Beyond the Rift (WHF/FFXIV)

Alright, I'm giving this one last try and then I'm going to give up on you and spend my time on something more productive.

The Beastpaths are very much described in the Lore as having a magical Element to them by both the things from Human perspectives and that of the Wood Elf's as they go through they should not be able to are almost Impossible for any but the Beastmen to find and go into and through Places like Athel Loren best the Wood Elf's best effort's to find them, the Warheards that use them and destroy them. I was not using the Computer Game as a base but the Way the are talked about in the lore and Armybooks. I will spend some time looking for a good piece of text describing them a post it when I have the chance.

You could do better then just saying I just skimm the Wiki's since you want to go with the Beastmen having great metal working industry which you have no evidence for. I would appreciate a fewer amount of insults when I have not insulted your ability to doe research.
Go ahead. You won't find anything, because you're wrong, but feel free. Rife with misinformation though it is, the Warhammer Fantasy wikia has, in this instance, copied the relevant passage almost verbatim. Beast-paths are just roads, and the reason you haven't insulted my ability to do research is because I actually do research, I actually cite my sources, and I have thus far only stopped just short of giving actual page numbers. Whereas you make stuff up, misremember or misread other stuff, refuse to admit you're wrong, and waste everybody's time in the process.

The reason I've lost patience with you is because when my views of the setting diverge from what's in the books, I am very clear about that fact. I lay out what the official material says, what it doesn't say, why I don't feel it makes sense as presented, and why I prefer my interpretation. You don't do this. You just make shit up and lie about it, and thereby, again, waste everybody's time. You don't even know where your views of the setting diverge from what's in the books, because you don't know what's in the books in the first place. It is humiliating to watch and frustrating to engage with.

This isn't limited to Warhammer lore, it also includes other peoples' posts in this very thread. Feel free to quote the post in this thread where I claim that Beastmen have a "great metal working industry". Feel free to quote the post in this thread where I claim, as you assert later, that "only the Humans of Sigmar's Empire think Beastmen Hate Civilization". You won't be able to, because I never claimed those things, and you have negative reading comprehension.

The things that have marked a Tzaangor have changed over the years and the post I was replying to their brought up the AOS Tzaangor's which is not the only way that a allegiance to the Change of ways has been shown. If you want I can go looking fit images I think are Gors devoted to Tzeench a post them, although I still have trouble getting images in my posts on this website, and you could tell me what you think.
The first source I cited is from Realms of Chaos, the 1997 book that defined Warhammer's Chaos for the first time. The third source is the final Beastmen army book, from 2010. I have literally topped and tailed this topic. Don't go vagueposting at me about how things have "changed over the years". Post a source, of literally any kind, or admit you're wrong. It can be a link. It can be an image. It can be the name of a book. It can be a Google search phrase. It can be a vague description. Fire away! There's a first time for everthing.

Your inability to back up anything you're saying is all irrelevant, in any case, because the original point you were trying to prove by making stuff up about Tzaangors was that Beastmen equipment could be a gift from the Chaos Gods, in the manner of Chaos armour, rather than something they make - despite looking and behaving exactly like mundane equipment made by Beastmen. This is patently absurd, but as I've now posted a passage directly stating that beast tribes don't receive these kinds of gifts, there's little point in continuing.

I meant unique as in their is no general design or plan Beastmen build Chariots to and that they can be pull as by Tuskgor's as by Razorgors depending on what the Group of Beastmen can tie to the front.

They don't have their own Native Language that they came up with themselves because the Dark Tongue came first from Demons and came in to use by different factions connected to or devoted to the Dark Gods. Some have shown the ability to learn Languages as seen with Reikspiel but we have no evidence of a Language they came up with their own. The Dark Tongue is something they use but it is not "their" Language in as much as they use a Language they barrowed/know as servants of the Ruinous Powers.

