Subjective perception is subject to change, and the ability to ensure perfect spread of information about our benevolent deeds is conducive to doing that safely and effectively.
Look at dorfs, how Belegar's opinion on Mathilde's usefulness changed over time and how dwarfs in general started treating us really well as of last few updates. RSvH is less practical and more scared girl thrust into Elector Counthood, but the same principles apply.
Question to anyone in general: is there anything stopping people from killing and offering up slain souls to their patron god like Chaos does with theirs? I can imagine plenty of reasons why that doesn't (cannot) work, but it's easier to understand when officiated and clarified by others the precise one.
If the god doesnt accept blood sacrifice it wont work. Chaos Gods obs accept blood sacrifice, Order Gods might be a bit more picky. Bloos Sacrofices aint OK in All Societies.
As unleashed greenskin energy whirls, you have a scant few seconds to use Mork's withdrawal to think clearly. Your act of cunning had allowed Mork to make you the conduit for his Cunning. But you already were a conduit for a God of Cunning, were you not? More than any mere worshipper. You have witnessed His battles, channelled His favour, and dedicated shrines to Him. Somewhere within you was the part where your own Ulgu-entwined soul reached out to Ranald, just as inside you was the part where Mork had slipped behind your eyes and used you as his puppet. All you have to do is bridge the two...
On another plane, Mork has just found himself sitting at a dice table with a man who always smiles, never blinks, and has every ace to ever exist up his sleeve.
Mork had poured His terrible power into you, and with typical greenskin carelessness had done nothing to seal that connection after his purpose had concluded. As a single strand of Ulgu touches the aperture that Mork had torn in your soul, and its other end extended into nothingness, offered freely to your oldest and most infuriating companion. And with a delighted laugh, he accepted.
And then he pulled.
The power of the Waaagh flowed into you again, and then through and out once more in a continuous raging deluge. The maelstrom that had been on the verge of exploding outwards had its rush to freedom arrested, the wasted energies of a failed gambit falling into the orbit of the torrent of power rushing through you. Every instinct the Grey College cultivated in you is screaming to reject the non-Ulgu magics, but you allow them to flow into you and be caught up in the the torrent, disappearing into the part of you that knew implicitly that when you bowed your head and prayed, you would be answered, and the answer would most likely be irritating. The bond between god and worshipper, transformed into a yawning abyss that thirsted for Godly energies - energies that could obliterate you in an instant.
Mathilde: "No matter how tempted I am with the prospect of unlimited power, I will not consume any energy field larger than my head."
Ranald: "Instead I will sip at it using this curly straw with a skull on the top."
Ranald: "Yo, Mathilde my friend, you're the straw today!!!"
Mork's deliberate attention had forced your muscles to accept and use the energies of the Waaagh, but the second his purpose was fulfilled he had turned his attention elsewhere. Now Waaagh energy flowed through you without touching you, the flesh of man utterly inert to the magics of the Waaagh.
That is some freakish luck.
Mork looked away JUST RIGHT for Mathilde to channel the power without being changed by it. Less enough attention and she couldn't divert the power. More attention and she'd warp from the power.
Energy poured through you like water through your fingers, and into the waiting grasp of Ranald. It took mere seconds for Mork to notice, and several more for him to howl in outrage, and only then did he recoil back from Karag Nar, if direction can be said to have meaning to the Gods. How much power can a God unleash, or be made to unleash, in a handful of seconds?
With Mork's power torn away, the power of Gork spinning through the air rushes to fill the void and it too was accepted by Ranald. For an instant you could feel a tugging at your very soul as Ranald's siphon tugged at the magical energies that had become a part of it, but then it stilled, and you slumped amidst the wreckage of the Idol of Gork.
But when you close your eyes and turn your attention towards a familiar presence, you almost stagger backwards before you manage to brace yourself. You'd felt Ranald's presence before, both when he acted and when he merely provided company. It hasn't changed, but it hasn't changed in the way that a candlelight doesn't change when you ignite a bonfire - it is still fire, just so much more of it.
He laughs again, in a tone laced with weariness and satisfaction, and you catch a glimpse of a featureless man sitting before a table with four towering stacks of jade-green tokens, which have already began to fade to various shades of grey. He takes one token from each pile, conceals them in the palm of his hand, and with a gesture reveals a single coin which he flips through the air to you.
You refuse to catch it, because that is what you do when Ranald is feeling especially pleased with himself, and it doesn't matter as the coin hangs in the air as if you caught it anyway. When you finally do accept the coin, the sigil on top is the dice of the Gambler, and underneath is the cat of the Night Prowler, but when you turn the coin back the top now has the cloak of the Deceiver, and a final inversion shows the dagger of the Protector. A four-sided coin, made of what looks like steel streaked with veins of jade. A cute trick, and already punched with a convenient hole for hanging from a chain or string.
With an internal sigh, you roll one of the more intact corpses over and check its filthy clothes for pockets, and you can't even muster an act of surprise when it happens to have a length of string in it. You slip your new amulet on, and slip it out of sight under your robe. Ranald's markings are not to be worn visibly, after all.
