Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism

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Yeah, but being set in the Era of Three Emperors means no Imperial Magic Colleges, so that's a large chunk of the setting I find interesting kind of gone. Ah well. It's mostly all speculation at this point, so who knows how things will really go.
 
torroar said:
Yeah, but being set in the Era of Three Emperors means no Imperial Magic Colleges, so that's a large chunk of the setting I find interesting kind of gone. Ah well. It's mostly all speculation at this point, so who knows how things will really go.
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Frankly I think the era of the three emperor setting is a stupid idea. They should just do what the fans did with Endhammer, namely make a what if timeline where Archaon failed to end things...

...actually now that I think about it there already is such a timeline if you count the retconned one created during the Storm of Chaos fiasco a few years back. You know, the one where Grimgor busts in like the Kool Aid man, sucker punches Archaon, and then runs off giggling that he's the best? They should just revisit that timeline.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
You just do not take compliments well, man. :p
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I do not. It likely stems from personal issues during my childhood and later upbringing. It always makes me itch inside of my spine somehow, and more than once my parents stated that they were a little worried about how I never seemed particularly proud of anything I'd done while I was growing up. I dunno. Of course, the terrifying thing for anxiety is the worry that people will perceive it negatively in the opposite direction. It's a mental nightmare cage that I can't seem to break out of. But, again, let's move on from that entire topic/discussion from this point forward for as long as possible.

Thors_Alumni said:
@torroar Do we know IC how many Chaos aligned locations that haven't been destroyed and purified yet are left? By left I mean both in Canon Warhammer and This Canon?
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No. There are new ones being made all the time, and being destroyed all the time. Some are small, barely worth anything, and are wiped out by a witch hunter. Others grow in power and malignant influence.
 
Doomed Wombat said:
Aside from that in what sense?

In terms of this quest torroar has his own well fleshed out ideas, but in canon terms Cathay is an irritating blackhole of not used.
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To be fair, this seems to be the case in every chop suey setting. Just look at A Song of Ice and Fire. Does anybody actually know anything about Yi Ti? Nope. Even the totally not dwarves Ibbenese are fleshed out more. Lord of the Rings has this as well.

Not that it's a bad thing here. Cathay would be extremely relevance-challenged even if it were more fleshed out due to how remote it is.
 
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torroar said:
If you could elaborate on your question, I would be happy to answer.
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Ah, apologies

I wanted to ask like lore wise if there's anyhting you added with cathay, because it is criminally underused in core warhammer fantasy. I'm also curious about what's happening with cathay right now, because apparently it's being invaded by nippon?
 
Kaboomatic said:
Ah, apologies

I wanted to ask like lore wise if there's anyhting you added with cathay, because it is criminally underused in core warhammer fantasy. I'm also curious about what's happening with cathay right now, because apparently it's being invaded by nippon?
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I recommend you go through the Omakes, specifically the ones with 'Jade' in their name. Those cover what Johanna is up to over in Cathay.
 
Kaboomatic said:
Ah, apologies

I wanted to ask like lore wise if there's anyhting you added with cathay, because it is criminally underused in core warhammer fantasy. I'm also curious about what's happening with cathay right now, because apparently it's being invaded by nippon?
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I recommend you go through the thread or search engine in the upper right of your screen looking for posts by torroar on Cathay. The question has been asked before.

We got lore dumps on this quest's version of Kuresh, and Ind at various points.

Here's something about Cathay's magicals.

torroar said:
I think part of the Empire's magic seeming 'lesser' comes from Johanna never really seeing the colleges in action as much. She hasn't gotten to see what they're capable of, because they hadn't - by the end of her time in the Empire - deployed themselves in such a fashion outside of the Great War Against Chaos. Remember, she just got back into the Empire by that point, she didn't actually participate unlike Ortrud and Natasha. So that's her own bias coming through. On the other hand, the astromancers of Cathay have been around since -2750 IC and were among the few offered reasons for the Great Maw itself coming crashing down. The only other group of humans doing intensive magic pre-Colleges successfully were the Liche Priests. Of whom are noted to be pretty darn powerful. Part of it is numbers, because Cathay has been doing this a lot longer and so had a larger number of magicals to pull from, I won't deny it.

But also, I have put the Astromancers in the highest magical position in Cathay and Nippon, contrasted to most commonly in Empire works and such it's a Bright Wizard or Gelt, in most media that I've seen. Astromancy is the most developed, most favored, while less effort has been put into things like their own equivalents of Gold Wizards an such. So it's an overbalanced representation in that manner, but that's rather the point. In the Empire, it's noted that the Supreme Patriarch's chosen lore often seems to make their Wind blow more strongly. Chamon under Gelt, Aqshy under Gormann, and so on. In Cathay, it's Azyr, and has been for a long time.

