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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Derpmind said:
So I'm still 30 pages behind and my internet's been on-and-off the last hour. (So sorry if this has already been brought up.) But I finally figured out what was bugging me about this vote: The arguments are that [] Truth gets us something. Something wondrous, powerful, world-changing, etc. But [] Faith get us nothing. Maybe a pat on the head. But that's it.

Thing is, I don't believe that's true. The only true "nothing" option is [] Prudence. And just because we only know what [] Truth might give us, that being a scientific understanding of divinity, that doesn't mean [] Faith might not gain us a result equally as valuable. Maybe it's a mystery box compared to a certain thing, sure, but is it truly of so little value as people make it out to be?

As for what that mystery might be, we do have some hints:


These are two traits we had as options following the Karag Dum expedition. [] Truth, obviously, corresponds to the first trait. It takes us on the path to developing a scientific understanding of divinity. But I'd argue that [] Faith might take us on the path that the second trait would have given us: A better social understanding of the gods. Better ways to interact with and work with Ranald and others. After all, do Priests not have their own secrets? Does Heidi not have some deep understanding and knowledge to pull off her Ranald-Shallya youth-giving blessing? Does not Ljiljana have some huge ties to multiple gods in order to pull off the Bearicane?

Again, the only gives-nothing option is [] Prudence. This isn't choosing between something and simply not having anything. It's a choice between two different paths, and while we have a better idea what one of those paths might lead to, ultimately I have a hard time believing that anywhere near as unequal as the discussion (as far as I've seen) has made them out to be.
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Faith is about faith, it might get us something, it might get us nothing. Faith is not about what we get, it is about the mentality you approach a revelation with. Now that shift in mentality itself will likely be of significant use in certain situations, but that is not the same as being able to use AV. Of the three actions the only one that continues the chain of research, the first research to produce anything we can personally use from all the things we have tried with AV, is truth.

Also we should be noted we are not a priest and thus would have a limited ability to approach magic like a priest as our soul is partly Ulgu.
 
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Derpmind said:
Thing is, I don't believe that's true. The only true "nothing" option is [] Prudence. And just because we only know what [] Truth might give us, that being a scientific understanding of divinity, that doesn't mean [] Faith might not gain us a result equally as valuable. Maybe it's a mystery box compared to a certain thing, sure, but is it truly of so little value as people make it out to be?
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That's a good point, but there are countless people all over the world who try to gain an understanding of the divine through communion with the gods. If we take that route, the only advantage we're sure to have compared to those people is that we get Ranald's opinion on the fingerprinting thing. We probably won't be doing something unique or breaking any new ground if we try to gain spiritual understanding, but we assuredly will be if we approach this research from a scientific perspective.
 
Dreikanter said:
That's a good point, but there are countless people all over the world who try to gain an understanding of the divine through communion with the gods. If we take that route, the only advantage we're sure to have compared to those people is that we get Ranald's opinion on the fingerprinting thing. We probably won't be doing something unique or breaking any new ground if we try to gain spiritual understanding, but we assuredly will be if we approach this research from a scientific perspective.
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I mean, it could be a step more on the road of currying enough favour with Ranald to become his Saint in truth.

The Sacrifice is a gift. Its meant to solidify relation to Ranald, not get something out of him in return, much less knowledge on something we just sacrificed.
 
Oddly, I actually consider Prudence the most fundamentally arrogant of the available options. Sure, we had a one in a gajillion event happen to make our access to AV possible, but if the gods are literally swimming in the stuff all they have to do is figure out a way to get it to their followers without directly touching and contaminating it. Which may in fact be exactly what happened for us to get it considering the sequence of events and intervention in play, which means that other schemy plotty deities could follow a similar path, and conceivably may have already done so, or at least have attempts to do so brewing amongst their million billion self thwarting machinations.

Prudence seems to basically say that no one else could ever get to where we are now by any path, so there's no need to be able to thwart the machinations of goateed Mathilde from the mirror universe.


Granted Truth comes in a close second because the above comes with the assumption that we'd be able to unravel and thwart the machinations of the Plotter, and that Ranald doesn't need his perception specifically drawn to this because its nature means it exists in a blind spot, as if he is constantly surrounded by AV a bit of him in the materium getting surrounded by it might not even register. But you makes your vote and you takes your chances.
 
