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I think one of the big gamechangers for Eonir relations is guns. Galenstra said:

"Ah, this," he says, drawing it. "Handgun. A gift from your Graf, and so very entertaining. So much more energy imparted than a normal arrow, and for so much cheaper than the special arrows! Noisy, yes, and so slow to prepare a second shot, but that just means the first must be made to count." He sights down it at a clumb of reeds. "Some might decry its lack of accuracy, but if you can't get close enough to take a shot, you don't deserve to."

Stronger than a normal arrow, cheaper than a magic arrow.

If the forestborn start equipping themselves with guns—I imagine they'll use Napoleonic-style skirmishers* rather than the more traditional ranked firing lines the Empire uses—then that would make them less dependent on cityborn soldiers, swinging the power balance in their favour.

Man, if only we could justify the Eastern Imperial Company establishing itself near Laurelorn. There's a killing to be made here. Shame all the rivers go north into the sea of claws, and the only passable road goes through Nordland.

*Skirmishers use rifles rather than muskets, so I was worried that the tech wouldn't be there yet (especially since the RPG lumps both rifles and muskets under "firearm"), but I did a quick search and in-quest Hochland, Nuln and Stirland all produce them, so we're all good on that front. Hochland makes the "long rifle", and Stirland the "repeater rifle", whilst Nuln's are just described as a "rifle". We might be able to get some on the cheap via the K8P branch of the Nuln gunnery school? We could also possibly try the repeater, assuming Roswita hasn't already bought every single one being produced.

I wonder if we can take an "introduce Galenstra to some notable firearm manufacturers" action in the near future? Anton, someone from the K8P Gunnery school, a radical dwarf engineer etc.
 
*Skirmishers use rifles rather than muskets, so I was worried that the tech wouldn't be there yet (especially since the RPG lumps both rifles and muskets under "firearm"), but I did a quick search and in-quest Hochland, Nuln and Stirland all produce them, so we're all good on that front. Hochland makes the "long rifle", and Stirland the "repeater rifle", whilst Nuln's are just described as a "rifle". We might be able to get some on the cheap via the K8P branch of the Nuln gunnery school? We could also possibly try the repeater, assuming Roswita hasn't already bought every single one being produced.

Don't put too much faith in terminology, as something being called a rifle is no guarantee that it actually has a rifled barrel and probably just means that the writer didn't want to use 'handgun', which is more technically correct but is misleading to modern audiences because the meaning has drifted over the centuries. Hochland's 'long rifle' is technically an arquebus, formally known as Leon Todmeister's Fantabulously Far-reaching Harquebus of Unforseeable and Unperceived Bereavement, and has been around for at least five hundred years so it would have very primitive rifling if it had it at all. And if we really go down the rabbit hole, then the Reikspiel word for all of the above would probably be 'gewehr', which means something like 'long gun' and doesn't necessarily specify rifling.
 
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Don't put too much faith in terminology, as something being called a rifle is no guarantee that it actually has a rifled barrel and probably just means that the writer didn't want to use 'handgun', which is more technically correct but is misleading to modern audiences because the meaning has drifted over the centuries. Hochland's 'long rifle' is technically an arquebus, formally known as Leon Todmeister's Fantabulously Far-reaching Harquebus of Unforseeable and Unperceived Bereavement, and has been around for at least five hundred years so it would have very primitive rifling if it had it at all. And if we really go down the rabbit hole, then the Reikspiel word for all of the above would probably be 'Gewehr', which means something like 'long gun' and doesn't necessarily specify rifling.

Godsdamnit, I'm once again foiled by my foolish assumption that specific words mean specific things. /s

But, yeah, thanks for the correction. It doesn't make skirmishing unviable, but I see it is much more ambiguous whether the technologies that lead to skirmishing in our timeline actually exist in Warhammer. I guess that'll be something the characters will have to work out in universe.
 
new take: all Warhammer lore is perfectly consistent. the inconsistencies are translation errors from Reikspeil that the world builders insist on writing in.