Yes they lack the lack baroque armour and resplendent weapons the human servants of the Dark Gods yet you are saying they are fully capable of making that kind of armor and weaponry as you brought up weapons Minotaurs use even though there other being who use weapons of a similar size in the service of Chaos. That the Beastmen look down on the Human servants of the Four for those fancy pieces of weapons and armor
  1. Yes, Warhammer Fantasy takes place in a pre-industrial setting, and Beastmen are very much pre-industrial, well done. I don't know what you think "there's no standard Tuskgor Chariot design" is meant to prove? Hell, I don't think you know, at this point. What's the relevance of this increasingly stupid tangent?
  2. Reikspiel is a language derived from tribal dialects, Classical Reman, and Khazalid. Eltharin is a simplified version of a simplified version of the language used by the Old Ones. English is a jumble of far too many languages to count, and American is English wearing jeans and a cowboy hat. This is how languages work. If the Beastmen speak a distinct dialect of an older language, then they have a language. And even that is irrelevant, because the original point was that the Empire claims Beastmen don't speak a language at all, when they patently do, therefore we must acknowledge that the Empire can be wrong about Beastmen.
  3. Minotaurs don't wear Chaos armour, or carry "fancy pieces of weapons". They don't use "baroque armour and resplendent weapons" that dropped straight out of the Realms of Chaos. They use weapons and armour that look, in fact, exactly like weapons hammered together by Beastmen out of plundered metal, because that's what they are. That's the point of the passage. It is an explanation of why the Hordes of Chaos wear H.R. Geiger magic war plate, while the Beasts of Chaos are stuck with the leathers and axes they craft for themselves. That's the point.
Hell, that specific passage is located directly below another passage describing Beastmen equipment as "cobbled together from the spoils of war". It is very much official material that Beastmen can and do make their own weapons and armour by using looted materials - such as metal! Obviously! Because that's what the models are carrying! And it's what the lore says they do! Why is this even a conversation? Why are you wasting everybody's time on this utter horseshit?
 
We watch as Stewart9 makes the bold claim that French is not the language of the French, because it came from a dialectal variation of Vulgar Latin which means the French didn't come up with it themselves, and likewise English is not the langauge of the English because the Old English substrate of English came from invaders and so they didn't come up with it on their own (while the British population is majority of pre-Anglo-Saxon stock, genetically).

Apparently using a language that came from elsewhere and developing your own dialect from it is evidence that you're basically just inferior.

Bold claim? We are told in the Lore that The Beastmen are one of several groups that use the Dark Tongue not that they came up with it themselves. I also said that they are not incapable of learning the basics of anther language as seen by the ability of some to communicate in Riekspiel. I also don't see how I am going on about inferiority when in spite of that their Hate of the Cities, Nations and Order the Human's and others build they are capable of winning battles and being a major threat.

Leaving aside the fact that their are very few words of Brythonic origin in Old English or toponyms of Brythonic origin in England and the amount of Anglo-Saxon genetic stook in the Modern English population change depending on the study I fail to see how that translates to taking about the use of Language by the Beastmen. The Dark Tongue is not something the Beastmen came up with soon after they came into existence for example it was something they picked up from the Demonic servants of the Four. That is not the same as the slow evolution of French among the Franks and other people living in Gaul after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. French was also not the only language used by the peoples living in France outside of Brittany right up into the 18th century.

They could have a version of the Dark Tongue completely their own at this point in the Timeline but everything said in lore about the Dark Tongue shows the same words being used by the different groups of Chaos Followers. I am just struggling to figure out how far you want to take the whole Beastmen are creating much more infrastructure then not just the Human think but the Wood Elves think for example. They are at the core twisted amalgamations of Man and Beast that hate order in all it's forms so I don't ever see them Building secret towns in the Drakwald around their Herdstones for example.
 
I am curious, @Stewart9 What do you think the beastmen are doing when they aren't out pillaging?
 
Bold claim? We are told in the Lore that The Beastmen are one of several groups that use the Dark Tongue not that they came up with it themselves. I also said that they are not incapable of learning the basics of anther language as seen by the ability of some to communicate in Riekspiel. I also don't see how I am going on about inferiority when in spite of that their Hate of the Cities, Nations and Order the Human's and others build they are capable of winning battles and being a major threat.
To be fair, I don't really see where you were going with the Dark Tongue point in the first place. You answered "the empire claims beastmen don't have a language because they're savage beasts that totally cheat when they ambush us" by "they have the dark tongue which is shared by other chaos factions" (and tbf it can just mean that the empire lumps every enemy language they don't understand in the same bag, since who the fuck would call their own language "the dark tongue"?).