So I wake up and suddenly the Truth faction is going "oh, we'll only study mean gods we don't like," and, uh. You do realize that fingerprint analysis requires two fingerprints, right? Like, if you've got Unknown God X, and you want to find out whether they're secretly Mean God Y, you get fingerprints from both, and now you have one of two outcomes: either X is Y, or X is not Y, and in the latter case we have acquired the fingerprint of not a mean god, and there goes our commitment to not violate the privacy of any god who doesn't have it coming. Furthermore, our best lead for getting started on this project is the altar to Mannslieb, which stands a pretty good chance of being Manaan, an important god of humanity. Does the Truth faction want to drop that line of inquiry entirely?

Like, here's the thing: I think that if Truth wins, and we take the tack of avoiding fingerprinting anyone who isn't definitely a jerk, then what was the point? That just means we build a catalogue of evil gods, some of whom are the same evil gods but others of whom are distinct, and... do what with it?
Boney said:
Putting aside Mathilde's curiousity, the most obvious benefit to being able to know for sure which Gods are which would be in matters like Vylmar, a formerly-legal God that was outlawed on suspicion of being Slaanesh in disguise, or with the Cult of Styriss that Gehenna mentioned tangling with that appeared to be using some of Anath Raema's symbology, who is one of the nastier Elven Gods. Cults to forbidden Gods often use different identities to fly under the radar, and innocent Cults are sometimes wiped out mistakenly when trying to combat this.
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All of Boney's suggested uses involve potential violations of privacy of relatively innocent gods, because, as mentioned, fingerprint analysis takes two.

(Also we would need a way to convince people that we know what we're talking about when we say "X is Y" or "X is definitely not Y" if we want to save cults from unjust persecution/persecute cults who deserve it, and I still haven't seen a satisfactory answer for that.)
 
consequences said:
Oddly, I actually consider Prudence the most fundamentally arrogant of the available options. Sure, we had a one in a gajillion event happen to make our access to AV possible, but if the gods are literally swimming in the stuff all they have to do is figure out a way to get it to their followers without directly touching and contaminating it. Which may in fact be exactly what happened for us to get it considering the sequence of events and intervention in play, which means that other schemy plotty deities could follow a similar path, and conceivably may have already done so, or at least have attempts to do so brewing amongst their million billion self thwarting machinations.

Prudence seems to basically say that no one else could ever get to where we are now by any path, so there's no need to be able to thwart the machinations of goateed Mathilde from the mirror universe.


Granted Truth comes in a close second because the above comes with the assumption that we'd be able to unravel and thwart the machinations of the Plotter, and that Ranald doesn't need his perception specifically drawn to this because its nature means it exists in a blind spot, as if he is constantly surrounded by AV a bit of him in the materium getting surrounded by it might not even register. But you makes your vote and you takes your chances.
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I do not think there is any 'only' about getting the raw stuff of chaos into the world. Not that warp tears are uncommon mind but... well they always involve hordes of daemons screaming for the blood of mortals. Trying to open such an unaligned gate is basically ringing the dinner bell to Chaos, the reason the Asp does not do so is because it is inside a living and eternally tortured minor daemon.

Also it is worth keeping in mind that we did not use AV alone. Be Ranald ever so wise in the ways of the warp I do not think he would be able to induce cats so shit out elf quality magic capture crystals. :V
 
If we identify something as a relic of an evil god, and then another potentially innocent, potentially guilty cult shows up, then we can tell whether it's a front for that previously identified evil god.

And declaring this a violation of privacy is begging the question. If a god is not prepared to reveal their identity to their potential worshippers and wants to preserve their ability to play shell games and lie to them about who they're worshipping, the bad actor is the god, not the person who exposes them.

A god doesn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy about what their true identity is when they're offering themself out for worship under false pretences.

The person whose privacy is being violated is the deceived worshiper who is baring their soul to a god under false pretences.
 
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picklepikkl said:
Like, here's the thing: I think that if Truth wins, and we take the tack of avoiding fingerprinting anyone who isn't definitely a jerk, then what was the point? That just means we build a catalogue of evil gods, some of whom are the same evil gods but others of whom are distinct, and... do what with it?
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So disclaimer, I switched my vote over to Faith though I'm pretty balanced on the two options but I am hoping Mathilde will gain knowledge simply from studying the imprints she gets. Even if we did extensively fingerprint every god in the empire so we can categorically declare whether a cult of individual person is ok or not I don't see the benefit to it. Do we then become a full time cultists hunter and abandon our other major projects? To me the point of Truth would be the increased knowledge of gods and that comes from studying them that way rather than any practical benefit.

Essentially "Mathilde collects god imprints and studies them" sounds like interesting storyline that can justify itself without aiding any other storylines.
 
