Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
K von Carstein said:
Maybe some wizard gilded a part of himself by accident, via a miscast? Then he realized that it was rad as hell and try to replicate it. Because honestly I can't see a human wizard saying « lol, I'm gonna put liquid gold at 1064 degree C on my body to see what happens » without having already some idea of the potential benefits.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
My guess is that turning yourself metallic was originally an Arcane Mark with positive effects, so someone with an affinity for gold tried to formalise aquiring the Mark into a ritual.

From there people only had to build on expanding the concept.
 
My really radical theory is that Teclis originally invented Gilding as a way to permanently cure his frailty, only to discard it when he couldn't make it work without permanently attuning himself to Chamon and preventing himself from using High Magic. Then, when he came to the Empire to train up the people who would become the Colleges, he realized that the Gold College could actually make practical use out of his gilding process.
 
To those curious about the Gilding Process, without getting into the mechanics of it, this is what Johann Gilded:

Fingers and Toes are cosmetic, so he did them as part of Hands/Arm/Feet/Leg. Hands and Arms are separate processes, the Hands improving manual dexterity and the Arms improving Strength and increasing the Armor of your arm. The process is separate for each hand and arm, and I'm pretty sure Johann did it for each hand and arm instead of skimping on any of it.

Feet and Legs are also separate, and a separate process for the left and right ones. Feet grants bonuses to resisting fatigue on travel by foot, and leg grants armor of the Legs on top of boosting Movement. He probably did every single one of these.

There is no Torso Gilding in Realms of Sorcery for some reason, but I'm pretty sure that it should exist and Johann took it. He also took the Lung gilding which means he doesn't even need to breath air, which he told Mathilde that he uses on solo ventures, probably by using gas.

The Lung one is dangerous if failed, as it causes you pain every time you breath if you fail, but then we get to the very delicate part. The Head. The Head can either be done all at once, or separated into components such as Ear and Nose (eyes aren't included in the book for some reason, but it's clearly a thing). Ears improves hearing, Nose improves smell, and Eyes would logically improve sight. Head lets you gild everything at once, giving you the benefits of everything being gilded (improved senses overall) as well as boosted head armor. The downside is that it is one of two Gildings that results in instant death if failed.

There is another very dangerous gilding that results in instant death. The Heart. If you Gild it then you no longer feel emotional pain, which let me tell you I'm not sure if that's worth risking death.

The book only gives guidelines for these modifications, but you can get creative and gild more parts I'm pretty sure. The only ones in this list that are left for Johann are the Head ones and the Heart. After the disaster that happened with his eyes, I'm not sure if he's keen to possibly ruin his other senses, and I'm not sure he should risk death for the Head. The Heart is not worth it. Maybe he can do Liver or Kidneys or Intestines I guess. I'm pretty sure bones and muscles are linked to the limb in question so I don't think you can gild them directly unless it counts as a separate "organ".
 
K von Carstein said:
Maybe some wizard gilded a part of himself by accident, via a miscast? Then he realized that it was rad as hell and try to replicate it. Because honestly I can't see a human wizard saying « lol, I'm gonna put liquid gold at 1064 degree C on my body to see what happens » without having already some idea of the potential benefits.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean you say that, but there are real world "medical" practices which have encouraged eating mercury (and a great many other poisons) for reasons that were entirely made up by the practitioners and not really verified in any way. Humans need surprisingly little incentive to do weird self-destructive things, and in Warhammer some of the people doing them are wizards who can figure out a way to make it work regardless of whether it would be true without magic.
 
@Boney I was thinking about what you said about us not being able to influence how the Guild would take Thorek's reform beyond what we write in the report for Dum and I was wondering, is that its own action? Because if it is we might want to put the coin towards it to give Ranald the chance to put his hand on the scales.
 
