Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism

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The good news is that Albion is now a power for Order and can be a nightmare to Chaos instead. Once they've recovered, of course, which will be a while.
 
The Fimir, restored to their pinnacle despite still being the boring children, with a power source not nearly as fickle or unpredictable as the gods themselves.
 
Speaking of Old One artifice... what Engines were the Druids talking about in old updates? Did I miss what they were and what they did? I saw a bunch of magic, but like, no magitech ace in the hole.
 
They had a chance to break out of minor power status and we help stomp them out. They were set to become a medium to large power. Lotta what was described sounds awful but at the very least it wasn't 'opps daemon world'.
 
EVA-Saiyajin said:
That's horrifically awesome, and still far better than I feared. I was thinking like, Chaos Wastes expands, parts of Ulthuan sink (or worse), something that significantly hinders the ability of the Asur to act beyond their own lands because they need all hands on deck to either destroy mutated monster packs and daemonic invasions or just hold the damn place together.
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Ah, nah, see, the Fimir would still be cautious enough to want to build up and build up and build up. That would just be them exercising their strength for the first time after that first generation has passed. Over time, yes, that sort of thing would start happening as they got strong enough to start affecting Ulthuan from a distance. Remember, the Fimir have to steal almost every bit of magic they have, and if they just upended everything, the Dark Gods might not look at them properly because 'the game' would be over outright. No, the Fimir want everyone to know, and be unable to deny, that it was the Fimir who did it, the Fimir who did it all. Hence, them growing worse as a threat over time. Control of the Oghams on Albion is essentially nirvana for them, because it is an endless stream of Magic for them to gobble down and empower themselves with.

All of the things I described was Post Gen1. Gen2-3 is when they start targeting Black Arks and making cursory attacks on Ulthuan, able to push through the magical defenses there. And so on and so on.

The thing is, if the Fimir actually did just straight break the entire Ogham Network, yeah. That'd...that'd be it, just about, unless the Asur did some stuff or the Slann or so on. The Chaos Wastes would massively expand, and the Vortex might well break real bad.

The PROBLEM with that, however, is that the Fimir are a bitter, jealous race. And they just...just got basically infinite magic to suck down. Which they've been denied by the Chaos Gods for thousands and thousands of years. They want to enjoy themselves! Luxuriate in their power and supremacy and dominance. And they don't want to share, not with Norscans, not with Chaos-aligned Imperials, not with nobody. Only them. Thus, they have the means for a near complete immediate victory, but they don't want to do it because they like what they've got going at the moment. And if other Chaos forces tried to tell them what to do, they'd say 'hey, fuck you guy, this is our place, you don't tell us what to do'. Hell, they'll imprison the messengers of the Gods if they try to tell them that too! They do it already! Like an abused child that is both desperate for the abusers affection but also, like, hates them too.

Chaos, as it must be said, truly is sometimes its own worst enemy.

Of course, that just means that the rest of the world would have to deal with a steadily more dangerous Fimir nation that would slowly but inexorably start weighing down on everyone, everywhere, as their powers/numbers/etc. increased.
 
You know... People've talked about Albion doing this or that, or not doing this or that... But, I've got another thought about that.

Namely, is it possible that a couple of the Albish might, individually, be interested in going out and seeing the Empire? That is. Of returning alongside Magnus And Friends, in order to learn more about the Empire that helped them and the outside world?

A few individual decisions -- or perhaps not individual, but policy decisions, in the vein of "Okay so we're going to be closing off our Mists, naturally. Buuut, what if we sent a few people out with our newly-made friends, to go see what their home is like for a bit?"

That could be a thing that happens.

It wouldn't interfere with Albion's internal issues. It wouldn't interfere with the internal-external geopolitical concerns. It would just be a few people, whether clansmen or Druids or whatever, possibly returning with the Imperials for a bit. Whether out of personal curiosity, or being asked by a Chieftain or Oracle or Xokh, or just wanting to, or... something.