But there's more to it than that. Cathay/Nippon does not have a Luminark of Hysh laying around, nor do they have Celestial Hurricanum. But they have their Storm Spheres, and Cloud Altars. So there is equivalence, in that the Celestial Hurricanum can cause major weather alterations, up to and including storms, or bringing down meteors. That's something that the Empire seriously can do, if the acolytes get the casting right when using a Hurricanum. So just because the Empire hasn't thrown these rare Hurricanum which if lost would be a terrible blow to the Celestial College but would not cause the College itself to cease to be, doesn't mean that they don't have some power to them. Much like how the astromancers of Nippon can lose these rare storm spheres and not be utterly destroyed.

And...yeah, it's not an end to the threat of Nippon, because they have more they can pull out, just as Cathay does. Just as the Empire would if they lost a few Celestial Hurricanum, they'd still have other battle altars, other knightly orders, etc. to throw in.

Johanna and Genevieve are partaking in vital battles, sure, but unless one of the Emperors dies, the war is not going to stop. Both of them believe that they have a divine mandate, and their people are fanatically devoted to them.
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Edit: I had the wrong quote. My bad, fixed now.
 
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Karmic Acumen said:
To be fair, this seems to be the case in every chop suey setting. Just look at A Song of Ice and Fire. Does anybody actually know anything about Yi Ti? Nope. Even the totally not dwarves Ibbenese are fleshed out more. Lord of the Rings has this as well.

Not that it's a bad thing here. Cathay would be extremely relevance-challenged even if it were more fleshed out due to how remote it is.
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In fairness to Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was constantly fleshing out his world--he died before he could finish. Hell, take a look at the complete map of Middle Earth (not Arda, but just Middle Earth). Can you even imagine how awesome it would be for all the stories in all of those places?
 
Simon_Jester said:
This was then replaced by "well shit, people don't like our new setting, let's find excuses to go back to the old one." The precise nature of those excuses is, well, whatever they have to be.
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Well I'll always defend Aos to the death, but the old world revival seems like a situation of 'why not both?' Instead of some kind of inference the Aos is bad, considering its actually pretty popular and certainly more so the old world in it's death throes.
 
In fairness, I guess I'm misinterpreting. Suppose it wasn't so much "people don't like our new setting" as "people don't like the way we blew up the old one."
 
Simon_Jester said:
In fairness, I guess I'm misinterpreting. Suppose it wasn't so much "people don't like our new setting" as "people don't like the way we blew up the old one."
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Oh, the latter definitely is a thing- personally, I don't mind AoS existing and I hope it does well, but the End Times just seems like a slap in the face to the fandom.

Frankly, if you haven't seen much enthusiasm for AoS in these circles... well, these sort of quests attract a lot of WHFB fans, naturally, and the hardcore of that group are the least likely to like AoS. That AoS is popular without their support comes down to the fact that, well, they weren't a very large group to begin with. Which is why they blew up the setting in the first place.
 
You'd think, but way too many people treat it as 'I don't like the new setting BECAUSE the old setting is gone'. Frankly after listening to years of whining and annoying 'thing bad haha' im kind of fucking sick of listening to it, and would rather Aos be judged on it's own merits as a pretty severely different game.
 
Well, the classical Warhammer Fantasy got an enormous buff out of Warhammer Total War and Vermintide, which, coupled with the loyal and bitter (and vocal) core fans of WF, made Games Workshop change their mind on the profitability of the setting.
 
Horium said:
Well, the classical Warhammer Fantasy got an enormous buff out of Warhammer Total War and Vermintide, which, coupled with the loyal and bitter (and vocal) core fans of WF, made Games Workshop change their mind on the profitability of the setting.
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They got a new CEO in 2015 as well didn't they? That guys seems to have turned the IP around.
 
I like Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, though for different reasons.

Warhammer Fantasy had a better setting, no doubt about it. It feels far more like a real, breathing, coherent world than the vague bullshit of the Mortal Realms, making for far better storytelling potential.

But at the same time Age of Sigmar is by far the better tabletop game, and I can appreciate how the vagueness of the setting allows them to introduce interesting new models and factions, exploring directions that would be exceedingly difficult to justify in a limited setting like WHF.

So I enjoy both of them, they just fulfill different needs for me.
 
Blackout said:
I like Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar, though for different reasons.

Warhammer Fantasy had a better setting, no doubt about it. It feels far more like a real, breathing, coherent world than the vague bullshit of the Mortal Realms, making for far better storytelling potential.

But at the same time Age of Sigmar is by far the better tabletop game, and I can appreciate how the vagueness of the setting allows them to introduce interesting new models and factions, exploring directions that would be exceedingly difficult to justify in a limited setting like WHF.

So I enjoy both of them, they just fulfill different needs for me.
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I never get why they feel like they gotta blow up an old setting to make a new one with the same name.
If you're destroying everything of the old setting, the names you transfer over aren't going to do anything but piss off old fans and be [blank look] for new players. Doubly so when it blows up and does a genre flip at the same time.