Nice coin. comes with free accessories too.
And a nice touch too. If you reflexively catch what he tosses at you without looking one of these days it'd be a live, angry bobcat.
Ranald's Coin is worn showing one of its four faces. During normal turns, you can choose which face you will be showing.
- The Gambler: As per Ranald's Gift, but can occur twice during one action.
- The Night Prowler: As long as you are outside of private property and within a town or city, nobody will question your presence and nobody will be able to find you if you do not wish them to.
- The Deceiver: Lies you have developed beforehand will be delivered perfectly. The listener may believe you to be mistaken, but they will never believe that you are lying. Cannot be used to tell truths.
- The Protector: When you act in a way that defends an individual or group from a danger that you did not cause, they will become aware of what you have done and will believe you acted selflessly in doing so.
Woah, this is a very nice piece.
-The Gambler - This is the best while we're doing Advisoring I think, normally not so much.
-The Night Prowler - This is pretty neat for sneaking around. Great legend maker. I'm guessing Private Property basically means any place not generally open to the public. Forts, temples and public offices might be a little fuzzier, but we got Take No Heed for those.
-The Deceiver - ...time to plan our cover story for having the Libris Mortis!
-The Protector - This face probably should be active for the purpose of the campaign huh?
1 - As it turns out, Mork IS indeed an energy field bigger than Ranald's head.
2 - Gork and Mork notice while we're sucking. Things turn very unpleasant for us.
3 - Mork notices and ensures the energy affects us while we're pumping it. Intensely unpleasant for us, possibly mutating if we fail the roll.
4 - What we got.
5 - Ranald gets a new aspect.
6 - I'm not sure this being Slaanesh's Sacred Number is a good thing, but apparently its the highest roll...
Question to anyone in general: is there anything stopping people from killing and offering up slain souls to their patron god like Chaos does with theirs? I can imagine plenty of reasons why that doesn't (cannot) work, but it's easier to understand when officiated and clarified by others the precise one.
Because it works for Chaos Gods because they're elemental forces, they'll take whatever they get and be fine with it.
This was a perfect offering for Ranald because it was a ballsy, high risk venture literally stealing divine power from the table of a careless god. As such, he profited more from this one act than he would the sacrifice of a nation.
Order Gods need the right kind of sacrifice to get much of a meaningful gain from it
Question to anyone in general: is there anything stopping people from killing and offering up slain souls to their patron god like Chaos does with theirs? I can imagine plenty reasons why that doesn't (cannot) work, but it's easier to understand when officiated and clarified by others the precise one.
tbf i imagine doing something like killing orks in Sigmar's name empowers Sigmar, it being his domain and all
not sure why gods of order do not straight up eat souls though, aside from it being, idk, evil
It's not about doing good, it's about being a bomb that could quite possibly consume the immortal souls of everyone in the blast radius. And we'll always be a bomb. The more good we do just makes a more pitiful bomb.
Doubly so for playing/being hard to get. Mathilde stands tall, looks her god in the eye, and tells him that we're not going to take this bullshit. That must be the best thing ever to him.
Edit: Reckon he has a job as a secretary lined up for us once we kick the bucket.
Subjective perception is subject to change, and the ability to perfectly spread information about our benevolent deeds is conducive to doing that safely and effectively.
Look at dorfs, how Belegar's opinion on Mathilde's usefulness changed over time and how dwarfs in general started treating us really well as of last few updates. RSvH is less practical and more scared girl thrust into Elector Counthood, but the same principles apply.
Belegar and to some extent Dwarfs in general sort of need us- they are a people on the defense losing day by day. They have little to lose by associating with us now that we've proven ourselves and a lot to gain.
Rosalina's perception of us already acknowledges we're a force for good and competent. It's just she feels zero need to associate with us when the risks as far she's concerned is astronomical. Being an even better do-gooder is not going to make her want to take us on unless she feels the need to, which just isn't going to be there unless the situation has deteriorated to the point where the Vampire Counts are seriously on the move.
Having info about all of our protective actions get out would be terrible for infosec. Sure, wear it while we're hunting visible targets, but knifing a celebrated hero fallen to Chaos or giving away information about the existence of a wide-ranging conspiracy we brought to justice would cause more trouble than it's worth. Good for our own reputation does not mean good for human civilization.
All of the faces have great uses and I'm excited to see how we can leverage them. I just think it's important to consider the potential negative consequences of them so we don't end up shooting ourself in the foot by assuming it will cover us in trying something it does not or that a given effect it has is purely positive when there are some circumstances that would make it blow up in our face.
On another plane, Mork has just found himself sitting at a dice table with a man who always smiles, never blinks, and has every ace to ever exist up his sleeve.
Having info about all of our protective actions get out would be terrible for infosec. Sure, wear it while we're hunting visible targets, but knifing a celebrated hero fallen to Chaos or giving away information about the existence of a wide-ranging conspiracy we brought to justice would cause more trouble than it's worth. Good for our own reputation does not mean good for human civilization.