Or maybe they want to hear more about the High Elves that are the 'Good Counterparts' of the evil Dark Elves. These High Elves that are expert and renowned mariners, and which know such magics, and who would have been around to shitkick the Dark Elves if it were possible. They might be interested in that, maybe.

Possibly that won't happen. Since they'd probably need a trinket to get back in, and that might be a point of vulnerability to Albion. Or maybe a few small trinkets wouldn't be a vulnerability at all; too small to allow anything too big or powerful through.
torroar said:
And, I will be frank. Going on about 'adventure quest' vs. 'CKII' quests holds just about no water with me. The entire CKII genre began as a improvised framework by Gaius Marius. It has transformed every which way with various incarnations and quests. The entire point, to me, is to build a long-lasting and notable dynasty, and that involves individual peoples getting their side of the story expanded significantly. Narratively, this was a great time to go into the characters of the Heirs of the Trident, for character development and awareness later on down the line when the inevitable occurs and the current Electors are dead, Frederick included. Different quests have had different events, and plenty of them - the original Dynasty Quest included - featured events/sections where individual members of the Dynasty got a good few updates dedicated to them being on their own doing things. Are my versions of that a bit more extended than what Gaius ended up doing? Sure! I'm also a different person entirely than Gaius.
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Yeah. Ultimately, "quasi-CK2-inspired-ish mechanics" is just a vehicle for the story, and it wasn't even perfectly copied and translated even in the original. And Gaius came up with "How do I make a quest out of this?" game decisions as he went and built up his quest.

Frankly, I think that "being a Warhammer Fantasy story and quest" plays (and should play) a more important weight and role than "being a (heavily modded, and improvised even in the first original quest) CK2-inspired quest" to be frank.

And this sort of adventure? It felt very Warhammer-y.
torroar said:
Also, you're sure as heck right that the players didn't exercise total control over everything in Lovely Laurelorn, nor in Accursed Albion. Because the rest of the world is making its own decisions and performing its own actions. 'Tangential connections' uh, yeah? Because sometimes other people decide they want to do shit. Lovely Laurelorn turned into a shitshow the way it did because someone - Ariel - decided she wanted to do something completely bereft of the players knowing about it or having any input whatsoever. This caused another person -Drycha- to also decide that she wanted to something completely bereft of the players knowing about it or having any input whatsover. What the players decided after that point was how they reacted to the rest of the world doing things.

A chance was given to tear out a major Chaos threat by the roots before they could snowball into an even more massive one. That was the reward, both ways, because that's flat out net good for the world that's being done, both in getting the chance, and succeeding.

Honestly, the vast majority of the quest has had the players control a relatively powerful province, altering the lives of hundreds of thousands, every single in-game year. The control and agency is more often than not directly in the hands of the players on that front. The fact that, on occasion, the level of control slips a bit, is just a fact of life that things happen.
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Very Warhammer-y.

Sometimes, evil threats just hit you out of nowhere. Or you stumble upon them with an adventuring group (or small army) and wind up fighting and saving a village from Forest Goblins or Beastmen or something.

I did not dislike what happened, or how it happened, or that it happened, at all. (Though of course I would always have liked to have lost less, of course. But that's just natural. You don't want to lose good people. You want to vanquish evil, and have as many of your's make it back home as possible.)

And in fact I felt like "Got thrust into an adventure" gave it a very Warhammer-y feel.

And another thing it did, was it helped add to the world of Dynamic Alcoholism. It showed that this was a living breathing world, that things and people existed and were happening and were doing things, outside of our own immediate sphere of awareness. And getting to take part in somebody else's story and see a bit more of the wider world -- like in First Laurelorn, Karak Ungor, Lovely Laurelorn, and Accursed Albion -- was really really cool.

It helps illuminate things that're going on in this quest.

It shows off things and places and people in the Warhammer Fantasy setting, too.

