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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Alright, so I'm reading up on draughts, poisons and stuff like that in WFRP, which is especially relevant because I'm planning to write a Warhammer Physician turned Vampire Hunter for the next omake. I'm a bit stuck on something though.

Draughts are described as stuff that could be crafted with Apothecary skills, letting you mix and combine things with chemical and herbal processes to create what is essentially a potion. Except magic is not involved at all in the process and you don't need to be a mage to do it. One of the draughts I have my eye on is of course, the Healing Draught, which heals "4 wounds" in the game. I'm trying to visualise how that would work narratively though, to have a non-magical "potion" just heal you up with a drink.

The conclusion I've come to is that whoever's making the draught uses magical materials to do it that don't exist on our world to accelerate healing processes, and there are limitations to it. My thinking is that these draughts spoil relatively quickly (in weeks if you're good, days if you're merely competent), you need to be quite skilled to make them or they'll seriously backfire, and your body can only handle consuming one draught per day. More than that would cause serious side effects.
 
Codex said:
Alright, so I'm reading up on draughts, poisons and stuff like that in WFRP, which is especially relevant because I'm planning to write a Warhammer Physician turned Vampire Hunter for the next omake. I'm a bit stuck on something though.

Draughts are described as stuff that could be crafted with Apothecary skills, letting you mix and combine things with chemical and herbal processes to create what is essentially a potion. Except magic is not involved at all in the process and you don't need to be a mage to do it. One of the draughts I have my eye on is of course, the Healing Draught, which heals "4 wounds" in the game. I'm trying to visualise how that would work narratively though, to have a non-magical "potion" just heal you up with a drink.

The conclusion I've come to is that whoever's making the draught uses magical materials to do it that don't exist on our world to accelerate healing processes, and there are limitations to it. My thinking is that these draughts spoil relatively quickly (in weeks if you're good, days if you're merely competent), you need to be quite skilled to make them or they'll seriously backfire, and your body can only handle consuming one draught per day. More than that would cause serious side effects.
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Their is a typo on the entry for realms of sorcerer which goes into how potions work but they are generally supposed to last seasons. In the printed book it lists weeks but there is an errata which makes it clear it's supposed to be seasons.
 
Codex said:
Alright, so I'm reading up on draughts, poisons and stuff like that in WFRP, which is especially relevant because I'm planning to write a Warhammer Physician turned Vampire Hunter for the next omake. I'm a bit stuck on something though.
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Non-Thaumaturgical Alchemy is apparently based on using materials that have absorbed the Winds of Magic to produce something that has a magical effect on the drinker.
 
I assume it's part game mechanics and part the general sort of magic which makes formations with sword and board militarily viable. That is to say, it's a consequence of living in a magical world.
 
Passive magical effect as far as we would be concerned because of the inherent infusing of the Winds into everything on the borderline Daemonworld. Not magical as far as the natives are concerned because it delivers a testable repeatable result that generally doesn't actively try to explode into daemons eating your face as long as you aren't trying to brew by the light of Morrsleib.
 
Alratan said:
Also, remember that there are non-magical clockwork horses made by Imperial Engineers.
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Both are ridiculous, but it's easier to justify some weird mechanical bullshit is happening inside a mechanical horse than it is to see someone drinking a non magical potion and their wounds healing.

But yes, I'm just assuming that the potion making process, even if it's not done by a Wizard, still uses the Winds of Magic. The world of Warhammer is flooded with magic, so why not? I'm just trying to enter the headspace of a "physician" who lives in an entirely different world and society and trying to understand how the hell medical practice works in there.

I definitely don't want to start writing a guy who sticks leeches onto people and performs bloodletting to release the bad humours. Or worse, having that stuff work.
 
Codex said:
Both are ridiculous, but it's easier to justify some weird mechanical bullshit is happening inside a mechanical horse than it is to see someone drinking a non magical potion and their wounds healing.

