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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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On the subject of the We being on the ship, while I don't think there would be enough space...well what if they weaved a massive web on the outside and anchor it to the ship?

It would make landing a bit difficult, but it would be a really cool visual for the ship flying through the air with a giant spider web flowing beneath it like a cloud or dress.
 
Sinsystems said:
On the subject of the We being on the ship, while I don't think there would be enough space...well what if they weaved a massive web on the outside and anchor it to the ship?

It would make landing a bit difficult, but it would be a really cool visual for the ship flying through the air with a giant spider web flowing beneath it like a cloud or dress.
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Especially cool if we do opt for a cloud at the base - the web joining with the mists, ethereal and dew-dappled, such that one can barely tell where one ends and the other begins...
 
Sinsystems said:
On the subject of the We being on the ship, while I don't think there would be enough space...well what if they weaved a massive web on the outside and anchor it to the ship?

It would make landing a bit difficult, but it would be a really cool visual for the ship flying through the air with a giant spider web flowing beneath it like a cloud or dress.
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They would never expose their Egg layers like that (even assuming they can make a web strong enough to carry one), but it might be workable for some of the others. Of course that comes with the added issues that you now have crew on the outside of the ship, the point of a ship being to protect her crew.

Also... how much food would you even need to feed We over a decent span of time for those instances when going down to hunt isn't practical. I know they can go into hibernation when food is scarce, but that just means they are starving which means they would have to eat all the more when you get to your destination and moreover you can't put all of them to sleep since the individual spiders are what makes up the mind of the We, you really do not want the spider nest loosing too much thinking capacity mid journey.

It doesn't really sound workable, but on the other hand it's cool enough that I would not mind looking into it IC... as long as it doesn't cost more actions.
 
We Librarians work because they genuinely care about and are interested in the preservation and acquisition of knowledge.

And also because it's a position with no real risk, only reward.

We Sky Pirates, in addition to being flatly impractical, have neither of these- it puts the prospective new We at great risk, and is centered around something they have previously expressed negative interest in- the sky.

Also I really don't like the idea of using the We as exploitable and expendable minions. The center of the We plotline has always been refusing to do that.
 
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DragonParadox said:
They would never expose their Egg layers like that (even assuming they can make a web strong enough to carry one), but it might be workable for some of the others. Of course that comes with the added issues that you now have crew on the outside of the ship, the point of a ship being to protect her crew.

Also... how much food would you even need to feed We over a decent span of time for those instances when going down to hunt isn't practical. I know they can go into hibernation when food is scarce, but that just means they are starving which means they would have to eat all the more when you get to your destination and moreover you can't put all of them to sleep since the individual spiders are what makes up the mind of the We, you really do not want the spider nest loosing too much thinking capacity mid journey.

It doesn't really sound workable, but on the other hand it's cool enough that I would not mind looking into it IC... as long as it doesn't cost more actions.
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Well one idea that I have is that rather than a full colony we make it an extension of the Library We.

Have it so that when we aren't using the ship that the Library We use it to extend their hunting range and when we are using it the Library We have a group detached to assist in us acquiring more knowledge and in general use it as a chance to learn more about the world.

It would be more practical to dedicate some hull space for the We detachment to sleep, store food and keep some memory webs.
 
Sinsystems said:
Well one idea that I have is that rather than a full colony we make it an extension of the Library We.

Have it so that when we aren't using the ship that the Library We use it to extend their hunting range and when we are using it the Library We have a group detached to assist in us acquiring more knowledge and in general use it as a chance to learn more about the world.

It would be more practical to dedicate some hull space for the We detachment to sleep, store food and keep some memory webs.
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Don't the We lose sentience when away from the main hive?
 
Dragonofelder said:
Don't the We lose sentience when away from the main hive?
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The way it works is that they use their webs as a means to maintain their memories. So if they are away from the main hive for too long they can't remember important info.

Which is also why they are a bit of a hive mind because all We maintain their memories from the same webs.

What i propose is that the group that goes with the ship weaves a...data repository of the most important info in a section of the hold, so it should mean that they should only be a bit less intelligent.

At least that is my theory, obviously I'm not Boney so I don't know if the idea will work.
 
