SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Only if the cults learned of it, there's plenty of ways to launder the information gained with out arousing their suspicion and if there aren't then the papers would be ultra mega classified.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Only if the cults learned of it, there's plenty of ways to launder the information gained with out arousing their suspicion and if there aren't then the papers would be ultra mega classified.
On that grounds exactly, how would the cults know, how would they be able to justify it to their members etc... The cults are not a hive mind prepared to ponce on us at any moment. This reminds me of that time early in the quest when people were treating the witch hunters as 40K inquisitors.
- Location
- Singapore
[X] Faith
- Location
- The internet
[x] Faith
- Location
- North Wales
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
If there's one thing this vote has made clear so far, it's that literally nobody will accuse Mathilde of having an excess of prudence.
K von Carstein
Likes to go for a walk
- Location
- Belgium
- Pronouns
- He
[X] Faith
- Location
- Australia
[x] Truth
[x] Faith
An interesting thought that occurs to me:
-Prudence
Highest degree of caution of course, to destroy the research and wipe everything of it other than MAYBE if one day Mathilde goes Dark she goes nuts with it.
-Faith
Its a show of piety, certainly, and a powerful one.
But one addendum to this - it robs Ranald of plausible deniability.
If we straight up sacrifice the research and how it is done to him, he knows, and should the other gods get mad at some future outcome, he cannot say "oh you know sometimes your worshippers just do these things". He would know and has to weigh the risks of having to take the consequences if anything goes wrong or the other gods get upset.
And while he's the Gambler, he's not only the Gambler. The Night Prowler can't shroud someone who unmasked themselves.
I expect a "continue, you have my interest" result to be only likely on a 1/6 roll, whether or not he personally was offended.
-Truth
Here we need to be careful.
I'm concerned but not overly worried about Ranald getting mad about it at our current juncture.
We're one of his favorite amusements, he checks in very often, and we literally carry a beacon of his power on our person. If we explore this, he can eventually find out, and it is unlikely that we'd know even if he did, because if he cannot conceal himself, he wouldn't be much of a Night Prowler.
So to take a look at his aspects to try to divine the reaction:
-Gambler - Largely neutral, reveling in the ENORMOUS gamble, but ready to enforce the consequences.
-Night Prowler - This IS a novel form of theft. Approving...provided it does not come to light. Also likely flips to disapproving if it seeks to end the mystery of Ranald.
-Deceiver - Falsifying a god's signature? Approving, once again, provided it doesn't get exposed. Also likely flips to disapproving if it seeks to end the mystery of Ranald.
-Protector - Should the other gods find out, then likely disapproving, for their retaliations are likely to hurt quite a lot of people.
So from here, what paths of Truth dare we walk?
-Studying Ranald's energy further, I think, is a non-starter without his overt approval. He is a god of mystery, and concealment. Prying deeper into his substance is quite likely to be against his nature. He'd HAVE to act if he found out.
-Studying the Chaos gods(including Hashut and the Horned Rat) is Dark Magic. We already know what shards of their power are - Daemons.
-Studying ANY major Human Order god is fraught. They have many, many means of making their displeasure known, and this will have further impacts on both our God and organizations. Whether they find out is another matter of course, but the step where you acquire the imprint is a location or object by definition imbued with their attentions.
-Studying the Dwarf gods is worse, because they definitely have very clear views on copyright and thieving, and while they aren't interventionist, if ANY dwarf ever learns we did it there'd be very few that would hesitate to carry it out anyway.
-Studying the Elf gods is a maybe, to my knowledge, most of them are non-interventionist, acting only through the elves mantling them. Bit hard to get our hands on some though. Maybe the Phoenix Crown has some Asuryan juice. And there's this Vaul holy site we'd get ritually sacrificed on if we get caught breaking into, in an high energy environment I'm not sure the Vitae would survive.
-Studying the Orc gods is another maybe. They're powerful as hell...but they're fundamentally very Orc. Not like this is our first rodeo stealing from them, and while they PROBABLY won't be doing anything particularly novel to us, they got Waaaghs for that.
-Studying minor human gods might be a thing. Their retribution is limited, especially the proscribed ones, though that is not to say its non-existent. We can get super cursed. However, bits of their power are few and far between.
-Studying spirits might be another thing. I refer to the Apparitions, Ghosts(as in, legit, free-range lingering spirits, though finding any ghost in a place that's not soaked in enough Shyish or Dhar to force the Vitae to react would be challenging), and possibly the Fae. This is quite relatively safe, because the beings involved can't really do much to us outside a limited range. Of course, this also limits what we can do with the copied essence.
TLDR - Try this trick on lesser spiritual entities first, we can at least fight those. Then go mug the greenskins again.
-Prudence
Highest degree of caution of course, to destroy the research and wipe everything of it other than MAYBE if one day Mathilde goes Dark she goes nuts with it.
-Faith
Its a show of piety, certainly, and a powerful one.
But one addendum to this - it robs Ranald of plausible deniability.
If we straight up sacrifice the research and how it is done to him, he knows, and should the other gods get mad at some future outcome, he cannot say "oh you know sometimes your worshippers just do these things". He would know and has to weigh the risks of having to take the consequences if anything goes wrong or the other gods get upset.
And while he's the Gambler, he's not only the Gambler. The Night Prowler can't shroud someone who unmasked themselves.
I expect a "continue, you have my interest" result to be only likely on a 1/6 roll, whether or not he personally was offended.