And entirely mundane historical inaccuracies for the historical research roleplayers, don't forget them!

…now I'm starting to wonder if Egrimm's whole snake pit deal was a misremembered fever dream from drinking Chaos kool aid.
 
The Tomb Kings army book has been incredibly enlightening in regards to many things. After I finished it up, I'm firmly convinced that the Lore of Nehekhara is a form of Divine Magic that perhaps has similarities most prominently with Waaagh magic, a combination of Arcane and Divine. The Liche Priests are capable of wielding the Lores of Light, Death and Nehekhara, and they believe that the Winds of Magic are the "breath of the gods". They even have a Goddess of Magic, which is pretty rare outside the Elves iirc.

It seems like Nehekhara is just in general an extremely magically inundated land, even before Nagash's Great Ritual. Nehekhara was incredibly close to a number of nexuses of power and Lizardmen cities, as well as Karak Zorn, and the book mentions very vaguely that they skirmished against all of these forces. Their magic was not taught to them by the Elves and they did not use Anoqeyan, Daemonic or other Arcane Languages, just Nehekharan. The way their magic is described though, is as far as possible from Boney's descriptions of Empire Wizardry as possible. Their magic involved very long and elaborate rituals where they ensure that all the steps were properly followed from Hieroglyphic inscriptions in papyrus writing, using things of superstitious and ritualistic signficance like the light of the Full Moon, the Eyes of a Cockatrice, entombed bodies of warriors who killed themselves with poison etc. to cast their spells. It's even explicitly said that the slightest mistakes could invoke the wrath of the gods and stepping out of line could ruin their day.

It also seems like most of their casting was often in groups instead of individually, and of course the locus for their spells were the bodies of the dead and constructs that they stuffed the spirits of the dead after calling them back from the Underworld. Nehekhara's also a weird place, with shifting sands, desert spirits, an "Ancient City of Bronze" located with it with glyphs that predate the Tomb Kings etc. The Nehekharans also seem to be able to invoke some of these spirits, which is probably where the Arabyans picked up the beginings of their traditions. They're also obsessed with curses. Really, really obsessed with curses.

Overall, there are indeed a couple similarities with the Light Order tbh. It's mentioned in the book that Nehekhara's domain did expand into the areas of the Empire briefly, and Old World Bestiary says that they are rare but there are tombs inside the Empire with Mummies. Could be that some of these traditions translated in the initial "Mystery Cults" of the Light Order, which is where they picked up Choir casting.
 
And entirely mundane historical inaccuracies for the historical research roleplayers, don't forget them!

…now I'm starting to wonder if Egrimm's whole snake pit deal was a misremembered fever dream from drinking Chaos kool aid.
That's actually pretty plausibel, and sounds like something that could happen in warhammer. Hell, it could be metaphorically "true", and represents Ergrimm being taken into the order while his sister wasn't because she didn't have magic.
 
In Nehekhara, Qu'aph, god of snakes (specifically the hooded cobra) is said to have hunted down Dragons before the arrival of man. Clearly Alric threw Horstmann and his sister in that pit to find out if he was secretly a Dragon pretending to be a human.
 
It seems like Nehekhara is just in general an extremely magically inundated land, even before Nagash's Great Ritual.

Being far from the poles Nehekhara would have actually had less magic available as a raw resource at least on average - however they had an extremely powerful magical tradition and a lot of knowledge which they developed over many centuries. The Colleges are extremely new and marginalised by comparison.

To put it in a metaphor even a dwarf would like: Nehekhara had a bit of gromril but a lot of grandmaster smiths, the Empire has a fair amount of gromril but almost no grandmasters and even masters are thin on the ground.
 
That's actually pretty plausibel, and sounds like something that could happen in warhammer. Hell, it could be metaphorically "true", and represents Ergrimm being taken into the order while his sister wasn't because she didn't have magic.