Your claim thus is "they're inferior beasts because they haven't developped their unique language out of thin air (or have, but out of chaos and that doens't count)" so actually, going back the chain of quotes three or so posts ago, yes, you do say they're inferior, albeit indirectly and possibly you've forgotten your point since it seems like you're just in full defense mode.
 
Elriza is going to assume that the Skaven are in fact Kobolds until very conclusively proven otherwise, which is hard to do.

(For those who don't play the game... Kobolds in FFXIV are small vaguely rat-like creatures with a predilection for machinery and high explosives, and a language that makes heavy use of repeated words. So, you can see where the confusion would come from.)
 
Honestly I have sincere respect to the Great Clans educational system, compare the ordinary skaven Clanrat's command of Reikspiel to the ordinary Imperial halberdier's grasp of Queekish.

For that matter, compare it to the ordinary Middenlander's grasp of Reikspiel.
 
Honestly, Primal summoning is probably better for Malleus than daemon summoning. Tempering would be a problem, but I think the Primals would be a great help in the fight against Chaos, and their aether-draining effect would supplement the Waystone network to reduce the spawn rates of beastmen, undead, apparitions, and daemons.

A whole new set of problems would arise if they got corrupted somehow by Dhar or Chaos-juice, of course, and you'd need some way of convincing them to travel to avoid over-draining any particular area, but assuming no corruption happens they would probably be a net benefit.

In fact, I think I know just the Primal for the job! The gang should go take down Alexander's stasis-field and send him through the portal!

Just need make sure the hatches are all locked and set some traps so he doesn't get a Skaven-infection.

Its worth remembering that the tempering as a result of primal summoning in most of FFXIV is a result of a deliberately broken version of the ritual spread by the Ascians to make the job of triggering Calamities easier- the Loporrits teach the correct version to convert the Mothercrystal into portable aether packets for the journey to Ultima Thule, and it could legitimately be a way of draining excess magic from the land.

…as long as it hasn't already curdled into dhar, mind you.
 
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Its worth remembering that the tempering as a result of primal summoning in most of FFXIV is a result of a deliberately broken version of the ritual spread by the Ascians to make the job of triggering Calamities easier- the Loporrits teach the correct version to convert the Mothercrystal into portable aether packets for the journey to Ultima Thule, and it could legitimately be a way of draining excess magic from the land.

…as long as it hasn't already curdled into dhar, mind you.
As many things in EW, it makes little sense given Zodiark tempered them in the first place. Wasn't the wonky summoning creating the aethyr drain instead?
 
Ok, but have you considered that they could have lied about being tempered by Zodiark?
 
Ok, but have you played through Elpis? Because as much as I wish Elpis wasn't part of the game, it is, and we meet pre-tempering Ascians in it.
I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with Tempering, since it doesn't weigh in on either side of them being tempered or not.
 
I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with Tempering, since it doesn't weigh in on either side of them being tempered or not.
Because they're very different people and straight up say "wow, that's fucked, who would even do that?" when told what they did/will do?

Anyway, while I'm all up for opening a "EW was stupid" thread, Primals haven't even appeared in this story (and have not been hinted at yet) so continuing on this might be a derail.
 
If you've lost everything and everyone you've known and loved to fire & chaos, spent centuries... millenia living in a broken, shattered world where only three of you remain whole, the rest of your comrades are shades of their former selves with just their memories are restored and where the blood of entire worlds cover your hands after spending all this time clinging onto this thin thread to possibly fix things then I imagine you'd look like you've been tempered yourself.
 
If you've lost everything and everyone you've known and loved to fire & chaos, spent centuries... millenia living in a broken, shattered world where only three of you remain whole, the rest of your comrades are shades of their former selves with just their memories are restored and where the blood of entire worlds cover your hands after spending all this time clinging onto this thin thread to possibly fix things then I imagine you'd look like you've been tempered yourself.
Listen, if tempering Johnny the tempering expert tells you "yep, tempered", sure he might be in denial, but, like, statistically speaking...
 
Was it the Ascians themselves that first floated the idea of them being tempered or the Scions? The Ascians really had no particular reason to tell the truth and the Scions can hardly be called tempering experts until post Shadowbringers.
 
