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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Ultrackius said:
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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Oh boy, Omegahugger is going to love you. Looking forward to when you join us properly.
 
Genunly don't see the downside to it tbh, from the discussion it sounds like the original necromancy guy who wrote the book didn't go insane (and besides, sanity is overrated anyway), and if the empire tries to send assassins or something we just have to take them out first (or beat the assassins ig, but then we would have to keep fighting them instead of just cutting off the source)
 
Ultrackius said:
Genunly don't see the downside to it tbh, from the discussion it sounds like the original necromancy guy who wrote the book didn't go insane (and besides, sanity is overrated anyway), and if the empire tries to send assassins or something we just have to take them out first (or beat the assassins ig, but then we would have to keep fighting them instead of just cutting off the source)
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Well, the Empire's response is less "assassins" and more "professional wizard killers". These people are pretty good at their job you know.
 
DocMatoi said:
how'd he live that long? Vampirism didn't come to the empire until long after sigmar
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It's not the same guy, it's a title that's been handed down.

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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One important thing about historical European medicine is how ridiculously classist it was for a long time, one major example being how much pushback germ theory got because the doctors of the time were apoplectic at the suggestion that a gentleman's hands could be unclean. In the time period of the quest, it's largely divided into Physicians and Barber-Surgeons. Physicians are Noble Men Of Science who study a heady mix of science, mysticism, and nonsense, and charge often outrageous fees for their services, which is usually limited to diagnostics and medicines as actually taking up a blade and doing stuff to a living body as seen by many of them as gauche commoner work (though taking a blade to a dead body is the study of anatomy and perfectly acceptable as long as the local Morrites don't catch you doing it). Barber-Surgeons aren't quite as grimdark as they sound - being a decent barber requires sharp blades, a steady hand, clean premises, and decent people skills, so if surgery needs to be done they're a natural fit, and they tend to be more reasonable with their fees because they depend more on repeat business than Physicians. Both are heavily regulated by their respective Guilds, and performing either without a license is legally considered assault.

To boil it right down, Physicians add things to a body and call it medicine (an old meaning for the word 'physic' is medicine), while Barber-Surgeons take things away from a body and call it surgery.
 
Ultrackius said:
Then the answer is simply: Deal with the Empire, and we wont have to deal with their assassins

Either that or just get good enough to fight them off, or far enough away they arent an issue
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Deal with the...? You're kidding right? You want Mathilde to fight an Empire with like a million soldiers by herself? Here's a hint, she'd lose. Vlad von Carstein lost and he was a better general, had a better opportunity and had less magical opposition.

Again, that's my point. Mathilde could probably take some of the Witch Hunters, but not all of them, and they only need to get lucky once. And to get far enough away would basically involve exile to somewhere inhospitable or full or other people that would want to kill her.
 
Ultrackius said:
Things I do not need: food, water, sleep, school, life, other people

Things I do need: to finish this quest or die trying
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To be fair, you're not the first person even this month I've seen attempting to read all the comments of a quest. On the other hand, that thread had less than seven hundred pages…
Ultrackius said:
Then the answer is simply: Deal with the Empire, and we wont have to deal with their assassins

Either that or just get good enough to fight them off, or far enough away they arent an issue
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I genuinely can't tell if you're playing a bit, or are entirely serious. Because if the latter, then you need to learn a lot more about the setting, or you would recognize that the last of those options is the only mildly plausible option. And I'm saying that as someone not heavily versed in the lore myself.
 
I fully understand we can't fight the empire

But with enough skill and the magic we'd make of the book (plus any allies we have) we should be able to deal with the hunters they send

Edit: also, we have the stealth magic, when combined with the book it should be fairly effective
 
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Raving lunacy and necromancy do not typically give you allies. As OmegaHugger can somewhat demonstrate (although Omega isn't a lunatic, he just has his shipping googles welded on too tight).
 
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Ultrackius said:
Genunly don't see the downside to it tbh, from the discussion it sounds like the original necromancy guy who wrote the book didn't go insane (and besides, sanity is overrated anyway), and if the empire tries to send assassins or something we just have to take them out first (or beat the assassins ig, but then we would have to keep fighting them instead of just cutting off the source)
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There's WOG later on that using dhar requires a pretty terrible mindset, so even if you can ignore the magical effects of dhar exposure, you'll still turn into a supervillain, because you have to think like one to really cast with dhar.

I dunno how far you're along in the quest, but there's some truly amazing stuff to come for a potential dark mage Mathilde.
Boney said:
One important thing about historical European medicine is how ridiculously classist it was for a long time, one major example being how much pushback germ theory got because the doctors of the time were apoplectic at the suggestion that a gentleman's hands could be unclean. In the time period of the quest, it's largely divided into Physicians and Barber-Surgeons. Physicians are Noble Men Of Science who study a heady mix of science, mysticism, and nonsense, and charge often outrageous fees for their services, which is usually limited to diagnostics and medicines as actually taking up a blade and doing stuff to a living body as seen by many of them as gauche commoner work (though taking a blade to a dead body is the study of anatomy and perfectly acceptable as long as the local Morrites don't catch you doing it). Barber-Surgeons aren't quite as grimdark as they sound - being a decent barber requires sharp blades, a steady hand, clean premises, and decent people skills, so if surgery needs to be done they're a natural fit, and they tend to be more reasonable with their fees because they depend more on repeat business than Physicians. Both are heavily regulated by their respective Guilds, and performing either without a license is legally considered assault.

