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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
You know one thing I am curious about is if the Estalians and Tileans have any local magical traditions that could be good for the project. All I can recall are that they have merc wizards, including from the empire and some sorcerers taking over cities at times. @Boney are there any local magicians in Tilea and Estalia or is it mercs all the way down?
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Mercs, Magickers, mystery cults and secret societies, similar to the Empire before Magnus but slightly less vigorously repressed.
 
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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The spell lasts for around an hour as I understand it
 
Currently playing Total Warhammer 2, and Nordland is getting divided between Boney Eonir and… not Norsca, not Skaelings, not even Middenheim. Bretonnia.
 
If we're talking about Magic in Tilea, then there is a notable magician in there. Lucrezzia Belladonna, the Princess of Pavona, is a Wizard. What lore of magic does she use? I don't know. Dogs of War says she can have up to three Battle Magic Spells, but it's a 5th Ediiton book so I really don't know what that means or how magic used to work back then.

Also, while she may be a Master Sorceress (book's own words), her "magic items" are actually "Poison Items" because her preferred method of combat is poisoning.
 
Codex said:
Also, while she may be a Master Sorceress (book's own words), her "magic items" are actually "Poison Items" because her preferred method of combat is poisoning.
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So probably Ulgu or Shyish, maybe Ghyran. Actually, scratch maybe, Ghyran is more syncretic with poison.

On the other hand, imagine Lucrezzia as a metalhead golden lady. When the first attempt at assassination fails, she instead starts screaming at the top of her lungs and defenestrating her targets through copious application of suplexes and piledrivers.
 
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Belladonna is one of those characters in early Warhammer who is so absurdly straightforward it's almost parody. Her name is literally Belladonna, referring to the poisonous Deadly Nightshade and the Italian meaning of "Beautiful Lady", and they play that completely and utterly straight by making her a beautiful women who hides a deadly poisonous edge (an example of this is that she's got a stilletto hooked up to her garter "just in case there is a need for off-the-cuff assassination"). She is so absurdly non subtle that I wonder how the hell she can even do her job. By 2513 IC Belladonna poisons her seventh husband. How the hell do people still marry her when there is such a ridiculous track record there???

When I said Asarnil was the most reasonable character in Dogs of War, I meant it. Trying to incorporate some of the other characters requires retooling and adjusting, because early Warhammer was very comedic in its takes.
 
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Boney said:
Mercs, Magickers, mystery cults and secret societies, similar to the Empire before Magnus but slightly less vigorously repressed.
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Ah... Ok then not really worth the bother, while they might know something we do not have an in with those secret societies and we do not even share a language.

Codex said:
Both very desirable traits, but I question these people's self preservation instincts when all the previous husbands just drop dead within a few years of marriage.
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A good chunk of the answer is that the writing just isn't very good, but on the other hand if we are to engage with it as written I would say it is just plain misogyny. Each of her husbands thinks he will be the one to 'tame' her... or they just plan to kill her first and underestimate her abilities. Worth keeping in mind that is a lot of land and power up for grabs if you can manage to get the city. By this point it is clearly very dangerous to marry her, but on the other hand this is Warhammer, the world where knights go to fight dragons, even knowing the last hundred of their fellows to try are dragon shit by now. At the very least Beladona is more fun to try your luck at than that. :V
 
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Turn 36 Results - 2487.5 - Part 2 - Truth and Faith
  • Threadmarks
    • -[*] EGRIMM: Attempt to bring the Light Order into the Waystone Project
    -[*] Attempt to bring an organisation into the Waystone Project (The Jade Order)
    --[*] The Gambler: Attempt to bring the Jade Order into the Waystone Project
    -[*] Investigate how the Vitae reacts with Divine Magic
    -[*] EIC: Insert agents into Talabecland administration to start gathering their secrets
    -[*] Seek official recognition of Kron-Azril-Ungol as an affiliated library of the Colleges of Magic
    -[*] Write a paper: Observations on the Chaos Wastes in the western Great Steppes


    It does occur to you that setting aside several weeks for the experiment you have in mind with the Aethyric Vitae might be considered overkill. The actual methodology of the experiment would take but a few seconds to perform, after all. But you are no petty Magicker or Elementalist to expose an irreplaceable artefact to a poorly-understood substance as casually as one adds seasoning to a meal. You will do as much research as possible first to identify what might go wrong and prepare accordingly, and just because you're unlikely to find much in the texts you possess due to Cult secrecy is no reason not to bother. And the results of the test will need proper recording, and a successful test will likely suggest follow-up tests and an unsuccessful one will need examining and correcting, and if you didn't have the time set aside to do so it would linger in the back of your mind, distracting you from whatever else you would be trying to do with that time.

