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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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veekie said:
Uh, the choices are ours. And I dare say you'd find SERIOUS opposition to yoinking a chunk of Ulric's Flame. Or really taking anything from an ally.

The targets with any support at all at this point are:
-Gork
-Mork
And yet to be mentioned options
-God of bandits?
-God of sharks?
-God of floods?
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There is absolutely no guarantee that that will be the case. Mathilde did not for a second consider any evil god, just good gods who help humanity survive, which is partly what gives me such strong feelings about it. Maybe the thread will only ever support stealing from evil gods, but aside from me not reading the 60 pages or so since the vote started, I have no guarantee that the thread truly will only support the options you mentioned. The majority of voters are silent and don't say anything other than vote.
 
Brainwave incoming... :V

It just occurs to me that we might have a ready made source of safe divine artifacts to test the Vitae on, Cython. He is a emperor dragon with an interest in gods, if anyone could and would loot multiple divine artifacts it would be him (I mean hell even we have managed to do it once while being a fraction as powerful and vastly younger). We can thus do our first imaging in the safest possible way imaginable short of having a Slann Mage Priest on call, with an Emperor Dragon older than all the mortal races for backup. If that is not safe enough I do not know what is and you know he would be down for the proceeds.
 
LadyLynn said:
Oki, before I sleep, I just want to mention Boney addressed this:
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Ah.

veekie said:
Lets walk through the chains of logic here on faith:
1) Ranald either did not notice the Vitae + Divine experiment, or He noticed, but was concealing his presence.
1.1) Ranald wanted plausible deniability.

It is possible, Mathilde is certainly aware that if it was known that He knew, the other gods would have very strong opinions on the matter, which would impact Him and his cult.
A lay-worshipper like Mathilde's actions are her own.

1.2) Ranald really did not notice.

It is possible but unlikely, Mathilde is one of his favorite sources of amusement, and the research involved a month of reading, and experiments with his divine relic.

Ranald has very frequently been present for AV and divinity experiments, including directly intervening in two specific cases, once in preventing her detonating enough AV to send her to the hospital and destroy her lab, once in the often referenced note.

It'd take an extended freak chance for the god of freak chances.

1.3) Ranald disapproves, but would rather work in mysterious ways instead.

This is implausible. We've seen his interventions. He's not shy about having a cat just SIT on the relevant apparatus until we give up and rethink things, or send us a letter on what not to do(which we had just found out could potentially have exploded her brain from seeing a pattern too complex to handle). His relationship with Mathilde is not one of subtle portents, we just keep doing things that please and amuse him, and he does the same back.

1.4) Ranald is present, and is testing Mathilde's faith(setting aside that throughout the quest Ranald has never really done any tests of faith on her that we could recognize, she's not a priest)
1.4.1) The test is whether she'd be up front about it to Him.

It is implausible that a god of Deception and Theft would perform a test that involves the tester voluntarily giving up secrecy.

1.4.2) The test is whether she'd put it to the right uses.

This is possible. We can refer to his aspects:
-Gambler - This truly IS a massive gamble.
-Deceiver - Falsifying divine imprints, right up his alley.
-Night Prowler - Requiring great secrecy on her part, while probing at the secrets of others? Esctatic.
-Protector - Not applicable until she either starts using it to harm or save innocents. A bold risk, carried by her personal moral code!

Now, going further poking into Ranald's essence himself does put him into conflict with himself, because it is unlikely he appreciates being unraveled like that, but that is a choice we have to make ourselves.
Poking into allied gods? Well, Ranald can hardly throw shade there, he supped from Shallya's cup. It would be very awkward for him, but it does emulate him.
Poking into enemy gods? Its a gamble, but one which wholly fulfills him.

It is POSSIBLE that what Ranald was really waiting for is the grandest fuckoff Pilgrimage of Fingers to steal some essence from each enemy god and then present them to him. I wouldn't know if it was likely.
Only Boney does and he's not telling.

2) Ranald has gotten out the popcorn, just he's waiting to see what happens, and doesn't want to mess with it.

Possible regardless(unless we choose Prudence)!

3) Ranald is keenly aware of Mathilde's Divided Loyalties, and as such, avoids forcing any confrontation between choosing Ranald and her other loyalties. He prefers her to just do what he likes by doing what she likes.

It IS how hes done things throughout the quest.
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Well, I suppose that's enough for me. It'll be nerve wracking not being able to use the coin when making copies, but we have to give Ranald the ability to wash his hands of us in the worst case, and that means ideally the gods don't even find out about the coin existing at all, much less us using it in our heists.