But yes, I'm just assuming that the potion making process, even if it's not done by a Wizard, still uses the Winds of Magic. The world of Warhammer is flooded with magic, so why not? I'm just trying to enter the headspace of a "physician" who lives in an entirely different world and society and trying to understand how the hell medical practice works in there.

I definitely don't want to start writing a guy who sticks leeches onto people and performs bloodletting to release the bad humours. Or worse, having that stuff work.
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"You've too much Aqshy in your body, I'm prescribing bloodletting to reduce it. Take this jar of leeches."
 
I like to imagine there's a process which involves leeches somewhere, not stuck onto people, but as catalysts for one of several poorly-understood superstitious medical procedures. Inspired by secondhand Wind Theory about "winds of life and death", it involves fresh plants for Life, leeches for the transition, and bones for Death placed in a line between two open windows to let the winds in and out, and the patient has to stand over the bowl (box?) of leeches while flapping a pair of big fans in the appropriate direction.

If there's any positive effect to the procedure at all, it's probably from the patient getting light physical exercise and fresh air. And not suffering worse procedures. ;)
 
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I think that we ought to learn the basics of potioneering at some point. Not because we want to make the potions ourselves - I'm pretty sure Mathilde is somewhat beyond that, now - but just to understand the basic mechanisms of such, that might be applicable elsewhere.

I appreciate it's not exactly a high priority, though.
 
Deathbybunnies said:
I think that we ought to learn the basics of potioneering at some point. Not because we want to make the potions ourselves - I'm pretty sure Mathilde is somewhat beyond that, now - but just to understand the basic mechanisms of such, that might be applicable elsewhere.
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The Grey College has the... more practical content as a standard part of the curriculum. :)
Boney said:
[ ] The Use and Creation of Poison
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Codex said:
This is excellent. It's exactly the kind of options I would expect Belegar to have, with a few ones that I didn't wholly expect. I don't personally expect Gotrek's wife to take up Gotri's offer, but I do hope that she does honestly. We need more notable dwarf female characters in Warhammer. They're so rare.
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Thank you! Headpats are awesome. :)

I do agree with you about the lack of female dwarves though, which is one of the reasons I really like Soulcake's quest- the valayan high priestess in particular is great. Works you believe, though, that I paused in the middle of writing and spent 20 minutes trying to find the name of this character who was so integral to Gotrek's life and the path he was set on in canon? As you might imagine from me avoiding it in the omake, I could not find a name. A bit depressing in how classic a fridging it was.

Codex said:
I look forward to revealing what's in store
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And I look forward to seeing it! The PoV looks great- solid connections to Rosi and enough authority to be in the high councils, while still being an out side observer of the war and presumably the new Markgraf. And from the way you said this, it sounds like you've got a whole plot arc in mind, not just snippets. Excellent.
 
Exmorri said:
I like to imagine there's a process which involves leeches somewhere, not stuck onto people, but as catalysts for one of several poorly-understood superstitious medical procedures. Inspired by secondhand Wind Theory about "winds of life and death", it involves fresh plants for Life, leeches for the transition, and bones for Death placed in a line between two open windows to let the winds in and out, and the patient has to stand over the bowl (box?) of leeches while flapping a pair of big fans in the appropriate direction.

If there's any positive effect to the procedure at all, it's probably from the patient getting light physical exercise and fresh air. And not suffering worse procedures. ;)
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If you're lucky, it gives Shallya a laugh, which is always good for your health. (She's got to have a sense of humor like that, given Ranald is her Ranald)
 
Glau said:
Thank you! Headpats are awesome. :)

I do agree with you about the lack of female dwarves though, which is one of the reasons I really like Soulcake's quest- the valayan high priestess in particular is great. Works you believe, though, that I paused in the middle of writing and spent 20 minutes trying to find the name of this character who was so integral to Gotrek's life and the path he was set on in canon? As you might imagine from me avoiding it in the omake, I could not find a name. A bit depressing in how classic a fridging it was.
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Oh yeah. I love the effort Soulcake puts into making so many excellent female dwarf characters. By far one of my favorite parts of that quest.
And I look forward to seeing it! The PoV looks great- solid connections to Rosi and enough authority to be in the high councils, while still being an out side observer of the war and presumably the new Markgraf. And from the way you said this, it sounds like you've got a whole plot arc in mind, not just snippets. Excellent.
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I've got 5 more chapters roughly plotted out. Herr Doktor, Andanti, Carrion, Dreamwalker and Assault on Red Abbey. I'm trying out an "assembling the team" format that heist movies love so much.
 
