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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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The armor of Von Tarnus stacks with AA, and I guess we're still going to need a magic item to cast that spell for us because we are very lazy. I'm imagining a very Jedi Knight sort of robed armor fashion.

'Narrative statements' don't really speak to me just for existing, though. We spent all this time on AV and the orbs and the thread ground to a halt for three months because we voted to make a statement with it and then didn't have anything to say.

The story has always been at its best when looking out over things that matter to other people in the story. Sylvania's conquest. Belegar's reclamation. Saving Roswita, or escorting the caravan to the Chaos Wastes, or rescuing Vlag. Even paying out the money to that widow lady. We didn't get endless lines about 'warm internal glows' or whatever. The evaluation that the other person's life had improved was what satisfied us.

Making our own +1 to our armor could be neat, but I would honestly rather we had a literal daemon hanging off our shoulder saying so to try to whisper the poison of pride into our ears, because at least then the self satisfaction would be coming from someone else (and I do like the self satisfaction, to be clear).

The Armor of Von Tarnus is a vehicle for more of the scenes I think we actually want -- scenes where we show up at critical moments and put in the work and get to watch some other character's life shine brighter for it.

The only statement vote I'd be interested in is Tenure, because that would be voting to say that we did it for the sheer love of the game. I am already voting for Tenure.
 
It does bother me that all these arguments for the Armor letting Mathilde be who she wants to be sort of implicitly dismisses the value of the airship to do the same thing, arguably moreso. There is no better vehicle for showing up in the middle of someone else's story to let them shine all the brighter than a literal flying ship. Boney's said we won't have to worry about maintainence, we won't have to worry about always using it, we won't have to do anything with it more than we'd 'have' to do something with the irreplacable relic of the armor.

Prismatic Wanderer lets Mathilde be where she wants to be, with the people she needs to be with. If disaster looms, she can get there, and pick up a dozen other heroes on the way. If you prefer the armor, sure, whatever, but I don't think there's a stronger tool for intervening where we want to with what we need than a flying magic airship.
 
DragonParadox said:
You can of course imagine it how you like, but we have an IC picture of how it actually looks like which is akin to the armor of the Greatswords its maker once belonged to
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Yeaaaaaaah, that's also a part I'm not the fondest of, it's aesthetics aren't great and it got a bloody big bright order symbol on the front. Nothing against our fire slinging friends but we ain't one of them...
 
Redshirt Army said:
(At least, if it's a one-off masterwork. If we come up with something more replicable by the colleges/dwarfs in the future, such that it's the start of an eventual new paradigm, I'm significantly more interested.)
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Honestly, even then, I feel like we could get that result by requesting its availability for study after we put together that suit of ithilmar armor.

We just recreated and improved upon the golden age waystone. We absolutely have this street cred for this without having to blow our entire boon on it.

...and, not for nothing, but how much AP and resources will any of us be able to convince the thread to spend on that if it doesn't come attached with personal growth and power?

Because, if we're talking about statements, I don't think it should escape either of our notice that there was a significant "be done with armor" lobby supporting Von Tarnus.

As for other statements...
chocolote12 said:
The armor of Von Tarnus stacks with AA, and I guess we're still going to need a magic item to cast that spell for us because we are very lazy. I'm imagining a very Jedi Knight sort of robed armor fashion.

'Narrative statements' don't really speak to me just for existing, though. We spent all this time on AV and the orbs and the thread ground to a halt for three months because we voted to make a statement with it and then didn't have anything to say.

The story has always been at its best when looking out over things that matter to other people in the story. Sylvania's conquest. Belegar's reclamation. Saving Roswita, or escorting the caravan to the Chaos Wastes, or rescuing Vlag. Even paying out the money to that widow lady. We didn't get endless lines about 'warm internal glows' or whatever. The evaluation that the other person's life had improved was what satisfied us.

Making our own +1 to our armor could be neat, but I would honestly rather we had a literal daemon hanging off our shoulder saying so to try to whisper the poison of pride into our ears, because at least then the self satisfaction would be coming from someone else (and I do like the self satisfaction, to be clear).

The Armor of Von Tarnus is a vehicle for more of the scenes I think we actually want -- scenes where we show up at critical moments and put in the work and get to watch some other character's life shine brighter for it.