And just... I liked this, okay? It was cool! :)

I was on the edge of my seat at times. I was worrying for the people we've known the whole time, and for the ones we only just met, and was grinning at things like a Dragon transformation or Giants showing up or hints of the depths and age of Albion or things like the way the Druids and Oracles and Xokh appeared and acted like and the depths of mystery and sheer meaning and importance of Albion's magics and traditions. The way the Xokh spoke and acted and used magic, and the Druids and Oracles too... It gave you an impression of being something more than 'just' spellslingers or 'just' priests. It felt like they were part of something greater. Like they were part of a tradition that helped maintain the world. Like they fought for some cosmic good (or, well, fought against the cosmic evil that is Chaos) and represented something immense. There was a weight and mystery and solemness to it all.

And, of course, there was the Bard Dice. They were with us. Possibly the greatest example of such being the natural 1 followed by a 70ish roll (which added up to 100 from bonuses) -- you had a hero character taken down and out in one fell blow, and Magnus responding by pulling a Hohenzollern; going on a freaking warpath and kicking ass and smiting evil.

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EVA-Saiyajin said:
It's extremely, ridiculously close, but Be'lakor has two eyes. That said, as others have said, he was there first. Given he was made formless, it's not impossible his true form changed to reflect Chaos' new favorite pet.
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To be fair, there's the fact that a lot of the Daemon's body was mist-like and shadowy. Incorporeal. Including even parts of his face!

Thus, it's possible that the reason it only had one eye... is because the other half of his face was writhing mist-like or shadow-like.

Perhaps it was because it was in the land of the Fimir, too? Being bound by Fimir meant that it gained a slight reference to Balor, because of local conditions.

Or maybe it was Balor himself. An old Daemon Prince, the greatest Daemon Princes of the Fimir, who was defeated and bound by the Albish long long ago. Maybe he was defeated by the Albish and sealed on Albion. And this was who the Fimir were trying to free; their ancient hero or progenitor or whatever. Maybe Balor's defeat and sealing corresponded to, or related to, the fall from Favor of the Fimir; and undoing it might have been thought to be a path to some amount of Favor again, or so went the Fimir's thoughts. Or maybe it was only semi-related, who knows.
 
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torroar said:
Either you ended the Fimir as a threat here, or they would feature as an ongoing issue and problem for the rest of the Old World and beyond for the foreseeable future of the game.
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And this is why fighting the fimir and beating them was the reward for the super crit success, and I am very happy we don't have to deal with this.

Hopefully the Albish can pull a fimir and stay behind mists to build up overtime too since the fimir are effectively done as a race on Albion since we killed all the major females in charge and the Albish will want to wipe them out. The only fimir that will be left are the scattered masses in the swamps of the Old World.
 
wondering about the alb magic and how knowledge about it will effect the collages , like as far as the collages know they have been informed by the supreme authority on magic that humans can only wield one wind of magic safely so just knowing that the alb can wield a magic this is two winds would be a huge discovery like just knowing about it opens all new lines of research , also the collages of magic trained wizards must have made quite the impression mayhaps enough that both sides will agree to an exchange of magical lore , with the Alb getting access to the structured , controlled and regimented elven derived magic of the collages allowing for great large scale feats of controlled magic that would normally only be possible for their best , brightest and most dangerous and the empire gains access to multi wind magic customized to be specifically used by humans leap frogging their magical advancement by a few thousand years .
 
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Massgamer said:
And this is why fighting the fimir and beating them was the reward for the super crit success, and I am very happy we don't have to deal with this.

Hopefully the Albish can pull a fimir and stay behind mists to build up overtime too since the fimir are effectively done as a race on Albion since we killed all the major females in charge and the Albish will want to wipe them out. The only fimir that will be left are the scattered masses in the swamps of the Old World.
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Plus once Albion recovers we might see the Albish ride to the Empire's rescue when the next Everchosen or other major Chaos threat rears his head in a couple of generations or so.
 
