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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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DragonParadox said:
I mean in which category does Regimand fall into? You know Mathy's father figure, we have not exactly slapped the Liber Mortis in front of him to brainstorm ways of laundering he lore. There is no category for unrestrained trust so far, Ranald would be the first.
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Yeah we did not tell Regimand about this, we also did not tell anyone at all about this...

However... there is no way in hell that Ranald does not know about the Liber Mortis. And he is cool with it, because Mathilde has never given reason for him to doubt her. He was by our side since the start, he was there putting his hand on our shoulder while we grieved about our fallen liege, he came running to save our asses when we were possessed by Big Bad Green, he rewarded us with the most powerful artefact at his disposal for having Faith in him to save us and helped us out in various fights and endeavors. He was side-by-side with Gazul when we killed a Waaagh. He went into a fist-fight with bloody Khorne to save our asses. Hell we are buddies with the Empress that is helping our empire to get better and we baptized the likely-future emperor in Ranald's name. The Dwarf thing? That's was not him, that was all Mathilde breaking the Dwarf Rep system with Ranald just giving us the toys to do so. For all people here are complaining about it the one that got a entry in the Big Book of Grudges was not Mathilde, it was Ranald.

And now... we accidentally came into contact with a very, very, intimate part of Ranald... and a lot of people here are trying to justify hiding this from him saying that he has fucked us over at other times.

It's just... it really feels like a betray to me, one that a lot of people are trying to justify and that... that feels wrong, it just does...

DragonParadox said:
How is this fucking over Ranald? Seriously I do not get where the idea of 'divine privacy' comes from. It is farcical, the gods cannot by their very nature give humans any privacy. The only reason for that 'No' that makes sense and is not hypocrisy of Zeus like proportions is that it would have driven Mathilde mad to look at him, as she theorizes in the last update.

Secondly... avatar? How exactly is Ranald going to fit in a soul that is partly Ulgu without driving us mad? All those personal magical boons of Ranald are not tenable and never have been, because our magic and his are not compatible. The only way this would work is theurgy, if he offered us something no human god has since the fall of Nehekara... for burning a fingerprint.

Lastly piety is better than learning sounds to me like ignorance is better than knowledge which is just depressing on the face of it really. Even with a softer interpretation are a wizard not a priest.
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If is not fucking over Ranald why do we need to hide it from him? If is not a betray we have nothing to fear right? So why not tell him? What is the problem here? Are we afraid that he would get angry about it, like we have been told, in update and by WoD, that it would upset the cults and maybe the gods themselves? If is something that would upset others, by logic there is a very real chance that it would upset Ranald so, by definition, it's an action that Ranald disapproves of and, given how much he thrust us, it's a betray. And don't try the whole 'oh but he secretly wants us to do it' that's just speculation.

The Avatar thing I said before was more along the lines of 'it might make our connection with Ranald grow', I'm sorry that I did not explain it better.

And I never said that piety is better than learning, just that more learning points is not worth the risk of this particular research, don't put words into my mouth. Also yeah in this instance, system and situation we could really use more Piety than Learning at the moment; we are fine when it comes to Learning at the moment thanks to a lot of points in the stat and also the books giving us various high bonus in various areas. Our Piety on the other hand is high and has some bonus but we could use more, especially since we failed a piety test in the expedition and that could have cost us A LOT if we had drank the evil cup but, fortunately, if we were not interrupted before we could.

Also piety here is not ignorance, is just a different type of knowledge. Because the gods are very real and very active and very vocal.

Saidoro said:
The Truth faction has just as much ideological backing as the Faith faction, please stop insisting it's exclusively about number maximizing in every single post. You may not agree that learning more about the world is good even just for its own sake, or that the relationship between gods and mortals should be a reciprocal one rather than a hierarchical one with gods always on top, or any of the other reasons people voting Truth no doubt have, but those reasons do exist and are considered important by the people voting on those grounds.
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I'm not saying that the Truth faction does not have points, I'm saying that none of said points sounds convincing to me that investing into Truth is worth the sacrifice. Me explaining things by way of 'it's just more learning points' is just one line of reasoning by way of quest-mechanics, which is a perfect valid way to argue things. Also I have never said that I'm against learning more about the world for learning sake, because this is very much not what this is about. Please don't put words into my mouth. I also have not at any point mentioning that Mathilde should be subservient to the Gods, in fact one of my lines of argument is that this would be a dick move even if it was between to mundane friends, something I said before, repeatedly.
 