The only statement vote I'd be interested in is Tenure, because that would be voting to say that we did it for the sheer love of the game. I am already voting for Tenure.
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I kinda have to say I resent this one. Dismissing other people's reasons for liking something with one hand and then speaking optimistically and aspirationally about their own always comes out sour, to say nothing of glossing over how other choices can achieve those same aspirations.

To be fair I appreciate the bits about making other people's lives better, I like that too - but that's more often achieved outside of combat, speaking prosaically.

We saved Egrimm outside of combat.

We gained the ducklings' respect in combat, but changed their lives for the better mostly with our coaching and training outside of it.

Karak 8 peaks? Half and half, the eye of gazul would not have existed without the significant groundwork outside of combat.

Karak Vlag? Our assistance to the caravan was primarily logistical, the masterstroke that saved it was delivered out of combat, and we were but one person fighting in it, for all that the Melkoth's Miasma was pivotal to holding the line.

That warm internal glow, those headpats, those are pieces of instant feedback we get when we do things that help people and change their lives ahead of time, or from the shadows.

It's fine to prefer the more in person, sword swingy kind. But while an air-portable artillery battery and army transport could turn some missions from asassinations into big battles with Big Hero Moments, I haven't seen any missions we'd be willing to undertake only with the armor of von tarnus in hand.

So you probably won't be getting more of those moments because we took the Armor.

But we might change more lives if we study it in pursuit of our own armor - a thing we can do because of the narrative factors you dismiss, factors like the we silk, like the ithilmar in Vlag, like Thorek's impending dive into a karak untouched since the golden age of cooperation between Elgi and Dawi, like the waystone project being a gathering of every magical tradition we can get our hands on, like our setup to get the fey enchantress herself added to that roster, like windherding.

If we stay motivated enough to do it, that is.

But in the meantime, having a mobile base of operations that can provide heavy fire support can change plenty of lives, and help plenty on the battlefield as-is. I'm not the only person who thinks so, either.

[X] Plan: The Prismatic Wanderer
[X] Plan Not Pickle Requests Variant with Apparitions
[X] Plan: The Next Generation
-[X] Use the whole boon to have the gold college teach Eike everything she can learn about material-enchantment, alchemy(-adjacent if alchemy itself is too much), and all-around enhancing and supplementing her Natural Alchemist trait until she's a walking talking reverse-engineering machine that can pick up magical crafting skills lightning quick.

And because I can't let it go, remember how as our apprentice, we could teach Eike Arcane Khazalid? I feel like this is relevant to plan The Next Generation, lul.
 
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chocolote12 said:
The armor of Von Tarnus stacks with AA, and I guess we're still going to need a magic item to cast that spell for us because we are very lazy. I'm imagining a very Jedi Knight sort of robed armor fashion.
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Enchantment slots are a thing. If we put the Armour of Von Tarnus in the Armour slot, then there's no room for an AA enchantment. Mathilde would cast AA herself, as she's been doing all along.
 
chocolote12 said:
Eh. Swap out the purifying candle for a little shield or something.
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A number of problems--
- Mathilde's never used a shield before, and doesn't know how to use one, and it would take AP to learn.
- One of the aspects of Branarhune is hand-switching, which is no longer possible with a shield.
- I'm pretty sure we can only put Aethyric Armour in the Armour slot.

And again, she already casts it herself whenever possible.
 
ReImagined said:
A number of problems--
- Mathilde's never used a shield before, and doesn't know how to use one, and it would take AP to learn.
- One of the aspects of Branarhune is hand-switching, which is no longer possible with a shield.
- I'm pretty sure we can only put Aethyric Armour in the Armour slot.

And again, she already casts it herself whenever possible.
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It's entirely possible to use a buckler that still leaves the hand free.
 
ReImagined said:
A number of problems--
- Mathilde's never used a shield before, and doesn't know how to use one, and it would take AP to learn.
- One of the aspects of Branarhune is hand-switching, which is no longer possible with a shield.
- I'm pretty sure we can only put Aethyric Armour in the Armour slot.

And again, she already casts it herself whenever possible.
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I edited my post to make it more clear, (but that was five minutes before your post anyways?). On a player level, I don't see why we'd have trouble keeping AA in our gear when making an Ultimate Armor purchase that has being compatible with AA as a selling point, though.