Because they're very different people and straight up say "wow, that's fucked, who would even do that?" when told what they did/will do?

Anyway, while I'm all up for opening a "EW was stupid" thread, Primals haven't even appeared in this story (and have not been hinted at yet) so continuing on this might be a derail.
Elpis was itself a testament to the failings of the pre calamity society.

Emet selch spells it out in shadow bringers.

"I do not consider you to be truly alive. Ergo, I will not be guilty of murder if I kill you."
 
Personally I prefer having their changes in character be the result of the circumstances they lived through, but there's an argument to be made that tempering is a feature rather than a bug with Zodiark.

14 sages sworn to protect the macguffin which protects their world from complete destruction? With magic ensuring that they couldn't betray their oath even if they wanted to? Make it a goddess instead of a god and that sounds practically Zelda-esque.
 
While I appreciate it is to some degree inevitable, this is not a general FFXIV discussion thread. Please avoid discussing Elpis, the ancients etc unless they seem somewhat relevant to the story.
 
VII - Mercy and Death
"Doctor Widenhoft is dead?"

The small room at the back of the warehouse must have been an office once, or perhaps a guard post, but with the advent of the plague and the building's conversion into a makeshift field hospital it had lost whatever purpose it once had. The priests would return to a temple for a true meeting, and it was too small and too poorly secured to serve as storage for medicine or extra beds. Yet there was nowhere better close at hand for an impromptu meeting, and so Elriza had grabbed her companion and the two most senior looking priests and made do.

"Murdered," she said with a grim nod, setting out the notes and equipment she had liberated atop a rickety old desk. "The plague is a weapon in the hands of his killers."

"Servants of the Fly Lord… I should have known." The old woman who had sent Elriza searching for the doctor in the first place was apparently the most senior of her order present, somewhere between a physician and a priestess. Her name was Sister Marta, and when she caught the brief looks of confusion on the faces of her fellow attendees, she shook her head in disgust. "The Fly Lord is god and father of every kind of disease and pestilence to blight the world today, and his cultists often work to spread his 'gifts' as far as thoroughly as they can. Does he go by a different name in your homeland?"

"I… don't think we know him," Elriza frowned, glancing over at G'raha. He'd always been the more scholarly one, but now he just had a vaguely troubled expression on his face.

"It is Nymeia who determines the span of man's life, and consequently might be fairly said to hold dominion over their deaths," he mused, rubbing his chin with two slender fingers, "Alternately, one might look to Sephirot, the fiend sealed within Azya Lla. His dominion over growth at its most rampant and dangerous is known to have included pathogens that he unleashed upon the invading armies of Allag."

"Good thing I killed him, then," Elriza nodded. Sister Marta looked vaguely like she had just been slapped in the face by some inconsiderate lout, but before she could respond or ask any questions the other local present interjected.

"This signature…" Father Sarkon murmured, fingering a small hourglass on his belt in thought as he read the missive over. He was a younger man than Elriza had expected to oversee the local church of the dead, but there was something about the depths of his dark eyes that told her he knew more of death and its keeper than most would ever wish to. "Rudolf Nierhaus has command of the High Watch garrison. Could he be the physician's supplier?"

"Nierhaus? I wonder… The good captain's daughter is among our ranks here in Taalagad. We all expected him to pull strings and get her reassigned inside the city when the plague began, but no such message arrived." Sister Marta frowned, nodding thoughtfully, "I was assuming some manner of family conflict, one that would explain Kristiane's growing distress, but it may be that more is going on here. One moment."

With a brisk nod she rose to her feet and headed for the door, marching like only a woman on a mission could. Elriza settled herself down on a rickety chair that creaked under her weight, while G'raha continued to pore over the documents she had recovered alongside the Morrite priest.

"Antidote, not an inoculant," he murmured, brow furrowed in thought as he traced the tips of his fingers across each word in turn, "Unless I am mistaken, such wording would imply that this affliction is not a plague at all. Some manner of poison, perhaps, existing in the body independent of the damage it causes?"

"A truly malicious design, if so," Sarkon said with a bleak smile, "one aimed straight at a weakness in Shallyan doctrine, the treating of symptom over cause. Yet to create the cure as well, and distribute it such that men might lay hands on it…"

In her corner, Elriza frowned. "Why?"

