating castle teleported himself into the Galleon's Graveyard, the enormous whirlpool at the heart of the Great Ocean, and somehow seized control over it. Now he empowers himself by snatching dead sailors and sunken ships from its gullet to join a rival necromantic admiralty known as the Dreadfleet. Of the dozen simultaneous responses from Luthor Harkon to the meteoric rise of this new rival, one has empowered you with the privilege and responsibility to create a public monument to the wealth, power, wisdom, experience, and largesse of the Pirate King of the Vampire Coast, as well as to gather information and artefacts relating to the many branches of the Vampiric and Necromantic family trees.

- The spookier side of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. These are bad guys, but they're not the worst guys, and they're fun. Vampire pirates!
- The differing nature of Necromancy at sea, where the dead can hope for no better than the indifference of Manann instead of the tender mercy of Morr and so tend to be a lot more open to a better offer, means that the Zombie Pirates are a lot more intellectually active than their landbound cousins and some individuals might be inclined to shamble through a museum. The Vampire Coast is also populated by various kinds of Vampires, Ghouls, Wights, Spirits, and even the occasional mortal.
- The dominant affinities are Trophy, to glorify the deeds and further the infamy of the pirate crews and captains, Magic, without which nobody would be here, and History, which Luthor Harkon has lived through, lost, and seeks to rediscover.



Sartosa, 2523
Affinity: Value, Trophy, Religion
Bonus affinity: ocean beasts and naval paraphernalia

As an extremely mountainous and defensible island off the coast off the large, fertile, and otherwise sheltered peninsula of Tilea, Sartosa's destiny as a pirate stronghold seems to have been set in stone at the beginning of time, and that's before you take into account the numerous creation stories that say it was explicitly made for that exact purpose. Occupied at various points in history by Arabyans, Druchii, Norscans, Nehekharans, and Tileans to raid Tilea from, various forms of order inevitably arise from its anarchic power struggles, but seemingly just as inevitably fall again back into a baseline of near-anarchy based on the unwritten and flexible Pirate's Code. But of these brief periods of civilization, great things can come. Its culture is a melting pot of wanderers, fortune-seekers, and exiles from all corners of the world, and its religious milieu contains just about every deity imaginable but is largely dominated by various forms of worship of Manann, Stromfels, and Ranald that are considered heretical on the mainland.

After the conclusion of the whole nasty 'Dreadfleet' business, the Grand Alliance that defeated it has given rise to the duarchy of the captains Jaego Roth and Aranessa Saltspite as undisputed rulers of Sartosa - for now. But Sartosa's reputation will need very hasty burnishing if an alliance with Ulthuan and Barak Varr is to be formalized, and to that end it seems appropriate to start working on a display of all the greater evils out there for the mere disreputability of the Decadent Pirate Principality of Sartosa to seem much more acceptable in contrast to. To whit, a building has been set aside and violence has been promised to anyone that appreciates with anything but their eyes the treasures to be put on display within it.

- The less spooky side of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. While the Sartosans are undoubtedly rapscallions, you have to go pretty far down the list of what a sailor doesn't want to encounter at sea before they remember to include the guys who are just gonna take their cargo, and under the Grand Alliance, Sartosa might be opening a new chapter in its history.
- The dominant affinities are Value, as the more mundane sort of pirates native to Sartosa are properly obsesessed with treasure, Trophy, as Sartosa values the sort of caper that goes down in history, and Religion, as according to legend the island was raised by Ranald himself to save and indebt an adrift sailor.



[ ] Altdorf
[ ] Sith Rionnasc
[ ] Tilea
[ ] Vampire Coast
[ ] Sartosa



- The purpose of this quest is to provide an outlet for the times in which I am ready and willing to expound on various historical and pseudohistorical details (probably about eighty percent of my waking hours), but not in a place to keep spinning all the moving parts of my other Warhammer Fantasy quest, Divided Loyalties. It is intended to have a particular focus on the setting in its own right and as a lens to learn about our own histories and the study of them. No knowledge of Divided Loyalties will be needed to participate in this quest, and it will take place either decades before or decades after DL does, and may diverge in history from it.
- As might be suggested by the range of possible hosts listed above, the exact tone of this quest is yet to be determined, but it is intended to be light. You are to be cut from the same cloth as the person that bemusedly receives whatever Indiana Jones has nabbed this week, the person trying to wrangle Evelyn and her brother in the opening of The Mummy. A certain amount of discussion about the real world equivalents of these institutions is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing, but let's not use this as the venue to rehash the same old debates.
- End Times is fake. The 2520s might get spicy, but it's not going to blow up the setting in this quest. There's no need to make a decision based on how many years it will give you until the world ends, because it won't.
- The affinities for the different locations are only the status quo. Other interests may arise from circumstance, or be cultivated in the population at large, or the institution can prefer to seek dedicated support from specific special interest groups instead of relying on the whims of the general public. It will be up to you to determine what success looks like, and though some roads might be bumpier than others, you are free to decide which one you go down.