EVA-Saiyajin said:
Ugh, yeah, Oghams are mobile and the Fimir very competent magic users. They could conceivably put them on their ships.
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Not anymore! Albish are wrecking all that shit!

Speaking of which, once the Great Ogham is clear they should build a new non-fimir city around it to act as defense in future and as new sign of reunification.

I would totally vote for Reinhardt's amazon crush being named high queen in the future since it was partly her actions that lead to all this victory in general. I certainly hope she survived battle.
 
torroar said:
There was a deafening scream deafening, and some sort of explosion
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The word "deafening" repeats.
torroar said:
There were large patches of the daemon, in fact, that remained in similar for.
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*form.
torroar said:
It was hard to tell given how severely affected his vision was.
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Should that be *hearing?
torroar said:
Even so, it might have been victorious had a pair of simply enormous hands emerged from the mists and rain, clad in unearthly alloys
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*not emerged
torroar said:
Reinhardt watched in awe as the hands of an elder Giant King, no longer prevented from intervening from a solid column of magic, quite literally clapped together with the daemon at its center.
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*by a solid
Alexander Sturnn said:
Just...damn! Mad Props to this Guy, even if he has to retire after this.
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I suspect he'll be "retiring" into being a Lord Magister. This was one hell of a showing. Carlotta and Smokewrought honestly seem like they may have earned something like that as well, they were also absolutely amazing even if they didn't do something as flashy as single-handedly summoning an Incarnate (!!!). That said, this was still a very rough experience for the Colleges overall. This was no war for Journeymen, and they lost EVERYONE out of that contingent.

Tor, this was an amazing finale to this arc. It was SO fucking epic. I regret that I don't have the mental energy to do a full set of reactions like this deserves, but if you just imagine me saying "wow" or "holy shit" or "those FUCKERS" or "FUCK YES" at least once every paragraph or so that should pretty much sum it up.
 
I'm really glad that we didn't go with Aberfa's father, otherwise the Fimir wouldn't have rushed the ritual and bought us time to gather more allies. I have no doubt that we wouldn't have gotten as many forces to take the Great Ogham if we did, and it likely would have been a failure. Shame that he had to die though.
 
EVA-Saiyajin said:
Ugh, yeah, Oghams are mobile and the Fimir very competent magic users. They could conceivably put them on their ships.
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Mmm, not quite. The Oghams would stay on Albion. I was imagining more like an evil version of Anvils of Doom, in terms of function. They would literally be creating outright major Chaos artifact weaponry because again - completely uninterrupted decades of using the Gales of Albion as they wished - and making things similar to those spheres mentioned early in the updates. Sort of like giant pearls, a la clams, built to absorb magic and be used by the Fimir later. I was going to call them Parasite Pearls, and they would be mounted in large mobile altars forged through the binding and infusion of multiple daemons of Tzeentch.

In game terms, they would be constantly lowering the Winds of Magic for their opponent, and directly boost their own Winds of Magic.

Like, again, the spooky thing would be the Fimir starting up the evil flames of Chaos-based Sorcerous Industry once more. Their Shearls would be equipped a la Chaos Warriors, rather than the lumps of metal and basic weapons, that sort of thing.

Fayhem said:
The word "deafening" repeats.

*form.

Should that be *hearing?

*not emerged

*by a solid

I suspect he'll be "retiring" into being a Lord Magister. This was one hell of a showing. Carlotta and Smokewrought honestly seem like they may have earned something like that as well, they were also absolutely amazing even if they didn't do something as flashy as single-handedly summoning an Incarnate (!!!). That said, this was still a very rough experience for the Colleges overall. This was no war for Journeymen, and they lost EVERYONE out of that contingent.