Alliterate said:
The Grey College has the... more practical content as a standard part of the curriculum. :)
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I think I'd prefer to take the Potions and Alchemy class instead, as I'm more interested in the magical theory behind the creation of potions than the practical benefits of using them, or poisons. (And the ability to recognise them out in the wild, too.)

I half-wish the Research Sabbatical option had won sometimes so that we could afford to cast our Learning wide, no matter how excited I am for the Waystones. Ah well, maybe next arc.
 
We have Panoramia immediately at hand. We could totally just spend the college favor on getting a tutor for potions, have it be Pan, and get a really cute scene of Pan showing Mathilde that side of her magic, and teaching her (and us!) basic theory during it. We know she was considered something of a prodigee in the area when she joined a decade ago, so it might be a nice way to benefit us, give her some college favor to spend on herself, and help her prep for her magisters exams.
 
Codex said:
Alright, so I'm reading up on draughts, poisons and stuff like that in WFRP, which is especially relevant because I'm planning to write a Warhammer Physician turned Vampire Hunter for the next omake. I'm a bit stuck on something though.

Draughts are described as stuff that could be crafted with Apothecary skills, letting you mix and combine things with chemical and herbal processes to create what is essentially a potion. Except magic is not involved at all in the process and you don't need to be a mage to do it. One of the draughts I have my eye on is of course, the Healing Draught, which heals "4 wounds" in the game. I'm trying to visualise how that would work narratively though, to have a non-magical "potion" just heal you up with a drink.

The conclusion I've come to is that whoever's making the draught uses magical materials to do it that don't exist on our world to accelerate healing processes, and there are limitations to it. My thinking is that these draughts spoil relatively quickly (in weeks if you're good, days if you're merely competent), you need to be quite skilled to make them or they'll seriously backfire, and your body can only handle consuming one draught per day. More than that would cause serious side effects.
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Don't forget that "Wounds" are merely an abstraction representing a "characters general vitality". Characters in the game don't become seriously injured until they've run out of wounds and start suffering from critical injuries—which can be anything from being winded for a single round all the way up to being disembowelled (the critical injury tables in this game are wild).

Mechanically, a potion may heal 4 wounds, but characters naturally heal 1 wound a day*, so it's pretty much just "four days bed rest in a bottle".

*Unless heavily wounded (3 or fewer wounds remaining), then it's 1 wound a week.

... "wound" no longer looks like a real word to me.
 
I think that at a certain level we just have to admit that what works as sensible in a game about constantly broke murder-hobos is probably not aplicable in a game about nations and Lord Magisters with proportional resources. There is no way significant healing on that timescale could be found down the bottle of some random chemist in the Empire.
 
Martenzo said:
Ehh... still not happy with the second half, so here's the first half. I'll probably have to do some more research into the lore of Gray Magic, and Dhar to figure out the spectacular stuff.

Omake - The Rise of The Dreamer (Part 1)

Julia Antoniette von Jungfreud (nee Massif)
2480

This month, it will be five years since Elector Count Abelhelm Van Hal's ill-fated march on Drakenhof. Certainly, the Empire's records note it as a victory, if a costly one. But to Stirlanders the price was simply too high. For all the grumbling and discontent in his lifetime, the first Van Hal is nowadays remembered fondly as the Count that got closer to reclaiming "Eastern Stirland" than anyone else in centuries, and who would have undoubtedly led Stirland to a golden age had he not tragically fallen in battle. His son Sigmund, the current Elector Count, is... admittedly well-rounded and competent, but unremarkable in every other way, save perhaps a notable lack of ambition.