K von Carstein said:
Because honestly I can't see a human wizard saying « lol, I'm gonna put liquid gold at 1064 degree C on my body to see what happens » without having already some idea of the potential benefits.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Generations and generations of alchemists attempting to give themselves the mystical properties of gold and one of them finally lucking into something that kinda sorta worked is believable though, and eventually could've been refined into gilding as we know it, especially once the knowledge given by teclis could be applied to it.
 
Codex said:
To those curious about the Gilding Process, without getting into the mechanics of it, this is what Johann Gilded:

Fingers and Toes are cosmetic, so he did them as part of Hands/Arm/Feet/Leg. Hands and Arms are separate processes, the Hands improving manual dexterity and the Arms improving Strength and increasing the Armor of your arm. The process is separate for each hand and arm, and I'm pretty sure Johann did it for each hand and arm instead of skimping on any of it.

Feet and Legs are also separate, and a separate process for the left and right ones. Feet grants bonuses to resisting fatigue on travel by foot, and leg grants armor of the Legs on top of boosting Movement. He probably did every single one of these.

There is no Torso Gilding in Realms of Sorcery for some reason, but I'm pretty sure that it should exist and Johann took it. He also took the Lung gilding which means he doesn't even need to breath air, which he told Mathilde that he uses on solo ventures, probably by using gas.

The Lung one is dangerous if failed, as it causes you pain every time you breath if you fail, but then we get to the very delicate part. The Head. The Head can either be done all at once, or separated into components such as Ear and Nose (eyes aren't included in the book for some reason, but it's clearly a thing). Ears improves hearing, Nose improves smell, and Eyes would logically improve sight. Head lets you gild everything at once, giving you the benefits of everything being gilded (improved senses overall) as well as boosted head armor. The downside is that it is one of two Gildings that results in instant death if failed.

There is another very dangerous gilding that results in instant death. The Heart. If you Gild it then you no longer feel emotional pain, which let me tell you I'm not sure if that's worth risking death.

The book only gives guidelines for these modifications, but you can get creative and gild more parts I'm pretty sure. The only ones in this list that are left for Johann are the Head ones and the Heart. After the disaster that happened with his eyes, I'm not sure if he's keen to possibly ruin his other senses, and I'm not sure he should risk death for the Head. The Heart is not worth it. Maybe he can do Liver or Kidneys or Intestines I guess. I'm pretty sure bones and muscles are linked to the limb in question so I don't think you can gild them directly unless it counts as a separate "organ".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is an extremely cool way of doing transhumanism in a pre-renaissance setting, as an aside.
 
Chlof said:
This is an extremely cool way of doing transhumanism in a pre-renaissance setting, as an aside.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If you think about it, all human Wizards engage in a kind of transhumanism as their magic transforms their body when they attune to it and gain Arcane Marks. The Gilding process of the Gold College is just speeding the process up, and is effectively a more controlled version of the Arcane Mark process.

You only suffer negative effects if you fail, but boy are the consequences severe when you do. But hey, for human wizards, no great reward come without risk.
 
Saidoro said:
I mean you say that, but there are real world "medical" practices which have encouraged eating mercury (and a great many other poisons) for reasons that were entirely made up by the practitioners and not really verified in any way. Humans need surprisingly little incentive to do weird self-destructive things, and in Warhammer some of the people doing them are wizards who can figure out a way to make it work regardless of whether it would be true without magic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The fact is that all those people didn't know that mercury (and probably those « other substances » as well) was a dangerous poison.
The dangers of molten gold are quite obvious to anyone, so I don't think a Gold wizard would try pouring some on himself without at least some idea of what it would do, and with a big potential benefit justifying the risks.

Despite the meme human wizards aren't in fact idiots, hence my hypothesis that something happened before that make them think that putting gold on/in themselves could be useful. I think an arcane mark could be that thing.
 
K von Carstein said:
The fact is that all those people didn't know that mercury (and probably those « other substances » as well) was a dangerous poison.
The dangers of molten gold are quite obvious to anyone, so I don't think a Gold wizard would try pouring some on himself without at least some idea of what it would do, and with a big potential benefit justifying the risks.