If you're a daemon capable of such things, implanting such a memory would be a great way of turning a wizard otherwise destined to be a dangerous foe into an asset. It seems like the kind of thing a Tzeentchian might do if, for example, the wrong kind of miscast happened.
 
Being far from the poles Nehekhara would have actually had less magic available as a raw resource at least on average - however they had an extremely powerful magical tradition and a lot of knowledge which they developed over many centuries. The Colleges are extremely new and marginalised by comparison.

To put it in a metaphor even a dwarf would like: Nehekhara had a bit of gromril but a lot of grandmaster smiths, the Empire has a fair amount of gromril but almost no grandmasters and even masters are thin on the ground.
The Temple of Skulls, Golden Tower of the Gods, Teotique, Zlaltan, Cuexotl, Tlaqua and Nahuatl are all in the Southlands and surrounding Nehekhara, and each one of them is marked as a locus of power as part of the Geomantic Web in the Lizardmen map.

EDIT: There's also the Ancient City of Bronze, but there's not much information about that. Might be one of these places actually.
 
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The way their magic is described though, is as far as possible from Boney's descriptions of Empire Wizardry as possible. Their magic involved very long and elaborate rituals where they ensure that all the steps were properly followed from Hieroglyphic inscriptions in papyrus writing, using things of superstitious and ritualistic signficance like the light of the Full Moon, the Eyes of a Cockatrice, entombed bodies of warriors who killed themselves with poison etc. to cast their spells. It's even explicitly said that the slightest mistakes could invoke the wrath of the gods and stepping out of line could ruin their day.
That just sounds like a focus on Ritual magic to me.

(I still think that class on Ritual Magic would be a lot more valuable than most of the thread believes.)
 
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The Temple of Skulls, Golden Tower of the Gods, Teotique, Zlaltan, Cuexotl, Tlaqua and Nahuatl are all in the Southlands and surrounding Nehekhara, and each one of them is marked as a locus of power as part of the Geomantic Web in the Lizardmen map.

EDIT: There's also the Ancient City of Bronze, but there's not much information about that. Might be one of these places actually.

The Geomantic Web beams power around the world - I doubt Nehekhara could tap directly into Lizardmen temple cities.

They might very well have had an equivalent network the same way the Karaz Ankor has but said network would be in the calmer region close to the equator. Nehekharan predilection for rituals could very well be an adaptation for calmer Winds - they might not get as much instant 'bang' but they developed a lot of ways for long term magic usage that's just as potent and a lot more flexible than the single use big 'bang' Battle Magic spells the Colleges use and also a lot more durable.
 
To be clear, the RItual Magic is done before the battle to raise the troops. While the Lore of Nehekhara is capable of healing the "wounds" of the undead and "resurecting" fallen troops, unlike the Vampire Count army, you cannot increase the base amount of models within a unit beyond the number they started with. I think this is to interpret the complexity of the rituals to raise the dead, it's not the slapdash shove Dhar and Shyish into em and enslave them to your will kinda stuff.

The majority of their actual spells are in fact Buff spells that only work on Nehekharan undead and Curse type spells weakening the enemy. They don't have a single Direct Damage spell and only one Magical Vortex. Also all their spells invoke one of their gods.

It's interesting, but it's also not the only lore they use. They can also use the Lores of Death and Light, which have more direct firepower if that's your thing. You just can't make that Death/Light Wizard a Hierophant (the guy holding the undead together. They die, the undead start crumbling).

EDIT: OH! I just remembered one of the main things that stuck in my brain. That pretentious prick Alkharad named himself after a Nehekharan King!
 
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they might not get as much instant 'bang' but they developed a lot of ways for long term magic usage that's just as potent and a lot more flexible than the single use big 'bang' Battle Magic spells the Colleges use and also a lot more durable.
War constructs would be the embodiment of that philosophy. Creating them is costly and takes time, but with enough of it and the ressources of a whole kingdom you can stockpile a very large amount of animated statues. They need neither food nor shelter, so when you have build them it costs you barely anything to keep them, you just have to repair them from time to time. Also, they can do the heavy lifting for building projects in peacetime.
 
