No. They are far too prone to sharing info. Sharing info on waystones is a terrible terrible idea that could destroy the world if it gets into the wrong hands.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Just a second ago, I clicked this particular spoiler to view the map while rereading. Not only did I not get a map, I got a "Threat blocked: We've safely aborted connection with imgbbb.com because it was infected with URL:Blacklist" notification from my antivirus.
The imagehost is apparently down for maintenance, and my guess is something about that is causing your antivirus to flip out. AFAIK viruses spreading through hosted images isn't really a thing.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
I sure as heck didn't think so, but who knows these days. Appreciate the quick response.
- Location
- Great Khanate of Scotland
- Pronouns
- She/Her
All this did was remind me that the poor son of a bitch blew himself up in that campaign.
There are actually some exploits that can do that, but assuming you browser is mainstream up to date very improbable.
Fayhem
Definitely not an escaped SCP
- Location
- At large
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Unrelated to the rest of the conversation, but I desperately want to read more about the mating habits of the Angolan Tree-Climbing Octopus now. Has Professor Y published yet, or is the study still ongoing?
Tragically the Angolan subspecies did not survive into the modern day, but there's a website dedicated to its Pacific cousin.
A classic of a long-ago era.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
You know, it occurs to me reading back through this exactly how big of a change it was in the 1800s for everything to get registered and bureaucracy installed- we are barely able to thing in terms of pre-industrial organizations because the change was so great.
And what was the change?
Scale.
A college of fifty magisters is not, by any stretch of the imagination, equivalent to a a organization with a dozen departments and scores of people in each department. There simply aren't enough people to formalize things inn the way we are used to, with procedures and forms and enforcement.
So I think that's the disconnect. Trying to treat "the grey college" like it's got a couple thousand people instead of less than a few score. Our projects just aren't big enough to require a point of contact.
And what was the change?
Scale.
A college of fifty magisters is not, by any stretch of the imagination, equivalent to a a organization with a dozen departments and scores of people in each department. There simply aren't enough people to formalize things inn the way we are used to, with procedures and forms and enforcement.
So I think that's the disconnect. Trying to treat "the grey college" like it's got a couple thousand people instead of less than a few score. Our projects just aren't big enough to require a point of contact.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
We also went to Krammovitch when we wanted to recruit Horstmann. Krammovitch set up the formal request and then gave us time and location for a meeting with a Light Order official to make our pitch.
Wouldn't that person get their salary from the Empire? Wasn't that the whole point of making an official branch called WEBMAT?
@BoneyM where does our official funding actually come from? The Imperial coffers? Some regularly supplied budget that Dragomas (or his accountant) oversees? The Grey College through von Bucht?
Funny thing is that for WEBMAT the cutting edge way actually is for the boss to personally go on all important errants. There's no faster or safer method that can cut better through red tape than the Dawi Grey LM with the speed incresing Shadowhorse mastery and the permission to use the Gyrocopter network at will.
To be fair, the Grey College also has a staff of Perpetuals that should be counted in addition to those fifty-odd Magisters.
The exact funding mechanism is deliberately murky. It could be the Empire is funding it as a diplomatic overture to the Eonir, it could be a grant or stipend from just the Grey College or from the Colleges collectively, or it could be patronage directly from Algard's personal 'of direct and practical use' slush fund. Whoever it is, publicly tying themselves to the Eonir by openly funding such a Project could be seen as taking a side in the Middenland/Nordland drama.
It was very much informal. Krammovitch was approaches as one equal to another because he had insight into the matter, not because that's the protocol for intercollegiate requests.
All of them work for one of the Magisterial Council. There's no ephemeral infrastructure of the Grey Order in general even though it might seem like there is at times, each branch of it was built by and reports to a single individual. When someone new comes into a position, they can and often do dismantle everything and rebuild it all from scratch according to their own preferences. No gear in the machine is ever allowed to quietly tick away in an unnoticed corner for generations, all of it is regularly stripped out and rebuilt.
This is before Gantt chart, before the Dewey decimal system. David Hume and Adam Smith aren't even born yet. The Renaissance is still barely a glimmer on the horizon. And there's no ISO 9000 consultants going around teaching the importance of streamlined and standardized departmental organization.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Wait does this mean we get Perpetuals?
They're not decanted out of clone vats to be handed out freely to everyone with an impressive title. Mathilde is allowed to hire individual Perpetuals if she has a demonstrable need for their services, just as she has been for some time, such as when she hired the Hochlander.
- Location
- Finland
If we want to pay for them, sure.
Yeah, that'll have to wait until the Skaven clone vats get figured out.
Though I've got my eyes on those Jades. They're shifty.
Chlof
Her Ladyship
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Gonna mark this down for later if we ever need people to retrieve overdue library books.
- Location
- Finland
I dunno, he has kinda shitty performance reviews from his previous post.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
What I'm getting out of this is that if the Grey Order had promoted us before the Sylvania Campaign, the Light Order might've sent someone who could've save Abel.
Omegahugger will remember this.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
One of the things that I enjoy about your writing is that you get how intensely personal the mechanisms for organizations were in the source-material GW drew on for the Old World nations. So many authors write as if impersonal bureaucracy was some timeless inevitability, rather than an invention implemented with cost and difficulty in order to improve on what had been there before.
Well, there is one bureaucracy of timeless inevitability, but that's because Tzeentch suborned the Ministry of Calendars.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
This is why we can't have nice things.
- Location
- Australia
The skaven cloning vats we got will fix this deficiency.
Godwinson
"Well, I've got nothing."
Nah, see, they're powered by rhymes -- cloning vats for cloning rats. Gotta rhyme if you want the results to have any soul.
- Location
- Utrecht