Despite the meme human wizards aren't in fact idiots, hence my hypothesis that something happened before that make them think that putting gold on/in themselves could be useful. I think an arcane mark could be that thing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The golds come from the tradition of the alchemists, and those consider gold the perfect metal, as in metaphysically related to the concept of perfection. So it makes sense that wizards wishing to improve themselves would turn to the use of Gold (Wizard + perfection = better Wizard). And melting it is an obvious step to turning it malleable and mixable (though I wouldn't be surprised if the research started with leaf gold applied to the skin, until they decided it wasn't working).
 
Last edited:
K von Carstein said:
so I don't think a Gold wizard would try pouring some on himself without at least some idea of what it would do, and with a big potential benefit justifying the risks.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There are ways of coming up with magical processes that aren't just "try it and see what happens." Again they may have started out with the intended outcome of "apply the mystical properties of gold to a person" and worked to come up with a process that would accomplish that.
 
The process to creating rituals is there in Realms of Sorcery, and the process is an extremely involved, lengthy and costly process of trial and error. Well, I say lengthy but it is not lengthy at all by the standards of Dwarfs and Elves, but it is for humans. There are tables and charts for every step of the process, and there are quite a few steps, each of which can horrifically fail, screwing you over. The process is split into Ideal, Research, Casting Attempt, and Scribing, and there are multiple parts to the research step. If you fail in the Casting attempt and you don't get yourself killed you can try Research again doing something else based on your results.

But I think I should mention that Realms of Sorcery is tuned to a lower level of power than Mathilde. Chances are if Boney adopts the Realms of Sorcery process it's even more involved because Rituals are a very big deal.
 
K von Carstein said:
The fact is that all those people didn't know that mercury (and probably those « other substances » as well) was a dangerous poison.
The dangers of molten gold are quite obvious to anyone, so I don't think a Gold wizard would try pouring some on himself without at least some idea of what it would do, and with a big potential benefit justifying the risks.

Despite the meme human wizards aren't in fact idiots, hence my hypothesis that something happened before that make them think that putting gold on/in themselves could be useful. I think an arcane mark could be that thing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Tragically, being sensible is not a human baseline. There are all sorts of examples of people deliberately putting dangerous substances in and on their body for various reasons, even when they are widely known to be dangerous.
 
Just as a note, when rereading I kept this in mind:
Boney said:
The books on Morr and Shyish you expected, but you do raise an eyebrow at the books on ritual magic, as you do at the ones on Tilean history.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This was in Gretel's room. Gretel might be practicing Ritual Magic. I admit to feeling some worry for her jumping to risky ventures. Rituals are pretty risky endeavours (Johann is an example of this), and she did mention wanting to look at Nehekharan tombs. I suppose being an Amethyst generally takes the fear of death away from you. Or at least you're always expecting your life to end at any moment to channel Shyish so it isn't much of a big deal to them.
 
Codex said:
To those curious about the Gilding Process, without getting into the mechanics of it, this is what Johann Gilded:

Fingers and Toes are cosmetic, so he did them as part of Hands/Arm/Feet/Leg. Hands and Arms are separate processes, the Hands improving manual dexterity and the Arms improving Strength and increasing the Armor of your arm. The process is separate for each hand and arm, and I'm pretty sure Johann did it for each hand and arm instead of skimping on any of it.

Feet and Legs are also separate, and a separate process for the left and right ones. Feet grants bonuses to resisting fatigue on travel by foot, and leg grants armor of the Legs on top of boosting Movement. He probably did every single one of these.

There is no Torso Gilding in Realms of Sorcery for some reason, but I'm pretty sure that it should exist and Johann took it. He also took the Lung gilding which means he doesn't even need to breath air, which he told Mathilde that he uses on solo ventures, probably by using gas.

