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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Thor's Twin said:
While I haven't been really keeping up with the thread, because wow it moves fast, I will note that if we want to spend time wrecking Skaven faces in Karak Eight Peaks we should probably head back to the College first. There's a couple of reasons for that.

First, there are some really useful spells that the College can teach us that would be extremely helpful when dealing with the Skaven. We have Shroud of Invisibility, we have Throttle, we have Cloak Activity, and we have Universal Confusion, Shadow Knives, and Illusion. All of which would be immensely helpful in quickly and stealthily dealing with the Skaven.

Secondly, information. It's clear given the suppressed memory that the Grey Order knows a lot more about the Skaven than a lot of other people in the Empire do. Getting access to that information to discover more of their weaknesses, tech, divisions, and society would allow us to more effectively engaging in a campaign of mass terror and destruction in the City of Pillars.
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If we can switch to the Night Prowler face of the coin for the normal turn we don't really need more stealth spells. We should still have a copy of the Shroud of Invisibility spell to learn as well.

The dwarves have probably forgotten more about the skaven that the Grey College has ever learned.

BoneyM said:
I've yet to see anyone tackle the smell issue.
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Shouldn't the coin make that a non-issue, or am I misinterpreting what it does? If no one will question your presence and no one can find you... Higher status skaven can control/suppress their musk secretions anyway, according to Children of the Horned Rat, so merely not smelling shouldn't be a red flag.
 
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Guile said:
Shame we can't get the coin working right now, it'd be fun and convenient not to have to go back and make regular reports and just have our god do our boasting for us while we're out and about.

Bing!
Belegar: "Oh, looks like the Mhornokrul just bagged a Big Boss."
Bing!
Belegar: "... Dragon Ogre? Where the heck is she?"
Bing bing bingbingbingbing!
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You have now convinced me that the protector face is just Ranald managing Mathilde's twitter account.
 
Alratan said:
If we can switch to the Night Prowler face of the coin for the normal turn we don't really need more stealth spells. We should still have a copy of the Shroud of Invisibility spell to learn as well.

The dwarves have probably forgotten more about the skaven that the Grey College has ever learned.



Shouldn't the coin make that a non-issue, or am I misinterpreting what it does?
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Doppelganger only impacts sight, the smell is that of a human, and Skaven are chiefly scent-based, they'd notice immediately that you're not a rat and that means you're not supposed to be in a Skaven warren which means Night Crawler doesn't proc, as that only works if you look like you'd 'Belong there' to a casual inspection.

What Night Crawler does--in effect--is that it removes the possibility of failure at getting around unseen in a not particularly hostile environment. It's not a perfect stealth cloak as long as you superficially look like you belong. Sneaking into a Skaven Warren is always a challenging task unless you have some way of masking your scent and your appearance, and Skaven noses are very good.
 
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Alliterate said:
Saying that made me wonder.
The inarguable previous Peak Dramatic Moment (of Tragic Death, Too Young, Too Soon) with those dark options on the table had 100 voters, while in the recent Waaghstorm we had what, 241 voters.

Mathilde is Mathilde, but that's enough new arrivals to have completely outvoted the constituency around at the time of the Drakenhofs.
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We are still similar enough that we have regular vote reversals, at least.
 
BoneyM said:
Responding solely in the capacity of 'is there enough canon information for me to write this', yes. Same goes for the homeland of anyone else that got a canon Army Book this side of 6th.

...current homeland, smartypantses. No trying to nab Cathay with Ogre lore.



Mathilde's knowledge of Waystones is limited to how bad it is if they go wrong, and how much you should leave them alone if they're not.



I've yet to see anyone tackle the smell issue.
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I mean, are there literally no skaven in a warren that smell kinda weird? worst case scenario, kill a skaven and smell like fear
 
wrecksalot said:
I mean, are there literally no skaven in a warren that smell kinda weird? worst case scenario, kill a skaven and smell like fear
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They use smell more than they do sight. Trying to wear one would just make you a horrible fantasy attempt at a Necron Flayed One for rats.

...which, I mean, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does rather defeat the stated purpose.
 
wrecksalot said:
I mean, are there literally no skaven in a warren that smell kinda weird? worst case scenario, kill a skaven and smell like fear
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No, they're engineered that way. Skaven typically only have four or five different scents because it's actually part of their language that they were given by the Horned Rat.