Sinsystems said:
Well one idea that I have is that rather than a full colony we make it an extension of the Library We.

Have it so that when we aren't using the ship that the Library We use it to extend their hunting range and when we are using it the Library We have a group detached to assist in us acquiring more knowledge and in general use it as a chance to learn more about the world.

It would be more practical to dedicate some hull space for the We detachment to sleep, store food and keep some memory webs.
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I do not think they can do that, the We are in constant communication which makes up their thoughts as a colonial organism, trying to take a part of the Library We would be like slicing off a piece of someone's brain to take with us and expecting that to remain connected to the part we leave behind.

Sinsystems said:
The way it works is that they use their webs as a means to maintain their memories. So if they are away from the main hive for too long they can't remember important info.

Which is also why they are a bit of a hive mind because all We maintain their memories from the same webs.

What i propose is that the group that goes with the ship weaves a...data repository of the most important info in a section of the hold, so it should mean that they should only be a bit less intelligent.

At least that is my theory, obviously I'm not Boney so I don't know if the idea will work.
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No, they use the literal bodies of the colony members for memory storage with Egg Layers making up most of their long term memory.
 
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Sinsystems said:
The way it works is that they use their webs as a means to maintain their memories. So if they are away from the main hive for too long they can't remember important info.

Which is also why they are a bit of a hive mind because all We maintain their memories from the same webs.
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Are you sure about that? My understanding is that their memory is contained in each individual We-brain, who constantly repeat information to each other to share among the hive.
 
I'm sure this has been said by someone else before in the last 5,000 comments, but a major thing that I don't like about the air ship is that it's coming out of nowhere, character wise. In story, Mathilde has never expressed any interest in captaining a ship, or traveling around the world with an entourage, or aerial bombardment, or anything else that says air ship to me. At best she's mused on whether Swamp Town has any appeal at all.

I thought about whether this is pure bias talking, and it might be, but looking back it seems like this was not the case for all the other major freeform or big decision votes. We joined the Dwarves because we were impressed with and took a liking to them in the Sylvania campaign. We thought that combining Burning Shadows with a whole mountain might be a good idea some time after blasting the Singing King with that spell to great effect. We went for the library after already collecting books every turn. We founded a branch college to help us with research, a long staple of the Quest. We hired the We when they were already an established character (though I voted against that one as well). Rite of Way was a tool that fit the job ahead of us. Freeing Karak Vlag was based on knowledge we already accumulated as a player base from the story and words of QM. The Waystone Project was something we wanted to do (at perhaps a smaller scale) for a long time and something that was first suggested to us by an NPC (Cadaeth). Mining Drakenhof mountain for books followed from the by then very established (even in character) B O O K thirst, the also very established interest in dark magic theory and the narratively satisfying return to treaded ground.

The closest to "where the hell did that come from" we've had was maybe the Dragon Altar. Which is hilarious, because that was the only plan I ever wrote that won. But I still feel that that's very different. Like Rite of Way, it was a tool for a job, a job given to us in the story. And though we had dreams about an order of dragon knights and whatnot, it never necessarily needed to be a major part of Mathilde's journey. In fact in the end it very much wasn't. All it is is a tool of last resort in Belegar's armory and all it cost us was one AP.
 
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Rafin said:
I'm sure this has been said by someone else before in the last 5,000 comments, but a major thing that I don't like about the air ship is that it's coming out of nowhere, character wise. In story, Mathilde has never expressed any interest in captaining a ship, or traveling around the world with an entourage, or aerial bombardment, or anything else that says air ship to me. At best she's mused on whether Swamp Town has any appeal at all.
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She has expressed enough of an interest in flight to have a personal gyro-carriage custom made for passengers, something with has never before existed and she had that moment thinking about the air ships of the past in K8P, sure it's not that much on screen, but you have to consider over the last five years or so a not inconsiderable portion of her time has been spent in the air. She has even alluded to flying beyond the borders of the Old World once to Adela when she asked her to be her pilot.
 
Sinsystems said:
The way it works is that they use their webs as a means to maintain their memories. So if they are away from the main hive for too long they can't remember important info.
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I think you might accidentally be thinking of that web running alongside their orc-killzone hunting route, which the Hunter-We follow to keep from getting lost?