    You've told yourself variations on that quite a few times over the years, as your curiosity warred with your caution and an insidious part of your mind insisted that you could perform a full suite of tests with every material imaginable within a few hours if you put aside proper methodology.

    But now, with research completed, calendar consulted, portents acknowledged, Morrslieb waning and your laboratory prepared, it is finally time to drip a single drop of Aethyric Vitae onto the Coin that Ranald gifted you after your encounter with the Cult of Only-Gork. If you had to guess, you'd say that the most likely result would be the Vitae unravelling into Winds as you've seen it do before, or otherwise completely fail to react to the Coin. A speculative positive result would be the Vitae being channelled through the Coin to Ranald, ideally in a way that would empower Him, though it may have as little effect as a drop of rain onto a fish in an ocean. The possible result you're most concerned about is that it does that in a way that leaves a path between the two open, creating a portal between the material world and the Aethyr. If temporary, such a result would still be very dangerous if the pathway proved accessible to Daemons, and if not, could still be very much to the detriment of the surrounding area. If permanent... well, you're pretty sure it couldn't be permanent. If it was that easy to punch permanent holes through the fabric of reality, there wouldn't be any of it left by now, not with all the ignorant amateurs and all-too-knowledgeable Chaos cultists running around the place.

    With trepidation firmly tamped down, you release a single drop of Vitae onto a stirring rod, and as it runs down the rod towards the Coin you fall back to the far side of the room. You watch as best you can from a distance as the Vitae impacts, and with a flash of energies it evaporates into nothingness. You frown as you peer at the Coin, then carefully approach and scrutinize it for any changes. Once it passes muster, you pick it up and rotate it in your fingers, counting its four faces. Then you place it back in position.

    Once you fetch another drop of Vitae, you set up the experiment again, this time observing from much closer, and the drop of Vitae evaporates before your eyes again. This time you can confirm that the unravelling of it seems superficially similar to that of its transformation into Winds that you're quite familiar with, though with less kinetic energy involved, but you can't see anything it transformed into. Was it sublimated into the Aethyr? Or is the sample size just too small for you to spot?

    Travelling all the way through your living quarters to fetch more of the Vitae is annoying, but you resist the urge to bring up an entire keg of the stuff, only bringing a phial's worth this time. With more of the Vitae involved you reverse the experiment, dribbling the Vitae into a watch glass and gently lowering the Coin to make contact with it by means of a long string through an overhead tackle. Again the Vitae evaporates, but in a gentler and more gradual manner radiating out from where the Coin had contacted the puddle than the swift deflagration of the Winds transformation. But again, you can't see-

    Ranald is watching.

    You resist the urge to try to hide the evidence like you were still an Apprentice and had just been walked in on while reading an unexpectedly spicy chapter of The Spokes of Altdorf, and instead exhale and examine that sudden assumption that had arrived fully-formed in your conscious mind. Ranald, you know, is often watching, and often your only indication of it is a series of coincidences that makes His will known. You only ever know for certain when He's watching when He wants you to know, and He announces His presence with the sudden presence of His divine energy. But with your eyes on a not-quite-Winds transformation caused by exposure to a divine artefact, you're wondering if you may have replicated that effect without His personal involvement. And if that's the case, of course you wouldn't be able to see the transformation - looking for a tiny amount of freshly-created Divine energy against the backdrop of a Divine artefact would be like looking for a candleflame next to a forge. You press the activation Rune that opens the flushing mechanism intended to disperse the Winds, and while the feeling doesn't disappear, it does begin to ease, you presume as background amounts of Divine energy diffuse through the openings.