[X] Truth

It's a risk, but I'd just like to say that if everything goes truly tits up and nowhere in the old world remains safe for us, there's always swamp town. :V

Just, uh. Might want to spend a great deed on one of those wolfships sometime just in case. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, eh?
 
Boney said:
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...
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Sacred Flame of Ulric, Grand Cathedral of Sigmar, Taalwelt for Taal, Black Sepulchre for Morr, High Temple of Manaan.

The first thing that pops up in Mathilde's mind aren't Khaine, Ahalt, Gunndred, Stormfels, Vylmar, Horned Rat, Hashut, Cytharai, Chaos Gods, Great Maw or the other evil vicious gods. This does not fill me with confidence.
 
Codex said:
Sacred Flame of Ulric, Grand Cathedral of Sigmar, Taalwelt for Taal, Black Sepulchre for Morr, High Temple of Manaan.

The first thing that pops up in Mathilde's mind aren't Khaine, Ahalt, Gunndred, Stormfels, Vylmar, Horned Rat, Hashut, Cytharai, Chaos Gods, Great Maw or the other evil vicious gods. This does not fill me with confidence.
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In her defence, if there were temples to those Gods that she was familiar with and able to walk right into, then her imagination would have featured them.
 
Codex said:
Sacred Flame of Ulric, Grand Cathedral of Sigmar, Taalwelt for Taal, Black Sepulchre for Morr, High Temple of Manaan.

The first thing that pops up in Mathilde's mind aren't Khaine, Ahalt, Gunndred, Stormfels, Vylmar, Horned Rat, Hashut, Cytharai, Chaos Gods, Great Maw or the other evil vicious gods. This does not fill me with confidence.
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We are still playing the character, there is no mechanism by which she would go anywhere without a vote, so I guess it comes down to how much you trust the thread.
 
opalbucket said:
I voted for Truth because, at this point, it doesn't really feel like Boney is interested in writing a quest with life-ruining setbacks for the protagonist - regardless of the votes, Mathilde's kinda gone from strength to strength, with only relatively minor bumps on her way to the top. Which is fine; a lot of people don't enjoy reading (or writing) bitter and painful stories about people losing their carefully-built reputations, or being deprived all their stuff, or suffering irreparable physical and emotional damage. Especially when it's in a loaded format like this one where people can be assigned "blame" for bad decisions.

But you can't blame me for wanting to try and push things a little. At this point, I wanna see Mathilde do something setting-transcending, or to fly too close to the sun and have something really interesting happen.
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From what I have understand death is a very real option for this quest. I distinctly remember at least one roll which was "if you roll a nat 1 the quest ends here".
And necromancy has at various points been an option. Reputation, physical and emotional damage all included.
All the strength to strength has been ahead of the time preparations that saved our bacon (Seed, belt) or just a large helping of luck.
When we pulled a mountain out of the warp there was a 1/6 chance of it being lost forever.
When we pulled the heist on Mork there was a 1/6 chance of "One less god".

One thing that makes me nervous about this update is just recently Boney has mentioned how we haven't been seeing all the rolls, because we wouldn't know the results in character. So what rolls happened in this update that we didn't see? Did Mathilde crit fail her sanity check?

Honestly a part of me resents being put on the spot like this. If this experiment had been run on any other god, any other god Mathilde hadn't been warned away from investigating and had a deep personal relationship with, then the choice would be much more clear cut.
 
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Still not seeing what we can do with the fingerprints of the Gods in the first place that is worth the gigantic risk that it will be to try this out. Hell maybe Ranald can give us a tip about how to use it if he confirms that looking into this is not a terrible idea.

Also wow people really are fixating on the whole 'no but Ranald secretly wants us to do this or he would have stopped us' which justs screams Miko Miyazaki for me...
 
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JayTar said:
From what I have understand death is a very real option for this quest. I distinctly remember at least one roll which was "if you roll a nat 1 the quest ends here".
And necromancy has at various points been an option. Reputation, physical and emotional damage all included.
All the strength to strength has been ahead of the time preparations that saved our bacon (Seed, belt) or just a large helping of luck.
When we pulled a mountain out of the warp there was a 1/6 chance of it being lost forever.
When we pulled the heist on Mork there was a 1/6 chance of "One less god".

One thing that makes me nervous about this update is just recently Boney has mentioned how we haven't been seeing all the rolls, because we wouldn't know the results in character. So what rolls happened in this update that we didn't see? Did Mathilde crit fail her sanity check?