The point of using a well used setting is the rich history and detailed lore of it. Burning it defeats the purpose.
 
Well it look like it a situation of a producer make a great toilet paper but discontinue their old deodorant brand so they can sell it to their deodorant customer base.

That sound about right for AoS vs WF. It just different people need different kind of recreation like in Rimworld... Who sometime just get mental breakdown because they decide to go for a walk instead of playing that 1080p gold plated computer you placed down in the rec room.

So, thought on next time we go on a diplomatic trip we take maybe like take haft our orge with us incase 4 chaos champion decide it the right time to attack us. Cause i gotta say i sometime feel like diplomatic mission is a secret death trap with how limited troop can be sent and not seem like a invading armies.

But on the bright sideat least we can say that we maybe (outside of truly terrible rolls) got t_

Nah, that way lies gloating the dices.

Also great writing as always.
 
Kaboomatic said:
Ah, apologies

I wanted to ask like lore wise if there's anyhting you added with cathay, because it is criminally underused in core warhammer fantasy. I'm also curious about what's happening with cathay right now, because apparently it's being invaded by nippon?
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As others have mentioned, I've done a good bit, I feel, involving Cathay through omakes. Go into the sidestory section, look for the one's with Jade in the title, and you should find stuff there involving Cathay and its current war with an invading Nippon. There are probably also some info-dumpy sections sitting around if you use the search bar function and search for Cathay and use torroar as the poster for searching purposes. I've gone into certain magical/martial traditions, setting pieces, and some cultural stuff here and there.
 
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veekie said:
I never get why they feel like they gotta blow up an old setting to make a new one with the same name.
If you're destroying everything of the old setting, the names you transfer over aren't going to do anything but piss off old fans and be [blank look] for new players. Doubly so when it blows up and does a genre flip at the same time.

The point of using a well used setting is the rich history and detailed lore of it. Burning it defeats the purpose.
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Oh definitely, and then they went out of their way to piss off everyone in the process with the way the End Times were handled. Chaos doesn't even get to look cool destroying the world, they pretty much luck into it by power of plot. Skaven go from destroying 95% of the world to playing second fiddle to Archaon for no reason. Dwarfs get fucked because Thorgrim left a door open. Settra gets set up for a revenge quest and never reappears until a tie-in novel resolves his fate. One book has the Human Gods returning and pushing back Chaos, next time we see the Empire it got all sacked offscreen and the gods faded away. Bretonnia has their entire way of life upturned and then that plotline is unceremoniously dumped in the trash can. Lizardmen get taken out by unexplained Skaven wunderwaffe out of nowhere. Ogres and Greenskins do basically nothing at all. Nagash comes back and Vlad von Carstein becomes an Elector Count but none of it matters, there's no payoff to any of it.

And that does not even begin to cover the clusterfuck of what was done to the Elves.
 
Regarding Cathay, @torroar, what is the more mystical parts of Cathayan martial arts such as the Iron monkey's transformation and metallic skin powered by? The winds of magic or some other source?
 
I'm going with it just being different mystical traditions than elsewhere in the world. Dunno if that's fully canon, but then there almost isn't any anyhow. There's a healthy base of just pure physical excellence/discipline/skill with any of the Monasteries or independent styles, obviously. I mean, in real life, you can see some of the old martial arts masters do some frankly insane stuff, yeah? Shaolin spear stuff, for one, freaks me the heck out, but that's RL possible. Things involving people using Iron Hand, too. But whether or not their stuff is possible I think is a matter of opinion, as Kislev/Nehekhara/Araby I think show quite clearly that it's possible to do things outside of the Imperial College way. Let alone Elementalists.

Iron Monkey is, sort of obviously, a weird sort of mixture of Ghur and Chamon. And all of the styles use minor magical enhancements without specifically being of a 'Lore' as it were.

It's said that vampires cannot use the Lore of Life, which I think is pretty obviously involved with the higher secrets of the Jade Dragon. Mostly involved in the internalization of powerful energies to improve the body and spirit. Which would totally work, but not on a vampire, if I'm correct on my lore with vampires being unable to benefit from Ghyran much. Luckily vampires have their own ways of increasing strength/speed, I guess. But Genevieve didn't take Johanna to the monastery to learn how to wield that sort of magic, it was the discipline more than anything else that helped. Plus, you know, familiarity with the order, having personally known Master Po, that sort of thing. Honestly, they could have tried to seek another monastery, but foreigners do not simply show up and say 'hey, time to take this weirdo in as a student'.

There are other schools of course, as mentioned in the Crimson Jade sidestory bit, the Iron Monkeys there mention the White Tiger, as well as Crane/Serpent/Mantis schools. There is also the Chained Ghost style, but they don't have a monastery and are pretty much pariahs in Cathay thanks to the long and patient work of the Jade-Blooded Vampire Bloodline.
 
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