Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Alliterate said:
Still, when I first read it, I thought it might have been surprise that the uncultured barbarian human could cast the very useful spell, one that's not about killing things. It could be our unique customizations, but they're neat, not show-stoppingly awesome, right(?)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Less "wow I want that" and more "wow the toddler with screwdrivers for fingers made a slightly better toaster by putting part of the toaster in her soul, how did she not blow herself to bits?"
 
Codex said:
If we're talking about what Thorgrim's age is, Belegar here gives a little bit of a hint. We don't know how old Thorgrim was when he took the throne, but Belegar is in his 90's right now. So it's been around 190-200 years since he became High King.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Thorgrim's reign is well documented in the lore. It started in 2304-6 ic, right after the chaos attack for beaten off.
Storm of chaos ends, high king Alriksson calls a council of kings, because he is dying and his heir is dead. The Kings agree to a competition of legendary deeds, which Thorgrim won.

Given he had to be over 30 (adult) and still young (<70), and spent 183 years on the throne, he's anywhere from 210 to 250,same as my estimate for Ungrim Ironfist's age.
 
I wonder what the non-Sapherian elven magical traditions are like, whether they stick to ordinal uses of the Winds, or whether you might find an elven shadow dancer that believes that all of existence is a grand illusion* or takes a Platonic view that perceived reality is just the shadows of fundamental conceptual objects (living in the Aethyr), which we imperfectly grasp, and so they can stretch Ulgu to do things that a Sapherian caster would use another Wind for.

* someone that truly believes in Māyā could potentially develop astonishing Ulgu spells… which could make sense because one of the meanings of the word is magic.
 
Last edited:
Boney said:
"Have you ever heard of Manhavok?" Without thinking you make a gesture to placate the God of Floods, and you frown as you try to remember where you learned it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Boney said:
She smiles at you. "Didn't you learn to swim as a child? In a dam or a dew pond or something?"

You shake your head. "Of course not. That's tempting Manhavok."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Manhavok creeps me out. If I have this right, he somehow has such a strong influence on Stirlanders that practically everyone in there knows the gestures to placate him and do it automatically without knowing where they got it from. I'm curious if the "tempting Manhavok" was an actual response from Mathilde or an instictive reaction. I wouldn't put it past this being.

He's very unsettling.
 
Codex said:
Manhavok creeps me out. If I have this right, he somehow has such a strong influence on Stirlanders that practically everyone in there knows the gestures to placate him and do it automatically without knowing where they got it from. I'm curious if the "tempting Manhavok" was an actual response from Mathilde or an instictive reaction. I wouldn't put it past this being.

He's very unsettling.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There was speculation that he's responsible for the flooded shrine to Stormfels we found (because that guy was trying to muscle in on his territory).
 
BurnNote said:
There was speculation that he's responsible for the flooded shrine to Stormfels we found (because that guy was trying to muscle in on his territory).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It was all but confirmed in story:
Boney said:
You frown to yourself as you remember the shrine to Stromfels under Wurtbad. It seemed strange to you at the time that there'd be a God of Shipwrecking so far inland, but for an ambitious acolyte, Manhavok might have represented some substantial Godly real estate that Stromfels might have been able to subsume, and considering the entire household got buried under flood-silt, perhaps Manhavok objected. "It makes sense," is all you say.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think Manhavok is quite powerful for a regional god, but the downside is that he's regional. In his territory he reigns supreme.
 
Alliterate said:
Yep yep, makes sense, good point well made and all, but if the Elves did get Shadowsteed from humans, I don't understand this reaction:
(Mathilde might not either, so we don't necessarily need an explanation.)

Still, when I first read it, I thought it might have been surprise that the uncultured barbarian human could cast the very useful spell, one that's not about killing things. It could be our unique customizations, but they're neat, not show-stoppingly awesome, right(?)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Elves don't have spell masteries. To them every new spell, even if it's a variation on an old one, comes from decades or centuries of meticulous arcane calculations by the most skilled of Archmages. They treat the Winds the same way an electrical engineer treats electricity: they respect and understand it and do their best to keep as much of it outside of them as possible. And then in walks someone that just says "yeah I let the electricity flow through me and it taught me a way to press the light switch in a way that changes the colour of the light".
 
Mathilde pumping out Rite of Way after 1 and a half years of development would probably utterly horrify most Elves. But hey, it got the job done.
 
BurnNote said:
There was speculation that he's responsible for the flooded shrine to Stormfels we found (because that guy was trying to muscle in on his territory).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What's interesting, if the same background applies here, is that depending on how old that shrine to Stromfels is it might have been from before the Cult of Stromfels was split off from the recognised Cult of Mannan. We interpreted it as a shrine to Stromfels, but it may have been created as a shrine to Mannan back when Mannan's portfolio encompasses what is now considered to be Stromfels'. If so, the Cult may may been trying to extend his worship past the point where the rivers are influenced by the tides, which is his conventional domain. You can see the interplay/rivalry between a god of floods and a god of the ride.
 
Last edited:
Codex said:
Mathilde pumping out Rite of Way after 1 and a half years of development would probably utterly horrify most Elves. But hey, it got the job done.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
An humanity continues to be the mad scientists of the species.

(I don't count the Skaven, writing it down and teaching others is a must have requirement.)
 
Burned_Cookie said:
An humanity continues to be the mad scientists of the species.