"Hm? Oh, the doctrine?" Sarkon shook his head, chuckling softly, "The lesser of two evils, I am afraid. To treat the symptom of suffering is simple, if not easy, and popular with nobles and commonfolk alike. To treat the cause is far more complex, and all too often leads one down a revolutionary's road."

Elriza nodded grimly, having heard such things before. How many times now had she set her will against the world, and forced the future into fairer shape? Ishgard, Ala Mhigo, Eulmore – each she had left better than she found them, but the axe was not a gentle tool, and there were good people in each land who yet flinched before the cost in blood such victories demanded. Some of them she might have even agreed with before circumstances forced her hand regardless. Why should this land be any different?

Such thoughts were silenced by the return of Sister Marta, the old Shallyan entering with a younger priestess in tow. Elriza realised that it was the same girl she had seen hunched over in the alleyway earlier, almost crumbling on the verge of despair, but if the young woman recognised her, she gave no sign.

"You have word of my father?" she asked, tremulous hope in her voice, and with a sideways look G'raha and Elriza retreated to the edge of the room. This was for the locals to handle, at least for now.

Somewhat to their surprise, Kristiane did not appear upset by the story and its implications. In fact she appeared increasingly relieved as more and more of the details came to light, even the murder of the alchemist drawing only a faint wince, and when at last it was over the young woman all but collapsed into a small chair.

"I thought he was damned…" she murmured, trembling with an upswell of emotions too potent and chaotic to define or contain, "Oh, father… why didn't you tell me?"

"Perhaps you can ask him in person soon," Sister Marta said, a severe frown on her face, "But for now – an explanation is due, sister, and by our lady's tears I will have it."

"Of course, Superior, I just…" Kristiane shuddered briefly, visibly mastering herself, "I was among the first to contract the Grey Auge, do you remember? Before all of this started, before we knew how bad it would get."

"We attributed your recovery to our Lady's mercy," Marta nodded, watching her subordinate closely, "Was this not the case?"

"Father gave me medicine. Blue medicine, in a vial. It tasted hideous, but the next day my symptoms disappeared… and when they came back three days after that, he had me drink again," the young woman replied, shaking her head slowly, "I thought… Shallya forgive me, I thought he had made a deal. Struck a bargain with something foul, to preserve my life at the cost of all the others."

"If he had, you should have told me. The Fly Lord offers peace from symptoms, but never from infection," Marta said severely, before sighing and shaking her head, "Yet I understand why you did not. The real question is where your father sourced the medicine… and what price the supplier demanded."

"We shall have to ask him directly, I think, and soon," G'raha put in, speaking up for the first time since Kristiane had entered, "If our mysterious adversaries knew enough to have Master Widenhoft killed, it seems likely they will be able to track down the source of the samples he was studying."

"Father is in danger?" Kristiane said, alarmed, before nodding fiercely, "Of course, I will do what I can. I send messages to him at times, at the garrison, and I've asked former patients to carry them. If I write one now, you should be able to speak with him in private."

"A fine plan," G'raha said warmly, nodding in approval. He seemed about to continue, but then paused, ears twitching beneath his hood. "I… does anyone else hear that?"

Frowning, Elriza rose to her feet, cocking her head to one side. Now that he mentioned it, the sounds of moaning despair from the hospice beyond had taken on a new tone, and there was a strain of angry shouting beneath it. She glanced briefly at the two priests, and when neither of them revealed some innocent purpose for the sound took off at a swift jog.

Outside the hospice, a crowd had gathered. Most seemed to be concerned onlookers or worried relatives of the patients receiving care within the warehouse walls, but a small knot at the centre of the growing mass seemed far more concerning. A dozen or so furious looking vagabonds, with matted hair and road-stained scraps of clothing, stood before the open doors of the makeshift hospice with lit torches in their hands. In the growing gloom the flames gave them a crazed, almost bestial look, and Elriza could feel the faint pricking in her neck that warned of danger.