The ID stuff assumes that we get the same print every time we sample the same god. I'm not sure that's a reliable assumption - what we have in the crystal isn't all of Ranald, it's just a tiny subportion. If we'd dripped the AV onto a different face of the coin we'd probably have a completely different pattern in the crystal.
 
The Lone badger said:
The ID stuff assumes that we get the same print every time we sample the same god. I'm not sure that's a reliable assumption - what we have in the crystal isn't all of Ranald, it's just a tiny subportion. If we'd dripped the AV onto a different face of the coin we'd probably have a completely different pattern in the crystal.
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That is kind of the basic assumption upon which the whole update rests if it that is not true than Mathilde is worrying over nothing and this whole update has been a waste of time. Personally I do not think she is a panicking fool so I am inclined to take her at her word
 
DragonParadox said:
That is kind of the basic assumption upon which the whole update rests if it that is not true than Mathilde is worrying over nothing and this whole update has been a waste of time. Personally I do not think she is a panicking fool so I am inclined to take her at her word
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Even if each sample is only a tiny fragment of the god, it still gives a direct and objective way to observe the gods. That's still huge.
 
Derpmind said:
So I'm still 30 pages behind and my internet's been on-and-off the last hour. (So sorry if this has already been brought up.) But I finally figured out what was bugging me about this vote: The arguments are that [] Truth gets us something. Something wondrous, powerful, world-changing, etc. But [] Faith get us nothing. Maybe a pat on the head. But that's it.

Thing is, I don't believe that's true. The only true "nothing" option is [] Prudence. And just because we only know what [] Truth might give us, that being a scientific understanding of divinity, that doesn't mean [] Faith might not gain us a result equally as valuable. Maybe it's a mystery box compared to a certain thing, sure, but is it truly of so little value as people make it out to be?

As for what that mystery might be, we do have some hints:


These are two traits we had as options following the Karag Dum expedition. [] Truth, obviously, corresponds to the first trait. It takes us on the path to developing a scientific understanding of divinity. But I'd argue that [] Faith might take us on the path that the second trait would have given us: A better social understanding of the gods. Better ways to interact with and work with Ranald and others. After all, do Priests not have their own secrets? Does Heidi not have some deep understanding and knowledge to pull off her Ranald-Shallya youth-giving blessing? Does not Ljiljana have some huge ties to multiple gods in order to pull off the Bearicane?

Again, the only gives-nothing option is [] Prudence. This isn't choosing between something and simply not having anything. It's a choice between two different paths, and while we have a better idea what one of those paths might lead to, ultimately I have a hard time believing that anywhere near as unequal as the discussion (as far as I've seen) has made them out to be.
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It's a character choice, do you want to pursue this risky line of research? yes, no because it's wrong, no because it's risky.

It's not like Sigmar appeared and resurrected Abel when we declined to use the Liber, or Gazul would have sent a priest with a chest full of ancient dwarf secrets to thank us for not reading it.
 
The Lone badger said:
The ID stuff assumes that we get the same print every time we sample the same god. I'm not sure that's a reliable assumption - what we have in the crystal isn't all of Ranald, it's just a tiny subportion. If we'd dripped the AV onto a different face of the coin we'd probably have a completely different pattern in the crystal.
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This would require Ranald's facets to be materially different from one another, and Mathilde's experiences with and observations of Ranald do not support that conclusion.
 
Just as an FYI y'all, but if we do end up voting for truth, I will be voting to get Ulric, Taal, and Sigmar's impressions.

Because they are the most useful- being able to say for sure a cult is not worshipping them is the main point of IDs, and because they are convenient.

They are also less likely to notice thefts because we are an ally, so less attention should need to be paid to us.

But since the first god we did this to is a major god of order, the one we are personally most loyal to, then I see no reason to have Mathilde treat the gods she cares less about with more respect.

You want truth? Let's go for truth.
 
Alratan said:
If we identify something as a relic of an evil god, and then another potentially innocent, potentially guilty cult shows up, then we can tell whether it's a front for that previously identified evil god.

And declaring this a violation of privacy is begging the question. If a god is not prepared to reveal their identity to their potential worshippers and wants to preserve their ability to play shell games and lie to them about who they're worshipping, the bad actor is the god, not the person who exposes them.

A god doesn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy about what their true identity is when they're offering themself out for worship under false pretences.

