Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Sinsystems said:
Probably a bit late for this suggestion, but one thing that we could ask for is the establishment of an intercollege Knightly Order for those wizards of a more direct martial persuasion.

We could make it so that it is funded by the colleges with each providing things to it, like the Amber college providing the best mounts that they can or the Greens providing a steady supply of potions.

Biggest hurle would be armor, maybe make a college actually commit to figuring out how to produce usable armor for mages that isn't a unique Relic?

Honestly mostly a vague idea that could have been an option.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Why would they need armour? Robes enchanted with Aethyric armour seem to work just fine already.
 
RwconHD said:
Redundancy for squishy artillery pieces is good, if the solution is accessible enough.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The solution isn't all that accessible. Wizards who care to make a moderate time investment in their own protection are already better armored than most friendly combatants who aren't Dwarves. Going much further beyond that as a wizard is an unusual lifestyle choice, and the costs are appropriate.

"You want the legendary Armor of Friedrich Von Tarnus, first Patriarch of the Bright Order?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I want to fight a Bloodthirster with my sword."
"That sounds like a terrible plan."
"I've had worse."
 
shepsquared said:
It's interesting because the We hunters are disposable, but we don't necessarily know how disposable they are in the eyes of the We. Would a We be willing to throw a few dozen hunters into combat like they were skaven sending in a wave of soldiers and there was little chance of getting any of them back? Would they want to sacrifice them all in battle if the central We isn't in danger? Or do they look at them more like a human general looking at his scouts - a few of them dying is a cost of business and you expect most to die if you're forging into the Drakwald, but all of them dying against bandits in the plains of Averland means you've made a horrendous mistake.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Standard We thinking is that Hunters that are not currently hunting guard the perimeter of the nest, so losing too many Hunters puts you in the unfortunate position of having to choose between eating and being guarded. That might no longer be the case in a new context, but it's hard to say how well or how quickly they'd internalize that new circumstance.
 
RwconHD said:
Redundancy for squishy artillery pieces is good, if the solution is accessible enough.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yes, if the Colleges could recreate and produce more of the Armour of Von Tarnus, that'd be great. But they don't seem to have that capability, and the context of my question is founding a knightly order of wizards, and problems in achieving that goal.

The lack of being able to recreate a unique relic doesn't seem like a reasonable impediment to that—Knightly Orders consist of Knights, who we can generalize as wearing plate armor, and Aethyric Armour scales to be as good as plate armor. So if we wanted to found a knightly order of wizards, lack of armor shouldn't be what's stopping us there.
 
[x] Plan Pickle Requests mk IV

[x] Plan Not Pickle Requests Variant with Apparitions

[x] Support in dispatching Battle Wizards to one major conflict of Mathilde's choice

[X] Outsourcing Apparition hunting and storage to provide us with captured Apparitions for spell creation on request

[X] Save the boon until we choose our next project

[X] Elector-Countess

[X] Plan: Wrong Turn at Albuquerque

[X] Dispensation to study methods of destroying or beneficially transforming Dhar
 
ReImagined said:
Yes, if the Colleges could recreate and produce more of the Armour of Von Tarnus, that'd be great. But they don't seem to have that capability, and the context of my question is founding a knightly order of wizards, and problems in achieving that goal.

The lack of being able to recreate a unique relic doesn't seem like a reasonable impediment to that—Knightly Orders consist of Knights, who we can generalize as wearing plate armor, and Aethyric Armour scales to be as good as plate armor. So if we wanted to found a knightly order of wizards, lack of armor shouldn't be what's stopping us there.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Though Von Tarnus was known for being a genius artificer, I don't think the Armor of Von Tarnus is so much "an irreplacable relic of lost magic" as it is "really expensive and weirdly specialized in a direction Wizards normally don't go". Heavy armor generally interferes with casting, but it also interferes with mobility... so since wizards generally prefer not to engage in melee, they also don't train in the use of armor, and wouldn't have much use for a set if they did have it. The weirdest thing about Von Tarnus was that he was a Greatsword before he awakened his powers... so when he felt able to do so, he made himself armor that'd let him use his magic alongside his accustomed style, and bent all the skill and resources he had into making that happen. It worked, and the resulting armor was good enough that it still sees use... but it's a special kind of wizard that'd want the thing. Conveniently, Mathilde is the right sort of weird for this, since she's heavily into greatsword melee. Still, there's probably at least one Battle Wizard of that stripe in the Bright Order already, who'll be rather peeved with Mathilde yoinking a famous symbol of their College for her own personal use.