"WE ARE UNWORTHY!" Screamed one, a wild looking woman clad in what might have once been a blacksmith's apron, one eye and half her face lost to a savage looking burn, "The gods have FORSAKEN us, and the Dark One's final blow has left us BLEEDING in the muck! Now we must CHOOSE! A slow death by poison, or a worthy death by FIRE!"

With a convulsive shudder that wracked her whole body, the maimed woman twisted her arm and slammed the burning torch against her chest. The tattered rags she was wearing ignited instantly, hungry flames devouring flesh and fabric alike, and with a piercing shriek she cast her arms wide and slumped to the ground.

"FOR SIGMAR!" screamed the dying woman's comrades, lifting their torches high and rushing forwards, "BURN THE IMPURE!"

"Tempered," Elriza spat, balling her fists and moving to intercept. She could worry about the source of the subjugation later, once she had successfully kept the mind-washed fanatics away from the sick and those who tended them. Her axe was back in the warehouse, having been set aside in deference to the healers' wishes, but she didn't need it here, not for foes like this.

The first fanatic folded like wet paper across her shoulder, slumping limply to the ground a moment later. The second swung at her with his torch, splattering them both with burning oil, then screamed as Elriza wrenched his arm out of its socket and smashed him into the cobblestones. She caught the torch as it fell, swinging it in a great arc that caught a third across the brow so hard their neck snapped with a grisly crack. She was in the very centre of the mob now, impossible to ignore and invulnerable to harm, and when four rushed her at once she drove a heel into the ground hard enough to splinter stone and send them reeling from the shockwave.

Fanatics they might have been, but the attacking mob were still civilians, many of them emaciated by hunger or weakened by untreated wounds. It was always like this when fighting tempered; save for those truly lost to aetheric corruption, they remained the same people with the same capabilities they previously were, and no amount of mind-washed fury would allow a half-starved peasant to overcome the Warrior of Light in open battle. Of the twelve who attacked the hospice, three of them died at her hands and four more would bear injuries beyond the reach of all common healing magics, but not one had managed to lay hands on a patient or caregiver nor set flame to anything valuable. Standing amid the ruin and rubble, surrounded by broken bodies, Elriza totalled up the trade and called it fair.

To her surprise, no sooner had she stopped fighting than the white-robed priestesses were hurrying forward, many of them abandoning the sick patients in the hospice in their haste. They rolled the unconscious onto their sides and pressed flasks of water to the lips of the crippled, and though a few of the fallen glared sullenly none so much as raised a hand in protest.

"I wish you hadn't done that," Sister Marta said with a sigh, appearing from among the bustling throng to stand at Elriza's side. She alone seemed immune to the twinge of fear in the faces of those locals who could bring themselves to even glance the Warrior's way, but neither did she show the contempt or hatred Elriza might have expected. If anything, she looked tired. "Your intentions were good, and I appreciate the defence, but when word gets around that a band of Sigmarites were brutalised on the steps of the hospice, things will get… difficult. For both of us."

"They are tempered," Elriza protested, though the doubt now gnawing at her heart robbed the words of any heat, "Lost to the gods who claim them."

"They are lost," Sister Marta corrected her sharply, shaking her head, "Lost and seeking purpose in a world gone mad. Sigmar's harsher doctrines had the answers they sought, and doubtless they found more than one priest willing to legitimise their self-destructive crusade."

That name again. Sigmar, founder and patron god of the Empire in which she now found herself. Elriza had to wonder just how that once-mighty hero would agree with the creed that claimed his name, were he around to see it, but such concerns were ultimately irrelevant. She could see the shape of the image the priestess was painting for her now, and while this was not the first time she had brutalised agents of the church in their own domain, that didn't make their current situation any less precarious.

"Best I leave, then," she said shortly, shaking her head, "I'll take G'raha and lay low. We'll return tomorrow for the letter, and see what Captain Nierhaus has to say."

"Shallya guide your steps," Sister Marta said with a sombre nod, already turning away to join her peers in tending to the wounded, "and Sigmar know your heart."
 
Yeah, while it's probably very easy for the WoL to see any fanatic and think tempered, they would know from both Ishgardian's mad fantasicm and the Garleans dogmatic belief in their nations superiority that not everyone is always tempered.

In that way, warhammer's difference is gonna make for some harder choices...not that the WoL isn't unused to hard choices allready
 
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