Tor, this was an amazing finale to this arc. It was SO fucking epic. I regret that I don't have the mental energy to do a full set of reactions like this deserves, but if you just imagine me saying "wow" or "holy shit" or "those FUCKERS" or "FUCK YES" at least once every paragraph or so that should pretty much sum it up.
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Corrections will be made, thank you.
 
torroar said:
Ah, nah, see, the Fimir would still be cautious enough to want to build up and build up and build up. That would just be them exercising their strength for the first time after that first generation has passed. Over time, yes, that sort of thing would start happening as they got strong enough to start affecting Ulthuan from a distance. Remember, the Fimir have to steal almost every bit of magic they have, and if they just upended everything, the Dark Gods might not look at them properly because 'the game' would be over outright. No, the Fimir want everyone to know, and be unable to deny, that it was the Fimir who did it, the Fimir who did it all. Hence, them growing worse as a threat over time. Control of the Oghams on Albion is essentially nirvana for them, because it is an endless stream of Magic for them to gobble down and empower themselves with.

All of the things I described was Post Gen1. Gen2-3 is when they start targeting Black Arks and making cursory attacks on Ulthuan, able to push through the magical defenses there. And so on and so on.

The thing is, if the Fimir actually did just straight break the entire Ogham Network, yeah. That'd...that'd be it, just about, unless the Asur did some stuff or the Slann or so on. The Chaos Wastes would massively expand, and the Vortex might well break real bad.

The PROBLEM with that, however, is that the Fimir are a bitter, jealous race. And they just...just got basically infinite magic to suck down. Which they've been denied by the Chaos Gods for thousands and thousands of years. They want to enjoy themselves! Luxuriate in their power and supremacy and dominance. And they don't want to share, not with Norscans, not with Chaos-aligned Imperials, not with nobody. Only them. Thus, they have the means for a near complete immediate victory, but they don't want to do it because they like what they've got going at the moment. And if other Chaos forces tried to tell them what to do, they'd say 'hey, fuck you guy, this is our place, you don't tell us what to do'. Hell, they'll imprison the messengers of the Gods if they try to tell them that too! They do it already! Like an abused child that is both desperate for the abusers affection but also, like, hates them too.

Chaos, as it must be said, truly is sometimes its own worst enemy.

Of course, that just means that the rest of the world would have to deal with a steadily more dangerous Fimir nation that would slowly but inexorably start weighing down on everyone, everywhere, as their powers/numbers/etc. increased.
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It's a clever means of pulling off the classic fantasy trope of "and then some new assholes showed up and life got a bit worse" without breaking the setting.
 
I was wondering why Druids of the Albion tried not do the same thing with those stones. With combined power of the stones they would have wiped out all threats. Is it because creating a good story? Or they do not have ritualistic ways to do so.
 
SouvikKundu said:
I was wondering why Druids of the Albion tried not do the same thing with those stones. With combined power of the stones they would have wiped out all threats. Is it because creating a good story? Or they do not have ritualistic ways to do so.
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The purpose of the Oghams is to act as a sink for magic, and the Druids (and Albion society as a whole) exist to keep the Oghams functioning as they should. Using the magic for material gain is the direct opposite of the task they have been tasked to do (and bad for the entire world in general), which is why they don't do that.
 
Man, while unfortunately the Albish are highly unlikely to ever reach their past Golden Age level, they could probably reach a 'Silver Age' as it were.

All threats are gone from the island. All they've got to do is clean up. And with the Giants roused and a victory to rally around, they can probably purge the rest of the island rather rapidly and thoroughly.

Once they bring the Mists to full blast, they can rebuild in isolation. They can finally focus on studying what artifacts remain and rebuild their civilization.
 
SouvikKundu said:
I was wondering why Druids of the Albion tried not do the same thing with those stones. With combined power of the stones they would have wiped out all threats. Is it because creating a good story? Or they do not have ritualistic ways to do so.
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Same reason the Fimir never managed to pull such a thing off before I would imagine, that being constant pressure from the enemy. I would imagine that once Albion is given a few generations to recover they'll become something of a magical powerhouse nobody can properly attack.
 
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