If nothing else, it'd certainly be a far easier project to recreate that armor than it was to make a new Waystone... but I predict that if we try, the results we run into are that no one has because it's really expensive and difficult to make, and there aren't enough Wizards interested in that specific fighting style to make the hefty pricetag of reverse engineering and replicating the thing worth the time of anyone who could manage the feat.
 
Blackshard said:
Conveniently, Mathilde is the right sort of weird for this, since she's heavily into greatsword melee. Still, there's probably at least one Battle Wizard of that stripe in the Bright Order already, who'll be rather peeved with Mathilde yoinking a famous symbol of their College for her own personal use.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Forget that one guy in the Bright Order, think about the Gold Order. They can cast in armor, ergo I'd wager they already have a few dozen Magisters or Battle-Wizards trained in heavy armor that might typically requisition the free megaprotection.

Johann: So let me get this straight. Not only did Mathilde use our bit with apparitions to solve two of the Colleges original mysteries, she then asked for our favorite drip as a reward for her efforts?

Feldmenn: *through gritted teeth* Yes.

Johann: lol. lmao, even.
 
Last edited:
Blackshard said:
Though Von Tarnus was known for being a genius artificer, I don't think the Armor of Von Tarnus is so much "an irreplacable relic of lost magic" as it is "really expensive and weirdly specialized in a direction Wizards normally don't go". Heavy armor generally interferes with casting, but it also interferes with mobility... so since wizards generally prefer not to engage in melee, they also don't train in the use of armor, and wouldn't have much use for a set if they did have it. The weirdest thing about Von Tarnus was that he was a Greatsword before he awakened his powers... so when he felt able to do so, he made himself armor that'd let him use his magic alongside his accustomed style, and bent all the skill and resources he had into making that happen. It worked, and the resulting armor was good enough that it still sees use... but it's a special kind of wizard that'd want the thing. Conveniently, Mathilde is the right sort of weird for this, since she's heavily into greatsword melee. Still, there's probably at least one Battle Wizard of that stripe in the Bright Order already, who'll be rather peeved with Mathilde yoinking a famous symbol of their College for her own personal use.

If nothing else, it'd certainly be a far easier project to recreate that armor than it was to make a new Waystone... but I predict that if we try, the results we run into are that no one has because it's really expensive and difficult to make, and there aren't enough Wizards interested in that specific fighting style to make the hefty pricetag of reverse engineering and replicating the thing worth the time of anyone who could manage the feat.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There is way more to armor interfering with spellcasting than just it restricting movement; it also naturally draws in Chamon in problematic amounts. Well, problematic if you aren't a gold wizard, anyways. Their master alchemists will wear masks and gauntlets of gold alloy just to flex on everyone. And even then that doesn't stack with aethyric armor like Von Tarnus' armor does.
 
Talon TigerDino said:
There is way more to armor interfering with spellcasting than just it restricting movement; it also naturally draws in Chamon in problematic amounts. Well, problematic if you aren't a gold wizard, anyways. Their master alchemists will wear masks and gauntlets of gold alloy just to flex on everyone. And even then that doesn't stack with aethyric armor like Von Tarnus' armor does.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sure; that makes two problems: "find a protective material that doesn't interfere with using your wind of choice" and "find out how to pin aethyric armor on top of it". That's still way less problems than we had with the waystone project.
 
Like different class perspectives and understanding on the Imperial Gods, though specifically the perspective of the peasantry in the case. Another term for it is contextual theology. I understand if it's no, kinda of a weird and niche question given the aim of the quest. Might not be able to exist in a world with actual deities.
 
Well, I had mostly stopped paying attention to this once it became clear my first choice, Elector-Countess, was not making it. However, it seems there is a highly contested vote on, and so now I feel like participating again. Airship is the most dramatic-sounding of the top options... Oh, Sylvania Park is fun too.