As the others said, the We's shared sentience and memories are based on proximity and echo communication to the rest of their colony, not to any memory webs - the only thing that hunting webline does is act as something their distant Hunter bodies can be easily trained to follow, so that they always arrive at that specific location even without conscious thought.
 
Maybe that's again bias talking, but the flight interest that lead to the gyro-carriage feels like it is already completely covered by said gyro-carriage to me.

I'll have to retread the thread to find her fleeting thought about the airships of old (and how much she showed interest beyond idle curiosity). Same goes for that conversation with Adela. If that's the way you describe it then yes, that would make wanting an airship not be completely out of nowhere. Do you remember the chapters?
 
Rafin said:
Maybe that's again bias talking, but the flight interest that lead to the gyro-carriage feels like it is already completely covered by said gyro-carriage to me.

I'll have to retread the thread to find her fleeting thought about the airships of old (and how much she showed interest beyond idle curiosity). Same goes for that conversation with Adela. If that's the way you describe it then yes, that would make wanting an airship not be completely out of nowhere. Do you remember the chapters?
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Here you go:
 
Mopman43 said:
Are you sure about that? My understanding is that their memory is contained in each individual We-brain, who constantly repeat information to each other to share among the hive.
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This is correct. Citations:
Boney said:
With Esbern and Seija only there to cast the spell and take fascinated notes, you have a breakthrough when you finally figure out what it means by Echo. It seems that the intelligence is distributed rather than centralized, which means that if something is to be remembered for longer than the lifetime of a single node, it needs to be told back and forth - hence, Echo, the period before the birth of the current eldest individual (or this-We).
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Boney said:
Their memory isn't actually that incredible. Anything older than the eldest Egg-Layer is 'Echo', which means the We had to consciously decide to retell it to itself to remember it. This means that despite potential immortality, there's a lot of information attrition over long timespans.
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Boney said:
The fundamental question you first seek an answer to is the nature of a We soul, and what you piece together over long days punctuated by headaches in your soul is that the answer is in a grey area. The We in their colony share a single soul, but it is a shapeless and amorphic one compared to that of the beings you're used to, and when a Hunter leaves a fragment of the greater oversoul breaks off to go with it. It's not dissimilar to theories you've seen referenced on the nature of the souls of other eusocial insects. So that means that internal communication via the soul is quite possible, and with the help of the bemused but cooperative We, you set to work testing for it. Which itself wasn't that difficult, because all it takes is a tunnel adjoining the Hall of Pillared Iron that the We call home, where a Web-Weaver carried in your arms rejoins the oversoul of the We but remains unmoving, as per the last set of instructions it received before leaving in the first place.

So, sound. Perhaps higher pitched than you can hear, perhaps lower, it doesn't matter terribly much. Either way, the We appear to be entirely non-magical, despite how alien they are from sentient life as you know it. You must admit a little disappointment that the answer is so mundane, but it does fill in the few remaining gaps in your knowledge of the We.
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When a We gets too far away from the main hive, which is mostly the case for Hunters, they lose sapience. You would need to found an entire new hive to staff a ship, which would impose a lot of delay on having the ship up and ready even if it was practical on a physical level (consider that it's been years since we invited the We to colonize KAU and they are still "in training," while the human and halfling scribes we recruited were up and running basically immediately -- one of the explicit drawbacks of the We librarian option was that it would take a long time before they could do it, and I imagine that goes double for flying a magic ship).
 
DragonParadox said:
Here you go:
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Thanks!

So the first is Mathilde espousing things she read about airships after the topic of airships is specifically brought up. That could betray a prior interest, I guess.

The mention of "outside the continent" to Adela seems to again be completely in context of both the gyro-carriage and the Waystone Project. Not something that makes it in any way seem, to me at least, that Mathilde was musing about maybe having use for, or interest in, airship access.

I concede that it's more than nothing. But emotionally it doesn't reach me. And I may be rationalizing, but it doesn't feel like it's much to go on objectively either.

Then again, I'm the kind of person who votes against attempting to steal a mammoth. And who voted against We librarians. And who preferred asking the Gold Order for a seviriscope over Golden Hound secrets. That last one is actually another example of a free form vote where we went for something that came out of nowhere, which I completely forgot until now. I disliked it then, but due to the much larger narrative impact, I dislike the current frontrunner more.
 
