Remove ads

Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Voting is open
Reader mode
Zero Gravitas said:
Well we didn't meet Sleek Sharpwit (beyond seeing him from afar as the overall commander of Mors forces) despite being in Karak Eight Peaks. Even if he survived and scurried away we're unlikely to get the chance to see him in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Wasn't there an option to go and fight him and his bodyguards during the end of the Eshin vs Mors battle?
 
I finished Spires of Altdorf, and I definitely enjoyed it more than Ashes of Middenheim. IMO it's more well constructed and a more intricate adventure with far more moving parts and flexibility, nowhere near the linear novel like story of Ashes of Middenheim. There are various points where the player's actions affect things and change the outcome instead of things being constructed for you. Sure there are points where they suggest that the GM should railroad things to keep the story moving, but at least they're not asking you to kill this specific character without any rolls involved just so they could serve as a plot device.

Also, the intrigue aspects of the adventure are very enjoyable. I quite liked it. What I found most surprising was how much I ended up liking Lord Frederick. I really didn't expect him to be so likable.

Most of all though, the villains are much more interesting in this adventure. Especially Carlott. She's actually pretty funny. She's really not that special in terms of physical prowess and she has no magical ability. All she has is money and an artifact that makes it so any chaos aligned person has to listen and consider her words. It doesn't even make them obliged to follow through, but she uses it to great effect to send wave after wave of enemies after you. Which brings me to my second point. There's something that amuses me a lot about a villain whose motivations aren't world domination or killing everyone or anything like that (although she might have had those motivations at some point). She just really wants to kill the PCs and will stop at nothing to do it. It helps that the encounters she creates are so interesting.

As an example of why I like her so much, an excerpt from the text that showcases everything you need to know about her:

"The door at the bottom of the stairs is bolted, but it is flimsy and opens with a single kick. Carlott is lying on her bed, apparently staring into space; in fact, she is concocting her next plan to kill the characters and is nonplussed to see them appear in person."

Anyways, I found a bunch more rituals in the book. Here they are for those who want to take a gander. Fair warning, they may contain spoilers for the plot of Spires of Altdorf if you're ever planning to play that adventure:
Arcane. High Difficulty. Two hours to cast. Requires the bound spirit of a Daemon and a willing intelligent sacrifice. The ritual involves drawing out a bound spirit, binding it into a willing intelligent creature who chooses to be sacrificed. If the ritual is a failure, the caster is knocked unconscious for a full day and the sacrifice dies without the Daemon being affected. When the ritual is underway the bound Daemon can't do anything to stop it. If the ritual is successful, the daemon is bound to the sacrifice and they become much more powerful. It is not easy to kill a Sacrificed, as they become possessed and desire the destruction of everyone they knew and loved, but doing so means that the bound spirit is "utterly destroyed". Unsure whether this means True Death or not.
Arcane. High Difficulty. 24 hour casting time. Requires the artefact to be cleansed, eight silver arrows placed around the artefact and pointing in towards it, a distorted mirror, which is shattered at sunset during the ritual. The casting must start at dawn, and it ends at dawn the following day. It must take place where the light of the rising sun can fall directly on the artefact, which generally means outside. This ritual destroys a Chaos spirit bound within an object (important that it has to be bound, unbound ones cannot be destroyed by this). The caster partially opens their mind to the Daemon. The Daemon's influence is limited, but the Daemon can send horrific images to someone. Every three hours the caster must resist or suffer mental degradation. If the caster breaks down, it only occurs after the ritual ends. If the caster fails, they suffer a wound for every point they rolled under the required casting roll.
Daemonic. High Difficulty. 8 hour casting time. Requires a Chaos artefact linked to a powerful Daemon; a number of willing but possibly duped sacrifices equal to the number of player characters; eight candles, each made from the fat of a different Human; an octagonal bronze bell with a clapper made from Human bone. The ritual must be performed at night in a place where at least eight Humans have died by violence; the caster must be Human, though the sacrifices need not be. This ritual destroys an artifact if successful, draining power from it and the sacrifices to fuel the caster. All the sacrifices fall unconscious and suffer significant mental damage as well as permanent draining of their abilities (their stats essential). The caster becomes much more powerful in all physical aspects as well as in magical power, transforming into a powerful Daemon and gaining wings, claws and natural armor. Failure results in the caster being devoured by the artifact in questioning and the artifact becoming more powerful.
 