That battle, though. You weren't there in person, you've picked together most of the pieces of what happened in that chaos. After the gate was seized with minimal resistance, infantry stormed the streets and a vicious melee began. The Count and your then-employer Spymistress Weber broke through the enemy lines, but the formation alongside them failed to follow through on their example. The pair ended fighting back to back deep in the enemy formation, the Count was mortally wounded and Weber put on a very impressive solitary stand defending the wounded Count with his own Runefang. The dwarfs eventually shattered the undead, and a barely-alive Count Van Hal was evacuated from the field. Meanwhile, the Magister Jovi Sunscryer had miscast and set a good portion of the town ablaze with arcane fire as he exploded. Attempts to heal the Count failed and he succumbed to his wounds. At this point Lady Weber vanished; the last anyone had seen of her was a steed of shadows galloping toward Wurtbad. Brother Kasmir probably had a quiet crisis of faith, since he likewise disappeared and didn't show his face again until the force was withdrawing from Drakenhof. Of Stirland's leading officials, only Marshal Gustav remained in the field. With the Count dead, the inferno from Magister Sunscryer's miscast spreading, and the regiment around the Magister having lost seven men out of every ten, the Generals argued that it was best to cut Stirland's losses: raze the town of Drakenhof and withdraw, rather than risk a siege of the castle with the diminished force. Reluctantly, Marshal Gustav agreed (though a short while after the wedding, on last year's anniversary of the battle, he had privately confessed to you that he only did so because he suspected the generals would mutiny if he didn't, and that he regrets not pushing them forward anyway).

Really, the only piece you were still missing is whatever happened to your former boss. You ended up taking over most of the spy networks you had already been managing for Mathilde and, through contact with Anton, essentially became the new spymaster of the regency council. The promotion was made formal shortly after the Count's funeral. Unfortunately, that missing piece has been getting increasingly disturbing. She did return to Wurtbad: after about a year of digging around, you discovered her secret, hurriedly-evacuated residence underneath an inn. The timeframe also fits for someone shopping for a fine young horse among the merchants of Wurtbad; someone very suspiciously nondescript that none of the merchants in question could meaningfully describe. With Mathilde's hideout cleaned out of truly valuable information, all that was left was a thoroughly demolished shrine to Ranald, a very secure box containing a greatsword, and a number of her scrap documents. The documents themselves were not terribly useful: a series of personal schedules and reminder notes (none of them more recent than late 2474) and a whole lot of discarded papers describing some wizard stuff you couldn't make heads or tails of. Still, you learned that your boss really hated "Wizard Chic", because she had been trying for years to get equipment to study "the box", "the juice" and "the swords". Whatever those were. The only troubling thing, really, was the demolished shrine. Unsurprisingly in hindsight, Mathile had been a worshipper of Ranald. You've never been too devout yourself, but even in your opinion a state of mind where you're furious enough to destroy a shrine to your own God, that you yourself have built... It's the kind of state of mind that needs friends and priestly counsel to recover from, not solitude. And in the case of a wizard, turning into a solitary hermit that despises the Gods isn't exactly harmless to the rest of the world either.

A few months after going through Mathilde's lair, a Grey Wizard showed up in town and requested audience with the spymistress. He was quite surprised to discover you were not Mathilde Weber, and in the process you found out your former boss had stopped paying her College tithes (and loan payments). Knowing better than to anger a shadow wizard, you showed him the handful of documents you'd found and kept, as well as the remains of Mathilde's lair. Thus you finally had *some* answers. The wizard, sensitive to the winds of magic, had noticed a vial of what must have been "the juice": the vial had fallen into a crevice of the stonework, and subsequently covered in mud. It was really quite terrifying, to see a Magister (probably, they wouldn't send a journeyman to chase down someone like Mathilde, right?) look at the multicolored contents of the vial with the same amazed confusion look as you must've had when trying to figure out the arcane diagrams on Mathile's research scraps. The wizard rushed off without a word and left the town on a steed of shadows. Not long after, a formal missive from the College arrived: Mathidle Weber was officially a witch and a renegade.