Godwinson said:
I didn't claim smiting was likely, just that this is a scenario where it's actually possible, unlike most of the scenarios people were tossing around about Truth resulting in it.
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I do not think it is possible, it feels too out of character, this is like me and the argument that the Empress would have us assassinate Elector Counts, well past implausible and into impossible when you think about it
 
So I've been thinking about what could Truth offer besides just allowing us to differentiate the gods, this is what I've come up (from more likely to less likely, according to solely to my opinion):

  • A greater familiarity with all kinds of Gods, allowing us to know what gods are paying attention to us, and maybe even if they're paying it to another person nearby.
  • A greater understanding of the Gods and the Divine, allowing us to create a similar enchantment to the ball that Algard threw us, only this would shine in reaction to a certain divine frequency.
  • The same as above but for Divine Artifacts.
  • A greater understanding of the Gods and the Divine, allowing us to create enchantments that prevent Divine Vision and/or their interference (pretty useful to lock up Chaos Artifacts and hide information from the Chaos Gods)
  • A greater understanding of the Gods and the Divine, allowing us to free Querch or more Skaven from the Horned Rat.
  • A greater understanding of the Gods and the Divine, allowing us to develop a spell that blocks divine interference in an area.
  • A greater understanding of the Gods and the Divine, allowing us to know how they cast magic without any risk of miscasting and maybe reproducing it.
  • A greater understanding of the Gods and the Divine, allowing us to know how is it possible for Divine Energy to mix without creating Dhar (like it happens with Heidi) and if it's possible for Arcane Magic to do the same (although I guess this would be Theurgy).
 
Fehu said:
*Why doesn't english have a genderless 'it' word for people... grumble.
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The singular They is widely accepted as a gender neutral pronoun in English.

picklepikkl said:
Doing it once is fine and forgivable. It's the time you do it in foreknowledge of what it means that earns the title of heresy.
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Thought of an analogy: When we were experimenting with Tongs, we accidentally created Dhar several times. This was not a breach of the articles as it was unintentional and we acted to prevent more from being created. But once we figured out that there was no way for Tongs to work without creating Dhar, continuing to use it would breach the articles; traitor heretic, fire sword.
In a world were we continued to use Tongs but made sure to not let anyone know about the Dhar, if another wizard were to independently try making Tongs and gets the same result as us they could then realize that we are using this Dhar using process, and they would make sure it was known to people who would very forcefully make their displeasure with us known.
 
Magnos III said:
If is not fucking over Ranald why do we need to hide it from him? If is not a betray we have nothing to fear right? So why not tell him? What is the problem here? Are we afraid that he would get angry about it, like we have been told, in update and by WoD, that it would upset the cults and maybe the gods themselves? If is something that would upset others, by logic there is a very real chance that it would upset Ranald so, by definition, it's an action that Ranald disapproves of and, given how much he thrust us, it's a betray. And don't try the whole 'oh but he secretly wants us to do it' that's just speculation.

The Avatar thing I said before was more along the lines of 'it might make our connection with Ranald grow', I'm sorry that I did not explain it better.

And I never said that piety is better than learning, just that more learning points is not worth the risk of this particular research, don't put words into my mouth. Also yeah in this instance, system and situation we could really use more Piety than Learning at the moment; we are fine when it comes to Learning at the moment thanks to a lot of points in the stat and also the books giving us various high bonus in various areas. Our Piety on the other hand is high and has some bonus but we could use more, especially since we failed a piety test in the expedition and that could have cost us A LOT if we had drank the evil cup but, fortunately, if we were not interrupted before we could.

Also piety here is not ignorance, is just a different type of knowledge. Because the gods are very real and very active and very vocal.
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  1. With truth we are only hiding in so far as we are not falling on our faces and offering our work as sacrifice which is basically shouting for him, the room is hardly Ranald proof. It is not really an option, but if he wants to walk in and have a debate about the merits of the study I wuld be happy to have Mathilde engage in it and consider it on the merits.
  2. I am not getting into the mechanistic argument about which roll could use a fractional increase, I'm mostly here for the narrative, to learn and use cool magic
 
Man, we are like 15 off from having 500 people voicing their opinion
Adhoc vote count started by Tobtorp on Oct 29, 2021 at 3:48 PM, finished with 2042 posts and 473 votes.
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Godwinson said:
Yeah, no, I have faith in Mathilde's ability to stuff her foot into her mouth (i.e. roll a 1)
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Boney scales the rolls. I don't think a 1 merits that level of reaction in this context. And when Ranald screws with someone, it's rarely directly.

