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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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picklepikkl said:
We archived the coins from the Grand Urbaz, not for any expectation of gaining something practical, but because we could not bear to see a piece of humanity's past disappear into the smelters.

Anyway, I am extremely loath to write off Windherder as useless before we have spent a single AP on it. I didn't vote for it back in the day, but the cost of entry to find out more about how it works is not high.

The tricky thing is that Grey and Light's Relatively Simple spells don't make for great combinations, and I don't think we should try enchanting much above that for our literal first try. I really wanted to use @Fayhem or @Jyn Ryvia's ideas for Grey/Jade RS combos, but that would require spending a personal AP rather than a WEBMAT one.
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Fair enough, those do provide some papers we can churn out when we need an easy assignment for serenity, but if I recall the discussion it was not really about that, more that people wanted to do one thing that was not a Dum preparation

We could send one of the gold mages to learn enchantment and the use their action next turn to enchant an item (probably our robes; those could use the most improvement)

IronFist said:
We could have become a magister even without the matrix.
That paper was imo mainly a contribution to the college's academic knowledge and to establish Mathilde's credentials in theoretical magic.
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I'm pretty sure you need a mastery project to pass so unless we were willing to show off AV we could not have become a magister then.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Not sure that would have worked, since that project was a collaboration (albeit one with a dead man) and I think the mastery project has to be yours alone.
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It's preferred for the Grey Order, but not mandatory. For someone who's Journey was spent in service to an Elector Count instead of as a wandering adventurer Mathilde would likely have been given particular leeway in that regard, if it had been needed.
 
DragonParadox said:
We could send one of the gold mages to learn enchantment and the use their action next turn to enchant an item (probably our robes; those could use the most improvement)
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I'm leery about using the golds for windherder, both because it doubles the AP investment to do our first action and it means their first ever proper enchantment would be in a new untested and potentially dhar inducing field of enchanting. At least Egrimm has some experience with regular enchanting first.
 
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Boney said:
The point I made in my head but not in my post is that 'germ theory' took us forever to come up with when there wasn't a bunch of other contagion vectors making a singular unified theory impossible. Disease can happen if the Chaos Moon shines at you at the wrong time, or because someone a mile away just did a ritual, or because a local museum just opened up a Nehekharan wing, or because of Daemonic possession, or because Nurgle thought it would be funny. Trying to implement magical versions of our own world's techniques to fight the spread of disease is as out of character as it is doomed to fail. Something like that could be selectively applied to diseases that have never been supernaturally tinkered with, but it would require a fair bit of knowledge and expertise Mathilde doesn't have to even begin to go down that line of thinking.
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Im curious.

In a world where magic and evil magic exist, is perpetual engine possible?
Can magic and/or evil gods broke the laws of thermodynamic?
 
B_omega said:
Im curious.

In a world where magic and evil magic exist, is perpetual engine possible?
Can magic and/or evil gods broke the laws of thermodynamic?
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Short term answer: Yes, easily. Go to the spellbook and look at Gold Magic for a simple example: "Stoke the Forge: Causes a fire to burn as hotly as naturally possible and without consuming fuel for up to an hour."

Long term answer: Try it and find out in a few thousand years. Magic might have its own power source that runs out eventually, we don't know. Maybe the Æthyr will 'dry out'.
 
B_omega said:
Im curious.

In a world where magic and evil magic exist, is perpetual engine possible?
Can magic and/or evil gods broke the laws of thermodynamic?
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Technically no, because the intervention of magic or gods means you're no longer dealing with a closed system. But you can use magic to make a wheel go around forever or something, though there's not that many existing applications for that sort of thing that can't be done even easier with a watermill.
 
B_omega said:
Im curious.

In a world where magic and evil magic exist, is perpetual engine possible?
Can magic and/or evil gods broke the laws of thermodynamic?
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Probably, if not already done. For instance the Transformation of Kadon violates the law of conservation of matter. Whether an actual perpetual engine is set up in universe will have to be left up to the loremasters, but it should be theoretically possible.
 