(I don't count the Skaven, writing it down and teaching others is a must have requirement.)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Actually, that would be a really succinct way to put it. Elves see the way humans engage with magic about the same way as how humans see how Skaven engage with magic: it's insane and self-destructive and it speaks of a deeply broken society that they're willing to accept permanent personality changes and possible death as a price worth paying for power.
 
Boney said:
Elves don't have spell masteries. To them every new spell, even if it's a variation on an old one, comes from decades or centuries of meticulous arcane calculations by the most skilled of Archmages. They treat the Winds the same way an electrical engineer treats electricity: they respect and understand it and do their best to keep as much of it outside of them as possible. And then in walks someone that just says "yeah I let the electricity flow through me and it taught me a way to press the light switch in a way that changes the colour of the light".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Every time a comparision between human and elven wizards comes up, I long for a wizard sitcom spin-off.

If features elf wizard, the straight guy, and human wizard, who is a walking joke (though at whose expense varies). Occasionally runesmith appears, but the joke there mostly is that he can't distinguish between what they're doing.
 
I wonder if one possible analogy would be that elves cast magic a bit like D&D wizards and humans do it a bit like D&D sorcerers.
 
BurnNote said:
Every time a comparision between human and elven wizards comes up, I long for a wizard sitcom spin-off.

If features elf wizard, the straight guy, and human wizard, who is a walking joke (though at whose expense varies). Occasionally runesmith appears, but the joke there mostly is that he can't distinguish between what they're doing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Skaven Wizard plays the role of Human wizards even crazier deadbeat stepbrother that only appears once a session, the difference being Skeven Wizard is always the butt of the joke.

Enoir Wizard is elf wizards younger sister with a chip on their shoulder about proving they are better then their big brother and is there to remind the audience that despite all the hell and wacky stuff human wizard makes/creates/coses, Elf wizard is actually the best wizard in the show.

Damsel and ice witch are human wizards older sisters, and the joke is that Elf wizard is always impressed about how normal and level headed they are compared to human wizard when they are in a episode, but are to the audience obviously doing far scarier and ethically dubious/downright war-crimes level experiments in the background.
 
Boney said:
Actually, that would be a really succinct way to put it. Elves see the way humans engage with magic about the same way as how humans see how Skaven engage with magic: it's insane and self-destructive and it speaks of a deeply broken society that they're willing to accept permanent personality changes and possible death as a price worth paying for power.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So, this begs the question... what do elves think of how skaven engage with magic? Aside from horrified screaming.
 
... I kind of wanna see Johann explain gilding to an elf wizard. It's kind of a horror show when it works... and it didn't for his eyes.

It's a process that even other wizards consider risky and extreme, and it involves pouring molten metal on yourself (inlcuding lungs and eyes). And Johann's solution to messing it up the first time was doing it again.
 
One of the spellcasters that I'm actually most impressed with the survival of is Ikit Claw. Despite being a skaven spellcaster, he's stolen magical secrets (and spells, apparently) from many of the nations of men across the world, from the Empire to Cathay, from the dark elves, managed to persuade the Chaos Dwarf daemonsmiths to trade secrets with him, looted magical knowledge from the vaults of the 'pre-human' city of Vorshgar in the Chaos Wastes as well as abandoned lizard men cities in Lustria

At the same time he's also managed to keep up on the technological side, learning from human and dwarf engineers as well as skaven ones,

He quite possibly has the broadest base of knowledge of anyone I've heard of in Warhammer.
 
Last edited:
BurnNote said:
It's a process that even other wizards consider risky and extreme, and it involves pouring molten metal on yourself (inlcuding lungs and eyes). And Johann's solution to messing it up the first time was doing it again.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
"Watch me! I am about to an extremely risky and difficult procedure that involves mutilating myself."

"Oh no it didn't work!"

"Wanna watch me do it again? You'll have to keep your eyes on me, because I can't see :rofl:"

Elves: :o:o:o
 
BurnNote said:
... I kind of wanna see Johann explain gilding to an elf wizard. It's kind of a horror show when it works... and it didn't for his eyes.

It's a process that even other wizards consider risky and extreme, and it involves pouring molten metal on yourself (inlcuding lungs and eyes). And Johann's solution to messing it up the first time was doing it again.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They'd probably consider it the distilled form of Imperial Wizardry, all its craziness expressed through one ritual. Very appropriate for Chamon. It's almost literally chisel hands.

I'd be curious what it might inspire an Archmage to try to develop, although we and the world probably wouldn't survive long enough to see what a Qhaysh ritual with the same basic goals could do to an elf.

They'd probably draw the parallels to vampirism pretty quickly. Transhumanism doesn't have the best record in this setting
 
Last edited:
Boney said:
They don't even acknowledge it as the same sort of thing that Elven Mages do, they're just a medium Chaos acts through to make the world worse.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Amusingly enough, if you logically then view human magic as the halfway point between Elf and Skaven magic then you could also say that human magic is halfway between properly done scientific magic and a medium of Chaos making the world worse. Which also seems a very accurate way for how elves view human magic lmao

You could make a scale from this, I wonder where orcs would fall on it. I love how consistent this all is.
 
FallenPears said:
Amusingly enough, if you logically then view human magic as the halfway point between Elf and Skaven magic then you could also say that human magic is halfway between properly done scientific magic and a medium of Chaos making the world worse. Which also seems a very accurate way for how elves view human magic lmao

You could make a scale from this, I wonder where orcs would fall on it. I love how consistent this all is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
At a 90° angle. Ork magic is a medium for making the world worse, but for Gork and Mork, not Chaos.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top