What people need to keep in mind is that the Skaven are a race engineered by a Chaos God aspirant--minmaxed Beastmen who then got a bunch of special divine blessings to put them head and shoulders over their distant kin. Their weaknesses basically only come into play when they're already losing somehow, not something you can use to just T-Pose through them trivially. It means when Skaven start to lose they lose incredibly hard, but until that point they seem unstoppable.
 
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Alectai said:
Doppelganger only impacts sight, the smell is that of a human, and Skaven are chiefly scent-based, they'd notice immediately that you're not a rat and that means you're not supposed to be in a Skaven warren which means Night Crawler doesn't proc, as that only works if you look like you'd 'Belong there' to a casual inspection.

What Night Crawler does--in effect--is that it removes the possibility of failure at getting around unseen in a not particularly hostile environment. It's not a perfect stealth cloak as long as you superficially look like you belong. Sneaking into a Skaven Warren is always a challenging task unless you have some way of masking your scent and your appearance, and Skaven noses are very good.
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Higher status skaven apparently always suppress their scent secretions to prevent their emotional state being detected, so they don't have a scent. Only lower status skaven involuntarily emit their musk.

I'd say that as written, Night Crawler is a perfect stealth cloak as long as you seem like you could possibly belong there. There's no conditions on it being impossible to find you. It's an absolute statement. Even if everyone around you would kill you in an instant, you're perfectly safe as long as you're on public.

And another the answer to the scent is probably to torture skaven and harvest their musk.

Also, thanks to excessive warpstone exposure/consumption, important skaven are often riddled with minor mutations. Smelling strange should be utterly unremarkable.
 
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Alratan said:
Higher status skaven apparently always suppress their scent secretions to prevent their emotional state being detected, so they don't have a scent. Only lower status skaven emit their musk.

I'd say that as written, Nighr Crawler is a perfect stealth cloak as long as you look like you belong. There's no conditions on it being impossible to find you. It's an absolute statement.
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Yes, but the point is that for Skaven identifying other Skaven, scent is more important than sight, and Doppelganger doesn't allow you to spoof your scent.

They don't look at the fake rat, they smell man-thing that doesn't have a slavemaster, and then Night Crawler breaks because you don't belong here. This is far more likely than a rando actually being a high rank Skaven (And even if they somehow reasoned you were one, they'd take a poke at you anyway for being vulnerable and wanting to rifle through your pockets for tokens). Sure, Eshin have their scent-glands surgically removed, but an Eshin assassin wouldn't be noticed by regular Skaven--and being seen as one is automatically suspicious to them.

And again, even with all that done, Doppelganger doesn't do anything for scent, so you'd still smell like a human no matter what.
 
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BoneyM said:
I've yet to see anyone tackle the smell issue.
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Well, from what it looks like it says it shouldn't matter, because nobody can question our presence even if we seem really weird to them.
BoneyM said:
- The Night Prowler: As long as you are outside of private property and within a town or city, nobody will question your presence and nobody will be able to find you if you do not wish them to. For non-human population centres, will work if it's not completely unknown for humans to be present, or if you are disguised as that species.
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But do you mean that it's an auto-cast Take-No-Heed instead?

Or do you mean that 'nobody questions your presence' isn't the same as 'nobody reacts to your presence', so we still need to present ourselves in such a way that the default reaction to us being wherever isn't hostile (nobody asks why the Flayed One is in the room, they just attack it)?
Alratan said:
I'd say that as written, Night Crawler is a perfect stealth cloak as long as you seem like you could possibly belong there. There's no conditions on it being impossible to find you. It's an absolute statement. Even if everyone around you would kill you in an instant, you're perfectly safe as long as you're on public.
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I'm starting to get the feeling Boney didn't mean it that way (also if it did we wouldn't need a disguise for inhuman populations).

Edit: Misread a post.

Twice Edit:

I've figured out what's confusing me. Night Prowler doesn't work by appearance, but by disguise. However, we were assuming our existing everything-disguise was good enough for Skaven. Skaven don't do sight, which is the only thing that Doppleganger does.

We need a scent-disguise for Night Prowler to work.

Orks are in trouble, though.
 
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Alratan said:
Higher status skaven apparently always suppress their scent secretions to prevent their emotional state being detected, so they don't have a scent. Only lower status skaven involuntarily emit their musk.