The slots are a gameification to represent spells that aren't compatible, right?
 
chocolote12 said:
I edited my post to make it more clear, (but that was five minutes before your post anyways?). I fundamentally don't see why we'd have trouble keeping AA in our gear when making an Ultimate Armor purchase that has being compatible with AA as a selling point, though.

The slots are a gameification to represent spells that aren't compatible, right?
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Yeah, I saw your updated post only after I'd already posted—I was spending most of the time grabbing the quote. We can table the 'physical shield' line of discussion.

Here's how enchantment slots work, emphasis mine.

Boney said:
To streamline the existing de facto system of metaphysical limitations, I've codified a hard limit of how many enchantments Mathilde can carry upon her person.

Melee Weapon: Branulhune
Ranged Weapon: Runed Revolvers
Staff/Banner: Staff of Mistery
Protective: Robes of Aethyric Armour
Healing: Seed of Regrowth
Talisman: Belt of the Unshackled Mountain
Social: Ranald's Coin
Activated 1: Candle of Cleansing Radiance
Activated 2: Grounding Rod
Activated 3: Dragonflask

- The Weapon slots can each be filled with a matched pair of weapons, such as dual pistols or a sword and dagger. They must be intended to be used together.
- Any item that directly makes Mathilde more able to take a hit must be in Protective; something that protects her less directly can be in Protective or Talisman.
- No healing effects outside of the Healing slot.
- Activated refers to items that do not have a constant effect. These can include single-shot ranged weapons as these would be effectively identical to wands or rings enchanted with similar effects. These cannot automatically detect when they should be used. They need to be manually activated in some way.
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The Armour of Von Tarnus is compatible with AA, in the sense that Mathilde can manually cast it to stack. And this is not necessarily onerous, because as I linked in the earlier post, she's already been manually casting it whenever possible:
Boney said:
It's got one shot of the full effect before it needs recharging, so Mathilde casts manually whenever possible.
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Funnily, if Mathilde wins "Supreme Patriarch/Matriarch Tournament", we will return to "the core" of The Quest (being a member of someone's council), given that Supreme Patriarchs/Matriarchs are effectively "Minister of Magic" on Emperor's Council
 
Prime 2.0 said:
Honestly, even then, I feel like we could get that result by requesting its availability for study after we put together that suit of ithilmar armor.

We just recreated and improved upon the golden age waystone. We absolutely have this street cred for this without having to blow our entire boon on it.

...and, not for nothing, but how much AP and resources will any of us be able to convince the thread to spend on that if it doesn't come attached with personal growth and power?
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The ithilmar armor discussion feels like its very much counting chickens before we have more than "well, vlag will sell you the eggs for a transcendent boon, and you can probably spend multiple AP getting together an expedition or two to find the instructions on how to build an incubator for them, and hopefully the runesmiths can turn those plans into said incubator"

Like, i think it *could* be a cool adventure, but we're not exactly short on cool adventures. We have lots of cool things lined up for adventures. Personally i dont think the personal growth and power represented in runed ithilmar armor is enough to justify the amount of AP, favours, and (most importantly) boney writing-time-and-energy, compared to other projects and adventures. If nothing else it would be at best a few turns from now, between the elfcation and the waystone project... Like, if with those caveats you'd still prefer that, then good on you, but let's not pretend that the ithilmar armor possibility wouldn't be a major commitment.

(Also if i'm reading your post right i think you interpreted Redshirt Army's post incorrectly. Redshirt is (i think) talking about the possibility of a more replicable *airship*, not more replicable armor of tarnus. Among other things, boney has i believe said that mathilde wouldn't get much out of studying the armor because of how divorced its enchantment paradigm is from hers, and how tied it is to von tarnus' whole deal)

Edit: Incidentally, if anyone else is interested in more replicable airship development, there is a vote for that that you can approval vote:
[] Cooperate with the dwarves on creating the plans for a flying ship type that can, in theory, be regularly produced - plus dibs on a prototype of a larger ship when such is built
And then eike's eventual magisterial career can include time spent developing a naval warfare paradigm for airships :V
 
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I don't think anyone's voting for the sake of Numbers Go Up or disregarding the narrative; it's just that people have very different desires for what they want the narrative to be and see Mathilde in different ways.