If you're worried about this reaction from a Faith vote, Truth is much more likely to result in that scenario as that's the path that actually keeps it secret and risks the intervention of Gods we don't already have a working relationship with. Though I don't think direct divine retribution is likely in any case. My opposition to Truth is mostly from the relationship between the Cults and the Colleges, as we're a Lady Magister. We're the highest level of representation they have outside of the actual leadership, which makes anything we do reflect on them, and I don't want to cause any additional tension there when we're working on a project that may require their cooperation.
 
dinomannitro6 said:
The singular They is widely accepted as a gender neutral pronoun in English.


Thought of an analogy: When we were experimenting with Tongs, we accidentally created Dhar several times. This was not a breach of the articles as it was unintentional and we acted to prevent more from being created. But once we figured out that there was no way for Tongs to work without creating Dhar, continuing to use it would breach the articles; traitor heretic, fire sword.
In a world were we continued to use Tongs but made sure to not let anyone know about the Dhar, if another wizard were to independently try making Tongs and gets the same result as us they could then realize that we are using this Dhar using process, and they would make sure it was known to people who would very forcefully make their displeasure with us known.
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And of course the world is just full of wizards with a deep knowledge of necromancy such as gave us the idea for Tongs. The reason Tongs are untenable is because the Dhar is visible to God and radar (well and the red line of the Articles and what they mean to Mathilde etc...) not because of potential research duplication

The circumstances here are even more unique, with AV it was a meta-crit.
 
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Redshirt Army said:
...

Of course. It's only natural for the "Research" option to secretly be exactly what our god wanted us to do all along, while the "Faith" option leads to us being smited. This is a very reasonable concern.

I might as well argue that actually the Truth option will lead to Mathilde tripping and hitting her head on the magic crystals and dying (because I have faith in Mathilde "rolling a one") and the Faith option will lead to Ranald showering us in praise and bringing in Verena to be our research partner on this cool new project - it seems about equally connected to the narrative outcomes and relative balance of the vote options from where I'm sitting.
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I feel like you are straw-manning here, quite a bit actually. While there has been some talk that Ranald might want us to be sneaker, there is broad consensus that faith will make us more faithful and truth more knowledgeable
 
With all the focus on explaining why it isn't morally wrong to do research without Ranald's knowledge, the debate has kind of glossed over how little we would be actually hiding from him.

Boney said:
If your main priority is continuing the research, there's no benefit to telling Ranald. Either He's against it and bad things happen, or the consequences for what happens if it gets found out just got a whole lot worse for everybody because now Ranald is implicated.
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@Boney Am I correct in my interpretation that the extent of the secrecy from Ranald that voting truth entails, will be limited to just not telling him, along with generalized secrecy from the gods as a whole? Voting truth will not lock us in to ignoring him if he finds out and objects.

I think the only reason we have for secrecy from Ranald is the deniable asset theory, which is just a theory, and only applicable so far to our collection of divine signatures. Other people's interpretations of Ranald's preferences may differ, but I don't think he'd object to our research even if he's not willing to give it his blessing. We should pospone the vote between having a positive relationship with Ranald and continuing our research to when that is an actual question being asked.
 
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See, for me, this comes down to friend or foe.

What do you want more, to be friends with the Order gods, Ranald first?
Or to be an enemy to the Evil gods, Chaos first?

And I'd like to be Ranald's friend first. I really would. But Mat has spent her whole life in sacrifice.
For all her power and wealth, when push comes to shove, Mat picks up that sword and goes to fight the good fight.
Not because it is easy, but because it needs to be done.

There is terrible risk to Mat for going with Truth, and I'd prefer to vote Faith. But "Death is lighter than a feather, Duty heavier than a Mountain."

With a way to track, ID, Gods, Mat can break so many fucking infiltrators. With her Windsight, Belt to shield from Chaos, and Dhar skill, this Fingerprint thing is just about the last thing Mat needs to be a god-damn terror to fuckers that use magical and sorcerous powers so infiltrate, hide and sabotage.

Here's a simple question for you @Boney :
In Mat's opinion, if she can somehow get the prints of Slanesh, or Nurgle, would that help her develop ways to detect their servants and/or works?

Because even if I want to vote for Faith, even if it is the safer, better option, Mat isn't the type to walk away. If she was, she never would have read the Liber Mortis. So once more, to war we go, till the world breaks us or it is mended:
[X] Truth

There's a speech Mat makes in K8Ps, that "the best way I can contribute is by slitting throats." That's what this choice is. It's ugly, but someone has to do it.

I fully disagree with going after this for any kind of shenanigans or ascension bullshit. Any kind of personal power crap. This is fully Liber Mortis tier danger. But that doesn't mean it can't be used for good. And it's a risk. Maybe some future vote or voter fucks it all up. That can happen. But Mat can die in every battle. We go to them anyway. Armed, trained and equpied. As ready as we can be. But we go anyway.
 