Rafin said:
I'm sure this has been said by someone else before in the last 5,000 comments, but a major thing that I don't like about the air ship is that it's coming out of nowhere, character wise. In story, Mathilde has never expressed any interest in captaining a ship, or traveling around the world with an entourage, or aerial bombardment, or anything else that says air ship to me. At best she's mused on whether Swamp Town has any appeal at all.

I thought about whether this is pure bias talking, and it might be, but looking back it seems like this was not the case for all the other major freeform or big decision votes. We joined the Dwarves because we were impressed with and took a liking to them in the Sylvania campaign. We thought that combining Burning Shadows with a whole mountain might be a good idea some time after blasting the Singing King with that spell to great effect. We went for the library after already collecting books every turn. We founded a branch college to help us with research, a long staple of the Quest. We hired the We when they were already an established character (though I voted against that one as well). Rite of Way was a tool that fit the job ahead of us. Freeing Karak Vlag was based on knowledge we already accumulated as a player base from the story and words of QM. The Waystone Project was something we wanted to do (at perhaps a smaller scale) for a long time and something that was first suggested to us by an NPC (Cadaeth). Mining Drakenhof mountain for books followed from the by then very established (even in character) B O O K thirst, the also very established interest in dark magic theory and the narratively satisfying return to treaded ground.

The closest to "where the hell did that come from" we've had was maybe the Dragon Altar. Which is hilarious, because that was the only plan I ever wrote that won. But I still feel that that's very different. Like Rite of Way, it was a tool for a job, a job given to us in the story. And though we had dreams about an order of dragon knights and whatnot, it never necessarily needed to be a major part of Mathilde's journey. In fact in the end it very much wasn't. All it is is a tool of last resort in Belegar's armory and all it cost us was one AP.
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Meanwhile the armor clearly stems from Mathilde's desire to be the least Ranaldian-presenting Ranaldian to ever steal things. No one expects the warrior-wizard in full plate with a greatsword whose idea of diplomacy is usually targeted violence against the other party's enemies to be an adherent of Ranald!
 
DragonParadox said:
They would never expose their Egg layers like that (even assuming they can make a web strong enough to carry one), but it might be workable for some of the others. Of course that comes with the added issues that you now have crew on the outside of the ship, the point of a ship being to protect her crew.

Also... how much food would you even need to feed We over a decent span of time for those instances when going down to hunt isn't practical. I know they can go into hibernation when food is scarce, but that just means they are starving which means they would have to eat all the more when you get to your destination and moreover you can't put all of them to sleep since the individual spiders are what makes up the mind of the We, you really do not want the spider nest loosing too much thinking capacity mid journey.

It doesn't really sound workable, but on the other hand it's cool enough that I would not mind looking into it IC... as long as it doesn't cost more actions.
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Fortunately we have options that others don't to make a Mookery of the normal logistical issues.
 
I looked at the tally that led to the Golden Hound vote. Turns out that's where the airship was first proposed as a reward. Back then it got 16 out of 254 votes. Back then the "big awesome thing" vote was also split between finding a way to fly Karag Dum away and GIANT ROBOT.

Talon TigerDino said:
Meanwhile the armor clearly stems from Mathilde's desire to be the least Ranaldian-presenting Ranaldian to ever steal things. No one expects the warrior-wizard in full plate with a greatsword whose idea of diplomacy is usually targeted violence against the other party's enemies to be an adherent of Ranald!
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I'll be completely honest and say I am only voting for the armor because of its comparatively low narrative impact and otherwise obvious practicality. It would not be my first choice.
 
Talon TigerDino said:
Meanwhile the armor clearly stems from Mathilde's desire to be the least Ranaldian-presenting Ranaldian to ever steal things. No one expects the warrior-wizard in full plate with a greatsword whose idea of diplomacy is usually targeted violence against the other party's enemies to be an adherent of Ranald!
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Also from desire to get better and better personally, including artifacts.
The best Jade magical healing item; a very good Dwarf protection belt; our best sword; dragonbone staff of Mistery and dragonflask. IMO it's time to up the armour part, and finally visit friendly elves to kill not-friendly elves.
 
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