The person whose privacy is being violated is the deceived worshiper who is baring their soul to a god under false pretences.
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Sure, no need to convince me. I don't particularly respect the gods' right to keep their secrets. The thing that had my eyebrows going way up was people who were voting for Truth but saying that we would only do this to jerks who have it coming, which I straight-up don't understand because it robs the exercise of basically all the practical value we know about. It's possible we might be able to glean deep insights about divinity just by looking at a line-up of jerks, but we don't know that; whereas we know we can use this to say definitively whether God A and God B are identical or different. As such, I am very skeptical of votes for "Truth, but without the practical applications," and want to check with those voters and be sure they have a clear sense of what it is they want.
Glau said:
Just as an FYI y'all, but if we do end up voting for truth, I will be voting to get Ulric, Taal, and Sigmar's impressions.

Because they are the most useful- being able to say for sure a cult is not worshipping them is the main point of IDs, and because they are convenient.

They are also less likely to notice thefts because we are an ally, so less attention should need to be paid to us.

But since the first god we did this to is a major god of order, the one we are personally most loyal to, then I see no reason to have Mathilde treat the gods she cares less about with more respect.

You want truth? Let's go for truth.
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As a Faith voter, I agree. Roll up to Cython's crib and be like "Get in, loser, we're pinning divine identities down like butterflies."
 
picklepikkl said:
Sure, no need to convince me. I don't particularly respect the gods' right to keep their secrets. The thing that had my eyebrows going way up was people who were voting for Truth but saying that we would only do this to jerks who have it coming, which I straight-up don't understand because it robs the exercise of basically all the practical value we know about. It's possible we might be able to glean deep insights about divinity just by looking at a line-up of jerks, but we don't know that; whereas we know we can use this to say definitively whether God A and God B are identical or different. As such, I am very skeptical of votes for "Truth, but without the practical applications," and want to check with those voters and be sure they have a clear sense of what it is they want.
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I disagree about the lack of practical applications. If we take a copy of Khaine's signature, we can tell if a new Cult or something claiming to be a legitimate Venerated Soul of another god is him wearing a false moustache, for example. The same applies to the not insignificant but also not vast number of other proscribed gods. We could probably identify all the commonly encountered proscribed gods and that would be immediately useful.
 
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Alratan said:
I disagree about the lack of practical applications. If we take a copy of Khaine's signature, we can tell if a new Cult or something claiming to be a legitimate Venerated Soul of another god is him wearing a false moustache, for example.
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Only if we're willing to take a close look at the divinity present in that cult.

Which means we're willing to examine gods that may be on the side of good - making use of our new knowledge to scrutinise them.
 
Alratan said:
I disagree about the lack of practical applications. If we take a copy of Khaine's signature, we can tell if a new Cult or something claiming to be a legitimate Venerated Soul of another god is him wearing a false moustache, for example. The same applies to the not insignificant number of other proscribed gods.
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...but I literally talked about that in my first post? I feel like you aren't reading what I'm writing.
picklepikkl said:
So I wake up and suddenly the Truth faction is going "oh, we'll only study mean gods we don't like," and, uh. You do realize that fingerprint analysis requires two fingerprints, right? Like, if you've got Unknown God X, and you want to find out whether they're secretly Mean God Y, you get fingerprints from both, and now you have one of two outcomes: either X is Y, or X is not Y, and in the latter case we have acquired the fingerprint of not a mean god, and there goes our commitment to not violate the privacy of any god who doesn't have it coming. Furthermore, our best lead for getting started on this project is the altar to Mannslieb, which stands a pretty good chance of being Manaan, an important god of humanity. Does the Truth faction want to drop that line of inquiry entirely?

Like, here's the thing: I think that if Truth wins, and we take the tack of avoiding fingerprinting anyone who isn't definitely a jerk, then what was the point? That just means we build a catalogue of evil gods, some of whom are the same evil gods but others of whom are distinct, and... do what with it?
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The people who are saying "only do this to gods who are definitely jerks" close off the practical application you're talking about, because Unknown God X might be a jerk and might not be a jerk. Now, you can get around this by saying "we will only do this to gods who are definitely jerks and gods who are under suspicion of being jerks," but that is a large increase in the scope of permissible targets and might upset the people who did legitimately want to only fingerprint the jerks. Without getting too political, there is a huge difference between "only convicted criminals" and "only people accused of a crime."

Like I said, I don't respect the gods' right to identity privacy. But there are people in the thread who apparently do, and whose solution to this is to limit the gods we are willing to go after if Truth wins. The thing I am trying to do is address those voters and make sure they understand the implications of limiting the range of targets to confirmed jerks.
 
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