I don't think i could support Truth given just how grave the risks for that would be. Like yea, discovering the truths and secrets about the god's sounds like a really cool idea, but given the dangers inherent in the option.

Through out the quest, a mini-plot with Ranald have been about him reaching out to old comrades. Trying to help, and showing that he isn't the person who ran away at first sight.

So a disciple of his suddenly going around, rummaging through your house, i feel would destroy a lot of the trust he's been building up again might just come crashing down. Even going with the assumption that Ranald is delibratly looking the other way, so he can say he didn't really know anything.

It doesn't change the fact that it's still an disciple of his doing it, one whom he's rather invested into. We may never be discovered, but i don't think i could ever support such a choice, given how it would be going back on all the effort Ranald have been doing through this quest.

He might be disapointed, by the this choice, but personaly i feel like going for the truth woudl be to go behind his back. I am really interested in researching this stuff, but not enough that i'd risk both Ranald's trust and waystone project.

Ranald have our back, and that isn't something i wanna betray...Even if it may not the choice Ranald actually wants us to do

[x] Faith
 
I... really don't like bringing this up, but I think we need a sockpuppet check. I've noticed at least one voter who (a) joined within the past couple of days and (b) has no posts other than a contentless vote in this thread. And if I'm right... well, where there's one, there's always the possibility of there being more. :(
 
kfrar said:
Look, Mathilde is a Grey Lady Magister who, among other things, has convinced herself that reading the Liber Mortis is in fact A-OK according to the Articles and is hiding the fact that her knowledge of Dhar and Necromancy should get her burned at the stake from everyone she knows at all times.

She has done this for years without showing any notable stress as a result.

Ulgu's a hell of a drug, mate, and Mathilde's mind has been stewed in the stuff for decades. I'm not worried about adding one more secret to the pile, especially when Mathilde is half convinced (almost exactly, based on voting numbers) that Ranald's purposely looking away to maintain plausible deniability on the secret in question.
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Mathilde managed to keep the fact that she was being stalked by a warp creature from her Master (and sorta!dad) and presumably the Grey College as a whole. She's good at keeping secrets, even from people she loves and trusts, even for questionable and maybe selfish reasons.
 
Incidentally to make my position vis a vis Ranald clear, and so that it is not lost in joking death threats over AV, I do think Mathilde respects him quite a lot and rightly so I would do a lot of things for him, just not literally everything he says without question or objection. For example:
  1. If Ranald asked Mathy to destroy his crystal, because he is just not comfortable with that I would vote to do that no questions asked
  2. If Ranald asked us to stop the research because he swore the god picky promise back in the day not to allow it, i would curse bad luck but I would still do it because vows are serious business
  3. If Ranald asked us to stop all research into this including of enemy just because he says so I would ask why? If he insists or threatened I would do it because he is stupidly powerful by comparison and then I would vote to look for a new god.
I take that description on the sheet as seriously as anyone else, Ranald if a friend, that does not means supreme unquestioned overlord... as the title clearly shows we do not have one of those
 
NSMS said:
I... really don't like bringing this up, but I think we need a sockpuppet check. I've noticed at least one voter who (a) joined within the past couple of days and (b) has no posts other than a contentless vote in this thread. And if I'm right... well, where there's one, there's always the possibility of there being more. :(
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If you have suspicions, report, I guess.

If SV handles things mostly like SV, reports help a lot. The clearer, the better.

Better to clear the air than to let suspicions of foul play festering.
 
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Magnos III said:
I'm not saying that the Truth faction does not have points, I'm saying that none of said points sounds convincing to me that investing into Truth is worth the sacrifice. Me explaining things by way of 'it's just more learning points' is just one line of reasoning by way of quest-mechanics, which is a perfect valid way to argue things. Also I have never said that I'm against learning more about the world for learning sake, because this is very much not what this is about. Please don't put words into my mouth. I also have not at any point mentioning that Mathilde should be subservient to the Gods, in fact one of my lines of argument is that this would be a dick move even if it was between to mundane friends, something I said before, repeatedly.
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You have on four separate occasions made a post in which you asked what immediate practical benefits the Truth option would have, described their benefits as 'just learning points' and questioned how the benefits as you had outlined could possibly be worth the risks. On two of those occasions you have raised the idea that we would gain a better understanding of the gods and then explicitly stated that that only amounted to learning points.

I have no intention of putting words in your mouth, but I'm sure you can see the cause of any confusion I may be experiencing here.
 