Boney said:
The point I made in my head but not in my post is that 'germ theory' took us forever to come up with when there wasn't a bunch of other contagion vectors making a singular unified theory impossible. Disease can happen if the Chaos Moon shines at you at the wrong time, or because someone a mile away just did a ritual, or because a local museum just opened up a Nehekharan wing, or because of Daemonic possession, or because Nurgle thought it would be funny. Trying to implement magical versions of our own world's techniques to fight the spread of disease is as out of character as it is doomed to fail. Something like that could be selectively applied to diseases that have never been supernaturally tinkered with, but it would require a fair bit of knowledge and expertise Mathilde doesn't have to even begin to go down that line of thinking.
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The answer is kind includes OOC knowledge, so feel free to pass, but with this post I'm unlcear what you mean.

Is it A) Germ theory of disease doesn't exist, because allthough it's correct as far as the source of communicable disease goes (including for magical diseases), it doesn't help with the spread because they can just pop out because magic. Put if you knew to look for it, you could still find germs for magic diseases.

or B) Germ theory of disesase doesn't exist, because it only applies to mundane sickness, and some magical diseases just don't work via germs.
 
SpaceSloth said:
Wouldnt winds of magic count as fuel?
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A perpetual motion machine is not one that doesn't require fuel.
It's one that doesn't lose energy over time once set in motion.

We haven't seen those particular spells in action, but my expectation is that the spell causes the fire to burn indefinitely at a constant level, without any extra input from the wizard.

The spell itself is the "machine"
 
IronFist said:
A perpetual motion machine is not one that doesn't require fuel.
It's one that doesn't lose energy over time once set in motion.

We haven't seen those particular spells in action, but my expectation is that the spell causes the fire to burn indefinitely at a constant level, without any extra input from the wizard.

The spell itself is the "machine"
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Boney said:
Stoke the Forge: Causes a fire to burn as hotly as naturally possible and without consuming fuel for up to an hour.
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Boney said:
Inextinguishable flame: Makes one flame inextinguishable. Duration depends on Magic, up to one year
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Both of these spells have a maximum duration.
 
BurnNote said:
The answer is kind includes OOC knowledge, so feel free to pass, but with this post I'm unlcear what you mean.

Is it A) Germ theory of disease doesn't exist, because allthough it's correct as far as the source of communicable disease goes (including for magical diseases), it doesn't help with the spread because they can just pop out because magic. Put if you knew to look for it, you could still find germs for magic diseases.

or B) Germ theory of disesase doesn't exist, because it only applies to mundane sickness, and some magical diseases just don't work via germs.
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B. There are diseases that are transmissible without what germ theory would consider pathogens. Nurgle's Rot exists entirely within the soul, Death's Breath spreads through biologically inert but magically cursed dust, Glorious Corruption is caused by exposure to Chaos energy and seems like mundane insanity until the sufferer begins mutating, and there's a variety of scurvy that is transmissible.
 
The WFRP Companion actually has a very long segment on the current progress of Imperial medical understanding. Here's a segment that does a good job illustrating its, uh, level of sophistication.

Whether Gaelenic or Mechanical in outlook, all medical scholarship is accompanied by a full grounding in Classical works, particularly the new field of Science. This field is dominated by a trinary model of the universe, dividing the world into the Realm of Law, containing the Gods and the Elves, the Realm of Chaos and all its dark threats, and the Realm of Man, where mortals are cursed to struggle between the two.
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Yep.

The book does a good job of implicitly explaining why human medical knowledge is so bad. See, back in the Classical era, they got the foundations of medical science from High Elf books, which were just taken as self-evidently true because - Hey, High Elves know everything, right? So for thousands of years, that was the orthodoxy, and anyone who suggested otherwise was laughed at as a fool. Why would you think you know better about how to keep people alive than a society of near-immortals?

The problem, of course, is that High Elves don't really get diseases. Plus their society is full of people who can heal using magic. So for them, "drink some herbal tea or w/e until your amazing metabolism fixes everything for you if you get an infection, or eat these berries if you ain't shitting good" is great advice and all most people need to know... But taken out of context and applied to humans, it's absolutely useless and doesn't fix any problems. But it's only in the past couple of centuries people have even begun to question it's usefulness.
 