-Truth
Here we need to be careful.
I'm concerned but not overly worried about Ranald getting mad about it at our current juncture.
We're one of his favorite amusements, he checks in very often, and we literally carry a beacon of his power on our person. If we explore this, he can eventually find out, and it is unlikely that we'd know even if he did, because if he cannot conceal himself, he wouldn't be much of a Night Prowler.
So to take a look at his aspects to try to divine the reaction:
-Gambler - Largely neutral, reveling in the ENORMOUS gamble, but ready to enforce the consequences.
-Night Prowler - This IS a novel form of theft. Approving...provided it does not come to light. Also likely flips to disapproving if it seeks to end the mystery of Ranald.
-Deceiver - Falsifying a god's signature? Approving, once again, provided it doesn't get exposed. Also likely flips to disapproving if it seeks to end the mystery of Ranald.
-Protector - Should the other gods find out, then likely disapproving, for their retaliations are likely to hurt quite a lot of people.
So from here, what paths of Truth dare we walk?
-Studying Ranald's energy further, I think, is a non-starter without his overt approval. He is a god of mystery, and concealment. Prying deeper into his substance is quite likely to be against his nature. He'd HAVE to act if he found out.
-Studying the Chaos gods(including Hashut and the Horned Rat) is Dark Magic. We already know what shards of their power are - Daemons.
-Studying ANY major Human Order god is fraught. They have many, many means of making their displeasure known, and this will have further impacts on both our God and organizations. Whether they find out is another matter of course, but the step where you acquire the imprint is a location or object by definition imbued with their attentions.
-Studying the Dwarf gods is worse, because they definitely have very clear views on copyright and thieving, and while they aren't interventionist, if ANY dwarf ever learns we did it there'd be very few that would hesitate to carry it out anyway.
-Studying the Elf gods is a maybe, to my knowledge, most of them are non-interventionist, acting only through the elves mantling them. Bit hard to get our hands on some though. Maybe the Phoenix Crown has some Asuryan juice. And there's this Vaul holy site we'd get ritually sacrificed on if we get caught breaking into, in an high energy environment I'm not sure the Vitae would survive.
-Studying the Orc gods is another maybe. They're powerful as hell...but they're fundamentally very Orc. Not like this is our first rodeo stealing from them, and while they PROBABLY won't be doing anything particularly novel to us, they got Waaaghs for that.
-Studying minor human gods might be a thing. Their retribution is limited, especially the proscribed ones, though that is not to say its non-existent. We can get super cursed. However, bits of their power are few and far between.
-Studying spirits might be another thing. I refer to the Apparitions, Ghosts(as in, legit, free-range lingering spirits, though finding any ghost in a place that's not soaked in enough Shyish or Dhar to force the Vitae to react would be challenging), and possibly the Fae. This is quite relatively safe, because the beings involved can't really do much to us outside a limited range. Of course, this also limits what we can do with the copied essence.
TLDR - Try this trick on lesser spiritual entities first, we can at least fight those. Then go mug the greenskins again.
Last edited:
Get your 40k themed strawman out of here. This isn't about "muh heresy", this is about pissing off the biggest forces of (arguable) good the setting has, including the one who has had our back when literally no one else did.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Truth
DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
Ultimately, I read this quest because I love exploring the setting and doing interesting stuff and Truth is an great opportunity for that. I want to know how this shit works. It has been one of the mysteries of the quest. And, I don't think we will get an better opportunity for divine research again.
How do they know and why are they acting as one? The cults of the Old World routinely fight among each other and within themselves, the very idea that some vague hint of this would unite all of them is highly dubious. That is the reason why I brought up 40K. The Imperial cult is monolithic, the cults of the empire are not so they will not be declaring united war on anyone especially on scant evidence.
- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
How would the cults justify it to their members? Are you joking? If the cults announce they want to murder every wizard the majority of the empire would just say about bloody time. If they actually have evidence that the colleges have done something to piss off the gods themselves the support for the colleges drops to near zero. Us studying it is one rogue magister, something it is accepted will happen occasionally. If we start writing papers on it it is a heretical cult at the highest level of the grey college, or possibly all the colleges. That is the risk anyone we gave the paper to would have to judge whether it is worth taking.
We are balancing the risk of us personally being smote or hunted down against the knowledge we will gain, Dragomas/Algard must balance the knowledge gained against the risk of the colleges and every magister in them being attacked in a war that will severely weaken the empire.
Who is announcing this stuff? Seriously you are setting up your conclusion before the argument by saying that the cult is doing stuff. Which part of the actively fractious heresy ridden multiple religions are announcing this thing and what would pass for evidence that the disparate parts would even accept?
About the cults finding out, they would first need to know what we are actually doing, from a outside perspective we are pouring some fluid over a artifact and holding a crystal next to it. This is probably heavily frauned on and gets us thrown out but it will not tell them that we are trying to identify their God.
The only ones that could actually do that are the gods themselves and maybe high-ranking and learned members that have windsight and understand the implications. Remember we are the only one with vitae and only we know what it can do (and we don't know all of it even)
The only ones that could actually do that are the gods themselves and maybe high-ranking and learned members that have windsight and understand the implications. Remember we are the only one with vitae and only we know what it can do (and we don't know all of it even)
- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Gods are entirely capable of sending clear and obvious signs, see Magnus the Pious. If they realise the colleges are investigating stuff they don't want them to they can send signs that they have revoked the approval they gave via Magnus.