[X] Elector-Countess
[X] Plan: The Prismatic Wanderer
[X] Plan: Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
 
Whynot09 said:
Like different class perspectives and understanding on the Imperial Gods, though specifically the perspective of the peasantry in the case. Another term for it is contextual theology. I understand if it's no, kinda of a weird and niche question given the aim of the quest. Might not be able to exist in a world with actual deities.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Tome of Salvation has a chapter titled Folk Worship, which sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for.
 
No, Folk Worship is a difference in practice not belief. Though one could always extrapolate I guess. A peasant theology is like the thought of John Ball or the Hussites or Tondrakians. It's a distinctly peasant perspective on the nature of the Divine and their relation to the world. I'm asking if Boney ever gave thought to the idea or found evidence of it in relationship to the Imperial Cults.

Perhaps, that is my answer though. Hmm...
 
Last edited:
Whynot09 said:
Like different class perspectives and understanding on the Imperial Gods, though specifically the perspective of the peasantry in the case. Another term for it is contextual theology. I understand if it's no, kinda of a weird and niche question given the aim of the quest. Might not be able to exist in a world with actual deities.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't think that's just something that fully exists in a single discrete blob, like a boxout on a page in a sourcebook or something I sit down and bang out in half an hour. It's something that'd be developed over a lot of time and in a lot of places as different people from different walks of life share different perspectives on their religion. And I don't think that one single part of the vast and complex spectrum of that can be neatly identified and sectioned off as the 'Peasant Theology'. Trying to do so strikes me as misguided, like you've got the hammer that is a particular socio-ideological framework and now every social system is a nail to be hit by it.

There is no unified groupmind of peasantry with a single shared conception of the divine. Even if you smooth out all the individual differences - and as a general rule, you really shouldn't - there's still vast gulfs between urban and rural and forest peasants, between peasants from different provinces, between Free City and feudal peasants, between peasants under different rulers, between the tillers and the orcharders and the foragers, between the cowherders and shepherds and goatherders, between the miners and the foresters and the fishers. Conceptions of divinity are as varied as the human experience.

Are there anti-feudal or anti-hierarchical splinters of the various faiths? Of course. There are Verenans that believe that feudalism is unjust, Ulricans that believe that hierarchies are an artificial crutch that allow the weak to survive (and some extremist Ulrican doctrines argue they shouldn't), Sigmarites that believe that advancing beyond the confederation of tribes of Sigmar's time was heretical, anarcho-primitivist Taalites, communalist Rhyans, there's, y'know, Ranald, and so on and so forth. But I don't think it'd be accurate to describe those as 'peasant theology'. Peasant-aligned, perhaps, or peasant-motivated, or peasant-originated, but I think there's a misleading bit of wordplay at work if you say that that sort of thing is the theology of peasantry.
 
Hmm... I should've used contextual as in born out of the context of the peasant experience though that would might still fall short of the criticism you made. I disagree with the part about group mind though in so much as there is an overarching commonality of dilemma. Their experience of their specific particularity maybe different but I believe the universality of issue to be there. Though I may be reading too much of real life into this and the hammer of ideology rears its head again. Fair criticism even if I have my own opposition to it.
 
Whynot09 said:
Hmm... I should've used contextual as in born out of the context of the peasant experience though that would might still fall short of the criticism you made. I disagree with the part about group mind though in so much as there is an overarching commonality of dilemma. Their experience of their specific particularity maybe different but I believe the universality of issue to be there. Though I may be reading too much of real life into this and the hammer of ideology rears its head again. Fair criticism even if I have my own opposition to it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

There is a reason why the concept of class consciousness emerged when it did and not a thousand years before and it's not because the lot of Early Medieval peasantry was all honey and mead. Even beyond what Boney said, go far enough beyond the cities in this context and you will find the local peasantry thinks of the people 'over there' a few days ride from their own village more foreign than not unless they can like that one interaction with Mathilde early in the thread find some commonality of blood. Yes the peasants of the Empire have shared challanges, but they do not have an understanding that they are shared.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top