The Lung one is dangerous if failed, as it causes you pain every time you breath if you fail, but then we get to the very delicate part. The Head. The Head can either be done all at once, or separated into components such as Ear and Nose (eyes aren't included in the book for some reason, but it's clearly a thing). Ears improves hearing, Nose improves smell, and Eyes would logically improve sight. Head lets you gild everything at once, giving you the benefits of everything being gilded (improved senses overall) as well as boosted head armor. The downside is that it is one of two Gildings that results in instant death if failed.

There is another very dangerous gilding that results in instant death. The Heart. If you Gild it then you no longer feel emotional pain, which let me tell you I'm not sure if that's worth risking death.

The book only gives guidelines for these modifications, but you can get creative and gild more parts I'm pretty sure. The only ones in this list that are left for Johann are the Head ones and the Heart. After the disaster that happened with his eyes, I'm not sure if he's keen to possibly ruin his other senses, and I'm not sure he should risk death for the Head. The Heart is not worth it. Maybe he can do Liver or Kidneys or Intestines I guess. I'm pretty sure bones and muscles are linked to the limb in question so I don't think you can gild them directly unless it counts as a separate "organ".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm surprised that no Gold Wizard has created a "YOLO why waste time, Gild everything at once, dive head-first with my mouth open into a vat of molten gold" one-shot procedure.
 
Codex said:
Just as a note, when rereading I kept this in mind:

This was in Gretel's room. Gretel might be practicing Ritual Magic. I admit to feeling some worry for her jumping to risky ventures. Rituals are pretty risky endeavours (Johann is an example of this), and she did mention wanting to look at Nehekharan tombs. I suppose being an Amethyst generally takes the fear of death away from you. Or at least you're always expecting your life to end at any moment to channel Shyish so it isn't much of a big deal to them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

She joined the Besiegers because she "wants to see more battlefields". I think her risk assessment ability is about as calibrated as the average wizard, which is to say, not at all.

Although, I am curious as to what her full ambitions are. She wants wealth and luxury, but she's also deep into the mysteries of Morr and appears to want a deeper understanding of her wind. Those... can align with each other, but it's an odd combination.
 
As there are more than one Arcane Mark of Chamon that causes parts of a Good Wizard to be transmuted into living gold it seems fairly plausible that a Good Magister would experience that, see it happening to his peers, and decide that if a magical phenomena can accidentally happen repeatedly it might be possible to harness the same process for something productive. That's very in theme for the mindset the Wind and the culture of their college encourages.
 
Nerdasaurus Rex said:
She joined the Besiegers because she "wants to see more battlefields". I think her risk assessment ability is about as calibrated as the average wizard, which is to say, not at all.

Although, I am curious as to what her full ambitions are. She wants wealth and luxury, but she's also deep into the mysteries of Morr and appears to want a deeper understanding of her wind. Those... can align with each other, but it's an odd combination.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I should say that none of the K8P Wizards are by any means "average". The people who joined the expedition or sought it out were explicitly those who wanted either adventure or who wanted to leave the confines of the Empire for one reason or another. Johann who wasn't entirely accepted by his peers and looking to prove himself. Max, who wants to attain the heights of craftsmanship from the notoriously reclusive Dwarfs with his horrible diplomacy. Panoramia, who's absolutely sick of all the religious debate in her Order. Adela, who instead of directly contributing to the military with pew pew blast, is working to gain further understanding of engineering. Hubert, who feels like the odd man out in his order because he doesn't like mysticism and portent/star gazing and just wants to shoot lightning, venerate Ulric, fight with sword in hand and prove himself to a noble family that somehow hasn't rejected him. And the seemingly out of place hedonistic Gretel in a supposed "order of ascetics".

The most normal of all the K8P Wizards are Esbern and Seija, and they didn't stick around for long. The only "atypical" part I suppose is that they're always together instead of being isolated. I guess Horstmann counts as a K8P wizard now? He's about as "typical" as you get discounting his skill and position as problem solver under the Patriarch. I'm of course not counting the possibility he's a Chaos Worshipper because there's no in quest proof.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top