All of the faces have great uses and I'm excited to see how we can leverage them. I just think it's important to consider the potential negative consequences of them so we don't end up shooting ourself in the foot by assuming it will cover us in trying something it does not or that a given effect it has is purely positive when there are some circumstances that would make it blow up in our face.
Yeah, basically--the point is we trigger Protector when we're going to do shit that we want to get out, because it feeds into our folk legend--and the powers that be will know it was our doing.
We leave it off when we're doing things that we'd rather remain hidden, or turn on Deceiver and have a cover story ready.
On other note, we did get sort of... confirmation? Heavy hint? on the matter that Ranald The Magician as an aspect of Ranald is definitively a possibility.
Should we gain power over a significantly huge human organization, we could try Divine/Social Engineer it into existence the same way as unlucky ork prophet tried with Only Brutality.
Except unlike Aspect of Only Brutality that conflicted with... a lot of stuff in Greenskin's faith, Ranald The Magician does not conflict with his traditional aspects at all. No danger of backlash from divinity lashing out against worshippers trying to warp it into something it isn't.
I wonder what the effect of Mork getting drained and hurling himself away from K8P will have on greenkind? Gork got drained too, but Mork got the worst of it by far. Will this result in an increased amount of ORC SMASH and reduced cunning?
It doesn't overwrite, it augments, it means the Ranald's Blessing applies twice in the chosen action, which makes it absolutely our best choice if we're planning on doing high risk research (Like the Liber Mortis, or the Snek Juice)
I wonder what the effect of Mork getting drained and hurling himself away from K8P will have on greenkind? Gork got drained too, but Mork got the worst of it by far. Will this result in an increased amount of ORC SMASH and reduced cunning?
It's not on a scale that would be relevant to us. Gork and Mork are second only to the Chaos Gods in sheer might, as massive a gain as this was for Ranald, it's a drop in the bucket for the Twin Gods, and they're liable to forget about it when they go back to fighting one another in their neverending game of Spy vs Spy.
It doesn't overwrite, it augments, it means the Ranald's Blessing applies twice in the chosen action, which makes it absolutely our best choice if we're planning on doing high risk research (Like the Liber Mortis, or the Snek Juice)
She knows we were doing our best- seriously her own dad who she obviously respected had nothing but praise for Mathilde. She also knows that our response to Van Hal dying was to follow on his desires and tear down Drakenhof Castle. Our intentions were never in doubt- that's why she tried to help us as best she could bring herself and actually felt bad we were cursed with magic, because she believed we were a good person who didn't deserve it.
Like this is some increasingly silly wishful thinking. No matter how benign we are, no matter how evidently good intention-ed we are, some people will never accept us simply because the risk inherent to doing so. And we can't remove that risk, only mitigating it at best.
This is how you become a wildly popular folk hero, and then a saint, then a venerated ancestor spirit. Oh, probably a Wizard Lord too, because it'll help with making a lot of friends as long as we keep going out and defending people. Not the Grey College's usual method of doing things but I daresay that they're not going to complain about good PR.
Of the time in the middle of the night you swear you saw her save you just as some horrible thing emerged for the sewer only for her to vanish into an alleyway just as fast. Or how she rode by just in time on her stead of shadow to save your band of travelers from a pack of beastmen late in the night or of the time one of her clever tricks exposed the vampire just in time to stop their evil scheme. Some of them are so big they must be true in part at least; so many soldiers swear of the woman in Grey who struck the Norscan army with one might spell so hard they carried the day it must have been someone. Just like someone must have cut the growing Waagh off cold by leaving the warboss head on a spike as she rode off in the dark. I doubt anyone knows the truth of all the tales, maybe even her, but no matter what we all know she is out there somewhere in the back of our minds at night. Mathilde the Grey... she is like a secret, a whisper in the wind... and to the foes of the Empire … a final gasping breathe.
I wonder what the effect of Mork getting drained and hurling himself away from K8P will have on greenkind? Gork got drained too, but Mork got the worst of it by far. Will this result in an increased amount of ORC SMASH and reduced cunning?
Ideally both are reduced, after all in their religion each enhances the other, cunningly brutal and brutally cunning, they do not compete for "space" or whatever you want to call it.
She knows we were doing our best- seriously her own dad who she obviously respected had nothing but praise for Mathilde. She also knows that our response to Van Hal dying was to follow on his desires and tear down Drakenhof Castle. Our intentions were never in doubt- that's why she tried to help us as best she could bring herself and actually felt bad we were cursed with magic, because she believed we were a good person who didn't deserve it.
Like this is some increasingly silly wishful thinking. No matter how benign we are, no matter how evidently good intention-ed we are, some people will never accept us simply because the risk inherent to doing so. And we can't remove that risk, only mitigating it at best.
"So Ranald, I know we just made out like bandits with Gork and Mork but I have an idea."
"....What are you getting at Mathilde."
"I'm just saying the Skaven God maybe somewhere in these mountains, and I want to be an equal opportunist thief. And if you happen to steal the Lore of Stealth from him I won't complain if you share some of the wealth."