Some people want Mathilde the adventurer, constantly going out to new places and seeing what is to be found there.

Some people want Mathilde the knight, whi fights for what she believes in with sword and spell.

Some people want Mathile of many hats, who has a lot of irons in the fire and doesn't want to sacrifice any of them.

Some people want Mathilde the Master, investing more in her apprentice.

Some people want Mathile the shining star of the Colleges, who brought something wonderful to them for the love of the game.

Some people want Mathilde, liberator of mammoths.

Some people want to put this question off until we decide what Mathilde is actually doing next.

And so on. So, like, the argument of what makes a stronger narrative seems inherently circular to me. Boney is the one who writes the narrative, and anything they write is going to be strong. We have a million words of evidence to that effect. It's just what strength you value, what vision of Mathilde you have and want to hew to, and it's clear that in this respect the thread's loyalties are divided.

(I warned you all that I am the fragment of Mathilde who fucking loves puns.)
 
DragonParadox said:
We cannot use a buckler (or any other kind of shield) for the same reason we can't just slap on regular metal armor, it would get in the way of spellcasting.
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I suppose the natural follow-up question to this is whether an ithilmar buckler would be worth it or not. Probably not, honestly? Not because it'd be bad, but because you'd be spending ithilmar on a dang buckler. At the very least, it's a bit of an edge case compared to the discussion of a hypothetical ithilmar suit of armor.

On the note of chickens and counting them before even getting any eggs or an incubator, I have to say that while I'm not opposed to getting an ithilmar suit of armor if the Armor doesn't win, I think it's way more likely that it should be enchanted rather than runed.

Gromril is the best material in the world for holding runes, and I assume that's because of its extreme toughness - it's why dwarfs resonate so well with it. Ithilmar seems like the opposite: light and interacts very positively with enchantments, which is why elves resonate so well with it. I'm not sure runes on ithilmar would go all that well, anymore than enchantments might work well on gromril.

Tobtorp said:
Tbf we also didn't give the ship a pun name... But honestly the name is too good for change, the prismatic wanderer is an ace name.
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The Prismatic Wanderer is only the name of the plan. Nothing stops us from actually naming it something different if we feel strongly enough about it.
 
Parabola said:
On the note of chickens and counting them before even getting any eggs or an incubator, I have to say that while I'm not opposed to getting an ithilmar suit of armor if the Armor doesn't win, I think it's way more likely that it should be enchanted rather than runed.

Gromril is the best material in the world for holding runes, and I assume that's because of its extreme toughness - it's why dwarfs resonate so well with it. Ithilmar seems like the opposite: light and interacts very positively with enchantments, which is why elves resonate so well with it. I'm not sure runes on ithilmar would go all that well, anymore than enchantments might work well on gromril.
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Runes and enchantments don't go on the same item is a lore restriction rather than a slot restriction, I believe. Mathilde isn't going to stop wearing robes over said armor, what with the robes being a display of her station/office, so I believe the enchantments can be done on those while runes enhance the armor underneath.

Might also be possible to do it to the silk under-armor, I suppose. All of this speculation since I don't think Boney ever gave an answer when asked whether or not we could do the above, but

EDIT: Boney later responded ruling "same slot" out.

If we uncover lost lore about working runes into Ithilmar armor, expect it to be very very good, actually, because said runeworked armor had to compete with High Magic enchantment, seeing as that's what the users of ithilmar armor already had access to... assuming they didn't figure out a way to make them co-exist.

I don't think Mathilde's personal work is going to be able to compete with high magic enchantment. As a null hypothesis, I would expect applicable runes to be superior at what the runes are for, and considering this is armor, "be really good armor" is probably top of the list of things the runes will be for.
Abby Normal said:
(Also if i'm reading your post right i think you interpreted Redshirt Army's post incorrectly. Redshirt is (i think) talking about the possibility of a more replicable *airship*, not more replicable armor of tarnus. Among other things, boney has i believe said that mathilde wouldn't get much out of studying the armor because of how divorced its enchantment paradigm is from hers, and how tied it is to von tarnus' whole deal)
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Oh, lol. Yeah, I did think he was talking about armor there.