To boil it right down, Physicians add things to a body and call it medicine (an old meaning for the word 'physic' is medicine), while Barber-Surgeons take things away from a body and call it surgery.
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Y'know, I really do love these incidental bits of learning that come up in the thread. It's one of the reasons I actually follow the discussion in this thread, which I don't normally do.
 
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BurnNote said:
There's WOG later on that using dhar requires a pretty terrible mindset, so even if you can ignore the magical effects of dhar exposure, you'll still turn into a supervillain, because you have to think like one to really cast with dhar.
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IIRC That's for using Dhar directly. Necromancy avoids that part of things by using Shyish to keep the Dhar at a distance, so the mindset it requires is a Shyish one - hence why Vanhal's fall was so slow comparitively.

Of course, you still have the fact that you're using the equivalent of high fallout radioactive bombs, so you have to be willing to poison everything around you when you cast (even if you personally are immune to the effects)
 
Barber-Surgeons aren't quite as grimdark as they sound - being a decent barber requires sharp blades, a steady hand, clean premises, and decent people skills, so if surgery needs to be done they're a natural fit, and they tend to be more reasonable with their fees because they depend more on repeat business than Physicians.
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Feels like there's a "never trust a doctor who doesn't seem to care about repeat business" joke to be had here. And look, I just made it!
 
kingreaper said:
IIRC That's for using Dhar directly. Necromancy avoids that part of things by using Shyish to keep the Dhar at a distance, so the mindset it requires is a Shyish one - hence why Vanhal's fall was so slow comparitively.

Of course, you still have the fact that you're using the equivalent of high fallout radioactive bombs, so you have to be willing to poison everything around you when you cast (even if you personally are immune to the effects)
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I think its like this: Use Dhar directly, go made real quick (maybe mutate too). Use dhar indirectly ala Necromancy, go mad much slower from working in a dhar rich environment. Use necromancy/dhar while warning a dwarven artifact of dhar immunity (and assuming Valaya doesn't call shenanigans), turn into a right asshole over time (probably), because the mentality requires it.
Use small amounts of dhar to cast spells of other winds (a wear a dwarven artifact), don't go mad at all. Maybe. Haven't tested it, bit of a risk that.
Briefvoice said:
Feels like there's a "never trust a doctor who doesn't seem to care about repeat business" joke to be had here. And look, I just made it!
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Can't trust a doctor that does care about repeat business either.
 
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When I'm reading WHF material, DL is stuck on the brain as usual. So I couldn't help but be amused at reading something in the books

First, Dragomas the Drake is a star sign in the Warhammer world. It represents courage, strength, conflict and strife. I'm not sure if Dragomas was born with the name or if he assumed it, but it's quite possible he was named after the star sign.

Second, in Tome of Salvation, there are a number of results for "Dooming". This is the process where a Doomsayer from the Cult of Morr "looks into the future" to divine your death with a cryptic prophecy when you hit 10 years old. I found Mathilde's result, the whole "when lost and alone, Morr will befriend thee". That was interesting, but the thing that made me laugh is this dooming result:

"Follow not the steps of Dragomas."

Now I have this image in my head of a magister who is incredibly paranoid about Dragomas and tracks his movement patterns to make sure he never walks in Dragomas' footsteps.
 
Ultrackius said:
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
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You'll catch up and see Part 2. The discussion prior to that is just... people being genre-savvy enough to see that there's no way this could lead to a good ending in a setting like WHF.
 
Martenzo said:
You'll catch up and see Part 2. The discussion prior to that is just... people being genre-savvy enough to see that there's no way this could lead to a good ending in a setting like WHF.
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Saw it, still think it's a good ending. It even says that the people in the shadowlands were happy according to adventurers who tried to enter and managed to escape

Give it some time, train some apprentices, and it'll be wonderful! Few people were really harmed that badly, great advancments in magic were made, and we likely improved the quality of life of everyone in the region
 
Perusing the Warhammer star signs does make me wonder what Mathilde's star sign is. Yeah I know it probably doesn't mean anything, but hey, Warhammer has all kinds of weird mystical stuff, so maybe the star signs do mean something in Warhammer. I don't think Mathilde actually cares though. She'd probably see it as Celestial frippery.

The Gloaming would be fitting, but I think Grungni's Baldric would be funny. Then again, Mummit the Fool and Witchling Star would fit too. If you stretch things you can include others too.

Yeah this book is doing a good job in showing how "flexible" star signs are.
 
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