Honestly a part of me resents being put on the spot like this. If this experiment had been run on any other god, any other god Mathilde hadn't been warned away from investigating and had a deep personal relationship with, then the choice would be much more clear cut.
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As a player I find the idea of sanity checks in the absence of any obvious corruption source both very unlikely and low key insulting. It assumes our PoV character is somehow insane and we missed it.
 
Aule said:
The articles and bless Magnus' foresight.
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The Articles say no studying Lores of the Daemonic powers or Dark Sorceries:
Boney said:
7. No Magister may ever study the Forbidden Lores of the Daemonic Powers, nor the unholy ways of Necromancy, nor any other sorcery or witchcraft that utilises the wicked powers of Dark Magic. Any Magister found disregarding this Article is guilty of an Abominable Act and is both Heretic and Traitor and will be put to sword and fire immediately.
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The Article says nothing about studying the Chaos Gods. Yes, this technicality doesn't matter and she will be killed for it anyway, but that's the exact same situation the Liber Mortis is in. And if she was found to be doing this to the good gods, she will also be killed for the same reason. So the Articles don't matter in this case.
 
Magnos III said:
Still not seeing what we can do with the fingerprints of the Gods in the first place that is worth the gigantic risk that it will be to try this out. Hell maybe Ranald can give us a tip about how to use it if he confirms that looking into this is not a terrible idea.
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Remember how Mathilde described Ulgu to Eike?
A secret only I know.

Silly muggle, treasure knowledge is for having.
 
Guys if I am right about Cython having divine artifacts we can literally bribe an emperor dragon with this, you know the being that killed the whole Skyre presence in Eight Peaks without breaking a stride.
 
Boney said:
Any that are discovered within the Old World are torn down as soon as possible, even if that means assembling an army to cut through whoever or whatever might be guarding it.
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Then what about the Great Maw. I assume she knows enough about Ogres to know they worship it because of Qrech, and she has Geography books from Cathay that indicate where it is located.
 
Damn. Am like 20 pages behind and will never catch up, but... I've been seeing that a lot of the circular discussion topic has been around "The gods will notice!" "No they won't." "Doing this is disrespectful to Ranald!" "Ranald probably knows anyway." "This is taking knowledge from the gods that we shouldn't be taking!" "So what, they voyeuristically spy on humans all the time anyway, isn't this just getting even?"

To... sort of edge around those arguments, I think the issue isn't just something like 'Is doing this disrespectful to Ranald and/or to gods in general?' or 'Wait, would the Gods notice if we take tiny crystals of their energy?'
Boney said:
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 curiousity 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.
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The issue is, as the update said, that this is "a declaration of war against the secrecy of the Gods and the Cults."

Meaning, the issue will be that in order to progress this research, you have to go into the places of knowledge and worship of the Cults, and steal knowledge from them that they won't even realize you are taking from them.

And the question is: is that an okay thing to do? To the Gods and to the Cults of humans?

We won't just be doing something presumably/arguably transgressive against Gods, we'll also be treating the Cults -- of Verena and Ulric and Sigmar and Loec and Hoeth -- as knowledge-pinatas. (Or, alternatively, we only target the Kurgan Moon God and Gunndred and Khaine and Gork and Hashut with this. In which case, well, that's a hazard of an entirely different sort. :V) (Or we target ancient or dead or foreign gods, play archaeologist, or something else.)

But, like. Do you want to look at the culture and history and the relationship that humankind has had with the gods, and go "Yeah I'll just take knowledge from you that you aren't realizing you are giving."

I mean, I'm pretty sure the answer to that for some people is going to be "Well of course. It gets us knowledge and we can use that knowledge" and "and nobody is really being hurt by it" and so on. But, well, still. That "a declaration of war against the secrecy of the Gods and the Cults" part of Boney's post comes to mind anyway.

Though, we don't necessarily have to go too far or target good gods. But then in that case, we aren't exploring the Truth option to its furthest exactly. Which might be frustrating to the Truth voters in a different way.

That's one reason why I voted for the Faith option. Because it felt more palatable to be. And because I wanted to see what the Faith choice involved I guess. As it's a mystery box and I want to see what is in it.
 
Codex said:
Then what about the Great Maw. I assume she knows enough about Ogres to know they worship it because of Qrech, and she has Geography books from Cathay that indicate where it is located.
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Possible, but you'd need an expedition since Great Maw holy sites are surrounded by ogres and half a continent away.. If she found a shrine to Gunndred, or human Khaine, she totally could.
 
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