Abby Normal said:
The ithilmar armor discussion feels like its very much counting chickens before we have more than "well, vlag will sell you the eggs for a transcendent boon, and you can probably spend multiple AP getting together an expedition or two to find the instructions on how to build an incubator for them, and hopefully the runesmiths can turn those plans into said incubator"

Like, i think it *could* be a cool adventure, but we're not exactly short on cool adventures. We have lots of cool things lined up for adventures. Personally i dont think the personal growth and power represented in runed ithilmar armor is enough to justify the amount of AP, favours, and (most importantly) boney writing-time-and-energy, compared to other projects and adventures. If nothing else it would be at best a few turns from now, between the elfcation and the waystone project... Like, if with those caveats you'd still prefer that, then good on you, but let's not pretend that the ithilmar armor possibility wouldn't be a major commitment.
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So, here's the thing about a lot of that:

We're not going to pass up on following Thorek into that abandoned karak. Like, it's just not happening. That is not an additional AP expense we would be incurring.

We're not going to pass up fighting the iron orks in Brettonia. Everybody is hyped as hell for it, to the point that the elfcation-first folks sometimes get into fights with them about it during turn votes, and we've put in most of the legwork to get the maximum concessions from them in exchange for that and waystone project membership - deploy some stones in eyeshot of them and we'll be the rest of the way there, something lots of people want anyways.

We have no other ideas with significant traction for what to spend the Vlag boon on. The library boon mostly just flew out the window because they just gave us their fire spire lore (And their RUNESMITH NOTES on it) for free and "runic preservation for our library" has been kinda niche as an ask regardless, not to mention we have other ways to achieve that.

We Silk is already in the bag.

The waystone project has just served as a tremendous proving ground for inter-national and inter-disciplinary cooperation, whose main membership we've been accruing up personal rapport and favors with. If we let the project be the last thing we're going to task the magic researcher avengers with, I'd be rather saddened.

The armies who fight against chaos could use some treaty-restricted super armor for their champions in general, if you ask me.

What I emphasize again and again and again about DIY armor is that most of the resources needed to do it have either already been spent, or we are committed to spending them, or they are burning a hole in our pocket with nothing better to do.

So the cost is quite cheap - that's what it means for so many narrative threads to all be applicable to making sick Ithilmar armor, it means the groundwork is already done.
 
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Prime 2.0 said:
Runes and enchantments don't go on the same item is a lore restriction rather than a slot restriction, I believe. Mathilde isn't going to stop wearing robes over said armor, what with the robes being a display of her station/office, so I believe the enchantments can be done on those while runes enhance the armor underneath.
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Boney said:
Enchantments and runes both change the rules of reality, but in different directions. Trying to have them coexist in one item is like trying to put an oven in your freezer so you can cook your food without having to defrost it.
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We can't put enchantments and runes on the same item, and while we can wear robes over armor, we can't have protective magical effects on both the robes and armor.
 
ReImagined said:
We can't put enchantments and runes on the same item, and while we can wear robes over armor, we can't have protective magical effects on both the robes and armor.
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I directly addressed the "same item" concern, and the robe enchantments don't have to be about protection when runed ithilmar will be way better for that part anyways.

With the armor taking care of the armor part, we can use robe enchantments for cooler stuff like that wallclip idea instead.

EDIT: Boney later responded ruling "same slot" out.
 
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My biggest complaints about the armor have been defused through reading people expound on why they want it and the history of the armor. It made me think about what moments of the story i liked the best, and I find myself agreeing it is very consistently 'Mathildie hits something with her teleporting magic sword"

I find the sentiment that *building* our own ithilimar armor is more appealing, in parallel with the training that would need to come with it, but as an objective of cutting to the endgoal of "more opportunities for Mathildie to swing her sword into things" I understand Von Tarnis now.
 
Parabola said:
I suppose the natural follow-up question to this is whether an ithilmar buckler would be worth it or not. Probably not, honestly? Not because it'd be bad, but because you'd be spending ithilmar on a dang buckler.
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I think the first problem with an ithilmar buckler is that one might not exist. Neither Laurelorn nor the KA can actually forge new ithilmar objects IIRC, so you'd have to have an existing one to work with.
 
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