Then, last week. Most question were answered. In a way far, far more terrible than you could possible have expected. On a stormy evening, as the privy council had gathered to make their report to the Elector Count, lightning struck outside, creating shadows for the briefest of moments, and at the table with the rest of us, stood a tall man in witch hunter regalia, unnatural shadows coiling and swirling around him, wreathing many of his features in darkness. A greatsword at his back and an iron box in his hands. The memory of that encounter would probably remain in your mind for the rest of your days (however *few* you had left, considering).

---

"Sigmund, my son" He spoke, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "I have watched and waited. You have no intention of following through on my dream." he continued. A statement of fact and nothing more.
"But even so," a brief note of softness enters the voice, only to immediately become discordant as a strange echo, like a woman's voice speaking alongside, repeats the three words "You have a duty to fulfill to your bloodline. Our penance."

Marshal Gustav was the first to find his voice. "...What. What abomination is this..."
The figure itself seemed to ignore him, but one of the shadows around him lashed out like a whip, and wrapped itself around Gustav's mouth, silencing him before pulling him down to sit. Likewise Kasmir, hefting his hammer.
She dropped the iron lockbox on the table, and continued as if nothing was strange "I entrusted this to Mathilde, for safe keeping. Now, at last, I have seen enough to know you will not abuse it if I turn it over to you. She has no more need of it."

Something is off, you can tell. All others around the table are enraptured, seemingly believing the apparition is the late Elector Count. But to you, the figure looks barely human, like a really poor mask. And as that thought crosses your mind, the illusion melts, revealing the tattered wizard robes of Mathilde (still wreathed in living shadows). At least, revealed to you; the others remain enraptured.

"It opens with any key, so long as you speak the codeword while turning the key."
"A-and what is that word, then... father?" the Elector Count asks. Immediately after, you are deafened by cacophonic whispers, and from the look of it, so is everyone in the room besides Mathilde and Sigmund, given that Mathilde's mouth moves and Sigmund nods in response.

"Mathilde. The College has branded you a renegade." you finally find your own voice.
The smirk on the corner of her mouth has your blood running cold "Oh. Already? Of course, the gold I owe them. Well, that just means they can't do it again."
You shudder, but try to keep her talking "What... Where, where are you going, then?"
"To fulfil Abel's dream, alone." she replies. A few moments pass in silence as you process the madness she's insinuating, then another flash of lighting outside casts shadows across the room, and in that instant, Mathilde is gone by the time torch-shadows return.

But the box remains.
And by the time the rumbling of thunder ends, Sigmund has whispered the codeword and opened the box.
His face immediately goes white and he buries his face in his hands, shaking.

---

Liber Mortis. The *original* Liber Mortis. This is beyond you, now. The College needs to know. And the Witch Hunters. And probably the Emperor should be warned as well. Though Count Sigmund is probably better connected with the latter two.

So you begin penning a letter. This isn't going to be very formal. You're far too terrified to bother with frivolous formalities.

Greetings, Regimand Speiseschrank
Magister of the Gray College

I have news of your apprentice, Mathilde Weber. Hypothetically, if she had possessed the original Liber Mortis for the past five years, and now claimed to have no further need of it, what is the worst way you can imagine for her (as a Gray Wizard) to attempt to carry out the late Abelheim Van Hal's dream of a Sylvania without undead?

Gods help us all
Julia Antoniette von Jungfreud
Spymistress of Stirland

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Not anything near caught up yet, but was confused why this is described as a bad ending. It seems to me that ressurecting him and using the book to invent our own form of necromancy before fuffiling his dream, and then hopefully moving on to even greater feats (say, taking revenge on Sigmar for failing him), is the defintion of a good ending

EDIT: Maybe against Ranald too for not saving him when we called
 
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