    Once the feeling of Ranald's presence has fully faded, you run through the experiment again with another phial of Vitae, and once more the sense of Ranald's presence suddenly waxes and then gradually wanes. While it's not impossible that Ranald is deliberately leaking His energy in at just the right time to mislead you, you feel like that would not fit His character - He does like to play games, but they're games with a purpose. In the past He's been very clear when your experimentation crossed a line, so He wouldn't follow that up by throwing off your experiments if you had done so again. Displeased Gods are not what you might call subtle. So assuming that Ranald is not actively intervening in the experiment, the result shows that when exposed to Divine energies, the Vitae transforms into more Divine energy in a way similar, but not identical, to the Winds transformation. It also appears to be a complete transformation, as instead of splitting into a number of different energies it completely and cleanly transforms. That does make sense to you. If the Vitae is the compressed matter of the realm in which the Gods reside, it would... submit to the presence of a God? Perhaps that is ascribing too much agency to the Vitae. Perhaps it 'submits' to the God only in the same way that air 'submits' to your lungs.

    It's a solid hypothesis, now you simply need to prove it. How does one confirm the presence of divine energy? You could use enough volume for it to be visible, but that could cost you a fair bit of Vitae. Can you confirm it with the current amounts? Well, you'd need to remove the Coin, and for that you need the Divine energy to not dissipate for a while. So, a storage and stabilization medium. You have that on hand, actually - the same sort of crystals used to store aethyric signatures for the Eye of Gazul, except these are of Eonir make, as you'd appropriated a few from the WEB-MAT facilities for your own personal laboratories. So they should be quite able to stand up to the much higher energy density this would involve. Then you simply separate the crystal from the Coin and inspect it at your leisure - there'd be no rush, as the crystal would preserve the energy indefinitely.

    You're halfway through setting up the experiment when the implications of that occur to you, and you freeze for a moment before forcefully returning your focus to the matter at hand. You do not freak out over hypotheticals, it's a waste of perfectly good gibbering.

    Once more the shimmering fluid fills the watch glass, and this time you lower a perfectly-formed shard of crystal into it, waiting a moment for the Vitae to settle and ensuring that the two don't react. Then once more you lower the Coin into the Vitae, and once more it ripples into nothingness as the sense of Ranald's presence returns. You reopen the vents as you remove the Coin from the string, carefully inspect it to make sure it remains unchanged, then take it downstairs to place in Wolf's watchful care, and give him a few pats for good measure to centre yourself before returning to the laboratory. And when you do, the sense of Ranald's presence is gone once more, but within the crystal is a wisp of frozen energy. At first it seems like no more than a flicker of light, but as your Windsight adjusts to the lack of other energies it grows in your mind and blooms into a seemingly endless tapestry of recursive complexity, interwoven with colours no mortal language has words for. It is beautiful, but it is beautiful like a butterfly pinned to a board is beautiful. Perhaps that is why Ranald warned you so harshly about inspecting Him - if this tiny fragment of Him is so impossibly intricate, what mortal mind could withstand witnessing the entirety?

    The longer you look, the more sure you are that there is nothing in all of reality and unreality that could look exactly like this, and though you have no names or concepts for any of it, it all somehow reminds you of the many facets of your oldest friend. This is, in your hand, the fingerprint of a God.

    The replicable, comparable, definitive fingerprint of a God.

    This is divine energy that has never directly touched the divinity whose nature it echoes. The Gods can turn Their attention in unfathomably large numbers of directions at once, but it is generally agreed That they cannot see all things at all times - They are great, but not infinite. With no reason for Him to be watching you at this time, it may be that Ranald does not even realize what you have. It may be that the same would apply if you did the same with other artefacts. Almost against your will, various plans unfold in your mind. Plans like: the Sacred Flame of Ulric is accessible to the public, and it is not uncommon for people to light their own fires off of it. It would be trivial to bundle a phial of Vitae and a crystal inside an oil lamp, and then appear to light it from the Sacred Flame. Then walk away, with Ulric's fingerprint alongside Ranald's in your collection. Similar plans in dozens of other places - the Great Cathedral of Sigmar, the Taalwelt, the Black Sepulchre, the High Temple of Manann...