Last edited:
So given that we cannot grab any elf magic books what books do you guys think we should grab? I think there is something to be said for rounding off on general subjects from an elf perspective, like the beastmen, orcs and those civilized realms than might be relevant to the project. I do not imagine the Eonir have books on Kislev, but they might have some on Bretonia. I also think we should recruit Panoramia, both because practically she would be a good opening to her College and because I don't want her to fall by the roadside as a character who only shows up in rare social interactions. Also she is kind of done with K8P so this is a goo moment for it IMO.
 
Last edited:
DragonParadox said:
So given that we cannot grab any elf magic books what books do you guys think we should grab? I think there is something to be said for rounding off on general subjects from an elf perspective, like the beastmen, orcs and those civilized realms than might be relevant to the project. I do not imagine the Eonir have books on Kislev, but they might have some on Bretonia. I also think we should recruit Panoramia, both because practically she would be a good opening to her College and because I don't want her to fall by the roadside as a character who only shows up in rare social interactions. Also she is kind of done with K8P so this is a goo moment for it IMO.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Absolutely anything we can get on Albion. I doubt there's very much, but any information on the stone circles they have up there would be an incredibly valuable alternative perspective on the problem.
 
The Lone badger said:
Absolutely anything we can get on Albion. I doubt there's very much, but any information on the stone circles they have up there would be an incredibly valuable alternative perspective on the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hmm... I do not think it is worth that much actually, it's still years until the mists begin to fail, if they even will with the PoD being this far back, and until they do Albion might as well be on the moon.
 
Mathilde thinks Albion's a hoax. A conspiracy theory:
Boney said:
Albion
Truthsayers and Dark Emissaries started showing up in the wider world in 2517, Albion's mists disappeared from 2518-2521. In the current day, Albion is a farcical tall tale. A hidden island the size of a province just northwest of Lyonesse, smack bang in the middle of some of the most frequented waters in the world? Ridiculous.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Boney said:
Some even say there's some secret island off the coast of Bretonnia where the Belthani still thrive, but that's never seemed plausible to me. So if that information is still out there, I'm going to have to try to winkle it out of someone who won't even openly claim they have it."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
IC she wouldn't look for info on Albion unless she gets something in character that makes her believe it's worth pursuing.
 
We could look around for books about silk weaving. Since the dwarven guild apparently doesn't care and it might be a way to get some connection with a bookseller.
 
Boney said:
The College of Engineering, little-known would-be rival to the Imperial Gunnery School, is a demonstration of the art it promises to teach its students, and the Imperial Gunnery School is much more sprawling but also much more bristling with every kind of artillery imaginable.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Reading Forges of Nuln has finally clarified the confusion I felt for a long time now. This particular line has always confused me because I kept thinking that the College of Engineering is an Altdorf institution, so why is it mentioned here?

Well, apparently Nuln has its own College of Engineering, which is separate from the Imperial Gunnery School, also in Nuln. I thought there was no need for an Engineering school because Nuln already has a Gunnery School, but apparently I was wrong.

I do understand the great benefits of Engineering being seperated from the creation of war machines and firearms, but my thought process was that in the World of Warhammer, non military applications of Engineering would be looked down on, which is why even the Imperial School of Engineering in Altdorf creates war machines and new inventions of war.
 
Briefvoice said:
Well you have to remember what standard we're starting from.

Imagine you walk into Silvery Depths, give the librarian a list of four books you're looking for that were published over a spread of four hundred years in two different continents in four different languages. Instead of waving you vaguely in the direction of various sections of the stacks, the Librarian disappears for half an hour and then comes back and informs you that they have three of the four books. Then a couple hours later, the Librarian returns with all three books. Believe me, that would be X-Treme.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is very good. Imagine you walk into Silvery Depths and give the librarian an obscure topic. Then after half and hour he returns to inform you that it occurs in four books present in the library, that were published over four hundred years in two different continents in four different languages, and three of them can be requested on short notice. That is Google X-Treme.
 
[X] Order

I have to deal with a terribly organised document management system on a daily basis, and I dread to imagine how much worse it would be if I was dealing with physical documents rather than electronic ones. And I remember all too clearly how much of a pain doing library-based research was during my degree.
 
Altom said:
Romance novels obviously. For reasearch purposes only.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I had assumed that that was part of Security. The highly sensitive material is encoded into the text of the romance novels. (Decoding is left to the reader - if you're the sort of person who gets clearance to read this material then you should be capable of figuring it out)
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Voting is open
Remove ads
Back
Top