To be clear, the RItual Magic is done before the battle to raise the troops. While the Lore of Nehekhara is capable of healing the "wounds" of the undead and "resurecting" fallen troops, unlike the Vampire Count army, you cannot increase the base amount of models within a unit beyond the number they started with. I think this is to interpret the complexity of the rituals to raise the dead, it's not the slapdash shove Dhar and Shyish into em and enslave them to your will kinda stuff.

The majority of their actual spells are in fact Buff spells that only work on Nehekharan undead and Curse type spells weakening the enemy. They don't have a single Direct Damage spell and only one Magical Vortex. Also all their spells invoke one of their gods.

It's interesting, but it's also not the only lore they use. They can also use the Lores of Death and Light, which have more direct firepower if that's your thing. You just can't make that Death/Light Wizard a Hierophant (the guy holding the undead together. They die, the undead start crumbling).

EDIT: OH! I just remembered one of the main things that stuck in my brain. That pretentious prick Alkharad named himself after a Nehekharan King!
Back in 6e,which is the last time i looked at the army book for tomb Kings, their magic users did not use the normal casting mechanics.
They had bound spells, which cannot miscast.
And i remember there being a lot of emphasis on how long the spells took to cast.
Ritual casting, learned by rote, and perfected to the point the priest doesn't risk making mistakes.
But that doesn't mesh with a tabletop game with short turns.
 
Godsdamnit, I'm once again foiled by my foolish assumption that specific words mean specific things. /s

But, yeah, thanks for the correction. It doesn't make skirmishing unviable, but I see it is much more ambiguous whether the technologies that lead to skirmishing in our timeline actually exist in Warhammer. I guess that'll be something the characters will have to work out in universe.


There are no dramatic technological changes in firearms from when skirmishers start getting deployed (late 18th century) and the mid-17th timeframe that WHF is roughly based on (it's not perfect of course, there's bits and pieces centuries either side but that's the vibe). It just requires you to slowly improve gunpowder quality, the cost of rifling, and your tactics. Given we have access to high quality dwarfen weaponry we could sell rifles such that a more effective skirmishing doctrine could develop, but it's not going to revolutionize anything either. They already have the capacity from their special arrows, and dwarfen imports aren't going to be any cheaper.
 
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I vaguely remember hearing that it's because the lands of Nehekhara had low magic that's why they started on the human sacrifice angle. It was to harvest that energy to power their spells. Also I think they power most of their living statues with people's souls.

I'm pretty sure that Nehekhara in general is big on conquest, slavery and human sacrifice. Generally not the kinds of people you want for a neighbor.

Anyway that's just what I vaguely recall from who knows were, so take it with a grain of salt.
 
Also, wasn't nehekharan magic very divine oriented? And therefore less dependent on the winds?
They didn't just use the Lore of Nehekhara, they also used Death and Light, so they had some Winds. The Lore is partly divine, but as we know from the spells of Sigmar's warrior priests, purely divine incantations aren't as strong as actual battle spells in exchange for having lower risk. These spells are vastly more powerful than any non chaotic divine caster, but carries substantial risk with it. They viewed the Winds as the manifestations of the God's presence in the World and used them.

Also, yes a whole lot of their magic is powered by the souls of the dead. That does quite a bit of the heavy lifting.
 
Sounds like some interesting echoes or similarities between Kislev, Bretonnia and Nehekhara. Divine magical traditions that call upon the land or upon the gods or upon leylines.

I wonder. If the Hedgewise's Haletha had more power and influence and energy... was simply a more dominant goddess and organization... would we be seeing more similarities in the Empire, too? (Not that Sigmarite priests -- and all the other Priestly magics too -- aren't also wonder workers and spell slingers. Just, yeah. Imagining a different sort of Empire history of supernatural power and infrastructure...)
 
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