Saidoro said:
You have on four separate occasions made a post in which you asked what immediate practical benefits the Truth option would have, described their benefits as 'just learning points' and questioned how the benefits as you had outlined could possibly be worth the risks. On two of those occasions you have raised the idea that we would gain a better understanding of the gods and then explicitly stated that that only amounted to learning points.

I have no intention of putting words in your mouth, but I'm sure you can see the cause of any confusion I may be experiencing here.
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I really don't? I made mechanical arguments before, yes, as I have made role-play arguments too among others. What I have never said was that I was that I was against learning for the sake of learning, something you very clearly implied that I was.

This whole thing? Is not learning for the sake of learning. It's violating the privacy of our oldest friend and what we can gain from it does not look like, in my humble opinion, something that is worth the cost. Plus I see it as a dick move against a friend, and notice that I'm not even mentioning that he is a God here. It just really feels like a dick move to me.
 
Magnos III said:
I really don't? I made mechanical arguments before, yes, as I have made role-play arguments too among others. What I have never said was that I was that I was against learning for the sake of learning, something you very clearly implied that I was.

This whole thing? Is not learning for the sake of learning. It's violating the privacy of our oldest friend and what we can gain from it does not look like, in my humble opinion, something that is worth the cost. Plus I see it as a dick move against a friend, and notice that I'm not even mentioning that he is a God here. It just really feels like a dick move to me.
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Sadly there is no option for 'burn the Ranald crystal in a normal fire and then make others for other gods', so it's either keep it or submit Mathilde's will utterly to Ranald in the middle of what is meant to be wizardly study over and above what Renald could reasonably claim ownership of.
 
DragonParadox said:
I'm not seeing eyes or blue feathers, passes the smell test. :V

If this is his doing that makes Mathilde rather pathetic really, a pawn in his schemes who can only escape them by running to Big Daddy Ranald
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... This is not pathetic, this is standard Grey Order procedure. We are not on par with Chaos Gods (yet?) , we can only survive them because of other gods doing stuff.

Remember our discussion with Starke about faith? Remember the protocol of rolling a dice on suspected chaos involvement? Remember that we were literally saved by Ranald (and a few other gods) last time we drew a chaos god's attention directly?

Humans need gods to survive in Warhammer, if only to protect them from evil gods, that is a fact, not pathetic. Doesn't make them pawns or immaterial either, their heroism can do a lot of stuff that can tip the scale, from the minor to a mountain heist. But without the god's passive and occasionally active protection, Chaos would just go "I only let stuff live because they amuse me" and we would be WH40K.
 
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storryeater said:
... This is not pathetic, this is standard Grey Order procedure. We are not on par with Chaos Gods (yet?) , we can only survive them because of other gods doing stuff.

Remember our discussion with Starke about faith? Remember the protocol of rolling a dice on suspected chaos involvement? Remember that we were literally saved by Ranald (and a few other gods) last time we drew a chaos god's attention directly?

Humans need gods to survive in Warhammer, if only to protect them from evil gods, that is a fact, not pathetic. Doesn't make them pawns or immaterial either, their heroism can do a lot of stuff that can tip the scale, from the minor to a mountain heist. But without the god's passive and occasionally active protection, Chaos would just go "I only let stuff live because they amuse me" and we would be WH40K.
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Assuming that years of your work are an elaborate chaos plot and unprompted by any external sign deciding to burn research which has not the slightest whiff of dark magic to the judgement of a barely tolerated god? I do not think there is anything standard of Grey College in there.
 
DragonParadox said:
Assuming that years of your work are an elaborate chaos plot and unprompted by any external sign deciding to burn research which has not the slightest whiff of dark magic to the judgement of a barely tolerated god? I do not think there is anything standard of Grey College in there.
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Not that. To ask for the help of gods when in doubt. And to trust them.
 
Magnos III said:
I really don't? I made mechanical arguments before, yes, as I have made role-play arguments too among others. What I have never said was that I was that I was against learning for the sake of learning, something you very clearly implied that I was.

This whole thing? Is not learning for the sake of learning. It's violating the privacy of our oldest friend and what we can gain from it does not look like, in my humble opinion, something that is worth the cost. Plus I see it as a dick move against a friend, and notice that I'm not even mentioning that he is a God here. It just really feels like a dick move to me.
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You don't see why you repeatedly saying that understanding has no value aside from its practical and mechanical benefits might lead a person to believe that you think that understanding has no value aside from its practical and mechanical benefits?
 
Please stop with tzeentch stuff, we don't know and have no way to find out right now, if boney decided one of these options is a nuclear bomb button then we are fucked either way.
 
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