I'd say that as written, Night Crawler is a perfect stealth cloak as long as you seem like you could possibly belong there. There's no conditions on it being impossible to find you. It's an absolute statement. Even if everyone around you would kill you in an instant, you're perfectly safe as long as you're on public.

And another the answer to the scent is probably to torture skaven and harvest their musk.

Also, thanks to excessive warpstone exposure, skaven are often riddled with mutations. Smelling strange should be utterly unremarkable.
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Now if we can just stop smelling like a human...
 
DragonParadox said:
She does but as a mage which full knowledge of how gods are made and what they are as well as one who has looked Ranald's aetheric presence in the eye I think the relationship is a bit less mystical than most other priests. She might belive in his divinity, but she also knows he is a blob of seinent warp energy sustained by belief and worship.
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She might view Ranald a bit differently akin to the way a Ancient Greek worshiper who only knew the basic pantheon learned about Gaia and Chronos and how Zeus was born. It's still a far cry from us questers' view on Ranald who we believe to be a Human with a keyboard.
 
"Mathilde."
"Yes, King Belegar?"
"I appreciate what you've done for the expedition and I mean this is the nicest way possible, but what in Grimnir's name are you doing?"
"Ah well you see I wanted to sneak into some of the skaven warrens for information, but they've got really good noses right? So I figured I had to find some way to smell like a rat, and this was the best way I could come up with."
"...The best way to sneak into a skaven warren was to strap several rats on you?"
"Yes."
"..."
"..."
"...You're paying for Kragg's Dental Care when he inevitably finds out what you've done."
 
EVA-Saiyajin said:
Are you talking about Doppleganger alone, or it and Night Crawler?
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The effect makes you impossible to find once you're a face in a crowd, and it's powerful enough to extend to anything that can be even very slightly conceivably interpreted as at least crowd-adjacent. But you got to at least get to the point where you'd not actively alarm the other people in that crowd.

Doppelganger would work on sight-based species, but on a scent-based species like the Skaven, you'd need to at least spritz yourself with Skaven musk every so often.
 
vote tally the winner is clear and voting has calmed
Adhoc vote count started by Humbaba on Sep 20, 2019 at 7:36 PM, finished with 881 posts and 191 votes.
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Just do some spell creation at the College or ask Regimand if he knows of any scent based disguise spells.

Then make a Ring of Doppelsmell in addition to the Ring of Doppelganger.

Or just strap some live rats to us.

EZPZ.
 
Alectai said:
Yes, but the point is that for Skaven identifying other Skaven, scent is more important than sight, and Doppelganger doesn't allow you to spoof your scent.

They don't look at the fake rat, they smell man-thing that doesn't have a slavemaster, and then Night Crawler breaks because you don't belong here. This is far more likely than a rando actually being a high rank Skaven (And even if they somehow reasoned you were one, they'd take a poke at you anyway for being vulnerable and wanting to rifle through your pockets for tokens). Sure, Eshin have their scent-glands surgically removed, but an Eshin assassin wouldn't be noticed by regular Skaven--and being seen as one is automatically suspicious to them.

And again, even with all that done, Doppelganger doesn't do anything for scent, so you'd still smell like a human no matter what.
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According to Children of the Horned Rat, Dwarven Rangers have learned that covering yourself with either skaven dung or pig's blood blocks the ability of skaven to scent you out. It's how Dwarf Rangers can sneak up on skaven without being sniffed out when they get within a few paces. That would block the manscent. Skaven excrement would be ubiquitous in a skaven warren, and it wouldn't be unusual for a skaven there to stink of it. When orcs and their boars are around, pig's blood wouldn't be unknown either. Mathilde gets on well with a veteran Ranger, so he's an obvious person to ask about this.
 
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Yes but eew.

Like, I don't think we're that desperate yet. And to be honest, it's going to be a good while until the campaign presses on anyway after this, as just holding what we've already seized is going to be a full time job until reinforcements arrive.
 
Alectai said:
Yes but eew.

Like, I don't think we're that desperate yet. And to be honest, it's going to be a good while until the campaign presses on anyway after this, as just holding what we've already seized is going to be a full time job until reinforcements arrive.
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Yeah, but depending on the state of the Greenskins keeping them occupied via assassinations could do well to keep them off our backs until we get those reinforcements.
 
We could talk with journeyfanling about that smell problem. She is supposedly good with general alchemy, even if it's a bit off her speciality.
 
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