    You remember the Cult of Karnos, and your puzzling over their almost-Elven Runes. You remember conversations with Asarnil and Deathfang, about Taal and Kurnous and Isha and Rhya. You remember Cython drawing lines between the Classical Gods and the Cadai. You remember the strange sense of familiarity you got from the cobra sigil of a Nehekharan God.

    You remember that your ignorance in these matters is not because the Gods have simply not gotten around to revealing the truth of the matter.

    You roll the crystal in your hand. Doing this once is curiosity and ignorance. But doing it again? That would be a declaration of war against the secrecy of the Gods and the Cults. One they might not realize you have made, but if they ever do...

    But they might not, not if you're clever and careful. And through collection and careful study you might be able to achieve an understanding of the Gods that perhaps only They can currently boast.

    You sit in your laboratory, stare at the crystal, and think.


    [ ] Truth
    Prepare a secure container to store the crystal in, with room for many more to come.
    [ ] Faith
    Sacrifice the crystal to Ranald in an act of dedication to Him.
    [ ] Prudence
    Break the crystal, burn your notes, and never again allow the Vitae to touch the Divine.



    - There will be a four hour moratorium.
    - The result of this vote should be considered permanent.
     
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    • Note that it doesn't say declaring war on the gods and their Cults, it says declaring war on their secrecy.

    And who better is there to get away with this investigation than a Grey Lord Magister. And this could be very transformative for the Colleges in terms of magical development, or simply being able to identify the activity of proscribed Gods.

    I'd go with:

    [] Truth
     
    Oh no, I can't imagine that would go well, if only due to the fact that there's so many random ways that could go wrong, and how the Gods may nudge their Priests.

    Edit: Better question would be to consider the difference between Cult and God, or if the greater sum of thoughts of the Cult are reflected onto the God.
     
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    I think we should claim the crystals, yes we are faithful to Ranald, but Ranald is not one to demand blind obedience nor is he one to be blind to our skills, he gave us an artifact knowing what we are, a wizard, a scholar, one who sees and studies the winds. This is sorcery, this is power and wisdom the likes of which only the Priest Kings of Nehekara ever held... and within it the ability to expand the will of Ranald more than it ever has been. This is where you find Ranald God of Magic.
     
    Ooooh man this is big. 3 am is not the time for hasty judgment calls. At the very least I am very very scared of the potential consequences of taking divine fingerprints of various gods. But the potential.... fuck this is tough.
     
    Alratan said:
    Note that it doesn't say declaring war on the gods and their Cults, it says declaring war on their secrecy.

    And who better is there to get away with this investigation than a Grey Lord Magister. And this could be very transformative for the Colleges in terms of magical development, or simply being able to identify the activity of proscribed Gods.

    I'd go with:

    [] Truth
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    Except it would be considered an absolutely egregious breach of the cults' sovereignty, a massive overreach by a wizard and quite possibly the colleges in general. Keep in mind if the cults get mad and cast blame- most people are going to take the cults' side.

    Let's not kid ourselves. These wouldn't be secrets to be stolen if the cults wanted them known. It is war. It is avarice. It is literally the untrustworthy wizard seeking to steal fire from the gods to further their own ambition. Even Matty alone knowing this is dangerous, and any bid to do good with it risks it's revelation. To say nothing of the fact it's predicated on a dangerous assumption, that the holiest of a god's holies aren't always observed, and that Mathilde will miraculously steal the imprint being unobserved. It's a heist where the guard rotations are unknown, the risk of discovery is terrifying, and you can't even tell when the guards are present.
     
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    Codex said:
    If we're talking about Magic in Tilea, then there is a notable magician in there. Lucrezzia Belladonna, the Princess of Pavona, is a Wizard. What lore of magic does she use? I don't know. Dogs of War says she can have up to three Battle Magic Spells, but it's a 5th Ediiton book so I really don't know what that means or how magic used to work back then.

    Also, while she may be a Master Sorceress (book's own words), her "magic items" are actually "Poison Items" because her preferred method of combat is poisoning.
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    5th edition is from the "Whats of Magic?" stage. There's Waaagh Magic, High Magic, Skaven Magic, Dark Magic, Necromantic Magic, Chaos Dwarf Magic, Regular Chaos Magic (in three different flavours) and the blandly named Battle Magic.
     
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