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Lupercal said:
I hate that section of the book. It really devalues the presence of the Cult of Shallya in favour of just copy pasting pseudo-historical victorian bad history of medical practices from irl europe with the names changed in the name of grimdrak
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I think that humans in the Old World see divine healing as something wholly distinct from medicine, since it's supposed to be very rare and its mechanisms (and their success and failure) are completely out of the hands of mortals. Magical healing is a different matter - since it intersects with science - but is probably too immature and too impacted by the secret-keeping of the orders to have disseminated its perspective to wider society.
 
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opalbucket said:
I think that humans in the Old World see divine healing as something wholly distinct from medicine, since it's supposed to be very rare and its mechanisms (and their success and failure) are completely out of the hands of mortals. Magical healing is a different matter - since it intersects with Science - but is probably too immature and too impacted by the secret-keeping of the orders to have disseminated its perspective to wider society.
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Divine healing as in a Priest explicitly calling on Shallya to instantaneously banish an illness is rare, but praying to Shallya when ill in the hopes of Her bolstering you against the sickness is the norm, and it's generally believed that if you survive an illness you should give thanks to Her.
 
opalbucket said:
I think that humans in the Old World see divine healing as something wholly distinct from medicine, since it's supposed to be very rare and its mechanisms (and their success and failure) are completely out of the hands of mortals. Magical healing is a different matter - since it intersects with Science - but is probably too immature and too impacted by the secret-keeping of the orders to have disseminated its perspective to wider society.
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yes but my issue is that that book, and it is only that book, says that the Shallyans are superstisious faith healers one and all when every other source, from 2e at least, has them using a great deal of practical and "science based" medical knowledge and actively having reasearch monestaries that work to improve the cults ability to ease suffering, treat mental health and cure diseases. The book also uses very gendered language to put down the Shallyan's medical abilites which is uncomfortable.

Edit: basically the book presents the Shallyans as ignorent excentrics who don't know what they are doing and barber-surgons as elightend scientist scholoars. When in every other book its the other way around.
 
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Lupercal said:
yes but my issue is that that book, and it is only that book, says that the Shallyans are superstisious faith healers one and all when every other source, from 2e at least, has them using a great deal of practical and "science based" medical knowledge and actively having reasearch monestaries that work to improve the cults ability to ease suffering, treat mental health and cure diseases. The book also uses very gendered language to put down the Shallyan's medical abilites which is uncomfortable.

Edit: basically the book presents the Shallyans as ignorent excentrics who don't know what they are doing and barber-surgons as elightend scientist scholoars. When in every other book its the other way around.
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Presumably that book was IC written by one of said barber-surgeons or an academic sympathetic to their views and other sources are IC written by people who like the Cult of Shallya more. Who has the better perspective is for us to judge, and in different times and places both may be true to varying degrees.
 
Boney said:
Divine healing as in a Priest explicitly calling on Shallya to instantaneously banish an illness is rare, but praying to Shallya when ill in the hopes of Her bolstering you against the sickness is the norm, and it's generally believed that if you survive an illness you should give thanks to Her.
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Well, when I say divine healing, I mean the former. But of course, average people can't even tell the difference, which further mystifies it.

Lupercal said:
yes but my issue is that that book, and it is only that book, says that the Shallyans are superstisious faith healers one and all when every other source, from 2e at least, has them using a great deal of practical and "science based" medical knowledge and actively having reasearch monestaries that work to improve the cults ability to ease suffering, treat mental health and cure diseases. The book also uses very gendered language to put down the Shallyan's medical abilites which is uncomfortable.

Edit: basically the book presents the Shallyans as ignorent excentrics who don't know what they are doing and barber-surgons as elightend scientist scholoars. When in every other book its the other way around.
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I mean, I can see where you're coming from considering the section is labelled "alternative medicine" and the lore regarding the topic in general is a bit spotty, but I don't think that's really true? It presents Shallya's priesthood as pretty competent and well-respected, with its weaknesses more about the obvious limitations that come from treating everyone for free than lack of knowledge. In fact, it outlines the primary motives for people seeing doctors at all are elitism and sexism based on the gender of the priesthoods members, and that the cult spends a lot of time cleaning up other people's mistakes because radical surgery instead of gentler methods of care has become fashionable.

This dynamic is pretty historical in of itself - in reality, early modern medicine than focused on lifestyle stuff like diet and exercises and a small range of well-proven treatments tended to be a lot more successful than over-interventionist medicine, which usually just got people killed.

I guess the only dubious part is this: "Not every temple has an Anointed Priest in attendance, meaning that the higher-level magic required to treat the diseased, the pestilence-stricken and the insane is unavailable. Such ailments must therefore be left to doctors." Which is weird and seems to even contradict the rest of the segment, but that's it.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong part? This is page 56.
 
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opalbucket said:
I mean, I can see where you're coming from considering the section is labelled "alternative medicine" and the lore regarding the topic in general is a bit spotty, but I don't think that's really true? It presents Shallya's priesthood as pretty competent and well-respected, with its weaknesses more about the obvious limitations that come from treating everyone for free than lack of knowledge. In fact, it outlines the primary motives for people seeing doctors at all are elitism and sexism based on the gender of the priesthoods members, and that the cult spends a lot of time cleaning up other people's mistakes because radical surgery instead of gentler methods of care has become fashionable.

This dynamic is pretty historical in of itself - in reality, early modern medicine than focused on lifestyle stuff like diet and exercises and a small range of well-proven treatments tended to be a lot more successful than over-interventionist medicine, which usually just got people killed.

I guess the only dubious part is this: "Not every temple has an Anointed Priest in attendance, meaning that the higher-level magic required to treat the diseased, the pestilence-stricken and the insane is unavailable. Such ailments must therefore be left to doctors." Which is weird and seems to even contradict the rest of the segment, but that's it.

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong part? This is page 56.
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I mean, it specifically notes that (paraphrasing) soldiers don't trust Shallyans because they are women. Which is wrong on two levels since there are both male shallyans and female soldiers. That doesn't seem like the section presenting Shallyans as well respected to me.

To follow up on Alratan's point about itentionally flawed narrators. Yes, but that then makes everything the author says about the "state of medicine" as basically not useful for figuring out what the actual state of medicine is in the empire because he is representing the anti-shallyan counter-culture.

And the fact that the Shallyans are the dominate force in healling and the snake oil salesmen like the author is question are the counter culture is important for determining how much to trust his word. The stuff about (ugh) Gaelen (that is lazy even for hams) is probably correct but basically everything about the "Tilean Renacoinse" (not a thing anywhere else in the setting and thank the gods for that) and after is so suspect as to be useless.

The guy who wrote that section in-universe is basically an anti-vaxxer. The Shallyans are not "Alternative medicine" they are the medical establishment for better and for worse and they are, critically, in-universe better at medicine then this author. In both the mechanics and the lore Shallyans have better skill levels for everything except surgery and are the only group doing things like systemitised research into mental health.
 
On thing to remember is that the Shallyan Cult isn't like the Sigamite one. From what I recall it doesn't have much in the way of central hierarchy or training. Shallyans in one city may be completely different than Shallyans in another based on the current character of its members and its local history, and their symbolic headquarters in Bretonnia probably doesn't exercise very much, if any control, over the various temples in the Empire, if only because the Empire is unlikely to accept that.

There could well be enormous disparities in the culture and practice of the various Shallyan temples even within provinces, let alone between them. In some locations the barber-surgeons might be your best bet, in other places it's without doubt the Shallyans, and people IC could easily stick with their initial impressions even if they move somewhere that they no longer apply.

When sources say 'Shallyans do X', it could easily mean 'The Shallyan temple local to them has treated the scholar writing the piece or people he knows of in way X' and nothing more, simply because a University scholar in Altdorf may have no occasion to visit Shallyan temples elsewhere and if they do their interactions will be coloured both by their prior interactions and by their relatively elevated social status.
 
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In practice being a Shallyan is almost certainly a brutally darwinian profession, what with it involving running towards sapient disease that hates you and your colleages in particular, instead of away from it like everybody else does. And that 'everybody else' certainly includes most medical professionals who haven't sworn holy vows.

So a fair amount of Shallyan practices must be dictated by what is survivable for them to do, and I rather expect them to be eager to share any information that reduces their casualties, if strictly by messenger because meeting someone who might be incubating a special present to the faith from Nurgle is a bad idea.
 
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